Learning activity 1.1
- 1. THE COMMON TONGUE CHAPTER 1 BY GEORGE LASLUISA
- 2. ENGLISH CAME FROM: • Germanic Warrior tribes colonizing Celtic Britons. or • Peaceful farmers looking for rich pastures. • It took more than three hundred years for English to dominate as main language.
- 3. FRISIAN LANGUAGE • Similar to antique English. Can be identified by listening and reading similarities. • Laam – Lamb • Stoarm – Storm • Sliepe – Sleep • Frisian came from Proto IndoEuropean.
- 4. Proto Indo- European Celtic Hellenic Germanic East Germanic extinct North Germanic Old Norse West Germanic Dutch German English Frisian Focus on Western Indo- European
- 5. CLAIMING TERRITORY • “-ing” means “the people of” • Ealing, Dorking, Worthing, etc. • “-ton” means “village” • Wilton, Ashton, Burton, etc. • “-ham” means “farm” • Birmingham, Tottenham, Nottingham, etc.
- 6. LOAN WORDS • In 635, Aidan arrived North England. Their successors fed English with Church Latin. • Started as pagan English, words about spiritual and religious beliefs. • Took on Latin, Latin smuggled on Greek.
- 7. ANGLES, SAXONS AND JUTES • The Jutes were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of their time in the Nordic Iron Age. • The Saxons were a Germanic people whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country near the North Sea coast of what is now Germany. • The Angles were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period.
- 8. THE RUNIC ALPHABET • A script from The Angles, Saxons and Jutes. • Named as “futhorc” just like its first letters. • Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets.
- 9. OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET • Aidan and other Irish missionaries brought to Northumbria the first manuscripts in the Roman alphabet.
- 10. ENGLISH IS BEING WRITTEN • In the early 80th century was written the Lindisfarne Gospels in Northumbria and The Ecclesiastical History of English People in Jarrow in the monastery of St. Paul. • During the seventh, eight century is dated The Wanderer, The Seafarer and Beowulf. • The Exeter Book is a tenth-century book which is an anthology of Anglo- Saxon poetry.
- 11. THE GREAT SCAPE CHAPTER 2
- 12. Norwegian Vikings Northern and western rim of scotland to Northwest of England. Danish Vikings Occupied Midlands and east of the country.
- 13. ALFRED AND THE BATTLE OF ETHANDUNE • Danes destroyed manuscripts and burned the great library of Jarrow. • In 865, they settled in East Anglia and attacked south. • In 878, they won and almost disappeared the last old kingdom. • Alfred was the leader of the Wessex the last English army who escaped. • Alfred used for first time the word “Englisc” to describe the language. • He conducted an intense program to educate in English. • In 878, Alfred joined 4000 men from Wiltshire and Somerset. • In the last attack the Danes surrendered and their leader was baptized as Christian.
- 14. AFTER WAR • Alfred knew the Danish will not subjugate. • He divided the land, to the north and east for the Danelaw under Danish rule. • The south and west for the core of the new England. • Crossing was not allowed, save for specific purposes or trading. • Trade refined the language and made it more flexible. • English had an immense capacity to absorb, to convert, to take on board other languages.
- 15. VIKING NAMING REMAINS • Ending “-by” means “farm or town” • Corby, Thornby, Rugby, etc. • Ending “-thorpe“ means “village” • Scunthorpe, Althorp, etc. • Ending “-thwaite“ is “a portion of land”. • Ruthwaite, Micklethwaite, etc. • Ending “-toft” means “homestead” • Lowestoft, Eastoft, Sandtoft, etc. • The word “dale” was “valley” • Langdale, Patterdale, etc.
- 16. OLD ENGLISH STRUCTURE • It was commonly Subject + Verb + Object, but it has not a rule. • It was necessary to use forms to give meaning to verbs and directional to point out the subject or the object. • Commerce needed fast talking and high comprehension, it was the end of word endings. • Prepositions came in and made the order of words important.
- 17. DIALECTS • In Britain, hybrid county dialects are disappearing due to people moving to bigger or main cities of a language. • Wigton Dialect: ‘I’ pronounced ‘Aah’, ‘the’ as ‘t’ • For Romany ‘horse’ was ‘grey’ or ‘book’ as ‘byeuk’ • Anglo-Saxon ‘to go’ is ‘gaan’, ‘gangan’, ‘gan’ • Old Nrose ‘Leika’ is ‘play’ • Scandinavian ‘clarty’ is ‘muddy’
- 18. BATTLE OF MALDON • In 991, Danes attacked again and won. • But thanks to Alfred, the language was already settled and cannot be extinguished. • There is a poem to describe the Battle of Maldon that was written in Old English. • Even Latin was thought using English as basis. • Pupils expressed their own feelings and beliefs in English as natural.