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lOMoARcPSD|25804680Final Language Change Notes
English Language & Literature (High School - United Kingdom)
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Language Change
Paper 3 Language Analysis
Section A
Development of the English
language
Old English, 450-1150
Roman Influence
History of English really starts at the Roman
Invasion but not many words in English
remain from then.
43CE - the Romans invaded England. They
brought their language with them, and some
of it stuck around.
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Latinate - words which we can trace back to Latin.
In 410CE the Goths destroyed Rome and the last Romans withdrew from
Britain. Latin was replaced by the various languages of the tribes who
invaded Britain after the Romans had left – the Angles, Saxons, Picts, Frisians,
and Jutes.
To flee the invading tribes, the Celts retreated to Wales, Ireland, and Scotland,
where the language continued.
Anglo-Saxon Influence
Included a lot of synonyms - popular Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf uses 36 different words for
‘hero’, 20 for ‘man’, 12 for ‘battle’, and 11 for ‘ship’
Contains many interesting ‘kennings’ (allusive compound nouns) e.g., “hronrad” (whale
road/sea), “banhus” (bone house/body), and “beadoleoma” (battle light/sword)
Nouns had three genders - male, female, neuter - and there were up to 5 different cases for
inflection
Adjectives could have up to 11 forms
Word order was looser - semantics was mainly influenced by inflections
Once punctuation and spelling orthography is taken into account, many Old English words
become similar to today’s version of the language
Many common English words come from Anglo-Saxon English, such as the, a, be, of, he,
she, you, no, not, water, earth, house, food, drink, sleep, sing, night, and strong
A lot of words are similar to Old English words, but have changed significantly in
spelling/meaning, such as ‘wif’ (now ‘wife’, but originally meaning any woman)
Anglo-Saxon consonant cluster ‘sk’ became ‘sh’ at some point in the sixth century - ‘skield’
became ‘shield’, ‘disk’ became ‘dish’ etc.
A vowel shift influencing pronunciation occurred in the 7th century, when vowels began to be
pronounced more to the front of the mouth
Plural forms of nouns began to be represented by pronunciation rather than inflections
These changes resulted in revised spellings, which have led to inconsistencies e.g. ‘foot’ and
‘feet’, ‘goose’ and ‘geese’, ‘mouse’ and ‘mice’ etc.
During the 5th century, Germanic tribes people known as Angles, Saxons
and Jutes began to settle in the British Isles.
English began to distinguish itself from Germanic dialects around 600 AD.
Germanic tribes gradually invaded from the east over several generations,
pushing Celts west into Scotland, Wales, and Ireland
Saxons took dominance - new Anglo-Saxon nation became known as
‘Anglaland’/ ‘Englaland’ (the Land of the Angles)
The Anglo-Saxon period lasted for 600 years and, in that time, the language,
culture and politics of the British Isles were transformed.
Anglo Saxon dialect words form the basis of the language we now call Old
English.
Oldest surviving text from Old English literature is Cædmon’s Hymn,
composed between 658 and 680 AD.
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