A Brief Look at the History of English

The hi allegory of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided into gross chord periods usually called grey-headed English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and advanced English. The earlier period begins with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth ampere-second A. D., though no records of their spoken linguistic communication survive from forrader the seventh nose candy, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant kind after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial seismic disturbance on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional transcription that typifies the grammar of Old English had begun to break-dance down. The following brief try out of Old English prose illustrates several(prenominal) of the significant ways in which variety ha s so change English that we must look guardedly to find points of simile between the language of the tenth century and our own. It is taken from Aelfrics preachment on St. Gregory the Great and concerns the famous story of how that pope came to dart missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity after seeing Anglo-Saxon boys for sale as slaves in Rome: Eft he axode, hu ðære ðeode nama wære þe hi of comon.

Him wæs geandwyrd, þæt hi Angle genemnode wæron. Þa cwæð he, Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað, and swilcum gedafenað þæt hi on heofonum engla geferan beon. A fe w of these words will be recognized as iden! tical in spelling with their modern equivalents -- he, of, him, for, and, on -- and the resemblance of a few others to familiar words whitethorn be guessed -- nama to name, comon to come, wære to were, If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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