Old English and Middle English

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Topic 9

Old English and Middle English

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Old English 449-1066 – “Englisc”

The story of English is the story of roaming and settling, invasions and war. What we call Anglo-Saxon or Old English developed through the contributions of many different peoples, including the Jutes (from Danish Jutland), the Saxons (rom the region of Germany still called Lower Saxony), and scatterings of other groups.

The Celts called their German conquerors Saxons but by degrees the terms Anglii and Anglia entered their speech.

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The Hundred Most Common Words

Of the next hundred, eighty-three are native. .

It is nearly impossible to write a modern English sentence without using a wealth of Old English vocabulary.

Of the hundred most common words in our speech today, everyone derives from Old English

Riddles

The Anglo-Saxons delighted in word play, riddles and ambiguity in language.

Few people could read or write, and so they had to rely on their memories.

As a result, the Anglo-Saxons developed their oral tradition very fully.

Playing riddles in Middle Earth…

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Remember

Medieval Britain had many languages. And English was in contact with them

Geoffrey Chaucer and English

Chaucer

English

English began to be more and more the language of choice for important literary writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer.

in the end of the 14th century records in English became more abundant, especially in London.

Many languages...

Triumph

His work integrates the richness of Middle English, Latinized and Frenchified by Christianity and Conquest.

Chaucer’s career illustrates the triumph of English.

Scandinavian influence

Most of these words come from semantic areas in which there was significant cultural influence from the Scandinavians, such as seafaring, warfare, social ranks, law, or coins and measures.

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French and Latin Influence

Latin and French borrowings were minimal in Old English. In Middle English, this changed. Words borrowed from Latin and French outnumbered the surviving Old English words.

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French based synonyms in the English Language

Words and Synonyms

• Maternity - motherhood
• Infant - child
• Amity - friendship
• Battle - fight
• Liberty - freedom
• Labour - work
• Chamber - room
• Forest - woods

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How did medieval English sound like?

Canterbury Tales Prologue

Medieval english

Some Old English words hardly need translation (mann or hus) although we spell them differently today (man or house)

The Anglo-Saxons were farmers (when they were not at war) and they soon settled down and took over all the good farming country, chasing the Celts to the hilltops or to Wales and Ireland.

Although more than half the vocabulary of modern English is borrowed, and more than half the words of Old English (some say as much as 85 percent) have vanished, the language of these Anglo-Saxon farmers became the basis of modern English.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XQx9pGGd0 .

to anger, to bait, bloom, boon, booth, bull, to die, ill, law, low, to raise, root, to scare, skill, skin, to take, though, to thrive, wand, to want, wing, wrong. We also saw the borrowing of “they, them, their”

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However, those Old English and Scandinavian words that survived topped the high-frequency lists. This means that they were more used than the Latin/French words. For example: “child”  “enfant”.

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