Anonymous

“ MOUTH LATIN AND BOOK LATIN.—The introduction of Latin words into our English speech by two doors—by the living conversation of living people, and by the silent door of books, has given rise to a phenomenon of the same kind as that described in section 36. But the phenomenon of duplicates or doublets presents itself to our notice on a much larger scale now; and, in every case, the duplicate word becomes in reality two separate words—employed for separate purposes, and with perfectly distinct meanings. ”

“ But, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries—and even much later—travelling was very difficult and expensive; working-men could not travel at all; there was little motive to travel for any one; and generations were born and died within the same village, or on one farm, or at least in one part of the ‘country-side.’ Thus different parts of this island pronounced their English in their own way; had their own grammar—that is, their own inflections; and each division of England looked upon itself as the right and correct speakers of the English tongue. ”

“ KING ALFRED.—Up to the year 866, Northumbria was the home of learning and literature; and the Northumbrian monks were its loving and diligent cultivators. But the incursions of the Danes, the destruction of the monasteries, and the perpetual danger to life and property arising from the troubled condition of the country, put a stop for some time to study and to letters. The cultivation of English as a book-language reappears, towards the end of the ninth century, in the south of the island. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, is its great friend and promoter. ”

“ Most of the words in our English language are not English. There are more Latin words in our tongue than there are English. But this statement is true only of our words as we find them in the dictionary. The words which we use every day—the language of the mouth—is almost entirely English. The fixed vocabulary—the vocabulary printed in the dictionary—is more Latin than English; the moving vocabulary—the words which are daily spoken—is English. ”

“ WHAT A LANGUAGE IS.—A language is a number of different sounds which are made by the tongue and the other organs of speech. But a spoken language is, or may be, written or printed upon paper by the aid of a number of signs or symbols—which are generally printed in black ink upon white paper.—The parts of a spoken language are called sounds; the smallest parts of a written or printed language are called letters.—A language is also called a tongue or a speech.—A language, like a living being, does not remain always the same. It grows. As it grows, it alters in appearance ”

“ ALLITERATION OR HEAD-RHYME.—Alliteration is the correspondence of the first letter of several words in the same line. It is like the well-known: ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper off a pewter plate.’
Round the rugged rocks the ragged rascals ran. ”

“ An inflected language is generally called a Synthetic Language, because it expresses changes of relations by the adding-on (synthesis) of something to the end of the word. A language which expresses relations by little words like prepositions is called an analytic language. We may therefore say that:
English was in its earlier forms a synthetic language; but it is now an analytic language.
So much for the form or grammar of it. But, on the other hand, if we look at the matter or words or vocabulary of it, we shall find that:
English was originally a pure or unmixed language ”

“ There is an established fact, however, which is of the highest interest and importance: most of the words of the great family of Indo-European languages can be traced to a few hundred roots; and these roots are common to the whole family. It is the greatest achievement of philological science to have clearly established this fact. How these roots have originated, is a more uncertain inquiry: in fact, is just the question of the origin of language presented in another form. It is the theory of some that words have arisen from the imitation of natural sounds ”

“ Low Latin is the name for that kind of corruption of Latin which was written and spoken after the breaking up of the Roman Empire in the fifth century.
[11] A synonym is a word that has the same meaning as another word; like begin and commence; will and testament. There are very few real synonyms in English; because when the language acquired a word of similar meaning, it at once set to work to use it in a different way, or to give it a different function, or to bestow on it a different tone, colouring, or shade. ”

“ FORMATION OF MODERN ENGLISH.—We have seen that the substance of the living English tongue was brought from Germany to this island by our Teutonic ancestors. We have seen also that it has undergone a great variety of influences, the greatest and strongest of which was the Norman Conquest. For a long time after the Conquest, the English language was the tongue of a subject and humiliated race ”

“ In the thirteenth century it began to revive, but with very important changes; the inflections, and many of the old English words, being lost, and a multitude of new words being introduced. In Chaucer’s time it regained its old position as the language of the court, of fashion, and of literature. In 1485 we find the language in all important respects fixed as we have it now. Every intelligent Englishman is able to understand all that has since been written. ”

“ Queen Elizabeth was a good Greek scholar, and could both speak and write good Latin. Now began to come into our language thousands of Latin words; until, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, an eminent writer complains that Englishmen will have ‘to learn Latin to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either.’ Unlike the Latin words of the Third Period, the Latin words introduced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suffered little or no change. ”

“ ENGLISH WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.—The English language has for centuries been importing words from many foreign tongues into its own vocabulary; and it has given a hearty welcome to all kinds of strangers. ”

“ The Low-German spoken in Holland is called Dutch; the Low-German spoken in Belgium is called Flemish; the Low-German spoken in Friesland—a wealthy province of Holland—is called Frisian; and the Low-German spoken in England is called English. (But, as we shall soon see, English contains many thousands of words in addition{10} to those which are purely Low-German.) The language on the continent which is most like English is the Frisian language. There is indeed a well-known couplet, every word in which is said to be both Frisian and English. ”

“ BÆDA.—The oldest literature of a nation—the early writings of its childhood—are always poetic; and prose-writings do not appear until the nation has, as it were, grown up. The first English prose-writer was Bæda—or, as he is generally called, The Venerable Bede. He was born in the year 673. Like Cædmon, our first poet, he was a Northumbrian, and belonged to the monastery of Jarrow-upon-Tyne. His most important writings were in Latin; and the best known of them is an Ecclesiastical History of the English People. ”

“ The Angles settled chiefly in the north and east. One of the kingdoms founded by them was called East Anglia; and the northern and southern settlers{12} in it gave their names to the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, which are only later forms of the words North folk and South folk. These three tribes all spoke different dialects of the same speech. The early predominance of the Angles, especially as the Angles in Northumbria were the first to have a literature, gave to the language the name of English, though the Keltic people still call it Saxon or Sassenach. ”

“ ENGLISH WORDS LOST.—The copious introduction of Norman-French, Latin, and Greek terms into our language, had the effect of pushing a great number of purely English words out of our speech, or at least of making them less frequent in use. Thus we used to say fore-elders, but this word has had its place taken by ancestors; fairhood has been pushed out by beauty ”

“ They have gone to China and brought home Chinese words (as well as things) ; they have long held India, which has given us Hindu words; they have imported names and terms from North and from South and Central America; they have borrowed from Spaniards and Italians; they have taken words, nearer home, from the Dutch and from the Germans; they have gone to the farthest east and to the farthest west, and there is hardly a language on the face of the globe from which they have not imported some words that live and make themselves useful in our language. ”

“ Social and Political Causes.—Society is a complex thing, continually growing. New facts and ideas are perpetually making themselves felt, necessitating new words, or a more extending meaning in old words. In this province, then, changes in language are incessantly required. ”

“ These words, ever after, ran in couples; and this habit of going in couples became a habit of the language. Hence it is that, in the opening words of our Prayer-Book, we use such couples as assemble and meet together; acknowledge and confess; dissemble and cloak; and humble and lowly. The words meet together, acknowledge, cloak, and lowly, represent the purely English part of the congregation; while the Norman-French supplies such words as assemble, confess, dissemble, and humble. The great poet of the fourteenth century—Chaucer—has hundreds of examples of such phrases. ”

“ Thus, though legal, leal, and loyal are, in their origin, fundamentally the same word, their meanings are perfectly distinct and even widely different; hospital and hotel are the same words, but they are no longer used in the same sense; while fact and feat have also widely diverged from each other in use and in signification. ”

“ The word bletsian has become bless. The grammar of the verbs has changed enormously. For example, the imperative ending ath in Veahxath and âfyllath has quite fallen away. It existed, in the form of eth, down to the time of Chaucer, who writes Standeth up! in addressing several persons.—Next, we ought to notice that all the words are pure English. The modern{16} version which we still use, and which was published in 1611, has been obliged to use Latin and French words. It says—and the words in italics are all foreign words: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth’! ”

“ FRAGMENTS OF VERB INFLECTIONS.—The inflections of the verb are very strangely disguised; and, if learned men had not worked hard, and made diligent inquiry in many directions, we should never have known what they really are. Thus the m in am is the same m that is found in me; and the oldest form known of the verb am, in the oldest language, is asmi.—The t which we find in the second person of some{38} verbs, such as art, wast, shalt, and wilt, is the same as the th in thou. ”

“ We must not forget that it was the spoken language of England that was affected by the Danes; not the written language; for the simple reason that, in these times, not more than one man in a thousand—either among Danes or Englishmen—could read and write.{22}
26. THE SCANDINAVIAN ELEMENT (ii) .—The Danish contribution is, like the Keltic, of two kinds: (a) Names of places; and (b) Common words.
(a) The most remarkable example of the place-name is the noun by, which means town. There are in England more than six hundred names ending in by. ”