Anglo-Saxon language

“ The Old English race grew by the absorption into it of tribal people descended from various ancient races. It assimilated to a great extent their dialects, and the Old English speech, as it prevailed in various parts of England, was formed by this process. No example of an Anglo-Saxon language has even been found out of Britain itself. ”

“ Their romantic literature soon weaned the hearts of educated men from the ancient rudeness of taste, but the mass of the English people clung so obstinately to their ancestral tongue, that the Anglo-Saxon language kept its hold in substance until it was evolved into modern English; and the Norman nobles were at length forced to learn the dialect which had been preserved among their despised English vassals.
Emerging from the Middle Ages into the illuminated vista of modern history, we find the world of action much more powerfully influenced by the world of letters than ever before. ”

“ In language we owe almost everything to the Anglo-Saxons. The Low German dialect which they brought with them from Sleswick and Hanover still remains in all essentials the identical speech employed by ourselves at the present day. It received a few grammatical forms from the cognate Scandinavian dialects; it borrowed a few score or so of words from the Welsh; it adopted a small Latin vocabulary of ecclesiastical terms from the early missionaries; it took in a considerable number of Romance elements after the Norman Conquest ”

“ A thorough familiarity with the Anglo-Saxon language and literature is obviously the first requisite: yet this attainment was scarcely to be met with till within a few years back, and even now, we fear that it is confined to a narrow circle, and that the able men who have made progress in this arduous path, lament that they have so slender and so scattered a train of followers. ”

“ If it's a matter of not dumbing down, why do we not include all the languages of the world here? There is a collection of Anglo-Saxon literature, that the Cambridge Bibliography of English literature spends all of 43 pages on; it's a tiny corpus compared to Middle English or any language that has a Wikisource. The literature of England includes all the works of the Cornish language, as well as a huge volume of Latin and French literature. Anglo-Saxon is not a part of the English language, emphasis on the singularity of the word language. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon Church long remained independent of Rome, notwithstanding the continual efforts of the Popes to bring it under their power. It was not till the tenth century that this result was brought about by Dunstan. Many Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics were distinguished for learning and ability, but the Venerable Bede holds the first place.
Anglo-Saxon Language.—The Anglo-Saxon language, which is simply the earliest form of English, claims kinship with Dutch, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, and German, especially with the Low German dialects (spoken in North Germany) . ”

“ The Latin writings of Englishmen are an integral part of English thought, and an important factor in the evolution of English culture. Gradually, as English monks grew to read Latin from generation to generation, they invented corresponding compounds in their own language for the abstract words of the southern tongue; and therefore by the beginning of the eleventh century, the West Saxon speech of Ælfred and his successors had grown into a comparatively wealthy dialect, suitable for the expression of many ideas unfamiliar to the rude pirates and farmers of Sleswick and East Anglia. ”

“ In Dunstan's time Saxon men were still translating Scripture into their tongue—paraphrasing it rather, with a change of spirit. Such translations were needed in Anglo-Saxon England, as in Germany. But after the Conquest the introduction of Norman-French tended to lessen at least the consciousness of such a need. That language, as compared with Anglo-Saxon, came so much nearer to Latin as to reduce the chasm between the learned tongue and the vernacular. ”

“ It must never be forgotten, however, that the whole framework of our language still remains, in every case, purely English—that is to say, Anglo-Saxon or Low Dutch—however many foreign elements may happen to enter into its vocabulary. We can frame many sentences without using one word of Romance or classical origin: we cannot frame a single sentence without using words of English origin. ”

“ There is thus in the centrifugal force which dominates the speech of Anglo-Saxons that which is a safeguard to the homogeneity as well as the institutions of this nation.
An Anglo-Saxon cannot be a bondsman; his language forbids it. The centrifugal force which prevails with him does not permit fetters. The children of all foreigners born here and speaking the English language come under its spell. ”

“ Compare the Sanscrit with the Gothic, the Gothic with the Anglo-Saxon, and again the Anglo-Saxon with the English: or what is even better, take two periods of the Anglo-Saxon itself, the eighth and tenth centuries for example. Always we perceive a compression, a gradual loss of fine distinctions, a perishing of forms, terminations and conjugations, in the younger state of the language. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon people, through the medium of literature, are continuously en rapport with each other. Everything published in the English language becomes common property to the whole English-speaking world; giving rise, according to its degree of merit, to the same impressions; calling into exercise the same faculties and sensibilities. The influence of literature may be considered in direct connection with language, of which it is the growth, and which in its turn it amplifies, strengthens, and embellishes. ”

“ Thus the Norman-French uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, and niece, have wholly ousted their Anglo-Saxon equivalents. In other instances the Romance words have enriched the language with symbols for really new ideas. This is still more strikingly the case with the direct importations from the classical Greek and Latin which began at the period of the Renaissance. Such words usually refer either to abstract conceptions for which the English language had no suitable expression, or to the accurate terminology of the advanced sciences. In every-day conversation our vocabulary is almost entirely English ”

“ No, it is not merely the difference between homely Anglo-Saxon and a language of classic origin; there is a radical distinction of thought. These people have an innate respect for things of the mind, which is wholly lacking to a typical Englishman. ”

“ As thus regarded and used to designate the race, the language and the institutions which resulted from that union, it is only objectionable, perhaps, as being superfluous, because English is the accepted name of the people of England and all pertaining to them. But the term Anglo-Saxon has also been more particularly employed to designate the Early English people and their language, before the Norman Conquest, as though they were Anglo-Saxon at that period and became English afterwards. Modern historians are protesting strongly against this use of the term. ”

“ Anglo-Saxon is not an original or aboriginal language. It points by its very name to the Saxons and Angles of the continent. We have, therefore, to follow our word from Anglo-Saxon through the various Saxon and Low-German dialects, till we arrive at last at the earliest stage of German which is within our reach, the Gothic of the fourth century after Christ. Even here we cannot rest. ”

“ We are now a mixed race, almost equally Celtic and Teutonic by descent; we speak a purely Teutonic language, with a large admixture of Latin roots in its vocabulary; we live under Teutonic institutions; we enjoy the fruits of a Græco-Roman civilisation; and we possess a Christian Church, handed down to us directly through Roman sources from a Hebrew original. To the extent so indicated, and to that extent only, we may still be justly styled an Anglo-Saxon people. ”

“ By these it appears that the translators of the Bible have happily preserved for us the pristine simplicity of our Saxon-English, like the light in a cathedral through its storied and saintly window, shedding its antique hues on hallowed objects. But as we advance, we discover in our most eminent writers the anglicisms diminish; and Sharon Turner has observed that a fifth of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. A recent critic20 has curiously calculated that the English language, now consisting of about 38,000 words, contains 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, Anglo-Saxon in their origin ”

“ To find others, we must wait till Anglo-Saxon has become English literature.
IV.
Besides their Latin writings and their devotional poems, the converted Anglo-Saxons produced many prose works in their national tongue. Germanic England greatly differed in this from Germanic France. In the latter country the language of the Franks does not become acclimatised; they see it themselves, and feel the impossibility of resisting; Latin as in general use, they have their national law written in Latin, Lex Salica. ”

“ They will amply repay him for his trouble, if he takes any interest in the early history of England, or in the general construction of authentic history of any kind. He will see plagarisms without end in the Latin histories, and will be in no danger of falling into the errors of Gale and others; not to mention those of our historians who were not professed antiquaries, who mistook that for original and authentic testimony which was only translated. It is remarkable that the "Saxon Chronicle" gradually expires with the Saxon language, almost melted into modern English, in the year 1154. ”

“ Every student who has given any attention to the historical development of our speech knows that it has changed from age to age no less in form than in pronunciation. Indeed, it could not be a living tongue if it did not constantly change. The oldest form of the language which we call Anglo-Saxon gradually changed in form and sound till Middle English times, and then it continued to change even more rapidly till modern times. ”

“ This fact of the gradual change in a living language is demonstrated through the difficulty one experiences in understanding the English of Chaucer, or even of Shakespeare, for the matter of that, although he is not so far removed from the present age. If a living tongue underwent no alteration with the lapse of years, then why should not Anglo-Saxon be as readily intelligible to us as modern English? ”

“ The language is a difficulty. The older English books are written in the language which is commonly called Anglo-Saxon; this is certainly not one of the most difficult, but no language is really easy to learn. Anglo-Saxon poetry, besides, has a peculiar vocabulary and strange forms of expression. The poetical books are not to be read without a great deal of application; they cannot be rushed. ”

“ But few of the civilized nations of Europe possess works which will bear comparison with those produced by our early Saxon writers; nor has any other of the Gothic tribes, from350 which our old Germanic language sprung, a literature of so old a date, that in any way approaches to the perfection attained by the early Anglo-Saxons. ”

“ We should probably experience a similar difficulty, if we knew equally well the current idiom of France or Italy in the seventh and eighth centuries. For when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce, why it should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English: 1. by contracting or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words ”

“ In addition to the Latin and the French (which was itself principally of Latin origin) , there was, thirdly, the Anglo-Saxon, to which the middle and the lower classes of the English stubbornly adhered. The Loss of Inflections.—Anglo-Saxon was a language with changing endings, like modern German. If a Saxon wished to say, "good gifts," he had to have the proper case endings for both the adjective and the noun, and his expression was g=ode giefa. ”

“ French disappears. It does not disappear so much because it is forgotten as because it is gradually absorbed. It disappears, and so does the Anglo-Saxon; a new language is forming, an offspring of the two others, but distinct from them, with a new grammar, versification, and [Pg 243] vocabulary. It less resembles the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred's time than the Italian of Dante resembles Latin. ”

“ ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD-ENGLISH PERIOD (450-1050) SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. Our English speech has changed so much in the course of centuries that it is now impossible to read our earliest records without special study; but that Anglo-Saxon is our own and not a foreign tongue may appear from the following examples. The first is a stanza from "Widsith," the chant of a wandering gleeman or minstrel; and for comparison we place beside it Andrew Lang's modern version. Nobody knows how old "Widsith" is; it may have been sung to the accompaniment of a harp that was broken fourteen hundred years ago. ”

“ The language grew as the tribal people who formed the settlers became fused. Anyone who will compare the oldest remnant of Anglo-Saxon poetry now extant, a few lines of Cædmon, and the same lines as they were modernised by King Alfred in his Old English version of Bede about 200 years after Cædmon’s time, will have no doubt about the changes which time brought in the dialects and language of the Old English people. In this development, the Northern name Windr or Winthr for a tribe may have lost its original meaning, and have been confused with that of winter, the season ”