historical linguistics

Fun Facts About English #98 – The History of English 1

02/22/2021 by admin

Kinney Brothers Publishing English History 1

The name “Britain” comes from Latin: Britannia~Brittania, via Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Breteyne, possibly influenced by Old English Bryten(lond), and ultimately an adaptation of the native word for the island, Pritanī.

This is the first of two posts exploring the history of the English language. In this post, I’ll take a look at the broadest cultural, political, and linguistic developments on the British Isles from the prehistoric up to the Norman invasion in 1066. The second post looks at the history of English from the Norman conquest through Modern English.

Prehistory and the Celts

Stonehenge, 3000 BC, built by Celtic high priests known as the Druids

During the Neolithic and Bronze Ages (4500 to 600 BC), the British islands saw the adoption of agriculture as communities gave up their hunter-gatherer modes of existence to begin farming.

During the British Iron Age (1200 BC to 600 AD) a trans-cultural diffusion and immigration from continental Europe resulted in the establishment of Celtic languages and gave rise to the Insular Celtic group. The Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels or Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish and Manx) and the Celtic Britons or Brythonic languages (Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons).

The first historical account of the islands of Britain and Ireland was by Pytheas, a Greek from the city of Massalia, who around 310–306 BC, sailed around what he called the “Pretannikai nesoi,” or “Pretannic Isles.” “Pretani” or “Pritani” was understood on the continent to mean “the land of the tattooed” or “the painted ones.”

Celtic influence on the English language is most apparent through geographic and place names. The Thames and Yare rivers as well as important Roman towns such as London, York, and Lincoln find their origins in the Brittonic Celt language. Beyond this, it has been suggested that it is impossible to point to any feature about Anglo-Saxon phonology or Old English which can be shown conclusively to have been modified due to the linguistic habits of the Celtic Britons.

Roman Invasion, Occupation & Departure – 55 BC – 410 AD

In 55 and 54 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar invaded the British Isles and by 43 AD “Brittania” had became the furthest western province of the Roman Empire. In the first century, governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola enlarged the province significantly, taking in north Wales, northern Britain, and most of Caledonia (Scotland). By the third century, most Britons were granted some form of citizenship in the Roman Empire.

Following the conquest of the Britons, a distinctive Romano-British culture emerged as the Romans introduced improved agriculture, urban planning, industrial production, and architecture. They also built an extensive network of roads, sanitation, and wastewater systems.

By the end of the fourth century, Roman Britain had an estimated population of 3.6 million people, of whom 125,000 consisted of the Roman army and their families and dependents. The capital city of Londinium (London) was an ethnically diverse city with inhabitants from across the Roman Empire, including natives of Britannia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

The British language at the time of the invasion was Common Brittonic and remained so after the Romans withdrew. Although a British Latin dialect was presumably spoken in the population centers, it did not become influential enough to displace Celtic British dialects spoken throughout the country. Examination suggests some 800 Latin words were incorporated into the native language.

The Druids, the Celtic priestly caste, vainly defended their sacred groves from destruction by the Romans and their religion was outlawed by Claudius in the first century AD. Archaeological evidence for Christian communities begins to appear in the 3rd and 4th centuries with small timber churches and Roman Christian burial grounds.

By 410 AD, 460 years into the occupation of the British Isles, the city of Rome was under attack and they could no longer maintain the far western stretches of the crumbling empire. The Roman Emperor Honorius sent a letter to the people of Britain to “look to their own defenses.” There may have been some brief naval assistance from the fading Roman Empire of the West, but otherwise, they were on their own.

With Britain open to invasion, the islands were divided politically as former soldiers, mercenaries, nobles, officials, and farmers declared themselves kings and fighting broke out among each other. Added to this, depredations of the Picts from the north and Scotti from Ireland forced the Britons to seek help from the pagan German tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who then, depending on interpretation, defended, immigrated, and then integrated with the populace peacefully or invaded the islands with an aggressive military occupation. Either way, their presence completely altered the cultural and linguistic makeup of the islands.

Anglo Saxons – 410 – 1060 AD

From the 5th to the 11th centuries of the medieval period, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were formed and gradually came to dominate the territory of present-day England. Gaining control of eastern England in the 5th century, they expanded during the 6th century into the Midlands, and expanded again into the south-west and north of England during the 7th century. By 600, a new order was developing of kingdoms and sub-kingdoms including East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, Essex, Kent, and Sussex. By the 8th century, the term Anglo-Saxon was in use, but more often than not, was used to distinguish Germanic groups in Britain from those on the continent (Old Saxony in Northern Germany). The earliest “English” identity emerged in this period when they were known in Old English as the Angelcynn (‘family of the Angles’).

The Saxon invasions of Britain destroyed most of the Roman Christian churches in the east of Britain, replacing them with a form of Germanic polytheism. The unconquered parts of southern Britain, notably Wales, protected their Romano-British culture, in particular retaining Christianity as well as spoken Celtic. Around 600, the Anglo-Saxon states were again Christianized by the Gregorian Mission; a Christian mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 596 specifically to convert Britain’s Anglo-Saxons.

When the Saxons arrived, they brought with them a writing system called Runes and a spoken language made up of Germanic languages such as Old Frisian, Old Norse, and Old High German. Over the next few centuries, at the expense of British Celtic and British Latin, these became the predominant languages throughout England. Today, we refer to these medieval dialects as Old English though it bears very little resemblance to the English as spoken today. About 85% of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are the basic elements of Modern English vocabulary. With the spread of Western Christianity during the Middle Ages, the Latin alphabet was adopted and eventually displaced earlier Runic alphabets.

Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish, and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period. It was Mercian that influenced the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English.

Old English can be subdivided into three historical periods:

Prehistoric Old English (c. 450 to 650) This language was a closely related group of dialects spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and pre-date documented Old English or Anglo-Saxon.
Early Old English (c. 650 to 900) This is the period of the oldest manuscript traditions, with authors such as Cædmon, Bede, Cynewulf, and Aldhelm.
Late Old English (c. 900 to 1170) This final period also includes the Old Norse (Viking) influence before the transition to Middle English.

The Vikings – 800 to 1150 AD

In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where “on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter.” (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)

The Viking Age and its relationship with England lasted from approximately 800 to 1150 AD. Its expansion took the forms of warfare, exploration, settlement, and trade with the Danish invaders ultimately becoming part of the mix of people on the British islands. Anglo-Saxon writers called the Scandanavian invaders Danes, Norsemen, Northmen, the Great Army, sea-rovers, sea wolves, or the heathen.

The Vikings took over parts of Northumbria, East Anglia, and parts of Mercia. In 866 they captured modern York and made it their capital. The kings of Mercia and Wessex resisted as best they could, but with little success until the time of Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great), who managed to re-conquer and unify England for much of the 10th century.

Danelaw is the set of legal terms and definitions created in the treaties between Alfred the Great and Guthrum, the Danish warlord, written following Guthrum’s defeat at the Battle of Edington in 878.

The Danes brought with them the Old Norse branch of Germanic religions commonly known as Norse paganism. Our names for days of the week come mainly from Anglo Saxon equivalents of Old Norse gods – Tuesday from Tiw or Týr, Wednesday from Woden (Odin), Thursday from Thor, etc. Hundreds of adopted words also include give, take, get, husband, fellow, sister, plow, ugly, egg, steak, law, die, bread, down, fog, muck, lump, and scrawny. With the 300-year influence of Old Norse, Old English was transformed beyond its Anglo-Saxon roots. This “Norsification” included changes in syntax, phonology, lexical borrowing, and (importantly) grammatical simplification. Old English was in its nature a synthetic language, where word meaning was indicated by distinctions of tense, person, gender, number, mood, voice, and case. The Old Norse influence simplified the language toward a more analytic language that organizes words and grammar by a strict word order instead of inflections or word endings that show grammar.

The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 AD from Old English:
Foxas habbað holu and heofonan fuglas nest… (“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests…”)

The final Viking invasion of England came in 1066 when Harald Hardrada of Norway sailed up the River Humber and marched to Stamford Bridge with his men. The English king, Harold Godwinson, marched north with his army and defeated Hardrada in a long and bloody battle.

Immediately after the battle, King Harold heard that William of Normandy had landed in Kent with yet another invading army. With no time to rest, Harold’s army marched swiftly back south to meet this new threat. The exhausted English army fought the Normans at the Battle of Hastings on the 14th of October, 1066. At the end of a long day of fighting, the Old French-speaking Normans had won, King Harold was dead, and William of Normandy, aka William the Conqueror or William the Bastard, was the new king of England.

To continue this history, click on the “next” button below! You might also be interested in the influence of Native American languages in the North American dialects, or English words you didn’t know were originally Spanish!

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Fun Facts About English #91 – Jaywalker

01/29/2021 by admin

Beginning in the Midwest in the early 19th-century, “jay” was common slang for an empty-headed chatterbox, like a bluejay.

By the later 19th century, using the word “jay” was akin to cursing and not to be taken lightly. A “jay” was a hick, a rube, or a downright dupe. A “jay town” was a fourth-rate or worthless place. In a display of contempt by an audience, “jay” could be hurled against a bad actor much like we say “hack” or “jackass” today.

As we moved into the 20th century, “jay” took on new meanings.

“A jay driver is a species of the human race who, when driving either a horse or an automobile, or riding a bicycle on the streets, does not observe the rules of the road. It is the custom of the jay driver to drive on the wrong side of the street.” Emporia Gazette, Kansas, 13 July 1911

In the first decades of the new century, motor carriages began crowding already busy city streets and resulted in a sharp increase in pedestrian deaths. Unsuccessful attempts were made to limit automobile speed to 25 mph and in some cases, ban cars altogether. Civic outrage and a concern for public safety gave rise to new laws prohibiting people from freely walking and playing in the street – as they had done for millennia. A pedestrian indifferent to the new rules became known as a “jay walker.”

The above image is from a 1924 New York parade with a jaywalking clown dressed in 19th-century clothing who is repeatedly bumped by a Model T Ford. The comedy was meant to impress on the audience that those who walked in the streets were country rubes.

Lest the laws become too restrictive for the growing automobile industry, pro-auto groups lobbied lawmakers to put the burden of responsibility on pedestrians. In concerted campaigns that included politicians, boy scouts, and even Santa Claus, municipalities worked to change people’s attitudes about who had the lawful right to be in the street. Safety organizations and police began formally using “jay walker” in signage and imposed fines for pedestrian infractions. Anti-jaywalking laws were adopted in many cities in the late 1920s and became the norm by the 1930s.

If you enjoyed this post, check out the earliest known reference to baseball, how Hello became a telephone greeting, or common words that were originally trademarked!

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Fun Facts About English #92 – English Rhoticity

01/28/2021 by admin

Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the rhotic consonant /r/ by speakers of certain varieties of English. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, whereas a non-rhotic speaker “drops” the /r/ sound, pronouncing them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/.

English dialects that use a hard /r/ include South West England, Scotland, Ireland, and most of the United States and Canada. Non-rhotic dialects are found in England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In the U.S., non-rhotic varieties depend on an array of factors such as region, age, social class, ethnicity, or the degree of formality when speaking.

In England, the loss of the hard /r/ began sporadically during the mid-15th century. By the mid-18th century, though /r/ was still pronounced in most environments, it was frequently dropped. By the early 19th century, the southern British standard was fully transformed into a non-rhotic variety. Colonization of countries like Australia and South Africa happened after England had become more fully non-rhotic.

In the British Council clip below, Shakespearean actor, Ben Crystal, presents two readings from the opening monologue of Romeo and Juliet – one in the accent of contemporary British English (Received Pronunciation), and the other in a simulated accent of Shakespeare’s day; the same accent that began arriving on North American shores in the early 1600s. Take special note of the hard /r/ in the latter. The comparisons begin around 1:40 in the six-minute clip.

During America’s early history as a nation, the loss of rhotic /r/ in British English influenced eastern and southern American port cities that still held close connections to England after the Revolutionary War. This caused America’s more established, upper-class pronunciation to become non-rhotic while the westward-expanding U.S. remained rhotic. Non-rhotic varieties are most apparent in the Boston, Rhode Island, and New York accents, as well as the southern accents of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Louisiana.

American non-rhotic varieties shouldn’t be mistaken for an accent known as the Trans-Atlantic or Mid-Atlantic accent; a largely cultivated manner of speaking most noticeable in Hollywood films during the 1930s and 40s. When one listens to the speech patterns of America’s old East Coast moneyed class – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, William F. Buckley, and Katharine Hepburn – it doesn’t sound like a typical American accent, but it’s not really British either. That’s because it’s fake. The “accent” or “diction” was taught in elite boarding schools and acting studios to affect a mix of American and non-rhotic British pronunciation. The result was a posh-sounding American accent no one naturally used unless “educated.”

After the Civil War, centers of wealth and political power shifted with fewer cultural connections to the old colonial and British elites. This included a cultural movement toward rhotic speech that accelerated after WWII. In the world of entertainment, the Trans-Atlantic accent fell out of popularity and film actors like Katharine Hepburn mysteriously lost their upper-class accents mid-career. This was also reflected in the national standard of radio and television where popular TV hosts like Johnny Carson hailed from the Midwest. In the eastern United States, the accent trend is reversing where rhoticism has re-asserted itself resulting in the cultural loss of distinctive accents familiar to many older Americans.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in learning why Americans say /zee/ instead of /zed/ for the letter Z, how rebracketing changes a word’s pronunciation, or the history of Johnson’s Dictionary published in 1755.

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Fun Facts About English #89 – Collective Nouns

12/22/2020 by admin

Kinney Brothers Publishing nouns of multitudes

Collective Nouns

Collective nouns, also known as nouns of assemblage, nouns of multitude, group terms, terms of venery, and veneral nouns, are words used to define a grouping of people, animals, objects or concepts. We use many without a second thought:

An array of magazines.
A batch of cookies.
A crowd of people.
A bevy of options.
A collection of coins.
A bouquet of flowers.
A string of pearls.
A school of fish.

As perfunctory or generic as some may be, like group or bunch, many of the nouns used for collectives convey meaning. A batch, whether cookies or car parts, indicates something made or manufactured. A string of pearls, insults, or lawsuits suggest a number in succession. Cleverly assigned collectives such as “an idiocy of drunks” or “an embarrassment of teenagers” colorfully illustrate circumstance, behavior, or character. Creating apropos nouns of multitude has been the pleasure of writers for hundreds of years. Though some will find their place in dictionaries for future reference, most will not.

venery – “hunting, the sport of the chase,” early 14c., from Old French venerie, from Medieval Latin venaria “beasts of the chase, game.”

For animals, many terms of venery, like “a crash of rhinos,” date back to the 15th century. The longevity of these classifications rests in part on their repeated publishing over the centuries. Such terms have present-day authority in that they’ve been attested in numerous documents and dictionaries over time. They are not, however, compulsory. A “flock of crows” will (blandly) serve the collective-noun purpose if murder is not to your liking. When speaking of giraffes, there’s no sense in arguing whether a tower, a corps, or a herd should take precedence as all are acceptable.

The Legacy

In their original context, medieval vernery developed terms that had a very practical intent: to classify animals, their droppings, and the noises they make. The earliest known hunting treatise on these topics is from the mid 1200s by the Anglo-Norman writer, Walter Bibbesworth. The Venerie of Twiti is another Anglo-Norman treatise that named only three different terms for herds of animals.

Throughout the 1300s, veneral terms were translated from French into English and were intended as a mark of erudition for the English gentleman who used them correctly. It became a fashion in the courts to creatively expand the vocabulary. By the 15th century, this “fashion” had reached exaggerated and even satirical proportions.

Boke of Seynt Albans Kinney Brothers Publishing

It was in this period that Juliana Berners, a Benedictine prioress of the Priory of St. Mary of Sopwell, published the Boke of Seynt Albans (1486) and introduced “the compaynys of beestys and fowlys.” Her translations of French treaties on hunting and hawking included a whopping 164 terms of venery as well as humorous human classifications. The “boke” was very popular and became a requisite read for gentlemen of the nobility. Over the centuries, the title was repeatedly edited, printed, and scrutinized for authenticity. Five hundred years later, we still find great appeal in Ms. Berner’s “asylum of loons,” and “unkindness of ravens.” Her tongue-in-cheek human groupings, like “a sentence of judges,” “a blast of hunters,” and “a gaggle of women” continue to convey a sardonic medieval wit.

So, whether you’re writing for classification or fiction, one’s assemblages can be colorfully termed. The license of the poet is yours.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in reading about proverbs that are often misconstrued, the Power of X, or idiomatic phrases coined by famous writers!

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Fun Facts About English #81 – Old English Words

10/29/2020 by admin

Kinney Brothers Publishing Flitterwochen

English Timeline Kinney Brothers Publishing

Old English is the language of the early Germanic inhabitants of England known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Their settlements began in the 5th century and lasted until the end of the 11th century. Only about a sixth of Anglo-Saxon words have survived and make up about 1% of the current English language. On the other hand, 80% of the thousand most common words in modern English come from Old English! They include the words water, earth, house, food, drink, sleep, sing, night, strong, the, a, be, of, he, she, you, no, and not. Interestingly, many common swear words are also of Anglo-Saxon origin, including tits, fart, shit, turd, arse, and probably, piss.

Here are ten Old English words you can start using to bring some medieval color to your daily vocabulary. You’ll also be doing your part to save endangered words!

anon – shortly; “The concert will begin anon! Make haste!”
bedward – to head to bed; “It’s late and I’m moving bedward!”
crapulous – feeling ill after too much eating or drinking; “I’m feeling totally crapulous today, dude.”
elflock – tangled hair; “After frolicking in the woods, her hair was full of elflocks.”
gardyloo – what you shout before emptying your bedpan out the window; “The drunk yelled, “Gardyloo!” and pissed out the window.”
groke – to stare intensely at someone who is eating hoping you will receive some, especially a cat or dog; “The dog sat groking at me while I ate my sandwich.”
grubble – to feel or grope around for something you can’t see; “She grubbled in the bottom of her purse for her house key.”
overmorrow – the day after tomorrow; “We’ll have to travel all day tomorrow and overmorrow to arrive by Sunday.”
trumpery – things that look good but are basically worthless; “The crowd was taken in by his Madison Avenue trumpery.”
twattling – gossip, nonsense; “The woman is nothing but a twattling old gossip!”

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in French words that you should know when dining at French restaurants, the influence of Native American languages in American English, or common words you didn’t know were Spanish!

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Fun Facts About English #60 – Rebracketing

07/03/2020 by admin

Fun Facts About English 60 Kinney Brothers Publishing

“A napron” becoming “an apron” wasn’t an anomaly. This kind of rebracketing has happened again and again in our language history. Here are five similar examples:

an ewt (salamander) / a newt
an ekename (additional name) / a nickname
an otch / a notch
a naranj / an orange
a naddre (type of snake) / an adder

These may seem like quaint misinterpretations from long ago. In reality, this kind of rebracketing is happening before our very eyes and ears, in spite of the fact that we rely less on an oral transfer of language. Our higher literacy rates seem to accelerate how we (sometimes intentionally) manipulate our language and, in turn, create strings of new words in the process.

Take for example the Middle English words all one or alone, meaning “one only” or “on one’s own.” When the word rebracketed to a-lone, a profusion of new vocabulary entered the English language, such as lone, lonely, and lonesome.

Consider the word helicopter. To most English speakers’ thinking, the two parts of the word are heli and copter. This is not correct. Coined in 1861, the etymology of the word originates from the Greek helico (spiral) and pter (with wings, as in pterodactyl). Nonetheless, we now have derivatives of this rebracketing, like helipad, heliport, and helidome. Copter, which wasn’t a word, suffix, or even slang before helicopter, gives us new combinations like gyrocopter, jetcopter, and quadcopter.

A more recent arrival is blog. The internet-era word came from the clever rebracketing of “weblog.” Its cousin, vlog, came from the words “video log.” From these newly-coined terms we get blogger, blogging, vlogger, and vlogging.

A popular rebracketing has occurred with the word alcoholic. The two parts of the word are alcohol (booze) and -ic (related to). Though –holic has no etymological history, per se, it is now a suffix with the definition of “being addicted to something,” such as shopaholic, chocoholic, and workaholic.

Finally, our beloved American hamburgers are a linguistic carnival of misinterpretations and rebracketing. If asked, many Americans would probably think the breakdown of the word hamburger (ignoring any cognitive dissonance) would be ham (meaning “not really ham”) and burger (a patty of meat or meat sandwich). From these misinterpretations, we get new words and food like a cheeseburger, double burger, and veggieburger.

The real meaning of hamburger is “a resident of the German town of Hamburg;” Hamburg + -er (resident of). Denizens of this burg gave us our meat sandwich progenitor, the Hamburg steak. When Germans arrived in America, their spicy Hamburg steaks were sold in restaurants, state fairs, and on food carts to industrial workers. Difficult to eat while standing or walking, the beef patty was sandwiched between two pieces of bread, and the hamburger was born. While there are numerous competing stories, it’s said that Louis’ Lunch, a small lunch wagon in New Haven, Connecticut, sold the first Hamburg steak sandwich around 1900.

And the rest is global history.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in how we unconsciously stack our adjectives, the anomaly of “The Big Bad Wolf,” or how Lewis Carroll gave us the first literary portmanteaux!

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