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H. Sweet, A Bough, G. Nesfield, H. Whild
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W.Caxton
G Travise, J. Choser, J, Whikkliff
trace -отследить
Outer history
nomadic – кочевой
hunter-gatherers – охотники-собиратели
barrow –курган, холм
mound – холм из камней, погребальный курган
henges -
fashion – отделывать, обрабатывать
sacrifice – жертва
ancestor – предок
beaker – горшок с прямыми краями, сосуд
wickerwork – плетеные крыши
Gaul
Emperor Claudius
subdue – подчинить
repel – отразить
firths (estuaries) – устье, пойма
stronghold – крепость, цитадель, оплот
indigenous – туземный, местный
forefather – предшественник, предок
ruthless - кочевой
acquire – приобретать воспринимать
borrowing – заимствование
Asia Minor – Малая Азия
petty principalities
hostilities - вражда
chieftains – племенной вождь, вождь клана
fertile -плодородный
Hengest and Horsa
inferior – отсталый, примитивный
in hosts
plunder
exterminate – уничтожить
intercourse - взаимодействие
faith – вера
monk – монах
oust – вытеснить
insular writing
The history of any language is an unbroken chain of changes more or less rapid. But though the linguistic tradition is unbroken it is impossible to study l-ge covering 15 cent. without subdividing it into smaller periods. Thus the history of the E. l-ge is generally subdivided conventionally into Old English (5th – 11th century), Middle English (11th – 15th century) and New English (15th – till now). This periodisation is based on extraliguistic factors, that is, the outer history events which are considered as milestones in the process of changing economic forms and political systems: the Norman Conquest of Britain finishing the development of the feudal system, Wars of the Roses, feudal state recession and the reestablishment of the state changing into the absolute monarchy, bourgeous development etc.But we should pesistantly mention that all these events playing the most significant role in the history of the country are not decisive in determining the stages in the l-ge developments. From the other hand, the dates of the periods in the history of the l-ge do not mean that the state of the l-ge in the year 1100 greatly differed from the l-ge of the year, say, 1110. So we may give general characteristics for each period. The definitions will be as follows:
Old English is the period of establishing English population, tribal dialect development in early feudal country.
Middle English is the period of establishing English race, the period of well developed feudalism, territory dialect development among which the London dialect of the central Midlands dialects dominated.
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New English is the period of the English national literary language, the period of consolidating English nation, capitalism and industrial development in Great Britain.
Most linguists accept this periodisation as a whole, but there are some points of disareement. For example, a difference in the dates of the start of Old English (the middle of the 5th cent. and the 7th cent. – mentioned in different editions of the textbook The History of the English Language by B.A. Ilyish (but it is not a descrepancy as some scientists stress the written records in particular). Then Russian and English scientists also distinguish subperiods and transition ones in each period. Moreover, taking into consideration the development of the society and l-ge itself they point out specific features to which they attach great importance. First and foremost it concerns written memorials that reflects the l-ge forms at a given time. The development of the l-ge and changes in its aspects give ground to some scientists such as H. Sweet, A Bough, G. Nesfield, H. Whild for dividing the periods into early and late subperiods and defining separate or single centures as: 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th. For ex. H. Sweet introduced the transition period between Old English and Middle English from 1100 to 1200: the author of “Brute” Limon used only 150 french words in the poem that contained 56 000 words at all. This proves weak assimilation of the french lexical stock into the the English l-ge of that period. Another transition period could be found between Middle and New English (14th -15th cent.) while W.Caxton printing activity. The 12th cent. was the beginning of the early Midle English characterised with the famous work “Ormulum” where spelling of the long and short syllables with cosonant dubbling differs. The 14th cent. is also important for the litrary activities of the great writers G Travise, J. Choser, J, Whikkliff, and Edward’s III petition written in English. So we may conclude transition periods, subperiods, peaks in each period are of importance and should not be neglected. Thus the definition of each p. should include both development of the people and that of the l-ge. The peculiarities of each p. can be traced in written memorials, speeches, books, papers.
Old English (5th – 11th century)
Middle English (11th – 15th century)
New English (15th – till now)
rapid - быстрыйconventionally
milestone – веха, краеугольный камень
recession – кризис, спад, упадок
pesistantly - настоятельно
Norman Conquest – Норманское завоевание
Wars of the Roses – Война Алой и Белой Роз
reestablishment – образование
decisive - решающий
tribal - племенной
accept – допускать, принимать
descrepancy
attach – придавать
give ground – дать основание
stock
neglect – недооценивать, отрицать
H. Sweet, A Bough, G. Nesfield, H. Whild
W.Caxton
G Travise, J. Choser, J, Whikkliff
trace -отследить
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Outer history
Early settlers: A race of nomadic hunter-gatherers were the earliest inhabitants of the British Isles. By about 3000 BC tribes of Neolithic people had crossed the water from Europe, probably from the Iberian peninsula, now Spain. They were farming folk who kept animals and grew crops. The barrows which can still be found, mostly in the chalky lands of Wiltshire and Dorset, were their huge communal burial mound s.More dramatic monuments were the henges, the most important of which was Stonehenge in Wiltshire, constructed before 2000 BC. It must have had religious and political significance: the massive undertaking involved in bringing bluestones all the way from Wales for place of its construction suggests that its builders had a substantial power base. Although in popular mythology Druids are associated with Stonehenge, they were Celtic priests who arrived much later. They met in sacred groves, usually near water, the symbol of fertility, and there is evidence that they made human sacrifices.
At about the time Stonehenge was built another race arrived from Europe. With them they brought the art of pottery making, the ability to fashion bronze tools and the custom of individual burial. Because decorated pottery beaker s have been found in their graves, they are known as Beaker people. They appear to have accepted the existing culture and many were buried at Stonehenge. But they developed their own farming society and built hill forts which took over the role of henges.
The next wave of immigrants were the Celts. They began to arrive about 700 BC and kept coming until the arrival of the Romans. The Celtic tribes, whose languages, the same as Germanic, also belonged to the Indo-European family, were at one time among its most numerous representatives. At the beginning of our era the Celts could be found on the territories of the present-day Spain, Great Britain, Western Germany and northern Italy. Before that they had been known to reach even Greece and Asia Minor. But under the steady attacks of Italic and Germanic tribes the Celts had to retreat, so that in the areas where they were once dominant they have left the scantiest trace of their presence.
The Celts who first came to Britain gradually spread to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Their languages are represented in modern times by Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. The Celtic tribes are ancestors of the Highland Scots, and the Irish.A later wave of Celtic tribes, having occupied for some centuries the central part of England, were in turn driven westwards by Germanic imvaders, and their modern language representatives are Welsh, Cornish and Breton. It should be noted that nowadays the remnants of the Celtic group of languages face the threat of complete disappearance.
The Celts probably became dominant because, being ironworkers, their weapons were superior. They seem to have been a more sophisticated people altogether. They drained much of the marshlands and built houses of wood and wickerwork with a weatherproof coating of mud.
The Romans: British recorded history begins with the Roman invasion. As we mentioned at the time Britain was inhabited by the so-called "romanised Celts", that is, Celts who had lived under the Roman rule for over four centuries and who had acquired Roman culture and ways of life and whose language had undergone certain changes mainly in the form of borrowings from the Latin language. Julius Caesar first crossed the English Channel and arrived in Britain in 55 BC but, meeting resistance and bad weather, he returned to Gaul. The successful invasion did not take place until nearly a century later, in AD 43, headed by the Emperor Claudius. This time, the land they knew by its Greco-Roman name, Pretani, was subdued with relative ease, apart from the country in the far north they called Caledonia (now Scotland). To repel persistent raids by the warlike Picts, or "painted ones", the Emperor Hadrian had a wall built right across the north of England, but the border with Scotland is now further north. When raids continued, a second wall was built by the Emperor Antoninus Pius, linking the firths (estuaries) of the Forth and the Clyde, but this also failed to contain the Picts. No centralised government was formed, instead there existed petty principalities under the control of local landlords. The Romans remained in control of Pretani, renamed Britannia, for nearly 400 years. Then, with barbarians at the gates of Rome, under repeated attacks from Picts and also from the Scots (the "tattooed ones" who invaded from the north of Ireland) and needing to set up a new military front on the east coast to repel the Germanic Saxon tribes invading from Europe, they pulled out. Behind them they left a network of towns, mostly walled, many on the sites of Celtic settlements or their own military camps. The Roman capital was London (Londinium), York had been created as a northern stronghold and Bath (Aquae Sulis) rapidly developed because of its waters. Many of these centers were linked by a network of roads, so well constructed that they survived for centuries and became the roles of other, much later, highways. Their main purpose was military, but they also encouraged trade by enabling goods to be moved rapidly about the country. The Romans also utilized Britain's natural resources, mining lead, iron and tin and manufacturing pottery. They constructed baths, temples, amphitheatres and ornate and beautiful villas, some with rudimentary under-floor central heating, the remains of which can still be seen today. They also brought literacy to the country, the use of the Latin language and the new religion, Christianity. This came at first by indirect means probably brought by traders and soldiers, and was quite well-established before the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, was proclaimed in AD 306. But the majority of the indigenous people continued to live much as they had before Roman rule and, when the conquerors left, their influence faded surprisingly fast. Buildings crumbled through lack of repair and language, literacy and religion soon disappeared. Thus, in 407 AD, with the departure of the last Roman emissary Constantine hostilities among the native tribes in England began anew. To normalise the situation the local chieftains appealed to influential Germanic tribes who lived on the continent inviting them to come to their assistance, and in 449 the Germanic troops led by Hengest and Horsa landed in Britain.
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The invaders, or Barbarians, as they were generally called, who came to the Isles were representatives of a by far inferior civilisation than the Romans. A bulk of the invaders came from the most backward and primitive of the Germanic tribes. They were an agricultural rather than a pastoral people. Their tribal organisation was rapidly disintegrating.
The invaders came to Britain in hosts consisting not only of warriors, but also including labourers, women and children. They plundered the country, took possession of almost all the fertile land there and partly exterminated, and partly drove away the native population to the less inhabited mountainous parts of the country — Cornwall, Wales, Scotland. The rest of the natives became slaves to the conquerors.
As we have already said, the forefathers of the English nation belonged to the western subdivision of old Germanic tribes, and the dialects they spoke later lay the foundation of the English national language.
The history of the English language begins in the fifth century AD. when the ruthless and barbaric Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, who up to that time had lived in western Europe between the Elbe and the Rhine, started their invasion of the British Isles.
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In view of the historical facts mentioned above it is quite clear why the language of the invaders underwent so few changes under the influence of the Celtic tongue as almost no normal intercourse between the invaded and the invaders was possible, the latter being very few and far below socially,
In the 7th century the Christian faith was introduced and with it there came many Latin-speaking monks who brought with them their own Latin alphabet.
The Latin alphabet was used by the majority of the people who could read and write. It ousted t he Runic alphabet. But the Latin alphabet could not denote all the sounds in the English language, for example, the sounds [w], [9]. For that purpose some runes were preserved — w, p, f, or some Latin letters were slightly altered — 5 to denote the sounds [6], [6] together with the rune p.
This alphabet that is a combination of the Latin alphabet with runes and some other innovations is called "insular writing", i.e. the alphabet typical of the Isles. The majority of Old English records are written in this insular alphabet. The spelling in these early records is on the whole phonetic and reasonably consistent, so that it is possible to learn much about the early pronunciation.
nomadic – кочевой
hunter-gatherers – охотники-собиратели
barrow –курган, холм
mound – холм из камней, погребальный курган
henges -
fashion – отделывать, обрабатывать
sacrifice – жертва
ancestor – предок
beaker – горшок с прямыми краями, сосуд
wickerwork – плетеные крыши
Gaul
Emperor Claudius
subdue – подчинить
repel – отразить
firths (estuaries) – устье, пойма
stronghold – крепость, цитадель, оплот
indigenous – туземный, местный
forefather – предшественник, предок
ruthless - кочевой
acquire – приобретать воспринимать
borrowing – заимствование
Asia Minor – Малая Азия
petty principalities
hostilities - вражда
chieftains – племенной вождь, вождь клана
fertile -плодородный
Hengest and Horsa
inferior – отсталый, примитивный
in hosts
plunder
exterminate – уничтожить
intercourse - взаимодействие
faith – вера
monk – монах
oust – вытеснить
insular writing
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