Detailed Short Note On Old English Period (1000 Words)
Old English Period : The history of the English language in England begins with the settlements of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in Britain. The settlement attained significant proportions by the middle of the fifth century, though it may have begun before then.
Detailed Short Note On Old English Period (1000 Words)
These three Germanic tribes came from the North German plain near to the district which is now known as Schleswig-Holstein. The Angles settled in the area extending northward from the Thames over the greater part of what is now England and the Lowlands of Scotland. The Jutes settled in Kent, the Isle of Wight and along part of the Hampshire coast.
The Saxons settled in the rest of England south of the Thames with the exception of the South-West, which was still held by the celts. The invaders had to encounter varying degrees of hostility from the celts and for mutual protection various tribes combined to produce small kingdoms. The grouping of tribes was not very permanent, since a vigorous ruler sometimes succeeded for a short time in uniting two or more kingdoms, but seven kingdoms can be distinguished as having a fairly stable existence, and these are described as the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. They are Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Wessex, Sussex, Essex and Kent. The relative importance of these kingdoms fluctuated.
In the seventh century Northumbria enjoyed political supremacy as well as leadership in literature and learning. During the eighth century the leadership passed to Mercia and in the ninth century it passed to Wessex. In 830 all England acknowledged the over lordship of Egbert, king of Wessex and under Alfred Wessex enjoyed the leadership in learning that had once belonged to Northumbria. These historical facts have had their influence on the language. The lack of political unity encouraged the existence of a number of dialects.
Old English Period
The fourth chief dialects represented by texts which have come down to us from England before the Norman Conquest are West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian and it will be seen that these correspond to four of the king-domes of the Heptarchy, although the scarcity of accurately localized texts prevents us from knowing how closely linguistic boundaries corresponded with political ones. The same scarcity of texts prevents us from saying whether the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy had distinctive dialects.
The political supremacy of Wessex during the ninth and tenth centuries and its comparative freedom from Scandinavian in roads had linguistic and literary consequences, since these conditions led to the preservation of many more manuscripts in this dialect than in any other.
Our knowledge of Old English is therefore derived mainly from West Saxon sources, whereas other dialects were more important in forming the basis of the English language of today. Since language is constantly changing, it is not always profitable to divide a history of language into periods. Yet it is sometimes convenient. to make such a division, and it is possible to divide the history of the English language as spoken in England into three periods, known respectively as Old English, Middle English and Modern English.
The old English period extends from the time of the earliest surviving written documents in the eighth century until the end of the eleventh century, the Middle English period extends from the middle of the twelfth until the middle of the fifteenth century, the Modern English period extends from the end of the fifteenth century until, the present day. The first half of the twelfth and the second half of the fifteenth century may be regarded as periods of transition, the existence of which emphasizes the gradual nature of the change.
The link which is Important
The Norman Conquest did not suddenly put an end to the Old English Period, but to it may be attributed directly or indirectly many of the characteristic differences between Old and Middle English. The mingling together of people speaking different languages is one of the causes of linguistic change, but from this point of view the Scandinavian inroads were probably more influential than the Norman, because Scandinavian and English resembled each other enough for it to be possible for the speakers of the two languages to understand one another approximately without learning a new language. A further result of the Scandinavian and French invasions was the introduction of large numbers of loan-words, which form one of the chief differences between Old and Middle English.
A Note on Old English Period
In some ways the effect of the Norman conquest has been to make the difference between Old and Middle English seem greater than it really was. The disturbed political conditions which accompanied the conquest did not favour the production or preservation of literary works, and when texts again became common in the thirteenth century, changes were recorded in writing which had really been spread over several centuries.
Moreover, the Normal Conquest led to a break in the Old English scribal tradition, and some changes which had already begun to take place in pronunciation in Old English are found in manuscripts some centuries later when, because of the Old English literary language, French or Norman scribes recorded them by using their own spellings, which were more phonetic than those current in late Old English.
The form of English in use before the Norman Conquest is sometimes called 'Anglo-Saxon, but the term is rather old fashioned, and the more usual term is now 'Old English, a description which had the advantage of emphasizing the essential continuity of the English language before the
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