EL1102

Studying English in Context

Tutorial No. 6

Topics in the history of English

Please read Graddol et al., English: history, diversity and change, Ch. 3
Another good introductory book is Jonathan Culpeper’s History of English (London: Routledge, 1997)
Please also consult the Time Chart distributed during Lecture 7. (The Time Chart can also be downloaded from: http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/EL1102-wk8a.htm).
The video The Story of English: Programme 2 also gives useful background information.: click on
http://ivle.nus.edu.sg/ivle/search/template.asp?courseid=EL1102, then click on ‘videos’ on the left. You will be asked for your user ID and password. (Your user ID must be in the form NUSSTU/xxxxxs for students or NUSSTF/xxxxxx for staff.) Then click on ‘The Mother Tongue’, and you should be off.

1. Give your reactions to these statements and elaborate on the reasons for them.

The people of Britain have always spoken some form of English.
The English language is related to Hindi, Urdu and Sinhalese.
Everyone in the UK speaks English as the first language today.
The original form of English was more barbaric and less polished than today’s English.
The English language has always been accorded high prestige.

2. Read the following passage written by a historian, and answer the questions that follow.

[T]he net product in the former Britannia was very different from that, for instance, in the former Gaul. In Gaul, the political triumph of the invading Germanics did not save them from assimilation into the language and the culture of the native Gallo-Romans. The language which emerged, first called Romain and later Français, i.e., Frankish, was in effect the Frankish variant of neo-Latin. In the former Britannia, in contrast, the invading Germanics avoided cultural assimilation; and the language which eventually emerged was not a fusion of Latin, Celtic, and Germanic, but a new, original idiom of an almost purely Germanic character. How was it that the culture of the Gallo-Romans triumphed whereas the culture of the Romano-British went under?

The simplest answer is extermination. Celtophiles love to relate how the murderous Saxons massacred the defenceless Britons and supposedly wiped them out. The word genocide is used. It is completely out of place. Though atrocious massacres did occur, both of civilians and of churchmen, as at Anderida in Sussex in 491 or on the even of the Battle of Chester in 616, there is plentiful evidence that the bulk of the British population continued to live on under Germanic rule, and to speak their own language. The law code of Ine, King of Wessex, from the late seventh century, for instance, makes special provision for the British still living in his domain.

A second answer invokes numbers. The native Celts were supposedly swamped by the overwhelming tide of Germanics. This too, is unlikely. Though fifth-century boat convoys might bring in enough migrants to fill the initial colonies, it is unthinkable that they could have repopulated the entire country. Apart from that, there is every indication that repopulation did not take place. Modern generic research is showing quite convincingly that the Germanic invasions, like the Celtic invasions before them, were insufficient to transform the existing gene pool to any major degree.

A third answer concerns the prevailing linguistic patterns in late Roman Britannia. The Germanics were moving into the most heavily Romanised regions of the south-east where Latin, not Brythonic [a Celtic language], was the main language. Celtic survivals there would naturally be less marked than in other regions where Brythonic had not been so seriously undermined. This makes sense.

Two further factors may have had some impact. The bubonic plague which devastated Western Europe in the mid-sixth century is thought by some commentators to have hit the Celts harder than the Germanics. And physical displacement had its effect. The advance of the Germanics from the east undoubtedly drove some of the British Celts westwards from the former civilian zone whilst forcing others to flee to the Continent.

(Norman Davies, The Isles: A History [Oxford University Press, 2000], pp. 195–196)

(a) What is the contrastive situation between the situation in the former Roman provinces of Britannia and Gaul (today: France)?

(b) What kind of language-contact situation ensued from the arrival of the Germanics?

3. It has been claimed that the Normans were culturally superior to the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings before them. Because of this, when the Normans finally learnt English from around the 14th century onwards, they found the language woefully inadequate so that there were massive borrowings from Latin and French.

(a) Do you think this is a fair claim?

(b) Consult a dictionary with etymological information, and collect at random, about 10 words that are derived from Old English, 10 words that are derived from French and 10 words that are derived from Latin. Discuss the ‘flavour’ of these words and attempt to assign them a place in the core-periphery continuum.

4. Here is a short opening passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (which is like a year-by-year diary, written in the ninth century AD). Examine the passage, taking note of the glosses, then answer the questions that follow.

Old English

Word-for-word translation

-of-Britain island is eight hundred miles long.

& two hundred broad. & here are in this

island five languages. english. & brit-

ish. & welsh. & Scottish. & pictish. &

book latin. First were inhabitants of-this

land Britons.

PDE

The island of Britain is eight hundred miles long and two hundred broad. There are five languages: English, Brito-Welsh, Scottish, Pictish and Latin. The first inhabitants of this land were the Britons.

(Note: The scribe copied ‘five languages’ and then divided the list into six. He had mistaken what should have been one language – Brito-Welsh – for two. The Old English words ‘brittisc’ and ‘wilsc’ referred to the same people.)

(a) Old English used different letters: the wynn (= <w> today), eth (not seen here), thorn (= <th> today) and yogh. Can you identify them in the passage?

(b) Which lexical items are still recognisable today?

(c) Note that the words for ‘island’ are a little different in the OE passage. Why is this so? Examine the OE words for ‘this’ as well.

5. (Attempt only if time permits.) Read this extract from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1387). It is written in the London dialect of Middle English.

Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,* [prioress, ie the ‘governor’ of a nunnery
That of hir smyling was full simple and coy;
Hir gretteste ooth was but by sëynt* Loy; [saint
And she was cleped* madame Eglentyne. [called
Ful well she song* the service divyne, [sung
Entuned in hir nose ful semely;* [seemly, ie in a pleasant manner
And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,* [skilfully
After the scole* of Stratford atte Bowe, [school
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknow.
At mete* wel y-taught was she with-alle; [meat, ie meal times
She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,
Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
That no drop ne fille up-on hir brest.

(a) Rewrite the passage in PDE
(b) Is the language of this text (as opposed to the OE text) closer to PDE? Refer to the spelling, grammar and lexis again.

6. (Attempt only if time permits.) Here is an extract from David Lodge’s novel Nice Work (1988).

Part of the humour of the book derives from the clash of two words. A university academic (in semiotic materialism), Dr Robyn Penrose visits the world of the industrialist (Vic Wilcox is MD of Pringle’s engineering firm). Here is a passage which describes her impression of the other world (p. 121).

At Pringle’s there was scarcely any colour, not a clean overall in sight, and instead of Mozart there was a deafening demonic cacophony that never relented. Nor had she been able to comprehend what was going on. There seemed to be no logic or direction to the factory’s activities. Individuals or small groups of men worked on separate tasks with no perceptible relation to each other. Components were stacked in piles all over the factory floor like the contents of an attic. The whole place seem designed to produce, not goods for the outside world, but misery for the inmates. What Wilcox called the machine shop had seemed like a prison, and the foundry had seemed like hell.

And here is Vic Wilcox’s reaction (the beginning and the end of the paragraph) to meeting Robyn Penrose (p. 116).

Jesus wept! Not just a lecturer in English Literature, not just a woman lecturer in English Literature, but a trendy lefty feminist lecturer in English Literature! A tall trendy leftist feminist lecturer in English Literature! Vic Wilcox scuttled into the Director’s Lavatory as if in to a place of sanctuary. It was a large, dank, chilly room, empty at this moment, which had been lavishly appointed, in more prosperous times, with marble washbasins and brass taps, but was now badly in need of redecoration. He stood at the urinal and peed fiercely at the white ceramic wall, streaked with rusty tear-stains from the corroding pipes. What the hell was he going to do with this woman every Wednesday for the next two months? Stuart Baxter must be off his trolley, sending someone like that. Or was it a plot?

KEY to colour coding

dark blue

brown

purple

magenta

dark green

lighter green

black

Old English/Anglo-Saxon (MnE >OE)

Latin (MnE >Lat)

Latin through French (MnE>Fr>Lat)

French (MnE>Fr)

Greek (MnE>Gk)

Norse (MnE>ON)

names ignored

Does this information reveal anything about the nature of English lexis. How have the words been used in the two passages?

Back to the EL1102 Home Page
Back to the EL1102 Lecture Schedule

Email me (for comments and questions)

Back to the top of the page