The Origin of the English Language: Part 1 Explained

To understand the origin of the English language we naturally need to understand the history of those who spoke the earliest forms of “English” or at least proto-English or the ancestral forms of the English language.

In fact it is a matter of interesting debate whether the ‘English’ of Beowulf can really be considered the same language (not in terms of its genetic history but in terms of its linguistic i.e. grammatical and lexical character) as later forms of English even something “comparatively” a little while later such as the English of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Well folks let’s start off from the very beginning right?

Proto Indo-European to Indo-European to Germanic to West Germanic to North Sea Germanic.

Well the tribes that invaded southern Britain from the 5th century AD spoke various forms of “North Sea Germanic” languages or to use them by their fancier sounding title the ‘Ingvaeonic’ (no that’s not the name of a 90s techno band or rock group but the technical name by which north sea Germanic languages are classified under). These Ingaveonic languages were in turn a subset of the west Germanic languages subset of the Germanic languages which are of course part of the wider Indo-European language family.

So:

Proto Indo-European > Indo-European > Proto-German > Germanic > West Germanic > Ingvaeonic

So as we can see that language is not static but continuously changing even today on a daily basis and in a constant state of flux and that with the passage of time the accumulation of changes can be so much that it renders a descendant variant of a particular language mutually unintelligible from its earlier predecessor.

Some are of the opinion that the name “England” or “Ing-land” is derived from the inital “Ing” syllable of the Ingaevones, the tribal confederation of northern Germany many of whom migrated and conquered southern Britain. Though it is more commonly said that England is named such after the ‘Angles’ a specific sub-tribe of northern Germany/Denmark.

This Germanic tribes usually referred to as the “Anglo-Saxons” (but they included the Jutes too) settled in England and spoke various mutually related dialects and by the 9th century due to the influence of Alfred the Great considered by some to be the first true English King, West Saxon was chosen as the standard written form of the language. West Saxon is in fact sometimes even referred to as ‘Alfredian’ after Alfred the great.

There are various texts that we know of that were written in old English of the standardized West Saxon version such as:
– The Winchester Chronicles.

– The Old English Orosius

However probably the most famous text that we know of that is in old English is ‘Beowulf’

Here is a sample of this celebrated epic poem and tale, first in old English and then ‘translated’ (notice how it is not problematic to use the verb “translate”, despite it being supposedly the same language according to some, which indicates that in fact it could well be argued that old English is a different language).

Old English original.

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,

þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,

egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð

feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,

weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,

oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra

ofer hronrade hyran scolde,

gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.

Modern English rendering “translation”.

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings

of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,

we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!

Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,

from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,

awing the earls. Since erst he lay

friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:

for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,

till before him the folk, both far and near,

who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,

gave him gifts: a good king he!

Aside from the orthography and actual writing used in the original version and even if it were to be written in a manner using only the modern English writing system the text would be unintelligible to most modern English speakers from all three main perspectives of lexis, phonology and grammar. Lexis meaning the words are very different and phonology meaning the sound.

However let us look at some of the similarities or differences.

“Hwæt”

Hwæt is pronounced like Hwat and would mean “Listen” i.e. the bard who is relating this story to this no-doubt enthralled and captivated audience who in the absence of electricity in the night term and the subsequent lack of netflix, BBC, CNN, Youtube would only be too happy to listen to him in order to have some form of entertainment in this very ancient pre-industrial age. Though the modern translation uses “Lo” as in “Lo and behold”. Lo itself is a shortened form of “look”, another of the five senses rather than the “listen” of Hwæt. But it is listening which the audience of the bard or story teller narrating Beowulf must do.

“Hwæt” or listen/hear

Modern German: hör

Modern Danish: høre

Though the “t” of “Hwæt” is omitted we can see the initial “h” and the following vowel.

“…in geardagum”

in geardagum in the old days and the “dag” in geardagum is “day” which we can see in modern Scandinavian languages and in modern German in the form of “tag” as in “Guten tag”, Good day. In modern Danish we say “god dag” for good day.

“þeodcyninga”

The “cyninga” in the second part of that word is kings. We can see a similarity in that the first consonant is a “k” sound there is a “n” in the middle and a “g” at the end.

In modern German: könig

In modern Dutch: koning

In modern Danish: konge

“funden”

Found.

In modern German: gefunden

In modern Dutch: gevonden

In modern Danish: fundet

The Dutch may be the least recognisable but we can clearly see the similarity with the German “gefunden” which is only different by the inclusion of the initial “ge”. If you changed the “v” in the Dutch “gevonden” to f it would become “gefonden” and almost identical to German.

So we can see the similarities lexically (vocabulary-wise) between the old English of Beowulf and other modern day Germanic languages but as mentioned previously in addition to the major differences in vocabulary there are many grammatical differences between modern English and old English including more inflections in old English.

For those not familiar with linguistics or grammatical nomenclature or jargon, “inflections” is a rather fancy sounding word for something quite simple (as is often the case with many things!). English unlike many of its other cousins in the “Indo-European” language family does not have many inflections with the possessive “s” being one of the few remaining.

For instance if we want to talk about a ball belonging to John we wouldn’t say “John ball” but have to add an ‘s’ and say “John’s ball”. This ‘s’ added to John is an inflection. In other languages there are lots of inflections and they are everywhere, some more in English would be.

“Peter runs“, the ‘s’ there indicates it’s a third person action.

“The books” the ‘s’ shows its plural, more than one book.

“Kate cooked” the ‘ed’ shows it’s a past action.

This is fairly simple because we grow up knowing this but study it in old English or try to read an old English text and you’ll see how grammatically more complex it is to modern English! If you are interested in knowing more about the inflections in old English, you can click on this link.

The influence of old Norse on old English.

The constant influx of Nordic invaders and settlers during that time also played a part in the infusion of Norse vocabulary and other influences on the language. For instance, “give”, “take”, “get”, three extremely common ‘English’ words which the English language would be inconceivable without owe their presence in the language to the old Norse. In fact some dialects of modern northern England are said to have evolved from the languages and vernacular dialects that emerged through the conquest of Norse warriors, for instance “bairn” in Geordie (North east English dialect) is of Nordic origin and it means ‘child’, and the Danish word is ‘barn’.

To end this first article in our series of articles on the history of the English language we will leave you with a video where Beowulf is read in the original old English and another video about old English.

Thank you for reading please comment and share your opinions.

The origin of the English language part 1.

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