Anglo-Saxon migration to England

Three main stages are usually recognized in the history of the development of the English
language: 1) AD 449 to 1066 or 1100- Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period 2) from AD 1066 or 1100 to
1450 or 1500– Middle English Period 3) 1500 AD onwards – Modern English period. These divisions
are not altogether arbitrary as they represent certain landmarks in the evolution of the English
language demarcated by historical incidents. 5th Century is the time when the Romans left Britain and
the Anglo-Saxons migrated there. 1066 AD marks the Norman Invasions and roughly in 1500 AD
renaissance reaches the English shores. In view of the simplification of accidence over the 1500 years
the history of the English language the Old English Period is called the Period of Full Inflections, the
Middle English Period, the Period of Levelled Inflections and the Modern English Period, the Period of
Lost Inflections
The history of the English language can be traced back to the arrival of the Germanic tribes,
mainly the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians to the British Isles during the 5 th and 6thCenturies AD. By
the 5th Century AD the Anglo-Saxons had succeeded in establishing their power and implanting their
language almost throughout England. The invaders drove the indigenous Celtic-speaking peoples to
the north and west. Up to that point, in Roman Britain the native population is assumed to have
spoken the Celtic language ‘Brythonic’ alongside the influence of Latin, from the 400-year Roman
occupation. This was quickly displaced. The influx of Germanic people was more of a gradual
encroachment over several generations than an invasion proper, but these tribes amongst them
gradually colonized almost whole of the British Isles. All these people spoke variations of a West
Germanic language which were different but probably close enough to be mutually intelligible. The
Angles were named from Angeln, the land of their origin. Their language was called Englisc from which
the word, English derives and their land Anglaland or Englaland (the Land of the Angles), later
shortened to England.
The Germanic tribes settled in seven smaller kingdoms, known as the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy:
Essex, Wessex, Sussex, East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria and Kent. Although the various different
kingdoms waxed and waned in their power and influence over time, it was the Saxons that gradually
became the dominant group. Hence, most extant Old English writings are in the West Saxon dialect as
the first great period of literary activity occurred in this dialect, the dialect of the powerful. West
Saxon was the language of Alfred the Great (871-901) and therefore achieved the greatest
prominence; accordingly, the chief Old English texts have survived in this dialect.
Thus Old English is the language of the Germanic inhabitants of England dated from the time of
their settlement in the 5th century to the end of the 1 1th century. Also called Anglo-Saxon, it is the
ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group
of the Ingvaeonic dialect of the West Germanic languages.
Old English
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form of the English language that was spoken and
written by the Anglo-Saxons at least from the 5thcentury to the 11thcentury in England.
Old English might have had around 20,000 words most of which are native words. Old English
had seven simple vowels, with short and long versions and two diphthongs and had a sixteen
consonant system. Old English had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin. It was highly
inflected. So the old English period is called the Period of Full Inflections.
Old English Dialects
Old English had a number of dialects as the Germanic settlers in Britain belonged to three
different tribes. Based on the regions of their occupation, we recognise four distinct dialects of the
period. They are,
1. Northumbrian in the North comprising the district between the Firth and the Humber river.
2. Mercian, spoken between the Humber and the Thames.
3. West Saxon, spoken in the region south of the Thames, except in Kent and Surrey.
 4. Kentish, spoken in Kent and Surrey.
Of these, Northumbrian and Mercian, spoken to the North of the Thames were dialects of the
Angles and called the Anglian variety. Modern English spelling, owes most to the Mercian dialect, since
that was the dialect of London. OE poetry had its beginnings in Anglian, but it has come down to us
mostly in West Saxon form. It was West Saxon, the dialect of the Saxons, which gained popularity and
status as the standard language, since it was patronised by King Alfred. Moreover, Wessex was the
most highly civilized of all the kingdoms and the first to attain political unity and stability. West Saxon
became the official language of Britain. Most of the important literary works of the period like Beowulf
and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were written in the West-Saxon dialect. Kentish was the dialect of the
Jutes, who were the earliest of the settlers. During the 9th Century the Vikings invaded the North and
this too had a marked influence on the language.
Old English Grammar
OE had a very complicated grammatical system, with a number of different declensions of the
noun and a three gender system, and with two declensions of the adjectives. It was highly inflected,
though the inflectional system was not as complicated as that of PG or PIE. This period has often been
described as the period of "full inflections", since the inflections (grammatical endings) of nouns,
adjectives and verbs were preserved in full. Being highly inflected, OE had a relatively free word order
(syntax). Inflections make meaning less dependent on word order. For instance, the sentence,
Nero interfecit Agrippanam (Nero killed Agrippa), will have the same meaning, whatever be the
word order, because of the inflections which indicate the cases. Old English nouns have several
declensions and five cases, Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Instrumental and the Dative. Numbers
could be either singular or plural. The definite article, and the pronouns, personal and interrogative,
had declension of four cases and three numbers. There were a number of plural markers. For example,
Modern English Singular Plural Plural marker
stone stā n stā nas -as
lamb lamb lambru -ru
sin synn synna -a
In the course of development -as emerged as the general plural marker and -es as the general
possessive or genitive marker by the end of the OE period. OE had a complicated three gender system.
There was no one-to-one correspondence between the natural gender and grammatical gender of
nouns. Each noun had to have a gender, masculine, feminine, or neuter, arbitrarily fixed. Thus, OE wif
and wifmann meant woman, but the former was neuter gender and the latter masculine. Stan (stone)
as well as mōna (moon) was masculine while sunna (sun) was feminine. In OE there were two
separate declensions of adjectives, the weak and the strong. The weak form was used after the definite
article and in some other positions as in,
sẽ goda mann (the good man)
and the strong form when the reference is non-specific as in,
god mann (good man)
Adjectives along with pronouns agreed in gender, case and number with the nouns they
described. Verbs came in nine main conjugations. Old English had a greater proportion of strong verbs
(sometimes called irregular verbs in contemporary grammars) than does Modern English. Many verbs
that were strong in Old English are weak (regular) verbs in Modern English (e.g., Old English verb
help; healp, past tense; healp/hulpon, past participle holpen versus Modern English help, helped,
helped, respectively). The weak verbs form the past tense and past participle using a suffix with a
vowel followed by -d-, which is the ancestor of the modern inflection -ed. Thus lufian (love, shows past
singular lufode. In OE, verbs had only two tenses, the present and the preterite (like the past). Making
use of these two tenses, the semantic concepts of present, past, and future time were expressed.
 The default word order was verb-second (V-2 word order). There was no do-support in
questions and negatives. Multiple negatives could stack up in a sentence, and intensified each other
(negative concord). OE grammar, however, is comparatively simple, compared to that of Proto
Germanic.
OE Pronunciation
OE was more or less phonetic in character, its spelling representing its pronunciation fairly
closely. The two major sound changes in OE were i-mutation and gradation, the former taking place in
early Anglo-Saxon and the latter inherited from PIE and PG. (Ref: Umlaut and Ablaut in later hand-
outs)
OE Spelling
The Germanic tribes used a particular kind of alphabet called the Runic Alphabet which was
later replaced by the Latin script with the coming of Christianity. Many symbols were brought in to
accommodate English sounds. Two of the typical symbols are ‘ð’ and ‘þ’ which are not there in the
Modern English alphabet. They were interchangeable in OE, used to represent the sounds spelt as th
today in words like thick and then. The OE spelling was phonetic in character, each letter representing
a sound and it contained no silent letters. OE has seven vowels / a, e, i, o, u, y & æ /. ‘æ’ was a
combination of two symbols (a + i). y and i later became the same i. In consonant combinations all the
consonants were pronounced.
E.g.: OE cuppe (cup)
There were certain symbols which stood for more than one sound. For instance, f could be
pronounced as either /f/ or /v/, depending on where it occurs.
OE sevfon = seven
OE feallan = fall
The alphabet s stood for /s/ and /z/
OE seon = see /s/
OE wæz = was /z/
The alphabet g stood for /ɡ/ and /j/
OE geit = gait
OE gearu = year
Letter c represented two sounds /k/ and /t/
cynn (kin)
ðancian (thank)
ceosan (choose)
cidan (chide)
But for such deviations, Old English remained a phonetic language without the discrepancy
between spelling and pronunciation, which is very much conspicuous in Modern English.
OE Vocabulary
The vocabulary of Old English was, of course, Germanic, more closely related to the vocabulary
of such languages as Dutch and German than to French or Latin. That is, the core Old English word-
stock was shared with the other West Germanic languages and like theirs, was subject to the sound
changes of Grimm's Law and Verner's Law. This period is characterised by a homogeneous Anglo-
Saxon language, remarkable for its high degree of purity, with only a small amount of Latin loan
words, followed by some Norse elements, consequent on the Norse invasion. The OE word stock was
enriched by Indo-European words, Celtic elements, Latin influence and the Scandinavian influence. To
enlarge its vocabulary, Old English depended mainly on its own resources and a few borrowings. But
often an old word was applied to a new thing and by a slight adaptation made to express a new
meaning. Instead of borrowing the Latin word, the idea of God the Creator was expressed by
scieppend (one who shapes or forms), fruma (creator, founder), or metod (measurer).
Compound words were common, including personal names: JElfred, (Elf Council - original form
of Alfred), Ætheldreda, (noble strength- original form of Audrey), Bretwalda (ruler of Britain- a title for
the foremost king of his time).
Other compounds were also numerous: ealdormann (nobleman– ancestral form of alderman),
séèweall(sea wall), stormsoe (stormy sea), sweordbora (sword-bearer)
Many of these compounds are kennings of a simple type, possessing just two elements. A
kenning is a type of circumlocution, in the form of a compound (usually consisting of two words) that
employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. It is a stylistic device that
describes an object through metaphors. It’s more of a compressed metaphor. E.g. for “sea”: seġl-rād
(sail-road”, swan-rād “swan-road”, bæð-weġ “bath-way”, hron-rād “whale-road”, hwæl-weġ “whale-
way”, for sun: "heofon-candel (sky-candle) or heofones ġim (sky’s jewel).

Indo-European words
Words relating to basic day to day transactions of life have mostly come from Indo-European.
These include words denoting close family relations, cardinal numbers up to ten, words like man and
tree, words associated with nature and the universe such as moon, sun, earth, fire, star etc., words
relating to fundamental concepts in farming and cultivation, names of basic weapons like the shield,
and names of basic colours such as red and yellow. Thus, from Indo-European the Germanic languages
including English, has inherited a whole set of words along with some prefixes and suffixes which
were quite useful for forming new words. Thus we have pairs like true (treowe) & truth (treowð) with
the addition of the suffix -ðu. Derivation was quite common: for example, with the prefix for-, as in
forlorenness (utter lostness), the suffix -end, as in wïgend (warrior) from wïg meaning war.

The Celtic element in OE

From the fact that the original language of Britain was Celtic, one might suppose that OE would
contain a considerable amount of Celtic words. But Celtic has left few marks on the OE spoken
language and the Celtic element in OE vocabulary is almost microscopic. The reason for this was that
the native Britons were expelled from Central England by the foreign invaders and their language left
little influence on the language of the invaders. The Anglo-Saxons, however, preserved the Celtic
names of cities and towns and rivers and mountains and some words referring to natural features of
landscape. Place names like Kent, London, Cornwall, York and the first syllable of Winchester,
Salisbury, Worcester, river names like Thames, Avon, Wye, Dover are all traceable to a Celtic source.
Words like dun (down or a hill), -cumb (valley, preserved in Modern English words ending with
-combe as in Duncombe), mattoc (mattock), dun (dark coloured) are also Celtic. One reason why the
Celtic words were short lived was that most of them were popular words, existing in the spoken
language and because they were transmitted orally, they tended to die out.
Latin vocabulary in OE
Latin the official language of the Catholic Church, which the missionaries brought to England,
was still only used by the educated ruling classes and Church functionaries, and Latin was only a
minor influence on the English language at this time, being largely restricted to the naming of Church
dignitaries and ceremonies (priest, vicar, altar, mass, church, bishop, pope, nun, angel, verse, baptism,
monk, Eucharist, candle, temple and presbyter came into the language this way). However, other more
domestic words (such as fork, spade, chest, spider, school, tower, plant, rose, lily, circle, paper, sock, mat,
cook, etc.) also came into English from Latin during this time, albeit substantially altered and adapted
for the Anglo-Saxon ear and tongue. More ecclesiastical Latin loanwords continued to be introduced,
even as late as the 11th Century, including chorus, cleric, creed, cross, demon, disciple, hymn, paradise,
prior, sabbath, etc.
 Latin words entered OE in two phases: (1) during the Roman occupation and (2) through the
early Christian missionaries. The words of the first phase were chiefly military and administrative
terms and names of essential commodities and items of food. Eg. weall (wall), mil (mile), win (wine),
cheese, butter, the suffixes chester and -caster as in Manchester, Winchester and Lancaster. A few
words like devil (deofol), night (niht) and angel (engel) came in with the Anglo-Saxons. Latin words
introduced by Christian missionaries are naturally of a religious nature. Eg: priest, monk, bishop, pope,
abbot, cross (cruc) saint (sanct) etc. The missionaries adopted certain native words and used them
with new connotations. E.g.: easter, húsl (which meant offering or sacrifice came to mean the
eucharist).
A range of compounds and derivatives was created as loan translations of Latin terms, such as
tôcyme (to-come) to match Lt. adventus (advent), gôdspel (good news: the ancestral form of gospel) to
match Lt. evangelium, and þrlnnys (threeness) to match Lt. trinitas (trinity).
Scandinavian / Norse / Danish elements in Old English
The Scandinavian influence is one of the three important foreign influences on the English
language. The Vikings consisted of Swedes, Norwegians and Danes. Towards the close of the 8 th
century, by about 790, a series of Danish inroads began. Bands of Norsemen attacked and plundered
the eastern coast of England and the Danes became a synonym for plunderers and murderers. From
the middle of the ninth century, raid and plunder were replaced by the regular campaign of armies
that marched to conquer. By the treaty of Wedmore in 878, the Danes were allowed to settle north of
the line drawn from London to Chester, an area which came to be known as Danelaw. There was not
much hostility between the Anglo-Saxons and the new settlers. In the 11th century, a Danish king,
Canute effected the union of the whole of England and this led to a blending of the two languages. The
Scandinavian influence is seen first in certain place names in the territories occupied by the
Norsemen, secondly in the introduction of new words of Danish or Norse origin and thirdly, in the
modification of the existing tongue.
A great number of Norsemen settled in Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Northumberland,
Cumberland, and Westmoreland. Numerous place names in those territories show the influence of the
language of the settlers. There are suffixes like -by, -toft –thwaite and-thorpe. -By today is the normal
Danish word for a town and is related to the English word borough and to the termination burgh as in
Canterbury. It is found in place names such as Rugby, Whitby, Derby etc. This element is also seen in
the word bye law which means a law made by the Council or Corporation of a town. The syllable-toft
occurs in Lowestoft and -thwaite (a clearing) occurs in Gunthwaite, Linthwaite etc. The suffix -thorpe
(village) is more frequent and widespread. Besides the surname Thorpe, there are Mablethorpe,
Goldthorpe, Bishopthorpe etc. Storr and Carr which both occur in place names in the north of England
and also as personal names are other examples of Norse words. The former is the Danish adjective for
great and in Old Norse signified a hill, and the latter from the Old Norse kjarr was used to designate a
wooded eminence.
The Scandinavian influence on English went a good deal further than place names. These
foreigners were not felt by the natives as foreigners in the same manner as the English themselves had
been looked upon as foreigners by the Celts. As Green says, "When the wild burst of the storm was
over, land, people and Government reappeared unchanged. England still remained England; the
conquerors 'sank quietly into the mass of those around them and Woden yielded without a struggle to
Christ". Old English and Old Norse were still very similar and Englishmen and Danes could properly
understand each other without much difficulty. In late Old English period there must have been
various bilingual situations. There were children of mixed marriages, who spoke an intermediate
dialect. Thus great mixing took place between the two languages, ultimately Old Norse died out in
England and English triumphed but not before a good deal of Scandinavian had got mixed with it.
Of the new words which the Danes brought with them and which were adopted into the
English language, many have fallen into disuse. To a native of Sheffield and its vicinity, the word flit
means to move one's residence, but to a southerner, it would have rather a suspicious suggestion. The
word is of Norse origin and is still used in Danish in the same sense, as it is to a native of Sheffield. The
English adjective fleet (quick moving) is a cognate word. Gill or ghyll is the regular term in the Lake
District for a steep ravine, and mawther in Hertfordshire for a girl. But many other words which the
Norsemen introduced have become permanently embedded in the English language and are some of
the most essential terms of their daily speech. Though most of them passed into Anglo-Saxon in the
Old English period itself, they appear in writing only in the Middle English period. Nouns like anger,
bank, boon, bull, crook, calf (of the leg), dirt, down (feathers), egg, fellow, gait, gap. guess, husband,
knife, keel, mire, racc, rift, scales, sister, skill, sky, thrift, trust, window, adjectives like black, ill, low,
meek, rugged, scant, sly, tight, weak, verbs like bait, bask, call, crave, crawl, flit, gape, get, give, kindle,
lift, raise, thrust, screech, the preposition till, pronouns like she, both, same, all owe their origin to the
Norse language. Names of parts of the body like leg, skull, skin are also from Norse. The Norsemen
were great sea farers and some of the nautical terms are their contribution for eg: haven (meaning a
merchant's harbour as in Copenhagen) occurs in place names like Newhaven, Milfordhaven etc, and is
used metaphorically. Skipper from Danish means shipman. Most of the names of the days of the week
enshrine Norse mythology or folklore, each day named after a Norse god.
Tuesday Tiwesdæg Tiw = Mars
Wednesday Wodnesdæg Woden = Mercury
Thursday Thorsdæg Thors Hercules
Friday Frigesdæg Frigg = Wife of Woden
Sometimes we come across the replacement of a native word by an entirely different
Scandinavian word
OE niman was replaced by take
OE sniðtan was replaced by cut
OE wræð (wrath) was replaced by anger
OE sweostor was replaced by syster
The pronouns they, their and them seem to have been derived from the Norse forms ðei, ðeira,
and ðeim. The OE forms were hie, hira, and him. Perhaps the OE forms of the definite article might
have helped or contributed to this change.
In certain cases, the native words have survived but they have taken the meaning of the
Scandinavian cognates; E.g.;
Old Norse Old English Modern English
draumr (vision) dream (joy) dream
braut bread bread
Sometimes there is the interesting phenomenon of two words, one of Norse and the other of OE,
existing side by side, differing very slightly in their meaning:
English Norse
no nay
rear raise
shirt skirt
shabby scabby
ditch dike
sick ill
 hide skin
craft skill
church kirk
Norse influence on the English language is also seen in the modification of the pronunciation of certain
words. For example.
(a) The OE 'c' before a front vowel was pronounced 'ch' in Wessex, the South and the West of
England, but in the North and North East, due to Danish influence it was hardened to 'k' sound.
Eg: Manchester, but Lancaster
Certain OE words with 'g' were pronounced /j/ but in the north owing to Scandinavian
influence, the /j/ hardened into /ɡ/. Hence in Modern English, we have give, get, egg etc. which should
have been pronounced, vive, yet etc. for in OE, they had /j/ sound, though in spelling they were
represented with 'g'. Even Chaucer, writing in the latter part the 14th century, uses the 'y' form. Even
in the present day speech, a native of Northern England would pronounce the word gesture or the
surname Gill a little hard (as in get) when one from the South would pronounce it soft (as in gem).
The words borrowed from Scandinavian are of a mixed nature. Some relate to the customs,
skills and ways of life of the invading Norsemen. These words appear in the written language only in
the ME period, though they must have entered the language at a much earlier date. Perhaps it was
because there was no literary tradition in the Danelaw that most surviving texts are in the West
Saxon dialect, which was not under Scandinavian influence. However, ME texts, especially those from
the North and the East Midlands contain a large number of Scandinavian loan words. Many of these
have died out but quite a number remain. What is striking about the Scandinavian words is the fact
that they are ordinary words. The English and the Scandinavians were used to the same kind of rural
life, having a similar Germanic background and the fusion of the two peoples was a very close one. As
Otto Jespersen says. "An Englishman cannot thrive or be ill or die without Scandinavian words; they
are to the language what bread and eggs are to the daily fare".
Anglo-Saxon elements
The Anglo-Saxon influence was mainly on the word stock and the changes in meanings of
words. The Anglo-Saxon words relate to man's daily life, most elementary occupations and natural
phenomena. For instance, words for close family relationships, father, mother, brother, etc., the names
of staple food items, bread, butter, milk, meat, names of flowers, trees and vegetation such as rose,
daisy, names of weapons such as sword, how, arrow, spear etc., natural features such as the sun, the
moon and the stars, words referring to long periods of time like year, month and week, many
alternative phrases like kith and kin, might and main, fair or foul, the prefixes forth- (forthwith,
forthright) and with- (withstand) and the commonest suffixes -down, -ship, -ness and -hood are native
in origin.
Many words underwent change of meaning through the processes of (1) elevation (2)
degradation and (3) association of ideas. Examples of words of elevated respectability are lord and
lady (originally meant bread-keeper and bread-kneader), steward (originally one who attended on pigs
or cattle), tun (originally meant village elevated to our modern town). Instances of words which
underwent degradation in status are knave (in OE a young man), silly (OE happy), and fiend (OE
enemy). Association of ideas gave rise to words like bead (OE prayer using the rosary of beads), bridal
(originally an ale or drink at the wedding), thrill (OE to pierce), uncouth (OE unknown) etc.
Now relatively few Modern English words come from Old English; but the words that do
survive are some of the most common in the language, including almost all the "grammar words"
(articles, pronouns, prepositions etc.) and a great many words for everyday concepts. Examples are
about by, from, now, these, almost, speak, friend, year, all, and, are, as etc. In fact more than eighty
percent of the thousand most common words in modern English come from Old English. A few
examples are given below;
• Nouns: cynn 'kin', hand, god, man(n), word.
• Pronouns: hē, ic 'I', mē, self, wē.
• Verbs: beran 'bear', cuman 'come', dyde 'did', sittan 'sit', wæs 'was'.
• Adjectives: fæst 'fast', gō d 'good', hā lig 'holy', rīce 'rich', wīd 'wide'.
• Adverbs: ær 'ere', alle 'all', nū 'now', tō 'too', ðǣ r 'there'.
• Prepositions: æfter 'after', for, in, on, under.
• Articles: ðæt 'that', ðis 'this'.
• Conjunctions: and, gif 'if'.

The End of Old English

The conventional dividing date of approximately 1150 between Old English and Middle English
reflects (very roughly) the period when these changes in grammar and vocabulary begin to become
noticeable in most of the surviving texts (which are not very numerous from this transitional period).
In what is often called ‘transitional English’ the number of distinct inflections becomes fewer, and
word order takes on an increasing functional load. At the same time borrowings from French and
(especially in northern and eastern texts) from early Scandinavian become more frequent. All of these
processes were extremely gradual, and did not happen at the same rate in all places. Therefore any
dividing date is very arbitrary, and can only reflect these developments very approximately.