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Before you read
• Have any of you seen
the film Beowulf? What
is it about? Who was
Beowulf?
• Do you think you
would have understood
the English spoken in
England 500 years ago?
A 1000 years ago?
• In what ways does a
language change? Any
examples?
• Ever struggled with
the spelling of tough,
though and through?
Can you think of any
reasons why English
pronunciation and
spelling are so hopelessly
inconsistent?
inconsistent inkonsekvent
Celtic keltisk
fringes utkant
invader angriper/angripar
tribe stamme
gradually gradvis
merge smelte sammen / smelte
saman
evolve utvikle sakte
Geordie person fra Newcastleområdet / person frå
Newcastle-området
raid herje
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English language history is normally divided into the following periods:
450–1100: Old English (Anglo-Saxon): the language of Beowulf
1100–1500: Middle English: the language of Chaucer
1500–1700: Early Modern English: the language of Shakespeare
1700–today: Present Modern English
From Beowulf to Hamlet
Old English
Some 1300 years ago, the real Beowulf could have said to his queen:
ic lufie þe (þ = th in modern spelling) and with a bit of imagination
you can recognize I love thee, or in Modern English I love you.
Beowulf’s language is called Old English and fortunately manuscripts like the poem Beowulf from that early period have survived.
If we read an Old English text today, we can recognize some English
words – like kyning for king and cwen for queen – but otherwise we
cannot make much sense of it without a lot of studying and a dictionary.
More than 2000 years ago, before the days of Beowulf, the
people living in Britain spoke Celtic languages. These languages are
still alive on the fringes of the British Isles – Wales, Scotland and
Ireland – as Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. Celtic languages
are very different from Germanic languages like English, German
and Norwegian and they are a lot harder to learn for Welsh, Irish
and Scottish children than it is for you to learn your “sidemål”.
English is still closely linked to German and Norwegian because
of what happened before and after the days of Beowulf. First, in the
early 5th century, after the Romans had left Britain, other invaders
attacked the country, among them the Angles, the Saxons and the
Jutes. They were tribes from what is today Germany, Denmark and
the Netherlands. Gradually, over time, their Germanic languages
merged with the local (Celtic) languages and developed into different regional varieties of a language now called Anglo-Saxon or Old
English. Because the tribes settled in different parts of the country,
they each had their own accent and dialect. This is one of the
reasons why a Londoner today sounds quite different from a Geordie from Newcastle.
Then, in the late 8th century, the Vikings began raiding Britain
and many even settled there for good. As a result many place names
have Norse roots like Jorvik (York), Grimsby and Scunthorpe. We do
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Poster for the Beowulf
movie from 2007.
not know for sure whether the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons could
understand each other, but we do know that the Vikings gave the
English language new words, like skirt, sky and skin. Also very
common and frequent words like die, husband, knife, they, them, their
and the verb to be were changed by Old Norse, the language of the
Vikings.
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tar g e t s
1066 and All That
The Viking influence lasted until 1066, when King Harold Hardrade
of Norway was defeated by the Anglo-Saxon king Harold II at
Stamford Bridge outside York. However, the Anglo-Saxon victory
was short-lived: a fortnight later they were themselves beaten at
Hastings by William the Conqueror and his Norman troops. These
new invaders, from Normandy in the north of France, in fact distant
relatives of the Vikings (Normans = Northmen), were to dominate
Britain in the coming centuries. They spoke French and this became
the language of the court, the nobility, the church leaders and the
merchants. English remained the language of the peasants. Over the
years the French language blended with the language of the AngloSaxons, resulting in what we now call Middle English. Other differences also faded, people intermarried and gradually Anglo-Saxons
and Normans became one people.
The influence of French on English was so profound that it
changed all aspects of the language: vocabulary, grammar, spelling
and pronunciation. Here are some examples:
defeat lide nederlag
fortnight 14 dager / 14 dagar
distant fjern
relatives slektninger/slektningar
court hoff
nobility adel
merchant handelsmann
peasant bonde
blend blande seg med
fade utviske / viske ut
profound gjennomgripende/
gjennomgripande
Æ
homonyms [ hÅm´nIms] ord som
uttales likt, men staves
forskjellig / ord som blir uttalte
likt, men stava ulikt
provocative provoserende/
provoserande
knight [naIt] ridder/riddar
sentence dømme
virginity jomfrudom
grant gi, innvilge
hag heks
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• Many new words entered the language, connected to the matters of court
and government, e.g. jury, justice, prison, victory, marriage, prince, duke,
baron.
• French also gave the language lots of (near-) synonyms for already existing
words: maternity in addition to motherhood, cordial in addition to hearty.
• In Old English a simple word like where could be spelled wher, whair, wair,
wheare, were and whear. Norman scribes standardized the spelling of English,
but the result was often a – for us confusing – mixture of Old English and
French spelling.
• The pronunciation of many vowels and consonants changed, but not the way
they were spelled. Therefore sea and see are now homonyms but spelled
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differently.
Middle English
Over the centuries the language spoken in England gradually changed into something more recognizable, like in the works of Geoffrey
Chaucer (ca. 1343–1400). His famous Canterbury Tales is a collection of tales told by pilgrims who are on their way from London to
Canterbury. One of the pilgrims, called the Wife of Bath, tells a
provocative story about a knight who is sentenced to death because
he took a girl’s virginity. The queen decides to grant him his life, if
he can tell her “What thyng is it that wommen moost desiren.” The
knight has twelve months and a day to find the answer. On the final
day an ugly old hag whispers the answer in his ear and he can tell
the queen:
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6 t h e e n g l i s h l a n g uag e
“Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee
As wel over hir housbond as hir love,
And for to been in maistrie hym above.”
(lines 1038–1040)
269
Women desire to have sovereignty
As well over her husband as her love,
And to be in mastery above him.
We can read this if we just modernise the spelling and sentence
structure somewhat, because Chaucer wrote in his London dialect
which became the predecessor of Modern Standard English. Neither
Old English nor Middle English was ever one single standardised
language. There were just a number of regional dialects with much
variation in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and spelling.
The Prioress (15th
century drawing),
detail from The
Canterbury Tales by
Geoffrey Chaucer
(1342–1400).
Ghoti is a constructed
word which shows
the irregularities of
English spelling. It is
pronounced like fish,
provided you
pronounce
• gh as in tough [tøf]
• o as in women
Æ
[ wImIn] and
• ti as in nation Æ
[ neIS´n]
sovereignty suverenitet
ancestor forfar
nunnery nonnekloster
breeder opphavskvinne,
oppdretter / opphavskvinne,
oppdrettar
sinner synder/syndar
retain beholde/behalde
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Early Modern English
In the late 15th century spelling had become fairly fixed because of
the invention of the printing press, but pronunciation kept on
changing. The pronunciation of the k in knight and the l in would
disappeared during this period – Shakespeare (1564–1616) rhymes
knight with night – but Hamlet would have pronounced all the r’s
when he says to Ophelia: “Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be
a breeder of sinners?” The final r in sinner and breeder disappeared
much later, but was retained in most dialects and in American
English. Shakespeare still uses thou, thee, thine, thy and thyself in
addition to you, your, yours and yourself. Thou was the informal word,
indicating intimacy and affection (like French tu and German du).
You was used for more formal situations (like French Vous and
German Sie), signalling distance and politeness. There were also
more verb endings than there are today, like wouldst. But these are
minor differences and on the whole we can read Shakespeare’s texts
today with just a little extra effort. We also have to remember that
vocabulary changed a lot during this period: many words changed
meaning and many new words, either invented or borrowed from
other languages, entered the English language.
Looking back at the development of the English language, we can
see how first the Germanic and Viking settlers changed the language
of England into Old English and next how the conquerors from
Normandy totally transformed the language into Middle English.
The introduction of printing gave way to Modern English and this
was the language that eventually was spread all over the globe, as
the British colonised more and more countries and built their British
Empire.
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tar g e t s
Reading
1
Reading for detail
1 Are the following statements true or false? Correct
the false ones.
true false
a When we read an Old English text like
Beowulf today, we cannot understand
a single word.
b Celtic languages have died out in Britain.
c Scottish Gaelic and English are mutually
as intelligible as bokmål and nynorsk.
d Anglo-Saxon is just another name for
Old English.
e The language was called Anglo-Saxon
because two of the tribes that invaded
England were the Angles and the Saxons.
f At some stage in the history of the
English language all people in Britain
spoke English in exactly the same way.
g The Vikings who settled in Britain had a
lot of influence on the English language
h The French from Normandy had even
more influence on English than the
Vikings.
i French became a sort of the fancy and
posh language in the 13th century,
while English was the language people
used at home.
j After 1066, the French and the English
always remained two very distinct
population groups.
k French gave English near-synonyms for
words that already existed, like pork in
addition to pig, and beef in addition
to cow.
l Middle English is very similar to Old
English and very difficult to read for us
today.
m The Canterbury Tales is a novel about
kings and queens in the Middle Ages,
like King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.
n After printing was invented, the spelling
of English became much more
standardized.
o Before Shakespeare’s time a word like
knight was pronounced with a clear k,
like the Norwegian knekt and the
German Knecht.
p Shakespeare pronounced all English
words just like we do today.
true false
q Shakespeare used Thou when
addressing someone in a very formal
manner.
r After Shakespeare’s time, the English
language changed very little: vocabulary,
grammar and pronunciation stayed
more or less the same.
5
Speaking
10
Making a summary
2 In pairs, use the following keywords to summarize
the main stages in the development of the English
language:
Angles, Saxons and Jutes / Old English / Vikings /
Normans from France / Middle English / vocabulary,
pronunciation, grammar, spelling / printing press /
modern English.
15
Find out more
3 Divide the following questions among you and use
the Internet and/or other sources to find answers.
Afterwards share your answers with the rest of the
class.
a Why is England called England? What is the origin
of this name?
b What is the poem Beowulf about? Is it a long or a
short poem?
c Is there a connection between Beowulf and
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings?
d Find the text of the Lord’s Prayer in Old English,
Middle English and Modern English. Try to describe
some of the changes that have taken place in the
words of this text over the centuries.
e Find more pairs like maternity/motherhood, cordial/
hearty: French near-synonyms for original English
words.
f There is one language also much used in Britain
that we have not mentioned so far: Latin. What
was the role of Latin through the ages?
g When and where did the pronunciation of the
letter –r in words like farm and far disappear?
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© Julia Kagge/ H. Aschehoug & Co.
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