Old English

THE HISTORY OF OLD ENGLISH AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

• The beginnings:

The Roman, Germanic, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon tribes are the four most important influences for the birth of the Old English.
In 409 AD the British coast were abandoned, where was the last
Roman legion; some fifty years later this isles were inhabited by the Celts and remaining Roman colonists, who failed to organize anyresistance against Germanic intruders, and so had to let them settle here, because the Germanic tribes pushed from their densely populated homelands.
In the century 7th BC the Celtic tribes starting to settle in Britain – the word “Britain” seems to be the name given by the pre-celtics - The Celts quickly spread over the island, Indo European (Picts, the name given by Romans) lived in Scotland andon Shetland Islands and represented the most ancient population of the Isles, the origin of which is unknown.
Picts don’t seem to leave any features of their language to Indo-European population of Britain, the famous Irish and Welsh initial mutations of consonants can be the only sign of the substratum left by unknown nations of Britain.
At the time the Celts reached Britain they spoke thecommon language, close to Gaulish in France. But later, when Celtic tribes occupied Ireland, Northern England, Wales, their tongues were divided according to tribal divisions. These languages will later become Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Cornish, but from that time the Celts did not invent writing yet.
Not much is left from Celtic languages in English. Though many place names and names for rivers aresurely Celtic, the morphology and phonetics are untouched by the Celtic influence.
Example: cothair (a fortress) – Carnarvon
In the 1st century AD first Roman colonists begin to penetrate in Britain; Roman legions built: roads, camps, founded towns and castres.
Tens of Latin words in Britain together with many towns, places and hills named by Romans make up the Roman heritage in the Old English.Such cities as Dorchester, Winchester, Lancaster, words like camp, castra, many terms of the Christian religion and several words denoting armaments were borrowed at that time by Britons, and automatically were transferred into the Old English.
In 449 the legendary leaders of two Germanic tribes achieved British shores on their ships, Germanic tribes killed Celtic population, destroyed Celtic andformer Roman towns and roads.

• The Tribes:
* Angles settled around Noridge, and in Northern England (at the prsent- day).
* Saxons (the most numerous of the tribes) occupied all Central England, the south of the island and settled in London - Londinii at that time -.
* Jutes and Frises settled on the island of White and in what is now Kent.
Soon all these tribes founded theirseparate kingdoms, which was united after centuries of struggle only in 878 by Alfred, king of Wessex. Before that each of the tribes spoke its language, they were similar to each other but had differences which later became the dialectal peculiarities of Old English.
The Old English language came to the end after the Norman conquest in 1066.

THE OLD ENGLISH PHONETICS

Old English Vowels
Thetable below shows the Old English (OE) Vowels in comparison with the Modern English (ME) ones:

|OE |ME |PRONUNCIATION |EXAMPLES |
|a |ʌ |Short back vowel; English cup |macian (to make); habban (to have) |
|á|ɑ: |Long back vowel; English star |stán (a stone); hátan (to call) |
|æ |æ |Short front vowel; English bad |dæg (a day); wæter (water) |
|æ' |æ: |Long front vowel |stæ'lon (stolen); hæ'lan (to cure)...