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Chapter 2: The Mother Tongue (46-89)

Chapter 2: The Mother Tongue (46-89). The Mother Tongue. The Story of English. By Don L. F. Nilsen Based on The Story of English By Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil and William Cran (Penguin, 2003). Indo-European Urheimat (4500 BC).

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Chapter 2: The Mother Tongue (46-89)

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  1. Chapter 2:The Mother Tongue (46-89) The Mother Tongue 41

  2. The Story of English By Don L. F. Nilsen Based on The Story of English By Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil and William Cran (Penguin, 2003) 41

  3. Indo-European Urheimat (4500 BC) • Compare Sanskrit pitar & matar with Greek & Latin Pater and matar. Sanskrit is Indic; Greek & Latin are European • The first Indo-European tribes had words for winter, horse, pig and sheep. • They worked leather and wove wool, ploughed the land and planted grain. • They had a well developed social and family structure • They worshipped gods much like the Indian, Mediterranean and Celtic deities. (McCrum 46-47) 41

  4. Indo-European Urheimat (4500 BC) • It was somewhere in Eastern Europe • Some scholars vote for the Russian Steppes • Some scholars vote for the Danube Valley (between Romania and Bulgaria) • It was inland, somewhere North of the Black Sea • A place which had snow, beech trees, bees, and wolves. (McCrum 48) 41

  5. The Indo-European Homeland (c3000 BC)(McCrum 54/60) 41

  6. Angles, Saxons, Jutes & Frisians • Some Danes found the well preserved bodies of Angles in peat bogs. The Angles came from the area south of Jutland (Denmark) • The Frisians came from coastal Holland. They have words like ko, lam, goes, dong and rein for cow, lamb, goose, dung, and rain. • The Jutes came from Denmark • The Saxons came from Germany • (McCrum 53-55) 41

  7. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Written in AD 449, this is one of our earliest records of English. • It tells about the Celtic King Arthur who led the resistance for the Celtic armies (McCrum 55). 41

  8. The Settlement of England c 500 AD (McCrum 59/68) 41

  9. Julius Caesar & His Legions Landed in England in 55 BC • The Romans built Hadrian’s Wall to keep the British tribes in check. • The Roman influence was South and West of Hadrian’s Wall (Wessex, Essex and Sussex). • Here you will find place names like Chester, Manchester, and Winchester, from castra, the Latin word for camp. (McCrum 52) 41

  10. Christianity in 597 AD: The Roman Catholic Church • When Pope Gregory the Great saw some fair-haired boys about to be sold as slaves, he asked who they were. • When told that they were “Angles,” Pope Gregory replied, “for they have an angelic face.” • The Pope then sent Augustine and fifty monks as missionaries to England 41

  11. The Christian missionaries taught not only religion, but also… • poetry, astronomy and arithmetic. • They also taught how to work in stone and glass, how to embroider cloth, and how to illuminate manuscripts, and they taught about church music and architecture. • They wrote and studied in Latin and Greek. • (McCrum 62) 41

  12. Latin, Greek & Hebrew in English 41

  13. The Story of the Bible Takes Place in Israel and Palestine. 41

  14. The Viking Invasions (750-1050 AD) • In 793 Jarrow & Lindisfarne were sacked for their gold and silver. (McCrum 65) • Alfred the Great rebuilt the monasteries and the schools, and used English, not Latin, in the schools and churches. • (McCrum 67) 41

  15. Saxon vs. Scandinavian Names 41

  16. Scandinavian Words 41

  17. The Danelaw (McCrum 66/68) 41

  18. King Canute (1000 AD)William the Conqueror (1066 AD) • King Canute of Denmark inherited the English throne, conquered Norway, and ruled over most of Scandinavia. • In 1066, William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at the battle of Hastings. • Harold was the last English-speaking king for nearly 300 years. • French & Latin were used for religion, law, science and literature giving us words like felony, perjury, attorney, bailiff, and nobility. (McCrum 72-73) 41

  19. Norman-French Words 41

  20. Celtic (1500 BC to today); they’re recedingGermanic Languages of today (McCrum 55/51) 41

  21. Wales and Welch (McCrum 83/54) 41

  22. Celtic Words 41

  23. Celtic Luminaries 41

  24. Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm • Romance | Germanic Languages: • Languages: | • Latin piscis English fish • Latin pater English father • Latin matar English mother • (McCrum 47) 41

  25. Grimm’s Law • b  • d  • g  • bh dh gh k t p • x/h  • Θ • f  (McCrum 47) 41

  26. Old English (Anglo Saxon) Dialects • Englaland (Land of the Angles) • Northumbria (Saxons) • Mercia (Angles) • East Anglia (Angles) • Kent (Jutes) • Essex (Saxons) • Sussex (Saxons) • Wessex (Saxons & Frisians) (McCrum 56-57) 41

  27. Anglo-Saxon Farming Words 41

  28. The Bible & Winston Churchill used Anglo Saxon Words • “We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, and we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” • All of these words except “surrender” are Anglo-Saxon Words. (McCrum 58) 41

  29. Old-English Dialects (McCrum 63/64) 41

  30. The Richness of English • King, royal, regal, sovereign • Rise, mount, ascend • Ask, question, interrogate • Time, age, epoch (McCrum 74) • Source of Our Rich Vocabulary: • 1. Anglo Saxon Terms • 2. Inkhorn terms from Latin and Greek • 3. Terms from European and other modern languages 41

  31. Reasons for the Ascendency of English • It became well established, and was hardy and vigorous. • Normans intermarried with Anglo Saxons. • Normans had English maids, and stewards. Norman families interacted with English peasants. • After 1244, Norman landowners had to choose between England and France—not both. (McCrum 75-76) 41

  32. King Henry • King Henry I spoke French and surrounded himself with French speakers, and • King Henry II spoke French and surrounded himself with French speakers, and • King Henry III spoke French and surrounded himself with French speakers, but • King Henry IVspoke English and surrounded himself with English speakers, and • Edward III spoke English and could only swear in French. • When Henry V died (1422) English was made the language of England by decree. • Henry VIII is another story altogether. (McCrum 76-78) 41

  33. The Hundred-Year War with France:(1337-1454) • Made people want to speak English and not French. • “The Black Death” made labor scarce, • resulting in a rise in the status of the middle class, • which culminated in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. • So that English speakers were more valuable generally, and could take over the abbots and prioresses. (McCrum 78) 41

  34. Oxford, Cambridge and London • The center for power during Middle English times was a triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London. • Note that when King James had the Bible translated into English scholars from Oxford, Cambridge and London were used. • (McCrum 80) 41

  35. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) • Chaucer was educated as a scribe and worked as a translator. • His “Canterbury Tales” tell about the Knight, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, the Summonner and the Friar. • (McCrum 81-82) 41

  36. Prologue to the Canterbury Tales • What that Aprill with hus shoures soote • The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, • And bathed every veyne in swich licour • Of which vertu engendered is the flour; • What Zephirus eeek with his sweete breeth • Inspired hath in every holt and heeth • The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne • Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne, 41

  37. And smale foweles maken melodye, • That slepen all the night with open eye • (So priketh hem nature in her corages); • Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…. (McCrum 83) 41

  38. Middle English Names • First people needed only a first name, like Egbert or Hrothgar. • Next, people used a –son prefix, like Johnson, Thomson, Jobson. • Then, people were identified by where they lived, like Brooks, Rivers, Hill and Dale or Cleveland. • And their occupations were also important, like Thatcher, Carpenter, Hunter, Mason or Cooper. • There were also continental names, like Fleming, French or Holland. • The Welch added Evans and Bowen (Ap Owen). • The Scotts added Mac- as in McDonald…. (McCrum 84) 41

  39. Middle English (1150-1500 AD) • Stress was front-shifted (to the roots) • Endings on nouns, verbs and adjectives were lost • Prepositions like by, with and from came into prominence. • Great English Vowel Shift didn’t happen until after Middle English (1500 AD) • (McCrum 79) 41

  40. William Caxton and the Printing Press (1476) • Caxton decided to standardize English spelling based on London’s South-East dialect—this was non-Cockney. • The printing press was the cornerstone of the European Renaissance. • (McCrum 85-87) 41

  41. !Miracle Plays • Mankind was a miracle play that was written around 1470. • There were only six actors and minimal scenery, so it travelled around Europe during the sixteenth century. • It dealt with the Devil Titivillus and the Seven Deadly Sins. • In the end, mankind is saved from suicide, the deadliest sin of all. He repents and is forgiven. • Such miracle plays were original, funny, and high-spirited (McCrum 88-89). 41

  42. !!The Mousetrap • The best miracle plays settled in London and built the first open-air theatres. • “The Mousetrap” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet represented one such traveling troupe. (McCrum 88) • The Mousetrap later became the basis for one of Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. 41

  43. !!!Nilsen PowerPoints • “The History of English” • “English as a Morphophonemic Spelling System” 41

  44. !!!Works Cited • McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story of English. New York, NY: Penguin, 1986. (source of map citations) • McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story of English: Third Revised Edition. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. (source of text citations) 41

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