- During this era, many words are borrowed from Latin. For example, Religion; Angel, bishop, chalice, deacon, front, martyr and mass
- Everyday vocabulary - Candle, cucumber, cheese, cup, elephant, fever, giant, history etc
- The Anglo-Saxons preferred to use their own language rather than the celtic language
- They were a pagan race and traces still remain in the names of four days of the week; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (They commemorate the gods Tiw, Woden, Thor and Frig)
The Vikings
- A selection of the 1,800 Scandinavian loan words that probably entered the language at this time: awkward, band, bull, crawl, die, drag, freckle, gasp, harbour etc
- More that 1,500 place names in England have Scandinavian origins, particularly Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
- The language of the Danes exerts an immense and long lasting influence on old English, especially in the north and east
- Many Scandinavian personal names come from his time, especially those ending in -'son'. And some very common words, for example: both, same, get, give and take - enter the language, as do regular pronouns like they, them and their
The Normans
- English continues to evolve after the Norman Conquest, particularly in grammar. Word order becomes increasingly important in conveying the meaning of a sentence, rather than the traditional use of special word endings
- Norman scribes spell words using their own conventions, such as qu- instead of cw. Slowly but surely, distinctive Old English characters begin to die out
- French is established as the language of power and officialdom, English is still used by the majority of people but is seen as "peasants" language, Latin is the language of the church and education and England becomes a tri-lingual country
Useful to keep your notes here! Remember to add in what you found about Anglo Saxon vocabulary in our current language.
ReplyDelete