THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

CHAPTER I.

History of its Vocabulary.

1. WHAT A LANGUAGE IS.—A language is a number of different sounds which are made by the tongue and the other organs of speech. But a spoken language is, or may be, written or printed upon paper by the aid of a number of signs or symbols—which are generally printed in black ink upon white paper.—The parts of a spoken language are called sounds; the smallest parts of a written or printed language are called letters.—A language is also called a tongue or a speech.—A language, like a living being, does not remain always the same. It grows. As it grows, it alters in appearance; small and great changes take place in it; and the story of these changes is called the History of the Language.

2. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE is the name given to the language which is spoken in Great Britain and Ireland, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa, and in many other parts of the world where Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen are found. In the middle of the fifth century it was spoken by a few thousand men who came over to Britain from the north-west of Europe, and by many thousands of men and women who dwelt on the banks of the lower parts of the great German rivers—the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Weser. It is now spoken by more than 100 millions of people. But the English spoken in the fifth century was a very different language from the English that is spoken now. It was different, yet still the same. It was different in appearance, as a child of one year old is different in looks from a man of forty; but both the English of to-day and the English of the fifth century are the same—because the one has grown out of the other, just as the tall strong man of forty has grown out of the child of one year old.

3. FAMILY.—To what family of languages does our English speech belong? It belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. This family is so called, because the languages which belong to it are spoken both in India and in Europe. Many thousand years ago, the people from whom we are descended lived on the high table-lands in the heart of Asia. Bands of them kept travelling always farther and farther west; and it is from their language that most of the tongues spoken in Europe are derived. These bands left their friends and relations and country, just as young men and women nowadays leave the homes of their parents to go and settle in distant countries. The Indo-European is also called the Aryan family of languages. Altogether, it embraces seven great languages—(1) The Indian or Sanskrit; (2) Persic; (3) Greek; (4) Latin; (5) Keltic; (6) Teutonic; and (7) Slavonic, which includes Russian, Polish, &c.

4. TEUTONS.—The English language was introduced into this country by bands of warlike colonists from Northwestern Germany, who drove the old inhabitants to the mountainous regions in the west of the island. Those colonists were variously called Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; but they all belonged to the Teutonic race, and their speech was a branch of the Teutonic group of languages. The Teutonic group of languages contains three main sections, from which all the others spring. These three main sections are: High-German, Low-German, and Scandinavian. High-German is the name given to the kind of German which is spoken on the higher lands or table-lands of South Germany—those table-lands which slope from the Central Plain of Europe up to the Alps; and its northern boundary is the pretty river Main, which falls into the Rhine. Low-German is the name given to the kind of German spoken in the lowlands of Germany; and the southern boundary of this kind of speech is the river Main—its northern boundary being the Baltic and the North Sea. Scandinavian is the wide general name given to those kinds of Teutonic speech which are found in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. These divisions may be placed in a table in the following manner:

5. HIGH-GERMAN.—High-German is spoken in the southern parts of Germany—such as Bavaria, Swabia, and other hilly regions; and also in the north and east of Switzerland.—It is this form of the language that has become the book-speech or literary language of the Germans; and its technical name is New High-German.

6. LOW-GERMAN.—The languages which belong to this division are spoken in the plains of Germany, especially along the lower courses of the rivers, in Holland, in part of Belgium, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the British Colonies, and in the United States of North America. The Low-German spoken in Holland is called Dutch; the Low-German spoken in Belgium is called Flemish; the Low-German spoken in Friesland—a wealthy province of Holland—is called Frisian; and the Low-German spoken in England is called English. (But, as we shall soon see, English contains many thousands of words in addition to those which are purely Low-German.) The language on the continent which is most like English is the Frisian language. There is indeed a well-known couplet, every word in which is said to be both Frisian and English. It runs thus:

The following are the chief subdivisions of

7. SCANDINAVIAN.—Scandinavian is the general name given to the different kinds of Teutonic speech which are employed in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. The oldest and purest kind of Scandinavian speech is that spoken in the far-off country in the middle of the North Atlantic, called Iceland; and it is the purest, because for many centuries there has been very little communication with that country. Indeed, the Icelandic of the 12th century differs very little from the Icelandic of to-day. But the English of the twelfth century differs so much from the English of the nineteenth century, that we should at first sight hardly know them for the same speech.—One peculiar mark of a Scandinavian speech is the preference for hard consonants—the preference, for example, of a k over a ch or sh. Thus the Danes say Dansk for Danish; and it is Danish influence that has given to Scotchmen and to the north of England the form kirk instead of church.

8. THE THREE CHIEF TEUTONIC LANGUAGES.—The three most important languages belonging to the great Teutonic stock are English, Dutch, and German. If we look at the words used in these languages, we shall at once see that they are sister-languages. If we look at the way in which their words are changed—or at their inflections—we shall also see that they are very closely related. Thus the commonest words appear in these three languages in the following shape:

Again, the inflections of these three languages are very similar—are in fact, different shapes of the same changes. Thus the possessive case of nouns in all three languages ends in s or es[3] or ’s. The second person singular of verbs in all three ends in st; and the ending of the past participle in all three is generally en. We know, then, both from history and from a comparison of the actual facts in the present state of the languages, that all three are sister-tongues.

9. WHERE THE ENGLISH CAME FROM.—Those Teutons who brought over the English tongue to this island, came from the north-west of Europe—most of them from that part of the German coast which lies between the river Elbe and the river Weser. The kind of Low-German spoken by them is much the same as that still spoken in the lowlands of Hanover, Holstein, and Schleswig. There is in Holstein—upon the west coast—a small district which is called Angeln—that is, England—to this day. The Teutons who came over to Britain belonged to three tribes. They were Jutes and Angles and Saxons. The Jutes came from Jutland.[4] The Angles came from Schleswig and Holstein. The Saxons came from Hanover and the land to the west of it. The Jutes settled in Kent and the Isle of Wight. The Saxons settled in Essex (or East Sex), Wessex[5] (or West Sex), Sussex (or South Sex), and Middlesex; and the ending sex is an indication of the fact. The Angles settled chiefly in the north and east. One of the kingdoms founded by them was called East Anglia; and the northern and southern settlers in it gave their names to the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, which are only later forms of the words North folk and South folk. These three tribes all spoke different dialects of the same speech. The early predominance of the Angles, especially as the Angles in Northumbria were the first to have a literature, gave to the language the name of English, though the Keltic people still call it Saxon or Sassenach. The country also in time acquired, from the same cause, the name of Engla-land, or the land of the English. The first landing of Teutons took place in the year 449; and for about a hundred years afterwards, bands of strong young warriors and colonists continued to arrive at short intervals.

10. THE PERIODS OF ENGLISH.—The language brought over to Britain by these three tribes has grown very much since the fifth century. It has been growing for fourteen hundred years. It has therefore altered very much in every way; its appearance has changed; and we have to learn the English of the fifth, or the eighth, or the eleventh century, almost as if it were a foreign language. There are four chief periods in the history of the English language. These are:

But it must not be forgotten that there is no hard and fast line between one period and another. A living language, like a living body, is always changing. It takes on new additions of new matter; it loses the old. With these new additions, its form also changes. We are rarely sensible of these changes; but they are going on all the time for all that.

11. THE OLDEST ENGLISH OR ANGLO-SAXON, 450-1100.—This form of the English language contained a very large number of inflections. The definite article was inflected for gender, number, and case; nouns and adjectives were highly inflected; and the verb had a very much larger number of inflections than it has now. The words of the English vocabulary during this period were almost entirely English; a few Latin and Greek words—brought in chiefly by the church—and a few Keltic words, had found their way into the English vocabulary. The rhyme used in poetry was not end-rhyme, as at the present date, but head-rhyme or alliteration—as we find it in the well-known line from Pope:

To this period belong the writings of the poet Cædmon and of King Alfred.

12. EARLY ENGLISH, 1100-1250.—The Normans had seized all power in the state and in the church, and had held it since the year 1066. During the early part of this period, English was not written, had ceased to be employed in books; and French words began to creep in even among the spoken words of the English people. The inflections of words began to drop off, or to be carelessly used, and then to be mixed up and confused with each other. One of the chief writers of this period is a priest called Layamon, who wrote a poem called the Brut (Brutus), which gave some account of the beginnings of the English people, who were believed to be descended from Brutus, the fabled son of Æneas of Troy.

13. MIDDLE ENGLISH, 1250-1485.—Nouns and adjectives during this period lost almost all their inflections. The inflections of verbs were very much altered and greatly simplified.—In the year 1349, boys in school were allowed to cease translating their Latin into French, and began to translate it into English. In the year 1362 Edward III. passed an act of parliament ordering the use of English in the pleadings of cases in all courts of law, instead of Norman-French, which had hitherto been employed. To the first half of this period belong such works as the Metrical Chronicle and the Lives of the Saints, supposed to have been written and translated by Robert of Gloucester; to the second half belong the works of the great poet Chaucer, of William Langland, and of the reformer Wicliffe.

14. MODERN ENGLISH, 1485-1882.—The year 1485 marks the accession of the House of Tudor to the throne, in the person of Henry VII. By this time almost all inflections had disappeared from our language. Many hundreds of French words had come into the language. From the time of the Revival of Letters[6]—which may be said to have begun in the sixteenth century—several thousands of Latin words were poured into the English vocabulary. The period which lies between 1485 and 1603—the year in which James I. came to the throne—is sometimes called the period of Tudor English. Its greatest verse-writer is Shakspeare; its greatest prose-writer is Hooker, who wrote The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

15. ENGLISH WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.—The English language has for centuries been importing words from many foreign tongues into its own vocabulary; and it has given a hearty welcome to all kinds of strangers. So much is this the case, and so far has this habit of taking in strangers gone, that we can now quite accurately say: Most of the words in our English language are not English. There are more Latin words in our tongue than there are English. But this statement is true only of our words as we find them in the dictionary. The words which we use every day—the language of the mouth—is almost entirely English. The fixed vocabulary—the vocabulary printed in the dictionary—is more Latin than English; the moving vocabulary—the words which are daily spoken—is English. Thus, if we take a passage in our translation of the Four Gospels, we shall find from 90 to 96 per cent. of the words used are English—and pure English. In the Prologue which Chaucer wrote to his famous set of poems called The Canterbury Tales, 88 per cent. of the words are English; while, in Mrs Browning’s Cry of the Children, the English words rise to the large proportion of 92 per cent.

The following is a list of a few more percentages of purely English words in the writings of well-known authors:

16. CHANGES IN ENGLISH.—Let us take a passage from the Saxon translation of the Old Testament—and it is the oldest English version we have—and notice what differences there are between this English and the English of the present day. This translation was made by Abbot Ælfric, who lived and wrote late in the tenth century. He translated into English the five books of Moses—commonly called the Pentateuch—Joshua, Judges, and part of the book of Job. Let us see how he writes (Genesis, ix. 1):

Now every word in the above verse is modern English; but every word has been changed—with the exception of God, his, and and. All the other words have changed enormously in the course of the eight centuries since the verse was written. The words have changed; and the grammar has changed. The word bletsian has become bless. The grammar of the verbs has changed enormously. For example, the imperative ending ath in Veahxath and âfyllath has quite fallen away. It existed, in the form of eth, down to the time of Chaucer, who writes Standeth up! in addressing several persons.—Next, we ought to notice that all the words are pure English. The modern version which we still use, and which was published in 1611, has been obliged to use Latin and French words. It says—and the words in italics are all foreign words: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth’! That is, it employs three Latin words in the most important parts of the sentence.

17. LOSS AND GAIN.—But, while the English language has, in the course of centuries, lost almost all its inflections, it has been all that time gaining new words, and at the same time gaining new powers of expression. In fact, the history of our language is a history of both loss and gain. It has lost inflections and gained new words. An inflected language is generally called a Synthetic Language, because it expresses changes of relations by the adding-on (synthesis) of something to the end of the word. A language which expresses relations by little words like prepositions is called an analytic language. We may therefore say that:

So much for the form or grammar of it. But, on the other hand, if we look at the matter or words or vocabulary of it, we shall find that:

18. THE FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH.