Historical Context

	Image Number 1 FROM:  BLANK MAP OF EUROPE (WITH DISPUTED REGIONS).SVG:, CC BY-SA 3.0, HTTPS://COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG/W/INDEX.PHP?CURID=18497754

The period that is considered that of the Old English language is the period from the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the fifth century up until the eleventh century, when the Normans invaded.  Until the fifth century, there were few Germanic speaking people in Britain and those who were tended to be found amongst the ranks of Roman Soldiers or in the Roman camps.  It is generally agreed that the languages found on the island when the Romans arrived were Indo-European Celtic languages and that the Celts had been in Britain several hundred years before the birth of Christ.  There is no knowledge of the languages spoken by the Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples who first inhabited this land mass, but the Celts were the very first Indo-European speakers there.

There were arrivals of folks from the continent before the fifth century, beginning with 55 B.C. as Julius Caesar made several attempts at settlement on the island which were met with fierce resistance by the local Britons, after which the Romans terminated their voyages there for at least a century.  In 43 A.D. the Emperor Claudius sent a legion to Britain and had subjugated what is modern day England in less than ten years.  Subjugation might be a relative term and perhaps it is not an accurate word to use in order to express that what the Romans had achieved were military outposts and in creating the westernmost military posts of the Roman empire, rather than subjugation of a people.  The Romans did not leave until 410 A.D., and as far as language is concerned, the influence of the Latin-speaking world came later through scribes of the Christian church and with the adoption of the Roman alphabet directly prior to the period that is considered Middle English, after the Norman conquest in 1066 A.D, and also through the influence of French.  The Latin language would not become important to the Angelcynn (English people, as the Anglo Saxons referred to themselves) or to the development of Englisc language until centuries later.

The year 449 A.D. is considered the official year when the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain began, even though there were likely already many Germanic migrants from the continent settling on the island in the gap between when the Romans were all called back to Rome in 410 A.D. and the year of these many invasions.  The Roman empire was vast and those they had among their military ranks were from many parts of Europe and beyond.  Some historians have stated that the Germanic personnel that chose to stay behind, or even those whom had left when they were called back in the defense of a crumbling Rome, likely organized migrant trips to Britain on a small scale, seeing as that the land was beautiful and ripe for agriculture.  For many people, this way a way to have something better for their families and this sort of back and forth from the island to the big continent might’ve been happening with a small scale of people until several Germanic groups decided that they had more ambitious plans for Britannia.

	Anglo-Saxon Invasions of Britain – Jutes, Angles, Saxons and Frisians Image Number 2 By mbartelsm – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86531831

The four Germanic Tribes began to arrive in great numbers circa 449 A.D., with the first arrivals being the Frisians and the Jutes, which were then followed by the Angles and the Saxons.  The four tribes spoke a continuum of related and mutually-intelligible language varieties. The Angles spoke Englisc, the Jutes Jutish, the Frisians Friesisch, and the Saxons Saxisch (I wouldn’t be sure about those names, but what I’m trying to say is they all called their languages different things, but they ended up being all called Englisc) and that language ended up being Old  English.  The written texts of OE (Old English) are likely not reproductions of the exact English spoken on the continent, not only due to orthographic differences/inconsistencies, but also due to morphological changes that transpire when languages come into contact, as well as how these changes are represented over time.  Many documents written in Old English were written decades or more after the invasions. The people of Britannia had not made it easy for the Romans legions who had invaded them for centuries. The people of these isles resisted at every single turn.  As a result, Britain was not considered a colonized land, and was often the post given as a demotion or as deployments of punishment for Roman officers.  All of the fighting might have served to not turn Britain into a colony but it was left extremely vulnerable when the Romans withdrew, and perhaps if the local Britons had seen the layout and ways of the continent, they might have mobilized themselves to protect from any future attacks.  The Anglo-Saxons entered Britain over the course of several centuries in various migrations and spread out, forming a heptarchy among their leaders.  A large island nation primarily under the rule of foreign Continental English, even if the kingdoms were divided. Though Christianity had been introduced before into the land by the late Romano Empire, with the departure of the Romans, so went their religion with them.  In the late 6th century Christian scribes began organizing missions to Britain which did bring back Latin and the Roman alphabet insofar as their teachings and what was written down—but this alphabet was initially limited to written material in Latin.  The missions of the church kept coming.  As things stand at this point in history there were ecclesiastical writings in Latin, and for those endeavours, there was a standardized writing system. the country of Britain some spoke what some call Britain Latin, Britain Celtic, and then there are the Celtic languages like Cornish, Welsh, the Gaelic of Scotland and the Gaelic of Ireland and now this Continental language of English.  In 787, the Vikings came to Britain and they pillaged, destroyed and terrorized everyone year after year with their raids but as many of these Danes were farmers, they saw opportunities in agriculture and eventually wanted to stay and have land of their own.  This took decades of negotiations, but eventually most of North England and East Anglia became the Danelaw, the area that belonged to the Viking people.  They brought their own Germanic languages and they were not Christians nor did they have any influence of Latin.  These continental Germanic people wrote using the runic alphabet known on the continent as the Futhark (for the first six sounds of the letters in the alphabet), which became the Futhorc in Britain due to some slight phonological variation in the first six sounds.  This is where we come to the point of being in a very mixed society and now we can begin to see the complete picture of Old English in its linguistic context.

	Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy circa 700 A.D. Image Number 3 By Bartholomew, J. G. (John George), 1860-1920 – https://archive.org/stream/literaryhistatlas00bartrich#page/22/mode/2up (A literary & historical atlas of Europe (1914)), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17292027

Extra Stuff:

Check out the British History Podcast online, on Google Play Music or the iTunes store for free to listen to some awesome history on Britannia by a lawyer turned historian. Highly recommended!

https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/playlist/

NEXT UP…PHONOLOGY & ORTHOGRAPHY

 

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