The Names “England” and “English"

The Celts called their Germanic conquerors Saxons indiscriminately, probably because they had had their first contact with the Germanic peoples through the Saxon raids on the coast. Early Latin writers, following Celtic usage, generally call the Germanic inhabitants of England Saxones and the land Saxonia. But soon the terms Angli and Anglia occur beside Saxones and refer not to the Angles individually but to the West Germanic tribes generally. Æthelbert, king of Kent, is styled rex Anglorum by Pope Gregory in 601, and a century later Bede called his history the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. In time Angli and Anglia become the usual terms in Latin texts. From the beginning, however, writers in the vernacular never call their language anything but Englisc (English). The word is derived from the name of the Angles (OE Engle) but is used without distinction for the language of all the invading tribes. In like manner the land and its people are early called Angelcynn (Angle-kin or race of the Angles), and this is the common name until after the Danish period. From about the year 1000 Englaland (land of the Angles) begins to take its place. The name English is thus older than the name England.6 It is not easy to say why England should have taken its name from the Angles. Possibly a desire to avoid confusion with the Saxons who remained on the continent and the early supremacy of the Anglian kingdoms were the predominant factors in determining usage.

Anglo-Saxon Civilization

It is difftcult to speak with surety about the relations of the newcomers and the native population. In some districts where the inhabitants were few, the Anglo-Saxons probably settled down beside the Celts in more or less peaceful contact. In others, as in the West Saxon territory, the invaders met with stubborn resistance and succeeded in establishing themselves only after much fighting. Many of the Celts undoubtedly were driven into the west and sought refuge in Wales and Cornwall, and some emigrated across the Channel to Brittany. In any case such civilization as had been attained under Roman influence was largely destroyed. The Roman towns were burnt and abandoned. Town life did not attract a population used to life in the open and finding its occupation in hunting and agriculture.

The organization of society was by families and clans with a sharp distinction between eorls, a kind of hereditary aristocracy, and the ceorls or simple freemen. The business of the community was transacted in local assemblies or moots, and justice was administered through a series of fines—the wergild—which varied according to the nature of the crime and the rank of the injured party. Guilt was generally determined by ordeal or by compurgation. In time various tribes combined either for greater strength or, under the influence of a powerful leader, to produce small kingdoms. Seven of these are eventually recognized, Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex, and are spoken of as the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. But the grouping was not very permanent, sometimes two or more being united under one king, at other times kingdoms being divided under separate rulers. In the early part of the seventh century Northumbria gained political supremacy over a number of the other kingdoms and held an undoubted leadership in literature and learning as well. In the eighth century this leadership passed to Mercia. Finally, in the ninth century, Wessex under the guidance of Egbert (802–839) began to extend its influence until in 830 all England, including the chieftains of Wales, acknowledged Egbert’s overlordship. The result can hardly be called a united kingdom, but West Saxon kings were able to maintain their claim to be kings of all the English, and under Alfred (871–889) Wessex attained a high degree of prosperity and considerable enlightenment.

The Latin Language in Britain

Among the other evidences of Romanization must be included the use of the Latin language. A great number of inscriptions have been found, all of them in Latin. The majority of these proceed no doubt from the military and official class and, being in the nature of public records, were therefore in the official language. They do not in themselves indicate a widespread use of Latin by the native population. Latin did not replace the Celtic language in Britain as it did in Gaul. Its use by native Britons was probably confined to members of the upper classes and some inhabitants of the cities and towns.

Occasional graffiti scratched on a tile or a piece of pottery, apparently by the worker who made it, suggest that in some localities Latin was familiar to the artisan class. Outside the cities there were many fine country houses, some of which were probably occupied by the well-to-do. The occupants of these also probably spoke Latin. Tacitus tells us that in the time of Agricola the Britons, who had hitherto shown only hostility to the language of their conquerors, now became eager to speak it. At about the same time, a Greek teacher from Asia Minor was teaching in Britain, and by A.D. 96 the poet Martial was able to boast, possibly with some exaggeration, that his works were read even in this far-off island. On the whole, there were certainly many people in Roman Britain who habitually spoke Latin or upon occasion could use it. But its use was not sufficiently widespread to cause it to survive, as the Celtic language survived, the upheaval of the Germanic invasions. Its use probably began to decline after 410, the approximate date at which the last of the Roman legions were officially withdrawn from the island. The few traces that it has left in the language of the Germanic invaders and that can still be seen in the English language today will occupy us later.

The Roman Conquest

It was in A.D. 43 that the Emperor Claudius decided to undertake the actual conquest of the island. With the knowledge of Caesar’s experience behind him, he did not underestimate the problems involved. Accordingly an army of 40,000 was sent to Britain and within three years had subjugated the peoples of the central and southeastern regions. Subsequent campaigns soon brought almost all of what is now England under Roman rule. The progress of Roman control was not uninterrupted. A serious uprising of the Celts occurred in A.D. 61 under Boudicca (Boadicea), the widow of one of the Celtic chiefs, and 70,000 Romans and Romanized Britons are said to have been massacred. Under the Roman Governor Agricola (A.D. 78–85) the northern frontier was advanced to the Solway and the Tyne, and the conquest may be said to have been completed. The Romans never penetrated far into the mountains of Wales and Scotland. Eventually they protected the northern boundary by a stone wall stretching across England at approximately the limits of Agricola’s permanent conquest. The district south of this line was under Roman rule for more than 300 years.

The Romans in Britain

In the summer of 55 B.C.Julius Caesar, having completed the conquest of Gaul, decided upon an invasion of England. What the object of his enterprise was is not known for certain. It is unlikely that he contemplated the conquest of the island; probably his chief purpose was to discourage the Celts of Britain from coming to the assistance of Celts in Gaul, should the latter attempt to throw off the Roman yoke.2 The expedition that year
almost ended disastrously, and his return the following year was not a great success. In crossing the Channel some of his transports encountered a storm that deprived him of the support of his cavalry. The resistance of the Celts was unexpectedly spirited. It was with difficulty that he effected a landing, and he made little headway. Because the season was far advanced, he soon returned to Gaul. The expedition had resulted in no material gain and some loss of prestige. Accordingly the following summer he again invaded the island, after much more elaborate preparations. This time he succeeded in establishing himself in the southeast. But after a few encounters with the Celts, in which he was moderately successful, he exacted tribute from them (which was never paid) and again returned to Gaul. He had perhaps succeeded in his purpose, but he had by no means struck terror into the hearts of the Celts, and Britain was not again troubled by Roman legions for nearly a hundred years.

The Languages in England before English

We are so accustomed to thinking of English as an inseparable adjunct to the English people that we are likely to forget that it has been the language of England for a comparatively short period in the world’s history. Since its introduction into the island about the middle of the fifth century it has had a career extending through only 1,500 years. Yet this part of the world had been inhabited by humans for thousands of years: 50,000 according to more moderate estimates, 250,000 in the opinion of some. During this long stretch of time, most of it dimly visible through prehistoric mists, the presence of a number of cultures can be detected; and each of these cultures had a language.

Nowhere does our knowledge of the history of humankind carry us back to a time when humans did not have a language. What can be said about the early languages of England? Unfortunately, little enough. What we know of the earliest inhabitants of England is derived wholly from the material remains that have been uncovered by archaeological research. The classification of these inhabitants is consequently based upon the types of material culture that characterized them in their successive stages. Before the discovery of metals, human societies were dependent upon stone for the fabrication of such implements and weapons as they possessed. Generally speaking, the Stone Age is thought to have lasted in England until about 2000 B.C., although the English were still using some stone weapons in the battle of Hastings in 1066. Stone, however, gradually gave way to bronze, as bronze was eventually displaced by iron about 500 or 600 B.c.1 Because the Stone Age was of long duration, it is customary to distinguish between an earlier and a later period, known as the Paleolithic (Old Stone) Age and the Neolithic (New Stone) Age.

Paleolithic humans, the earliest inhabitants of England, entered at a time when this part of the world formed a part of the continent of Europe, when there was no English Channel and when the North Sea was not much more than an enlarged river basin. The people of this period were short of stature, averaging about five feet, long-armed and short-legged, with low foreheads and poorly developed chins. They lived in the open, under rock shelters or, later, in caves. They were dependent for food upon the vegetation that grew wild and such animals as they could capture and kill. Fortunately, an abundance of fish and game materially lessened the problem of existence. Their weapons scarcely extended beyond a primitive sledge or ax, to which they eventually learned to affix a handle. More than one distinct group is likely to be represented in this early stage of culture. The humans whose remains are found in the latest Paleolithic strata are distinguished by a high degree of artistic skill. But representations of boar and mastodon on pieces of bone or the walls of caves tell us nothing about the language of their designers. Their language disappeared with the disappearance of the race, or their absorption into the later population. We know nothing about the language, or languages, of Paleolithic culture.

“Neolithic” is likewise a convenient rather than scientific term to designate the peoples who, from about 5000 B.C., possess a superior kind of stone implement, often polished, and a higher culture generally. The predominant type in this new population appears to have come from the south and, from its widespread distribution in the lands bordering on the Mediterranean, is known as the Mediterranean race. It was a dark race of slightly larger stature than the Paleolithic population. The people of this technologically more advanced culture had domesticated the common domestic animals and developed elementary agriculture. They made crude pottery and did a little weaving, and some lived in crannogs, structures built on pilings driven into swamps and lakes.

They buried their dead, covering the more important members of society with large mounds or barrows, oval in shape. But they did not have the artistic gifts of late Paleolithic peoples. Their language has not survived, and because our hope of learning anything about the language they spoke rests upon our finding somewhere a remnant of the race still speaking that language, that hope, so far as England is concerned, is dead. In a corner of the Pyrenees mountains of Spain, however, there survives a small community that is believed by some to represent this non-Indo-European culture. These people are the Basques, and their language shows no affiliation with any other language now known.

Allowing for the changes it has doubtless undergone through the centuries, the Basque language may furnish us with a clue to the language of at least one group in the Neolithic cultures of Europe. The first people in England about whose language we have definite knowledge are the Celts. It used to be assumed that the coming of the Celts to England coincided with the introduction of bronze into the island. But the use of bronze probably preceded the Celts by several centuries. We have already described the Celtic languages in England and called attention to the two divisions of them, the Gaelic or Goidelic branch and the Brythonic branch. Celtic was probably the first Indo-European tongue to be spoken in England. One other language, Latin, was spoken rather extensively for a period of about four centuries before the coming of English. Latin was introduced when Britain became a province of the Roman Empire. Because this was an event that has left a significant mark upon later history, it will be well to consider it separately.

The Indo-European family of languages: Germanic

The common form that the languages of the Germanic branch had before they became differentiated is known as Germanic or Proto-Germanic. It antedates the earliest written records of the family and is reconstructed by philologists in the same way as is the parent Indo-European. The languages descended from it fall into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic, and West Germanic.

The principal language of East Germanic is Gothic. By the third century the Goths had spread from the Vistula to the shore of the Black Sea and in the following century they were Christianized by a missionary named Ulfilas (311–383), whose father seems to have been a Goth and his mother a Greek (Cappadocian). Our knowledge of Gothic is almost wholly due to a translation of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament made by Ulfilas. Except for some runic inscriptions in Scandinavia it is the earliest record of a Germanic language we possess. For a time the Goths played a prominent part in European history, including in their extensive conquests both Italy, by the Ostrogoths, and Spain, by the Visigoths. In these districts, however, their language soon gave place to Latin, and even elsewhere it seems not to have maintained a very tenacious existence. Gothic survived longest in the Crimea, where vestiges of it were noted down in the sixteenth century. To the East Germanic branch belonged also Burgundian and Vandalic, but our knowledge of these languages is confined to a small number of proper names.

North Germanic is found in Scandinavia, Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. Runic inscriptions from the third century preserve our earliest traces of the language. In its earlier form the common Scandinavian language is conveniently spoken of as Old Norse. From about the eleventh century on, dialectal differences become noticeable. The Scandinavian languages fall into two groups: an eastern group including Swedish and Danish, and a western group including Norwegian and Icelandic. Norwegian ceased to be a literary language in the fourteenth century, and Danish (with Norwegian elements) is one written language of Norway.

Of the early Scandinavian languages Old Icelandic is by far the most literary. Iceland was colonized by settlers from Norway about A.D. 874 and early preserved a body of heroic literature unsurpassed among the Germanic peoples. Among the more important monuments are the Elder or Poetic Edda, a collection of poems that probably date from the tenth or eleventh century, the Younger or Prose Edda compiled by Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241), and about forty sagas, or prose epics, in which the lives and exploits of various traditional figures are related.

West Germanic is of chief interest to us as the group to which English belongs. It is divided into two branches, High and Low German, by the operation of a Second (or High German) Sound-Shift analogous to that described above as Grimm’s Law. This change, by which West Germanic p, t, k, d, etc. were changed into other sounds, occurred about A.D. 600 in the southern or mountainous part of the Germanic area but did not take place in the lowlands to the north. Accordingly in early times we distinguish as Low German tongues Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian, Old Frisian, and Old English. The last two are closely related and constitute a special or Anglo-Frisian subgroup.

Old Saxon has become the essential constituent of modern Low German or Plattdeutsch; Old Low Franconian, with some mixture of Frisian and Saxon elements, is the basis of modern Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish in northern Belgium; and Frisian survives in the Netherland province of Friesland, in a small part of Schleswig, in the islands along the coast, and other places. High German comprises a number of dialects (Middle, Rhenish, and East Franconian, Bavarian, Alemannic, etc.). It is divided chronologically into Old High German (before 1100), Middle High German (1100–1500), and Modern High German (since 1500). High German, especially as spoken in the midlands and used in the imperial chancery, was popularized by Luther’s translation of the Bible (1522–1532) and since the sixteenth century has gradually established itself as the literary language of Germany.

The Indo-European family of languages: Balto-Slavic

The Balto-Slavic branch covers a vast area in the eastern part of Europe. It falls into two groups, the Baltic and the Slavic, which, in spite of differences, have sufficient features in common to justify their being classed together.

There are three Baltic languages: Prussian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. Prussian is now extinct, having been displaced by German since the seventeenth century. Latvian is the language of about two million people in Latvia. Lithuanian is spoken by about three million people in the Baltic state of Lithuania. It is important among the Indo-European languages because of its conservatism. It is sometimes said that a Lithuanian peasant can understand certain simple phrases in Sanskrit. Although the statement implies too much, Lithuanian preserves some very old features that have disappeared from practically all the other languages of the family.

The similarities among the various languages of the Slavic group indicate that as late as the seventh or eighth century of our era they were practically identical or at least were united by frequent intercourse. At the present time they fall into three divisions: East Slavic, West Slavic, and South Slavic. The first two still cover contiguous areas, but the South Slavs, in the Balkan peninsula, are now separated from the rest by a belt of nonSlavic people, the Hungarians and the Romanians.

The earliest form in which we possess a Slavic language is a part of the Bible and certain liturgical texts translated by the missionaries Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century. The language of these texts is South Slavic, but it probably approximates with considerable closeness the common Slavic from which all the Slavic languages have come. It is known as Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian and continued to be used throughout the Middle Ages and indeed well into modern times as the ecclesiastical language of the Orthodox Church.

East Slavic includes three varieties. Chief of these is Russian, the language of about 175 million people. It is found throughout the north, east, and central parts of Russia, was formerly the court language, and is still the official and literary language of the country. Belorussian (White Russian) is the language of about 9 million people in Belarus and adjacent parts of Poland. Ukrainian is spoken by about 50 million people in Ukraine. Nationalist ambitions have led the Ukrainians to stress the difference between their language and Russian, a difference that, from the point of view of mutual intelligibility, causes some difficulty with the spoken language. Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian constitute the largest group of Slavic languages.

West Slavic includes four languages. Of these Polish is the largest, spoken by about 36 million people within Poland, by about 5 million in the United States, and by smaller numbers in the former Soviet Union and other countries. Next in size are the mutually intelligible languages of the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Czech, spoken by about 10 million people, and Slovak, spoken by 5 million. The fourth language, Sorbian, is spoken by only 100,000 people in Germany, in a district a little northeast of Dresden.

South Slavic includes Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and modern Macedonian, not to be confused with ancient Macedonian, an Indo-European language of uncertain affinity. Bulgarian was spoken in the eastern part of the Balkan peninsula when the region was overrun by a non-Slavic people. But the conqueror was absorbed by the conquered and adopted their language. Modern Bulgarian has borrowed extensively from Turkish for the language of everyday use, while the literary language is much closer to Russian. The history of Yugoslavia and the fortunes of its languages illustrate tragically the quip that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” Serbo-Croatian represents the union of Serbian, formerly the language of Serbia, and Croatian, spoken before World War I by the Croats of Bosnia and Croatia. The two languages are practically identical but use different alphabets. With the breakup of Yugoslavia we can expect references to Serbo-Croatian to be replaced by references separately to Serbian and Croatian. Slovene is spoken by about 1.5 million people in Slovenia, at the head of the Adriatic.

The Slavic languages constitute a more homogeneous group than the languages of some of the other branches. They have diverged less from the common type than those, for example, of the Germanic branch and in a number of respects preserve a rather archaic aspect. Moreover the people speaking the Baltic languages must have lived for many centuries in fairly close contact with the Slavs after the two had separated from the parent Indo-European community.

The Indo-European family of languages: Italic

The Italic branch has its center in Italy, and to most people Italy in ancient times suggests Rome and the language of Rome, Latin. But the predominant position occupied by Latin in the historical period should not make us forget that Latin was only one of a number of languages once found in this area. The geographical situation and agreeable climate of the peninsula seem frequently and at an early date to have invited settlement, and the later population represents a remarkably diverse culture. We do not know much about the early neolithic inhabitants; they had been largely replaced or absorbed before the middle of the first millennium B.C.

But we have knowledge of a number of languages spoken in different districts by the sixth century before our era. In the west, especially from the Tiber north, a powerful and aggressive people spoke Etruscan, a non-Indo-European language. In northwestern Italy was situated the little known Ligurian. Venetic in the northeast and Messapian in the extreme southeast were apparently offshoots of Illyrian, already mentioned. And in southern Italy and Sicily, Greek was the language of numerous Greek colonies. All these languages except Etruscan were apparently IndoEuropean. More important were the languages of the Italic branch itself. Chief of these in the light of subsequent history was Latin, the language of Latium and its principal city, Rome. Closely related to Latin were Umbrian, spoken in a limited area northeast of Latium, and Oscan, the language of the Samnites and of most of the southern peninsula except the extreme projections. All of these languages were in time driven out by Latin as the political influence of Rome became dominant throughout Italy. Nor was the extension of Latin limited to the Italian peninsula. As Rome colonized Spain and Gaul, the district west of the Black Sea, northern Africa, the islands of the Mediterranean, and even Britain, Latin spread into all these regions until its limits became practically co-terminous with those of the Roman Empire. And in the greater part of this area it has remained the language, though in altered form, to the present day.

The various languages that represent the survival of Latin in the different parts of the Roman Empire are known as the Romance or Romanic languages. Some of them have since spread into other territory, particularly in the New World. The most extensive of the Romance languages are French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. French is primarily the language of northern France, although it is the language of literature and education throughout the country. In the Middle Ages it was divided into a number of dialects, especially Norman, Picard, Burgundian, and that of the Ile-de-France. But with the establishment of the Capetians as kings of France and the rise of Paris as the national capital, the dialect of Paris or the Ile-de-France gradually won recognition as the official and literary language. Since the thirteenth century the Paris dialect has been standard French. In the southern half of France the language differed markedly from that of the north. From the word for yes the language of the north was called the langue d’oïl, that of the south the langue d’oc. Nowadays the latter is more commonly known as Provençal. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was the language of an innovative literature, the lyrics of the troubadours, but it has since yielded to the political and social prestige of French. A patriotic effort at the close of the nineteenth century, corresponding to similar movements on behalf of Irish, Norwegian, and other submerged languages, failed to revive the language as a medium of literature, and Provençal is today merely the regional speech of southern France. In the Iberian peninsula Spanish and Portuguese, because of their proximity and the similar conditions under which they have developed, have remained fairly close to each other. In spite of certain differences of vocabulary and inflection and considerable differences in the sounds of the spoken language, a Spaniard can easily read Portuguese. The use of Spanish and Portuguese in Central and South America and in Mexico has already been referred to. Italian has had the longest continuous history in its original location of any of the Romance languages, because it is nothing more than the Latin language as this language has continued to be spoken in the streets of Rome from the founding of the city. It is particularly important as the language of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and the vernacular language in which the cultural achievements of the Renaissance first found expression. Romanian is the easternmost of the Romance languages, representing the continued influence of Roman legions in ancient Dacia. In addition to these six languages, about a dozen Romance languages are spoken by smaller populations. Other languages on the Iberian peninsula are Catalan, a language of the northeast but also found in Corsica, and one with an extensive literature, and Galician in the northwest, similar to both Spanish and Portuguese, having features of each, just as Catalan shares features of Provençal and Spanish. The Rhaeto-Romanic group in southeastern Switzerland and adjacent parts of the Tyrol includes Romansch and dialects in which Germanic elements are especially prominent. Walloon is a dialect of French spoken in southern Belgium.

The Romance languages, while representing a continuous evolution from Latin, are not derived from the Classical Latin of Cicero and Virgil. Classical Latin was a literary language with an elaborate and somewhat artificial grammar. The spoken language of the masses, Vulgar Latin (from Latin vulgus, the common people), differed from it not only in being simpler in inflection and syntax but also to a certain extent divergent in vocabulary. In Classical Latin the word for horse was equus, but the colloquial word was caballus. It is from the colloquial word that French cheval, Provençal caval, Spanish caballo, Italian cavallo, etc., are derived. In like manner where one wrote pugna (fight), urbs (city), os (mouth), the popular, spoken word was battualia (Fr. bataille), villa (Fr. ville), bucca (Fr. bouche). So verberare=battuere (Fr. battre), osculari=basiare (Fr. baiser), ignis=focus (Fr. feu), ludus=jocus (Fr. jeu). It was naturally the Vulgar Latin of the marketplace and camp that was carried into the different Roman provinces. That this Vulgar Latin developed differently in the different parts of Europe in which it was introduced is explained by a number of factors. In the first place, as Gustav Gröber observed, Vulgar Latin, like all language, was constantly changing, and because the Roman provinces were established at different times and the language carried into them would be more or less the language then spoken in the streets of Rome, there would be initial differences in the Vulgar Latin of the different colonies.

These differences would be increased by separation and the influence of the languages spoken by the native populations as they adopted the new language. The Belgae and the Celts in Gaul, described by Caesar, differed from the Iberians in Spain. Each of these peoples undoubtedly modified Latin in accordance with the grammars of their own languages, as normally happens when languages come into contact.

It is not difficult to understand the divergence of the Romance languages, and it is not the least interesting feature of the Romance group that we can observe here in historical time the formation of a number of distinct languages from a single parent speech. Such a process of progressive differentiation has brought about, over a greater area and a longer period of time, the differences among the languages of the whole Indo-European family

The Indo-European family of languages: Albanian

Northwest of Greece on the eastern coast of the Adriatic is the small branch named Albanian. It is possibly the modern remnant of Illyrian, a language spoken in ancient times in the northwestern Balkans, but we have too little knowledge of this early tongue to be sure. Moreover, our knowledge of Albanian, except for a few words, extends back only as far as the fifteenth century of our era, and, when we first meet with it, the vocabulary is so mixed with Latin, Greek, Turkish, and Slavonic elements—owing to conquests and other causes—that it is somewhat difficult to isolate the original Albanian. For this reason its position among the languages of the Indo-European family was slow to be recognized. It was formerly classed with the Hellenic group, but since the beginning of the present century it has been recognized as an independent member of the family.

The Indo-European family of languages: Hellenic

At the dawn of history the Aegean was occupied by a number of populations that differed in race and in language from the Greeks who entered these regions later. In Lemnos, in Cyprus, and Crete especially, and also on the Greek mainland and in Asia Minor, inscriptions have been found written in languages which may in some cases be IndoEuropean and in others are certainly not. In the Balkans and in Asia Minor were languages such as Phrygian and Armenian, already mentioned, and certainly IndoEuropean, as well as others (Lydian, Carian, and Lycian) that show some resemblance to the Indo-European type but whose relations are not yet determined. In Asia Minor the Hittites, who spoke an Indo-European language (see § 27), possessed a kingdom that lasted from about 2000 to 1200 B.C.; and in the second millennium B.C. the eastern Mediterranean was dominated, at least commercially, by a Semitic people, the Phoenicians, who exerted a considerable influence upon the Hellenic world.

Into this mixture of often little-known populations and languages the Greeks penetrated from the north shortly after a date about 2000 B.C. The entrance of the Hellenes into the Aegean was a gradual one and proceeded in a series of movements by groups speaking different dialects of the common language. They spread not only through the mainland of Greece, absorbing the previous populations, but also into the islands of the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor. The earliest great literary monuments of Greek are the Homeric poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, believed to date from the eighth century B.C. Of the Greek language we recognize five principal dialectal groups: the Ionic, of which Attic is a subdialect, found (except for Attic) in Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean Sea; Aeolic in the north and northeast; Arcadian-Cyprian in the Peloponnesus and Cyprus; Doric, which later replaced Arcadian in the Peloponnesus; and Northwest Greek in the north central and western part of the Greek mainland. Of these, Attic, the dialect of the city of Athens, is by far the most studied. It owes its supremacy partly to the dominant political and commercial position attained by Athens in the fifth century, partly to the great civilization that grew up there. The achievements of the Athenians in architecture and sculpture, in science, philosophy, and literature in the great age of Pericles (495–429 B.C.) and in the century following were extremely important for subsequent civilization. In Athens were assembled the great writers of Greece—the dramatists Æchylus, Euripides, and Sophocles in tragedy, Aristophanes in comedy, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the orator Demosthenes, the philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Largely because of the political and cultural prestige of Athens, the Attic dialect became the basis of a koiné or common Greek that from the fourth century superseded the other dialects; the conquests of Alexander (336–323 B.C.) established this language in Asia Minor and Syria, in Mesopotamia and Egypt, as the general language of the eastern Mediterranean for purposes of international communication. It is chiefly familiar to modern times as the language of the New Testament and, through its employment in Constantinople and the Eastern Empire, as the medium of an extensive Byzantine literature. The various dialects into which the language of modern Greece is divided represent the local differentiation of this koiné through the course of centuries. At the present time two varieties of Greek (commonly called Romaic, from its being the language of the eastern Roman Empire) are observable in Greece. One, the popular or demotic, is the natural language of the people; the other, the “pure,” represents a conscious effort to restore the vocabulary and even some of the inflections of ancient Greek. Both are used in various schools and universities, but the current official position favors the demotic.

The Indo-European family of languages: Armenian

Armenian is found in a small area south of the Caucasus Mountains and the eastern end of the Black Sea. The penetration of Armenians into this region is generally put between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C. They evidently came into their present location by way of the Balkans and across the Hellespont. The newcomers conquered a population of which remnants are still perhaps to be found in the Caucasus and whose language may have influenced Armenian in matters of accent and phonology. Armenian shows a shifting of certain consonants that recalls the shifts in Germanic described above and which, like those, may be due to contact with other languages. Moreover, like the south Caucasus languages, Armenian lacks grammatical gender.

Armenian is not linked to any other special group of the Indo-European family by common features such as connect Indian with Iranian. It occupies a somewhat isolated position. But in ancient times Thrace and Macedonia were occupied by two peoples—the Thraco-Phrygians, whom Herodotus mentions as very numerous, and the Macedonians, whose kings for a time adopted Greek and enjoyed a short but brilliant career in Greek history. The Phrygians, like the Armenians, passed into Asia Minor and are familiar to us as the Trojans of Homer. Their language shows certain affinities with Armenian; and, if we knew more about it, we should probably find in it additional evidence for the early association of the two peoples. Unfortunately we have only scanty remains of Phrygian and Macedonian—chiefly place names, glosses, and inscriptions—enough merely to prove their Indo-European character and give a clue to the linguistic affiliation.

Armenian is known to us from about the fifth century of our era through a translation of the Bible in the language. There is a considerable Armenian literature, chiefly historical and theological. The Armenians for several centuries were under Persian domination, and the vocabulary shows such strong Iranian influence that Armenian was at one time classed as an Iranian language. Numerous contacts with Semitic languages, with Greek, and with Turkish have contributed further to give the vocabulary a rich character.

The Indo-European family of languages: Iranian

Northwest of India and covering the great plateau of Iran is the important group of languages called Iranian. The Indo-European population that settled this region had lived and probably traveled for a considerable time in company with the members of the Indian branch. Such an association accounts for a number of linguistic features that the two groups have in common. Of the people engaged in this joint migration a part seem to have decided to settle down on this great tableland while the rest continued on into India.

Subsequent movements have carried Iranian languages into territories as remote as southern Russia and central China. From early times the region has been subjected to Semitic influence, and many of the early texts are preserved in Semitic scripts that make accurate interpretation difftcult. Fortunately the past few decades have seen the recovery of a number of early documents, some containing hitherto unknown varieties of Iranian speech, which have contributed greatly to the elucidation of this important group of languages.

The earliest remains of the Iranian branch fall into two divisions, an eastern and a western, represented respectively by Avestan and Old Persian. Avestan is the language of the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians. It is some-times called Zend, although the designation is not wholly accurate. Strictly speaking, Zend is the language only of certain late commentaries on the sacred text. The Avesta consists of two parts, the Gathas or metrical sermons of Zoroaster, which in their original form may go back as far as 1000 B.C., and the Avesta proper, an extensive collection of hymns, legends, prayers, and legal prescriptions that seem to spring from a period several hundred years later. There is considerable difference in the language of the two parts. The other division of Iranian, Old Persian, is preserved only in certain cuneiform inscriptions which record chiefly the conquests and achievements of Darius (522–486 B.C.) and Xerxes (486–466 B.C.). 

The most extensive is a trilingual record (in Persian, Assyrian, and Elamite) carved in the side of a mountain at Behistan, in Media, near the city of Kirmanshah. Besides a representation of Darius with nine shackled prisoners, the rebel chieftains subjugated by him, there are many columns of text in cuneiform characters. A later form of this language, found in the early centuries of our era, is known as Middle Iranian or Pahlavi, the official language of church and state during the dynasty of the Sassanids (A.D. 226– 652). This is the ancestor of modern Persian. Persian, also known as Farsi, has been the language of an important culture and an extensive literature since the ninth century. Chief among the literary works in this language is the great Persian epic the Shahnamah. Persian contains a large Arabic admixture so that today its vocabulary seems almost as much Arabic as Iranian. In addition to Persian, several other languages differing more or less from it are today in use in various provinces of the old empire—Afghan or Pashto and Baluchi in the eastern territories of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Kurdish in the west, in Kurdistan. Besides these larger groups there are numerous languages and dialects in the highlands of the Pamir, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and in the valleys of the Caucasus.

The Indo-European family of languages: Indian

The oldest literary texts preserved in any Indo-European language are the Vedas or sacred books of India. These fall into four groups, the earliest of which, the Rig-veda, is a collection of about a thousand hymns, and the latest, the Atharva-veda, a body of incantations and ritual formulas connected with many kinds of current religious practice. These books form the basis of Brahman philosophy and for a long time were preserved by oral transmission by the priests before being committed to writing. It is therefore difftcult to assign definite dates to them, but the oldest apparently go back to nearly 1500 B.C. The language in which they are written is known as Sanskrit, or to distinguish it from a later form of the language, Vedic Sanskrit. This language is also found in certain prose writings containing directions for the ritual, theological commentary, and the like (the Brahmanas), meditations for the use of recluses (the Aranyakas), philosophical speculations (the Upanishads), and rules concerning various aspects of religious and private life (the Sutras).

The use of Sanskrit was later extended to various writings outside the sphere of religion, and under the influence of native grammarians, the most important of whom was Panini in the fourth century B.C., it was given a fixed, literary form. In this form it is known as Classical Sanskrit. Classical Sanskrit  is the medium of an extensive Indian literature including the two great national epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, a large body of drama, much lyric and didactic poetry, and numerous works of a scientific and philosophical character. It is still cultivated as a learned language and formerly held a place in India similar to that occupied by Latin in medieval Europe. At an early date it ceased to be a spoken language.

Alongside of Sanskrit there existed a large number of local dialects in colloquial use, known as Prakrits. A number of these eventually attained literary form; one in particular, Pāli, about the middle of the sixth century B.C. became the language of Buddhism. From these various colloquial dialects have descended the present languages of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, spoken by some 600 million people. The most important of these are Hindi, Urdu (the official language of Pakistan), Bengali (the official language of Bangladesh), Punjabi, and Marathi. Urdu is by origin and present structure closely related to Hindi, both languages deriving from Hindustani, the colloquial form of speech that for four centuries was widely used for intercommunication throughout northern India. Urdu differs from Hindi mainly in its considerable mixture of Persian and Arabic and in being written in the Perso-Arabic script instead of Sanskrit characters. Romany, the language of the Gypsies, represents a dialect of northwestern India which from about the fifth century A.D. was carried through Persia and into Armenia and from there has spread through Europe and even into America.

The Indo-European Family

The languages thus brought into relationship by descent or progressive differentiation from a parent speech are conveniently called a family of languages. Various names have been used to designate this family. In books written a century ago the term Aryan was commonly employed. It has now been generally abandoned and when found today is used in a more restricted sense to designate the languages of the family located in India and the plateau of Iran. A more common term is Indo-Germanic, which is the most usual designation among German philologists, but it is open to the objection of giving undue emphasis to the Germanic languages.

The term now most widely employed is IndoEuropean, suggesting more clearly the geographical extent of the family. The parent tongue from which the Indo-European languages have sprung had already become divided and scattered before the dawn of history. When we meet with the various peoples by whom these languages are spoken they have lost all knowledge of their former association. Consequently we have no written record of the common Indo-European language. By a comparison of its descendants, however, it is possible to form a fair idea of it and to make plausible reconstructions of its lexicon and inflections. 

The surviving languages show various degrees of similarity to one another, the similarity bearing a more or less direct relationship to their geographical distribution. They accordingly fall into eleven principal groups: Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Hellenic, Albanian, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Hittite, and Tocharian. These are the branches of the Indo-European family tree, and we shall look briefly at each.

Grimm’s Law

A further important step was taken when in 1822 a German philologist, Jacob Grimm, following up a suggestion of a Danish contemporary, Rasmus Rask, formulated an explanation that systematically accounted for the correspondences between certain consonants in the Germanic languages and those found for example in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. His explanation, although subsequently modified and in some of the details of its operation still a subject of dispute, is easily illustrated. According to Grimm, a p in Indo-European, preserved as such in Latin and Greek, was changed to an f in the Germanic languages. Thus we should look for the English equivalent of Latin piscis or pēs to begin with an f, and this is what we actually find, in fish and foot respectively. What is true of p is true also of t and k: in other words, the original voiceless stops (p, t, k) were changed to fricatives (f, þ, h). So Latin trēs=English three, Latin centum=English hundred. A similar correspondence can be shown for certain other groups of consonants, and the Consequently Sanskrit bhárāmi (Greek )=English bear, Sanskrit  dhā=English do, Latin hostis (from *ghostis)=English guest. And the original voiced stops (b, d, g) changed to voiceless ones in the Germanic languages, so that Latin cannabis=English hemp (showing also the shift of initial k to h), Latin decem=English ten, Latin genu=English knee. In High German some of these consonants underwent a further change, known as the Second or High German Sound-Shift. It accounts for such differences as we see in English open and German offen, English eat and German essen.formulation of these correspondences is known as Grimm’s Law. The cause of the change is not known. It must have taken place sometime after the segregation of the Germanic from neighboring dialects of the parent language. There are words in Finnish borrowed from Germanic that do not show the change and that therefore must have resulted from a contact between Germanic and Finnish before the change occurred. There is also evidence that the shifting was still occurring as late as about the fifth century B.C. It is often assumed that the change was due to contact with a non-Germanic population. The contact could have resulted from the migration of the Germanic tribes or from the penetration of a foreign population into Germanic territory. Whatever its cause, the Germanic sound-shift is the most distinctive feature marking off the Germanic languages from the languages to which they are related.

Certain apparent exceptions to Grimm’s Law were subsequently explained by Karl Verner and others. It was noted that between such a pair of words as Latin centum and English hundred the correspondence between the c and h was according to rule, but that between the t and d was not. The d in the English word should have been a voiceless fricative, that is, a þ. In 1875 Verner showed that when the Indo-European accent was not on the vowel immediately preceding, such voiceless fricatives became voiced in Germanic. In West Germanic the resulting ð became a d, and the word hundred is therefore quite regular in its correspondence with centum. The explanation was of importance in accounting for the forms of the preterite tense in many strong verbs. Thus in Old English the preterite singular of cweþan (to say) is ic cwœþ but the plural is we In the latter word the accent was originally on the ending, as it was in the past participle (cweden), where we also have a d.

The formulation of this explanation is known as Verner’s Law, and it was of great significance in vindicating the claim of regularity for the sound-changes that Grimm’s Law had attempted to define.

Dialectal Differentiation

As previously remarked, where constant communication takes place among the people
speaking a language, individual differences become merged in the general speech of the
community, and a certain conformity prevails. But if any separation of one community
from another takes place and lasts for a considerable length of time, differences grow up between them. The differences may be slight if the separation is slight, and we have merely local dialects. On the other hand, they may become so considerable as to render the language of one district unintelligible to the speakers of another. In this case we generally have the development of separate languages. Even where the differentiation has gone so far, however, it is usually possible to recognize a sufficient number of features which the resulting languages still retain in common to indicate that at one time they were one. It is easy to perceive a close kinship between English and German. Milch and milk, brot and bread, fleisch and flesh, wasser and water are obviously only words that have diverged from a common form. In the same way a connection between Latin and English is indicated by such correspondences as pater with English father, or frāter with brother, although the difference in the initial consonants tends somewhat to obscure the relationship. When we notice that father corresponds to Dutch vader, Gothic fadar, Old Norse faðir, German vater, Greek patēr, Sanskrit pitar-, and Old Irish athir (with loss of the initial consonant), or that English brother corresponds to Dutch broeder, German bruder, Greek phrātēr, Sanskrit bhrātar-, Old Slavic bratŭ, Irish brathair, we are led to the hypothesis that the languages of a large part of Europe and part of Asia were at one time identical.

Language Constantly Changing

In the mind of the average person language is associated with writing and calls up a picture of the printed page. From Latin or French as we meet it in literature we get an impression of something uniform and relatively fixed. We are likely to forget that writing is only a conventional device for recording sounds and that language is primarily speech. Even more important, we tend to forget that the Latin of Cicero or the French of Voltaire is the product of centuries of development and that language as long as it lives and is in actual use is in a constant state of change.

Speech is the product of certain muscular movements. The sounds of language are produced by the passage of a current of air through cavities of the throat and face controlled by the muscles of these regions. Any voluntary muscular movement when constantly repeated is subject to gradual alteration. This is as true of the movements of the organs of speech as of any other parts of the body, and the fact that this alteration takes place largely without our being conscious of it does not change the fact or lessen its effects. Now any alteration in the position or action of the organs of speech results in a difference in the sound produced. Thus each individual is constantly and quite unconsciously introducing slight changes in his or her speech. There is no such thing as uniformity in language. Not only does the speech of one community differ from that of another, but the speech of different individuals of a single community, even different members of the same family, also is marked by individual peculiarities. Members of a group, however, are influenced by one another, and there is a general similarity in the speech of a given community at any particular time. The language of any district or even country is only the sum total of the individual speech habits of those composing it and is subject to such changes as occur in the speech of its members, so far as the changes become general or at least common to a large part of it.

Although the alteration that is constantly going on in language is for the most part gradual and of such nature as often to escape the notice of those in whose speech it is taking place, after a period of time the differences that grow up become appreciable. If we go back to the eighteenth century we find Alexander Pope writing

Good-nature and good-sense must even join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine….

where it is apparent that he pronounced join as jine. Again he writes 

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes Tea.

It is demonstrable that he pronounced tea as tay. Elsewhere he rhymes full—rule; give— believe; glass—place; ear—repair; lost—boast; thought—fault; obliged—besieged; reserve—starve. Since Pope’s time the pronunciation of at least one in each of these pairs has changed so that they are no longer considered good rhymes. If we go back to Chaucer, or still further, to King Alfred (871–899), we find still greater differences. King Alfred said bān (bone), hū (how), hēah (high); in fact all the long vowels of his pronunciation have undergone such change as to make the words in which they occur scarcely recognizable to the typical English-speaking person today.

Natural Gender

English differs from all other major European languages in having adopted natural (rather than grammatical) gender. In studying other European languages the student must learn both the meaning of every noun and also its gender. In the Romance languages, for example, there are only two genders, and all nouns that would be neuter in English are there either masculine or feminine. Some help in these languages is afforded by distinctive endings that at times characterize the two classes. But even this aid is lacking in the Germanic languages, where the distribution of the three genders appears to the English student to be quite arbitrary. Thus in German sonne (sun) is feminine, mond (moon) is masculine, but kind (child), mädchen (maiden), and weib (wife) are neuter. The distinction must be constantly kept in mind, since it not only affects the reference of pronouns but also determines the form of inflection and the agreement of adjectives. In the English language all this was stripped away during the Middle English period, and today the gender of every noun in the dictionary is known instantly. Gender in.

English is determined by meaning. All nouns naming living creatures are masculine or feminine according to the sex of the individual, and all other nouns are neuter.

Inflectional Simplicity

A second feature that English possesses to a preeminent degree is inflectional simplicity. Within the Indo-European family of languages, it happens that the oldest, classical languages—Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin—have inflections of the noun, the adjective, the verb, and to some extent the pronoun that are no longer found in modern languages such as Russian or French or German. In this process of simplifying inflections English has gone further than any other language in Europe. Inflections in the noun as spoken have been reduced to a sign of the plural and a form for the possessive case. The elaborate Germanic inflection of the adjective has been completely eliminated except for the simple indication of the comparative and the superlative degrees. The verb has been simplified by the loss of practically all the personal endings, the almost complete abandonment of any distinction between the singular and the plural, and the gradual discard of the subjunctive mood. The complicated agreements that make German difficult for the nonnative speaker are absent from English.
 

It must not be thought that these developments represent a decay of grammar on the one hand or a Darwinian evolution toward progress, simplicity, and efficiency on the other. From the view of a child learning a first language, these apparent differences in complexity seem to matter not at all. As Hans H. Hock and Brian D.Joseph put it, “the speakers of languages such as English are quite happy without all those case endings, while speakers of modern ‘case-rich’ language such as Finnish or Turkish are just as happy with them.”

However, it is worth trying to specify, as ongoing research in second language acquisition is doing, those features that facilitate or complicate the learning of English by adult speakers of various languages. To the extent that the simplification of English inflections does not cause complications elsewhere in the syntax, it makes the task easier for those learning English as a foreign language.