Words: Native and Borrowed

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  • 1. Chapter 3 WORDS: NATIVE AND BORROWEDOLD ENGU5EI AND Of ah the aspects of language that charge through timepronunciation,spelling, usage, grammar, meaning, and vocabularymeaning and vocabularyare the most sensitive to the external social and historical forces that deter-mine which words a culture preserves from its own heritage and which wordsit borrows from others. Particular meanings change themostidiosyncratically.We could never have predicted that the meaning once attached to dweltwould shift from " lead into error" to its current sense. There are some largegeneralizations we can make about how meanings change, but they arerelatively few.The total lexicon of a language, however, is a very accurate linguisticbarometer to the broad social and historical changes in the history of aculture. Given the relevant cultural information, we could have predictedfairly accurately the general makeup of our ModE vocabulary and its sources.We know that some kinds of words arc so durable that they will for centuriesresist the most violent vicissitudes of time: hand, foot, mother, father, head,heart, sun, moon, sleep, eat, and so on. Other words predictably disappear:OE wergild, the money a murderer had to pay to the family of his victims;41

2. 42 WORDS ANDOE , a hairy garment; freox, a hurting spear. Cultural necessity hasforced other words into the language through borrowing, derivation, orcreation: machine cab, crime, jazz, etiquette, chocolate albino, ghetto, syrup,candy, shawl, jungle, iycoon> taboo, tote, blender, television, retrorocket.The Origin nf WordsHow and where the first words originated has always puzzled linguists and philosophers. When Socrates and Hermogcncs debated the question2000 years ago, they argued whether words related naturally to the thingsthey named. It is it notion that helps explain much of the magic and folkbelief found almost everywhere in the world. The Egyptians, for example,gave everyone two names, a public name and a secret one; they believed ifsomeone knew a persons real name, he would have power over the person.In other cultures, word-magic takes the form of taboos against uttering thename of a god, or the name of certain relatives, or even words that sound likethose words. (60) The relationship between a word and its referent is for the most partarbitrary. The shape or sound of a word has no natural relationship to thething it names. There may be a narrow range of words that could illustratephonetic imitation: boom, clangs hiss, screech, and so on. And a few othersmay illustrate principles of conventionalized phonetic symbolism: Teeny issmaller than tiny, for example. But among the hundreds of thousands ofEnglish words, they are a very tiny (even teeny) minority. So if primitive mandid create words by imitating sounds around him, the words have changed sogreatly that almost all traces of the original association have disappeared.The sound of the word dog does not resemble one. The other speculated sources are equally problematical: the grunts andgroans of work, cries of joy and sorrow, sounds made by the tongue imitatingthe shape of an object. Nor does it help to study the language of the mostprimitive peoples in the jungles of South America or the Philippines, Suchlanguages are as mature, as complex, as expressive for the needs of theirspeakers as any modem European, African, or Asian language. Thus what we must begin with as we seek out the history of any specificlanguage are not speculations about fancied linguistic prehistory, but the"givens," the oldest words that we can trace back to the earnest texts. Oldest Words in Knglish In English, the oldest data are the words we can find in written texts andcarved monuments surviving from the Old English period (c. A.D. 450-e, 1100). 3.1: While it is not easy to explain why every item among the wordsleft to us from OE should have endured, been replaced or lost, we can make 3. WORDS NATIVE AND RORROWEn43 some general preliminary observations if we examine this Ikt of words. Those starred have beer completely lest from the language. The others are direct ancestors of the Modern English word found in parentheses. Why have we lost some and retained others?* coward (consecrated bread used as a lest for truth), "dolgbot (compensa-tion for wounding), wtf (wife), jod (food), *pqft (bench for rowers),*scofa (a hairy garment), stars (stone), *peox (hunting spear), winter(winter), *eafor (tenant obligation to king to convey goods), god (good),*fiytme(& hiood-letting instrument), wster(water), *feohfang(the offenceof bribe-taking), brodor (brother). *eam (mothers brother), *nrsed(quick), *barda (beaked ship), com (corn), blod (blood), hand (hand),gntnd (ground), kind (land), *faSe (fathers sister), win (wine), heorte(heart), keo/od (head), lufit (love), siepan (sleep), *steting (huntingrights), silian (sit), *zwitl(a narrow-necked basket),> A Note on Pronunciation: The letters in OE had roughly the following values. and were pronounced like in thing when they occur at the beginning or end of a syllable or next to a

, , , or . Otherwise they are pronounced like in the, and were pronounced like and in fit and sit at the beginning or end of a syllable or next to a

, , , or . Otherwise they were- pronounced like and respectively. were pronounced like and had the German quality of in Back. Before or after or , was like a heavily aspirated in yield; before or after back vowels , , it was pronounced like the voiced equivalent of German was always pronounced after , as in ModE fonger. OF. vowels were either long or short, but since OE manuscripts did notindicate quantity by diacritical marks or spelling, we have not used lengthmarks here. The vowels have their continental values: as in see or sit; as in bate or bet; as in bar a lengthened pronunciation of bad; as in hot or a lengthened pronunciation of hod; as in bought or boat; as in pool. In early OE, was like a long or short German .THE MOST DISTANT ORIGINS: INDO-FCUROPEANIf we can infer a good deal about an older culture from the words it no longeruses, we can also discover a good deal from the words it passes on. From thew d in Problem 3.] and from others, we know that those which have been 4. 44 WORDS AND MEANINGSpreserved cover some of the most basic objects, actions, and concepts ofdaily Jife, words like hand, food, wife, sun, hause, stone, go, sing, eat, see, sleep,good, wise, cold, sharp, in, on, off, ot>er. These concepts are so independent ofparticular cultures, so basic to human life that it is almost certain we wouldfind in ail languages tbaL words for these concepts have been passed on fromgeneration to generation for centuries, pronounced and spelled differently,perhaps, but basically the " same" word. (3,44,128)PROBLEM 3.2: Words from several languages that refer to roughly the sameconcepts are shown in Table 3.1. What do you conclude from the fact that insome cases, among several languages, roughly the same mean ing is representedby words that are rather similar to one another, but in other cases are notVThat is, night is rather close to Sanskrit nakiam but very different fromJapanese ban.FROBI-FM 3.3: Here are some words in various languages for aluminum:French: alamtttum, Spanish: atuminio* Italian: , Dutch: aluminium,Danish: aluminium. Polish: aluminjum, Hungarian: aluminium, Turkish:, Indonesian: aluminium, Russian: alyununi, Arabic: akminyoum,Japanese: aruminyuumu. Why are they alike ?As Problem 3.3 demonstrates, words can resemble one another fromlanguage to language because they have been borrowed from some commonsource. Hut when we consider the likelihood of borrowing the word foraluminum and the likelihood of borrowing words so basic and common asmow, night, hundred, and so on, we can also tentatively reject borrowing asan explanation of widespread similarities among the most common words indifferent languages. The more plausible explanation assumes that in eachlanguage, the words must have been inherited from some common ancestorlanguage, and that through time, in different descendant languages, the formsof the words gradually changed.Once we establish the principle that similar words with similar meanings(or meanings which at one time we might speculate were similar) may bedescended from some common but now lost ancestor form, it becomespossible to reconstruct in very rough outline some of those earlier ancestralwords. If, for example, we compare the word for mother in the languages wesuspect are related to a single ancestor, we can create a form from which therecorded ancient and modem words for mother can be consistently derived.Compare these words: English mother, Dutch tnoeder, Icelandic mofyr,Danish moder, Irish mdthir, Russian mate, Lithuanian mote, Latin mater,Persian madur, Sanskrit matt: From the features these share, we could postu-late as the parent form this hypothetical root: * mater. Lach letter in the rootis a symbol from which we can derive by means of a set of phonological rules 5. COGNATE AND NON-COGNATE WORDSEnglish night snowseven foot fish hearthundred ten toothGermannacht schneesiebtnfuss usch herz hundert zehnzahnDutch nacht sneeuwzeven voet vishart honderd ticntandSwedish nattsno sju fotiisk hjarta hundratio tandLatin noctisnlvis septein pcdispiscis uordis cenlumdecem dcntisFrenchnuiLneige sepcpied poissonCftUTcentdi?tdentSpanish nouhc nieve sielftpiepescadocorazondcnto diezdienteItalian notte nevescltc piedecuorecento dieci denteRumaniannoaptezapadasapte picior pesteinimasuta2dinteGreek nuktosnipha hepta pod os psarikardia hekaton cfeka odontosPolishnoc snieg siedemstoparyba serceModziesitji TabCzech noc snihsedmno haryba sidcesto deset zubRussian nochsnyeksycmnaga riba syertse sto dyiisit zupSanskritnakta snehaisapfcapaltnatsyah hftl-satam dasadantHungarian ejszaka hohet labhalsziv szaztiz fogFinnish yolumiseitseman jalkakala sydansata kymmenen liammaaTurkish gcoekar yedi ayakbalikkalb yuzon disArabiclay lagal idsabaa qadamsamakqalb maah aiiharafinSwahili usiku thcluji sabaniguusamaki moyo niia kuma jinoJapaneseban yukishichiashi sakana shin hyaku juu haChinese wan hsueh chi chiaoyiihsin pai shihche 6. 46 WORDS AND MEANINOSthe sounds of cognate words found in dcsccndanL languages. It does notnecessarily represent the way the ancestor word was actually pronounced atany given moment in our linguistic prehistory, though it very likely isreasonably close to it. Certainly, Indii-European, the name of the reconstructed hypotheticalcommon ancestor Language, was itself once a dialect or collection of dialectsof some even more distant progenitor. Some linguists have attemptedandfailedto group them with the Hamito-Semitic languages (including Arabic,Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, Berber, and the North African Cushitic dialects)or the Finno-Ugric (Finnish and Hungarian). But no one has found enoughevidence to confidently relate the large and scattered group of modernIndo-European languages with any other language family.PROBLEM 3.4; We have seen that from OE words and their meanings, we carideduce something about Anglo-Saxon culture, even if we had no firsthandknowledge of England, its location, or its climate. OE words for referentslike the ocean, winter, ships, deer, fish, oak trees, chalk, and so on would leadus to a Northern European location somewhere close to the sea. Numerouswords for concepts in law suggest an elaborate legal code based on duty West I uropcanIt has been thought that IE first split into Eastern and Western branchesbecause of the widespread correspondences of one particular sound changeeast and west of a line running roughly north and south at about 2011 eastlatitude.East of this line, the original *k- sound in IE changed to a sibilant, a sor sh sound. The IE root for hundred, *kmldm, became sat am in Sanskrit,Simtas in Lithuanian, suto in Old Slavic. In the Western branch, it remained k,as in Latin ceirfum and Celtic can/, then changed to ft in the Germanic lan-guages : hundred, or to s or ch in Romance languages: cent, cie3.5: Does this confirm or contradict your conclusions about thetE homeland? Why?The Eastern branch then "split into two: (I) the Ralto-Slavic, whichincludes Lettish, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian among the Baltic; andBulgarian, Slovenian. Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Czech, and Russian among theSlavic; and (2) the In do-Iranian, which includes modem Persian, Hindi,Bengali, and Romanythe traditional language of the Gypsies (a wordadapted from Egyptian, from whence Ihe Europeans believed them to havecome).The Western branches split into aL least four more branches: Hellenic,Italic, Celtic and Germanic Most scholars also include a dead languagediscovered in the early years of this century: Tuebarian, surprisingly found inCentral Asia, far to the east of the Western IE languages, which it resemblesn some important ways. It was probably spoken by a group that originally 8. 4S WOKDS AMD MEANINGSbelonged to the Western branch but shortly after the Centum-Satem split(as it has bctn called), migrated eastward. One other language, Hitiite,evidence for which has been discovered in Turkey, is also included among theIE languages, though il is unclear exactly how it related to the two mainbranches.PHOELEM 3.6: Here are a few cognates in the Western branch that do netappear in the Eastern. Comment, corn, groin, furrow, bean, meal, maw, sea, salt, fish, elm, finch, starling, swallow. Of the several Hellenic dialects, Attic Greek, spoken in Athens, becamethe standard, a natural consequence of its being the political and culturalcenter of the early Western world. From the Italic descended two dead lan-guages, Oscan and Umbrian, and Latin, from which descended French,Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Rumanian. Celtic split into the extinctGallic, Gaelic (the ancestor of Manx, Scots Gaelic, and Irish Gaelic),Britannic (the ancestor of the now dead Cornish and Pictish), the dyingBreton, and the mildly robust Welsh, > West European > Germanic > West Germanic The most important subgrouping for our purposes is Germanic. Itsearliest records go back to some fourth-century Scandinavian inscriptionsand a translation (by Bishop Ulfilas [, 311-3&1]) of parts of the Bible intoGothic, a now extinct East Germanic language. The largest body of earlyliterature appears in OE after A D . 700, and in Old Icelandic after 1100.Germanic is conventionally divided into three branches on the basis ofcertain phonological and grammatical changes that occurred before aboutA.D. MM): (]) East Germanic, which includes the dead Gothic; (2) NorthGermanic, which includes two groups: (a)Icelandic, Norwegian,and Faeroese(from the Faeroesean Islands); and (b) Danish and Swedish; and finally(3) West Germanic. This includes Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, Low German,modern standard German, Yiddish, Frisian, and English.PROBLEM 3.7: Cognates of these words are found only in the Germaniclanguages. Comment, broth,, brew, dough, knead, loaf, wheat, gold, silver, lead, tin, buy, ware, worth; borough, king, earl; book, lore, write, teech (healing): cliff* island, sea, sound (as in Puget Sound), strand (beach); whale, sea! (the animal); ship, steer, sail, north, east, south, west. 9. K: NATIVE AND BORROWED49PROBLEM 3.8: (I) What is dangerous about relying on negative evidence inattempts to reconstruct cultures or geographical origins from linguistic delta?That is, what does it prove when a number of languages known to havedescended from the same ancestor language are shown not to share cognatewords for fish! What does it indicate when we discover that cognate wordsfrom the root for hand are found only in Germanic languages? (2) Whatfurther problem in cultural reconstruction does the following exampleintroduce? In Great Britain, the word robin denotes a red-breasted member ofthe warbler family. When the colonists arrived in North America, they founda red-breasted member of the thrush family. They called it robin. 3.9: We can show how the Indo-European languages relate to oneanother by means of a tree, as shown in Figure 3.1. This figure is a model ofINDO-EUROPEAN WESTERNI - O- I ,- CELTICGFft MANIC ITALIC HLLLENiC TOCHARIAN 1 -SLAVIC INDO.UMNIAN HITTITE LAS I NORIH WEST Figure 3.1. Relationship of indc^Huropean Languagesthe historical relationships as well as the linguistic relationships. How doesit lead us to think about the way one language splits into two or morelanguages? What problem does the following diagram and explanationintroduce? (14, 171,204)WesternEastern CelticGermanic *Balto-SlavicItalic4* Hellenic I nd-Iranian Both the Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages have a similar inflectional ending for instrumental plurals. Other languages have endings related to a different sound. The Celtic and Italic groups have a similar passive voice inflection. The H elleni d I n do- T ilia n have simila r past tenses. The Hellenic- and Italic share a. characteristic of feminine nouns with masculine suffixes.? The Germanic and Italic use the perfect tense as a general past lense. 10. 50 WORDS AND MEANINGSFrom the common vocabulary, archenlogical remains, and the observa- tions of Roman historians, we can sketch the outlines of pre-h is lu He Germanic society. Because their common vocabulary included for the first time many words referring to advanced agriculture, farming must have become more important than it had been. More significantly, the ocean had also become important, ft would be the Viking long-ships that would carry the Germanic warriors across the seas to raid, plunder, and conquer from Britain to Franceto the Mediterranean. Their social and economic organization must also have begun to develop. King, earl, and borough indicate a government and anincipient feudal society; gold, silver, lead, tin, buy., ware, and worth indicate aneconomic life beyond trading in kind.They were a diverse lot, though. They included the Franks, the Goths, theVandals, and the Lombards, all warlike enough to harass France, Spain,Rome, and Africa and give the Teutons their fierce reputation among theRoman historians. They also included the- Germans, who did not wander farfrom Central Germany, and the Northmen (hence- Norseman, which finallybecame ffvrHlOn), who both farmed and sailed. They shared a commonmythology of Odin and Thor and an epic poetry chat celebrated the values ofhonor, loyalty to chief and kinsman in return for their generosity with gifts,and bravery and gtory in battle. (103)From certain La Lin words borrowed into Germanic before Lhe Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in the fifth century, we know that they must have hadsome contact with Rome, (7,194)PROBLEM 3.10: From these borrowed words, speculate about the kind ofcontact the Germanic tribes had with Rome. The first word in the list is theoriginal Latin word. The second is the OE adapted from Latin with a moderntranslation in parentheses if the word has been lost. The third is the des-cendant ModE word or its closest equivalent. Where the word has been lostin Mod L, the symbol 0 appears. camputti-ettmp (field, battle)-^ tribirtum-infei (tribute)-P mango-mangim (to barter with)-monger (asmfishmonger) -toH-iott poudn-pund- -pound tttitiupassutn (a thousand steps)-m:I-mile ralcem-ceatc-chatk cuprumccporcopper pic- --pitch {the substance) busyrum-buiere-butter ulmim winwine 11. WORDS; NATIVE AND BORROWEDSI merttha-minle-mmt (the plant) pisum-pisa-pea piper-pipvr-pepper prumtm-plume-plum plan ta-pfanie-pfant balteus-beh-belt soccus-socc-sock catillus-cite{-$ (ModE kmie is borrowed from Danish, which also borrowed il from Latin) plpa-pipe-pipe bsrtna-binf^-bin cuppa-cuppe-cup p&rmapimne-pnn coquJtta-cycene-kitchen piima-pwn-pirt gi!mfw-gOTWi(gem)-0 (ModE gem is borrowed from French) ltnea-fitie-Une uatiuny-weali-walifebris-fefer-feverP-Anglo-Saxon Britain Long before these northern Germanic tribes attacked the native Britons(orCelts), the Romans had long since raided, invaded, colonized, and desertedthe island. Julius Caesar (100 B.C.-44 B.C.) invaded Britain twice, failing thefirst time in 55 B.C.; but the nest year with a larger force, he conquered thebland. Though he had invaded Britain to shore up his northern flank, hewas also looking for slaves and tribute. Finding neither in sufficient quantityor quality to justify his effort, he turned from Britain to his problems inGaul, giving the island a brief period of freed in from Roman domination.Then in A.D. 43, Claudius (10 B.C.-A.D. 54) invaded ihe island, and afterputting down an uprising led by the Celtic Queen Boadicea, finally broughtBritain into the Empire. But because Rome was unwilling to expend the mena4d effort to conquer the Picts in the wilds of Scotland while being harassedfrom the rear by the still unruly Southern Celts, its sway ended at HadriansWall along the northern bank of the Tyne in the Lowlands. Thus, Romancvviljzatiun was limited to what is now known as the Midlands and theSoutheast, where Romans buiit their walled towns and villas and connectingroads in an attempt to reproduce a sunny Mediterranean life on (what was to 12. 52 WORL>S ANDbecome after a global climatic change) a wet and cloudy distant outpost. (13,34)ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN: THE BEGINNINGSIt was to be shortlived. Before the end of the fourth century A.D., Scandinavianraiders from the north had already begin to harry the British coast. Simul-taneously, the Picts &f Clifiiti ^ / j EAST ) *_MERCSA /ANGIA/ ) J^v4 ^WALES ,1 "^ llTJT " Canterbury lLr 4/ X WESSEX ,Vsussi^/""CORNWALL p-^Ni^S^3.4. The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy 16. S6 "WORDS AND MEANINGSpolitical boundaries. But Mercian included both East Anglia and Essex,while West Saxon covered both Wessex and Sussex.During the reign of Aethelberht (c, 552-616), Kents political and culturalsuperiority eclipsed the rest of England. It* close commercial ties with theFrisian traders on the Continent are reflected in the large number of Englishcoins found among [he remains of Frisian settlements and the number ofFnmfcish coins found in Kent. In the seventh century, Kenfs cultural domin-ance extended northward to the Humber, perhaps reflecting its prestigiousposition as a link to the commercial and intellectual life on the Continent, alife which at the time was probably still superior to Englands.In the seventh and eighth centuries, cultural and political supremacypassed from Kent to Northumbria, then to Mercia, and finally to Wessex,where under Alfred (84^-899), there flourished a culture that surpassedanything on the European continent since the brightest days of Rome. Infact, were it not for the West Saxon rise to power and its accompanyingliterary flowering, we would have relatively few texts from before the Normaninvasion. Except for some laws and charters, a Jittle verse, and a few transla-tions of the Bible, the other O kingdoms have left us no great number ofdocuments.The Christian Conversion and a NationalThe conversion of England to Christianity began during the reign ofAethelberhC In 597, St. Augustine (?-604) became the first in an army ofmissionaries that wouid Christianize Kent in just seven years. And aftercontesting with Celtic Christianity (the Celts having already been convertedby the Romans), they would win over Northumbria in 664. By 700 Englandcould be called a moderately Christian nation.But Christianity did more to England than institute a new religion thatencouraged new values. It re-introduced Latin and created monastic environ-ments in which learning and scholarship flourished so richly that Europe wassoon sending its students to Canterbury, Jarrow, and York. From the eighthto the eleventh century, southern England was one of the most advancedintellectual communities in the western world.During this period, England also began to develop a national character.From the eighth through the tenth centuries, Old English poetry flowered. Tlwas during this time that the great poems of mixed Christian and Nordicthemes were composed: Beowulf. The Wanderer, The Seafarer, the Caed-monian and Cynewultian poems. The efficient administration of a largeinstitution, the church, provided a model for the secular kings in ihcirattemptsto complement Romes spiritual dominion of England with their worldly one.The organization of townships was roughly coterminous with parishes, eachruled spiritually by a priest who at first was often the chaplain to the local 17. WORDS! NATFVF. AVD BORROWED 57 thcgn (chieftain). The marriage religious laws and secular enforcement created ;i governing institution of potentially great power and wealth. (2, 20ft, 223)2: Irt Problem 3.10 were listed some words borrowed fromLatin during the Germ an ic continental period, before the invasion of Britain.Hud we listed [hem all and divided them into semantic categories, the p r oportions would have been very roughly as follows: Plants and animals: 307 0 Food, vessels, household items: 207Q Buildings, settlements: 12% Dress: 12% Military, legal: 9% Trade, commerce: 97 0 Religious, scholarly: % Miscellaneous: 5%Altogether, about 170 words were borrowed during this pre-OE period.Below are listed a weighted sampling of OE words adopted from Latin duringthe nest two periods: 404^650, and 650 to the end of the OE period,400-650prafost (provost), waster (town), cugfe (cowl), mentel (cloak), cist(chest), pxgel (pail), pott (pot), mwwc (monk), traht (text), cat! (cat),truht (trout), pert* (pear), gfcdene (gladiola), leahtrk (lettuce), xbs{ fir tree),senep (mustard), laser (.Larc, a kind of weed).11 ii iinulite (soldiers), cettiur {centurion), yndse (ounce), fenester (window),cluster (cloister), purs (purse), cxppe (cope), coc (cook), setae! (dish),rabbinn (to rage), scrofei (scrofula), credo (creed), discipu! (disciple),mmsse (church mass), papa (pope), xlmesse (alms), eretic (heretic),tnartir (), organ (song), son (musical sound),sfol(school),pbiiosoph(philosopher), comet a (comet), bises (leap year day), (library),paitn (pahn), balsam (balsam), carte (dried fig), iilie (lilyX peoate (peony),ysope (hyssop), cancer (cancer), loppestre (locust), tiger (tiger), fenix(phoenix), camel (caniel).can you conclude about the nature of Lalin-OE contacts ? (7, 194)PROBLEM 3,13: Just as we can discover something about a culture from thewords it ] m lost, so can we tell something from the words it often uses. Heres a sampling of words that occurred very frequently in OE compounds,words made up out of two parts to express an idea no single word can,words in Old English like boccrseft (literally book-craft, or literature). 18. SS WORDS ANfJ MEAiSTINUSfolclagu (folk-law. or law of the people), widsst (wide-sea, or ocean). What might you very tentatively speculate about a culture that used words like thesefairly often?1.sumof (summer), winter (winter), Sid (time), corn (corn), lyft (air), raht(night), j*(ui(wood), wyrm (dragon), bhd (blood).2. gold (gold), isen (iron), burg (dwelling), ham (home), sele (hall), medu(mead), bring (ring), win (wine), tar (learning), lead (song, poem), word(word), botf (book), gieip (boast, fame, pride), ftwrf (treasure), ceap (price,sale).3. wtf (woman), wer (man), ^eow (servant), fread (people, nation), brodor(brother), ceorl (peasant), cyning (king), hfaford (lord), pegn (retainer).4. hell (hell), heofan (heaven), cirice (church), crist (Christ), deofoi(dwW).5. woh (error, iniquity), teona (injury), t&l (blame), syn (sin), sar (sorrow,pain), 0 (strife, spite), morSor (murder), man (evil deed), bealu (harm),cweahn (death), dead (death), Awfe (error, heresy).6. eufie (ea iy), wynn (joy), gliw (pleasure, sport),7. zsc (spear), urfa pertained; so that whatever) be of heavenlyletters through boceras geleornodc, J?set he sfter medmiclum in scopgereorde scholars learnedthat he after moderate time in poets language mid ha msestan swelnisse ond inbryrdnisse ge&iengde, ond in with (he mostsweetness and humility adorned, and in Hngliscgereordc wei gewoiht brohtc. Ond for his Icu^sotigum English-language well worked forth brought. And for his poemsongs monigra mtmnamod oft to worulde forhogdnisse ond to many(of) mens minds often to world contempt and to ge^eodnissc|>ffis heofonlican lifes onbsrnde wiron. association (of) the heavenly life inspired were.Her ^pelstan cyning, / eorla drihtenHere, Athelstan king.earis lordheovna beahgifa, / and his broSor eac,warriors rlnggiver and his brother also,Eadmund Seting, /ealdorlangnctir Edmund nobleman, Lifelong glorygeslogonffitsa^tce / sweorda ecgumwon at battle (with) swords edgesyinbe Brunanburh; / bordwcall clufon, around Brunanburg; shieldwalldove,heowon hcaQolinde / hamora lafum, hewed warlinden (with) hammersleavingseaforan Eadweardes; / swa him sons Edwards; so (link, reindeer, reef{of sail), scab, scales, scrap, sear, sister, skin,skirt, jfcy, snare, steak, swain, window; birch., boon, gait, gap, guess, loan,race, rift, score, skill, slaughter, stack, Shrift, tidings, trust, waul, gift. Verbs: call, crawl, die, get, give, lift, raise, rid, scare, take, cast, clip, crave, droop, fiii, gape, kindle, nag, scowl, snub, sprint, thrust.Adjectivesxflat, loose, low, odd, tight, weak, awkward, ill, meek, seemly,sly, rouen, tattered, muggy. Pronouns and iither words: they, their, ihetn, both, same, though, till, (2) In the Oxford Universal Dictionary, there are approximately 30 or sods beginning with sk-lsc- of Danish origin still in our active vocabulary.in the English Dialect Dictionary, there are over a thousand simple words 22. 62 WORDS AND MEANINGSbeginning with sc-Ltk-. What do you conclude about the durability of borrow-ings in non-standard dialects? What dialect area wouid you guess they arefrom? 0) Is the part of speech significant in the borrowings listed above?Why?(] I) (4) Review Lhe borrowings from Latin and Celtic. What difference-is there in the tone of words like iiraop, scare, nag, muggy, and/recite on theone hand and, on the other, words in Problems 3.10 and 3. ] 2?When the Danes were Forcibly brought into a not very solidly united England, it did more than begin the political unification of the land. While surpassed by few in their military zeal, the Danes were equally skilled in commercial affairs and in boning their legal points to a fine edge in their Thing, or meeting of ciders. Earlier, in Anglo-Saxon England, a violation of the law was often followed by a blood-feud. The strong sense of Danish legality combined with the increasingly strong English local government made crime less a private question of one individual compensating the kin ofan injured party with a hnc eailcd werglid than something to be dealt withby those who spoke in the name of the local thegn, the king, and God.Real, immediate, practical political power, though, was still exercisedby the local thegn and priest. The thegn supplied land in return for hispeoples labor and its fruits, protected them, and dispensed justice. In thissystem lay the seeds which would grow into a social structure powerfulenough to shape the English social system for hundreds of years after theNorman invasion. The ploughman ploughed and the thegn governed andfought. And if this meant a more stable and productive society for everyone,it also rneaTit less freedom for Lhose who pushed their ploughs.Because the power of the throne was not yet strong enough to reachdown to the individual thegn and churl, it could not enforce a single standardof justice. Long after the putative unification of the kingdom, the Danelawcontinued to exercise a considerable degree of independence in its ownaffairs. As a consequence, England was still divided in spirit when new Danishraids broke out, particularly during the reign of Ethel red the Rede less{c. 968-1016), a rather incompetent ruler. Since the union beLween the peopleswas not an easy one, the Danes did little to resist the raids against Wesscx,an area outside their Danelaw.After Elbelreds death, Saxon and Danish England engaged in a briefcivil war before Cnute (c. 994-1035), a Dane, defeated Wessex in 1015. Heand Edmund Ironside (c, 980-101 d), Ethelreds son, briefly divided the islandbetween them, and when Edmund died in ]0!6, Cnute became the king of theentire kingdom. As it turned out, not only did Cnute rule wisely, but hisaccession to power opened southern England, particularly London, to Danishbusinessmen and traders, making London an even more powerful andcosmopolitan city than it already was. (223)PROBLEM 3.16: Words borrowed from the Danes do not begin to occur 23. WORDS: NATIVE AND IWIKKUWED 63 frequently in English texts until the Middle English period. What might be one explanation for this 7 The Rise of LondonBecause London figures so centrally in the development of a standard English, we have to account for its unique position in English history.Although some sort of settlement undoubtedly existed on the Thames beforethe Romans arrived, it was during Roman times that London began to developinto the iirst city of the country. The spot on which London iits was the only-piece of hard ground on the northern side of the Thames that afforded a solidbridgehead for roads coming from the Kentish towns and a suitable landingplace for ships coming up from the English Channel. Because half the roadsbuilt also converged on London Bridge, London was long destined to be thefuture m in ere i ill center of England,Under the Saxons of Mercia, London declined somewhat in prestige since commerce with the continent was not as great as during the Roman occupation or Kents ascendancy. But though of little relative importance, London maintained a measure of independence from both Mercia and Kent,and when Alfred settled with the Danes in 87S, he managed to excludeLondon from the Danelaw, [hereby preserving its Saxon character. Becauseit was the main entry to the heartland of England, he fortified it and encouragedits growth in order to defend it from the Danes, Then when Cnute assumedthe throne in 1016, Danish merchants became some of the leading tradesmenand citizens. Before the end of the eleventh century, London had become the mostimportant commercial city in England, populated by a variegated and sophisti-cated people, many from continental Europe. Always more powerful thanher official status would suggest, London finally regained the status it hadheld in Roman times. By 1066, her population stood at perhaps 14,000several thousand more than the next largest city, Winchester, and perhaps6000 more than the estimated 8000 population of York.After the Norman Conquest in 1066, William the Conqueror wascrowned near London in Westminster. But when he built a residence, hemoved from inside the walls of the City closer to his new Cathedral atWestminster, two miles away. In this single action, he made the few milesencompassing Westminster and London the political, commercial, andcultural center of the land. At the same time, by living outside the walls ofLondon, he helped preserve its independent political, cultural, and economicspirit.Londons later political and cultural strength eventually resulted in itsdialect becoming the prestige dialect of the land. While Alfred and hisdescendants made tlieir court in the South, West Saxon was the dialect of 24. 64 WOKL1S AND MEAN1NUSEnglish in which the major literature and law was written. When the NormanConquest ended Wessexs ascendancy and reduced the flow of literaturewritten in English to a trickle, the only prestige dialect among the upper classwas Norman French. When English hegan to re-assert itself three centurieslater, it would be the dialect of London, of the East Midlands, that wouldeventually become the national standard. This raises a difficulty in studying the history of English because WestSaxon, the earlier prestige dialect, and Mercian, the OE dialect that wouldfather East Midland, were different in some important ways. When we studyOF., we study West Saxon, hecause that dialect was used in the great prepon-derance of OE texts. But standard MudE stems not, ultimately, from WestSaxon but from East Midland speech.