| LANGUAGE. | ||
|---|---|---|
| [CHAPTER I.] | ||
| HISTORY OF THE VOCABULARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. | ||
| PAGE | ||
| [1.] | What a Language is | [7] |
| [2.] | The English Language | [7] |
| [3.] | Family | [8] |
| [4.] | Teutons | [8] |
| [5.] | High-German | [9] |
| [6.] | Low-German | [9] |
| [7.] | Scandinavian | [10] |
| [8.] | The chief Teutonic Languages | [10] |
| [9.] | Where the English came from | [11] |
| [10.] | The Periods of English | [12] |
| [11.] | Anglo-Saxon | [12] |
| [12.] | Early English | [13] |
| [13.] | Middle English | [13] |
| [14.] | Modern English | [13] |
| [15.] | English Words in English Language | [14] |
| [16.] | Changes in English | [15] |
| [17.] | Loss and Gain | [16] |
| [18.] | Foreign Elements in English | [16] |
| [19.] | Welsh | [17] |
| [20.] | Keltic Element | [18] |
| [21.] | Latin Element of First Period (i) | [18] |
| [22.] | “ “(ii) | [19] |
| [23.] | Latin Element of Second Period (i) | [20] |
| [24.] | ““ (ii) | [20] |
| [25.] | Scandinavian Element (i) | [21] |
| [26.] | ““ (ii) | [22] |
| [27.] | ““ (iii) | [22] |
| [28.] | Latin Element of Third Period (i) | [23] |
| [29.] | ““ (ii) | [24] |
| [30.] | ““ (iii) | [24] |
| [31.] | ““ (iv) | [25] |
| [32.] | ““ (v) | [25] |
| [33.] | ““ (vi) | [26] |
| [34.] | Synonyms from Norman-French | [26] |
| [35.] | Bilingualism | [27] |
| [36.] | Doublets | [28] |
| [37.] | Doublets | [28] |
| [38.] | Pronunciation | [28] |
| [39.] | Latin of Fourth Period | [29] |
| [40.] | Mouth Latin and Book Latin | [30] |
| [41.] | Greek Doublets | [32] |
| [42.] | English and French Words in Sentences | [33] |
| [43.] | English Words Lost | [33] |
| [CHAPTER II.] | ||
| HISTORY OF THE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH. | ||
| [1.] | An Inflected Language | [34] |
| [2.] | Grammar of Nouns | [35] |
| [3.] | Grammar of Adjectives | [35] |
| [4.] | Grammar of Definite Article | [35] |
| [5.] | Grammar of Personal Pronoun | [36] |
| [6.] | Grammar of Verbs | [36] |
| [7.] | Fragments of Noun Inflections | [36] |
| [8.] | “Adjective Inflections | [37] |
| [9.] | “Pronoun Inflections | [37] |
| [10.] | “Verb Inflections | [37] |
| [11.] | “Inflections in Adverbs | [38] |
| [12.] | “Inflections in Prepositions | [39] |
| [CHAPTER III.] | ||
| CHANGES IN MODERN ENGLISH. | ||
| [1.] | Formation of Modern English | [39] |
| [2.] | Continued History | [39] |
| [3.] | Spanish and Italian | [40] |
| [4.] | Dutch Words | [41] |
| [5.] | Latin and Teutonic Element | [41] |
| [6.] | Influences affecting our Language at the present time | [42] |
| [CHAPTER IV.] | ||
| [1.] | Words adopted from Foreign Languages | [43] |
| [2.] | Chief Dates in the History of the English Language | [45] |
| [CHAPTER V.] | ||
| NOTES ON THE GROWTH OF ENGLISH WORDS. | ||
| [1.] | Roots; Influence of Imitationon Language | [46] |
| [2.] | Hybrids | [46] |
| [3.] | Words disguised in Form or in Meaning | [48] |
| [4.] | Words that have changedtheir Meaning | [53] |
| [5.] | Words from the Names ofPersons | [54] |
| [6.] | Words from Names of Places | [55] |
| [7.] | English (or Teutonic) Roots | [56] |
| [8.] | Latin Roots | [57] |
| [9.] | Greek Roots | [63] |
| [10.] | Branching of Words from LatinStems | [65] |
| [11.] | Branching of Words from EnglishStems | [69] |
| [CHAPTER VI.] | ||
| PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES. | ||
| [Prefixes.] | ||
| [1.] | English (or Teutonic) | [70] |
| [2.] | Latin | [71] |
| [3.] | Greek | [72] |
| [Suffixes.] | ||
| [4.] | English (or Teutonic) | [72] |
| [5.] | Latin | [74] |
| [6.] | Greek | [75] |
| [LITERATURE.] | ||
| [I. OUTLINE OF OUR EARLY LITERATURE.] | ||
| PAGE | ||
| [1.] | The Beowulf | [76] |
| [2.] | Cædmon | [76] |
| [3.] | Bæda | [77] |
| [4.] | King Alfred | [77] |
| [5.] | The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle | [78] |
| [6.] | Archbishop Ælfric | [78] |
| [7.] | Anglo-Saxon Gospels | [78] |
| [8.] | Old English Dialects | [79] |
| [9.] | First English Book after Norman Conquest | [80] |
| [10.] | Orm’s Ormulum | [80] |
| [11.] | Langland and Chaucer | [81] |
| [12.] | Alliteration or Head-Rhyme | [82] |
| [13.] | John Gower | [83] |
| [14.] | John Barbour | [83] |
| [15.] | Sir John Mandeville | [83] |
| [16.] | John Wicliffe | [84] |
| [17.] | Our English Bible and its History | [85] |
| [II. TABULAR OUTLINE OF MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE] | [87] | |
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
CHAPTER I.
History of its Vocabulary.
[1.] WHAT A LANGUAGE IS.—A language is a number of different sounds which are made by the tongue and the other organs of speech. But a spoken language is, or may be, written or printed upon paper by the aid of a number of signs or symbols—which are generally printed in black ink upon white paper.—The parts of a spoken language are called sounds; the smallest parts of a written or printed language are called letters.—A language is also called a tongue or a speech.—A language, like a living being, does not remain always the same. It grows. As it grows, it alters in appearance; small and great changes take place in it; and the story of these changes is called the History of the Language.
[2.] THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE is the name given to the language which is spoken in Great Britain and Ireland, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa, and in many other parts of the world where Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen are found. In the middle of the fifth century it was spoken by a few thousand men who came over to Britain from the north-west of Europe, and by many thousands of men and women who dwelt on the banks of the lower parts of the great German rivers—the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Weser. It is now spoken by more than 100 millions of people. But the English spoken in the fifth century was a very different language from the English that is spoken now. It was different, yet still the same. It was different in appearance, as a child of one year old is different in looks from a man of forty; but both the English of to-day and the English of the fifth century are the same—because the one has grown out of the other, just as the tall strong man of forty has grown out of the child of one year old.
[3.] FAMILY.—To what family of languages does our English speech belong? It belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. This family is so called, because the languages which belong to it are spoken both in India and in Europe. Many thousand years ago, the people from whom we are descended lived on the high table-lands in the heart of Asia. Bands of them kept travelling always farther and farther west; and it is from their language that most of the tongues spoken in Europe are derived. These bands left their friends and relations and country, just as young men and women nowadays leave the homes of their parents to go and settle in distant countries. The Indo-European is also called the Aryan family of languages. Altogether, it embraces seven great languages—(1) The Indian or Sanskrit; (2) Persic; (3) Greek; (4) Latin; (5) Keltic; (6) Teutonic; and (7) Slavonic, which includes Russian, Polish, &c.
[4.] TEUTONS.—The English language was introduced into this country by bands of warlike colonists from Northwestern Germany, who drove the old inhabitants to the mountainous regions in the west of the island. Those colonists were variously called Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; but they all belonged to the Teutonic race, and their speech was a branch of the Teutonic group of languages. The Teutonic group of languages contains three main sections, from which all the others spring. These three main sections are: High-German, Low-German, and Scandinavian. High-German is the name given to the kind of German which is spoken on the higher lands or table-lands of South Germany—those table-lands which slope from the Central Plain of Europe up to the Alps; and its northern boundary is the pretty river Main, which falls into the Rhine. Low-German is the name given to the kind of German spoken in the lowlands of Germany; and the southern boundary of this kind of speech is the river Main—its northern boundary being the Baltic and the North Sea. Scandinavian is the wide general name given to those kinds of Teutonic speech which are found in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. These divisions may be placed in a table in the following manner:
| TEUTONIC. | |||||||||||||||
| | | |||||||||||||||
| | | | | | | |||||||||||||
| High-German. | Low-German. | Scandinavian. | |||||||||||||
| | | | | | | |||||||||||||
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |||||
| Old. | Middle. | New. | Dutch. | Flemish. | Frisian. | English. | Icelandic. | Danish. | Norwegian. | Swedish. | |||||
[5.] HIGH-GERMAN.—High-German is spoken in the southern parts of Germany—such as Bavaria, Swabia, and other hilly regions; and also in the north and east of Switzerland.—It is this form of the language that has become the book-speech or literary language of the Germans; and its technical name is New High-German.