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CHAPTER I.
GERMANIC ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.—DATE.
[§ 1]. The first point to be remembered in the history of the English Language, is that it was not the original language of any of the British Islands altogether or of any portion of them. Indeed, of the whole of Great Britain it is not the language at the present moment. Welsh is spoken in Wales, Manks in the Isle of Man, Scotch Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland, and Irish Gaelic in Ireland. Hence, the English that is now spoken was once as foreign to our country as it is at present to the East Indies; and it is no more our primitive vernacular tongue, than it is the primitive vernacular tongue for North America, Jamaica, or Australia. Like the English of Sydney, or the English of Pennsylvania, the English of Great Britain spread itself at the expense of some earlier and more aboriginal language, which it displaced and superseded.
[§ 2]. The next point involves the real origin and the real affinities of the English Language. Its real origin is on the continent of Europe, and its real affinities are with certain languages there spoken. To speak more specifically, the native country of the English Language is Germany; and the Germanic languages are those that are the most closely connected with our own. In Germany, languages and dialects allied to each other and allied to the mother-tongue of the English have been spoken from times anterior to history; and these, for most purposes of philology, may be considered as the aboriginal languages and dialects of that country.
[§ 3]. Accredited details of the different immigrations from Germany into Britain.—Until lately the details of the different Germanic invasions of England, both in respect to the particular tribes by which they were made, and the order in which they succeeded each other, were received with but little doubt, and as little criticism.
Respecting the tribes by which they were made, the current opinion was, that they were chiefly, if not exclusively, those of the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles.
The particular chieftains that headed each descent were also known, as well as the different localities upon which they descended. These were as follows:—
[§ 4]. First settlement of invaders from Germany.—The account of this gives us the year 449 for the first permanent Germanic tribes settled in Britain. Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, was the spot where they landed; and the particular name that these tribes gave themselves was that of Jutes. Their leaders were Hengist and Horsa. Six years after their landing they had established the kingdom of Kent; so that the county of Kent was the first district where the original British was superseded by the mother-tongue of the present English, introduced from Germany.