 How did English emerge? What are the linguistic roots of English and what are the central linguistic aspects of early versions of English? These questions constitute the central goals of this e-lecture. Thus, we have to look at the roots and predecessors of English. We will take a look at the language families to which English belongs and eventually we will look at the earliest version of English referred to as Old English and in doing this we will also say something about possible varieties of Old English. English belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. So in order to understand the development of English let us start looking at these language families first. Indo-European or more precisely proto-Indo-European since it is an extinct but reconstructed language is assumed to have been spoken in Central Europe and South Asia between 6000 and 4000 before Christ. The Indo-Europeans probably lived in Central and Eastern Europe before they began to travel West and East between 3500 and 2500 before Christ. This movement led to the emergence of new dialects. New objects and landscapes were discovered thus new words had to be coined and more and more local dialects developed as the migration continued. Eventually these dialects became mutually unintelligible and developed their own status of independent languages. Today the Indo-European language family which was established by comparative studies in the last decades of the 19th century stretches from the Hebrides in the West to the Indian subcontinent in the East. By the way, do you know any non- Indo-European languages that are spoken in Europe? Well, you might want to pause the e-lecture here and I will tell you later. Well, the languages of the Indo-European family and here you can see some of the early languages which are now families in their own right, are phonologically related in a principled way. This phonological relationship was first formulated by Jacob Grimm in 1822 and has been a continuing subject of interest and investigation to linguists. We already discussed the central implications of Grimm's discoveries in our e-lecture language reconstruction. But here are the main findings in a nutshell. Grimm's law, also known as the First Consonantal Shift, shows that a regular shifting of consonants separated the Germanic languages such as English or German on the one hand from the other Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit, Greek or Latin in the following way. Do you remember some examples? Well, here are the main laws. Well, let's take the bilabial, the voiceless bilabial plosive in Sanskrit, Greek or Latin in words such as peter, parter and parter. So we're looking at this consonant and the result in the Germanic languages is ph, a labial dental fricative such as in English father or German father or take the initial aspirated voiced bilabial plosive as in Sanskrit vrata. In classical Greek, it was phrata. In Latin, it was similar, but it was labial dental phrata. And in Germanic, the result is a simple voiced bilabial plosive as in English brother or in German brooder. So using the principles of Grimm's law, we can establish a particular language family within the Indo-European family and this sub-family is referred to as Germanic. Now other families alongside Germanic are Italic, also referred to as the Romance languages, Celtic, Bautoslavonic, today's languages would be Russian, Czech, Polish and so on. And then we have further families such as Hellenic, Armenian, Albanian or Indo-Iranian. By the way, earlier on I asked you about the non-Indo-European languages in Europe. Well, here they are. We have Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian, three Uralic languages and we have a language referred to as Basque, which is one of the oldest languages of the world and it is not clear where it belongs. Some linguists claim it is an independent language. But let us return to the story of English. Round about the beginning of the Christian era, the speakers of Germanic formed a relatively homogeneous group living in the north of Europe. So the extension was something like this. So this is where they were here and possibly in this area. So this was the early home of the Germanic people. They started from the northern parts of Europe at around 500 before Christ and extended with new settlements down south between that time and shortly after Christ. So they extended their area to roughly this area. Today Germanic languages are spoken by over 550 million people. The primary phonological difference between Germanic and the other members of the Indo-European language family can be manifested on the basis of Grimm's law, which we discussed earlier on. Germanic itself can be subdivided into three sub-families. The West Germanic family, which can be found over here. Languages such as English, German or Dutch are well-known representatives of the West Germanic family. Then we have the North Germanic family, which subsumes the Scandinavian languages such as Norwegian and Swedish. Danish is a representative of it. Never forget Icelandic and Faroese. So these are the North Germanic languages and then we have the East Germanic families. So let's use the color gray here because the East Germanic language family has no living representative anymore. The main representative, which is now extinct, was Gothic. English, as I already said, belongs to the West Germanic branch and within it alongside Frisian to the Anglo-Frisian group. Thus it is closer to Frisian than to German. Let us take an example from the VLC language index to illustrate this. Now here we have the numbers from one to ten in East Frisian, spoken in the north of Germany and let us compare them with present-day English. One. One. Two. Three. Three. Three. Four. Five. Five. Five. Six. Six. Seven. Seven. Eight. Eight. Nine. Ten. Ten. Nine. I hope you discover the similarities between East Frisian and present-day English. A fundamental phonological difference between the Anglo-Frisian branch and the other West Germanic members can be manifested in the high German sound shift. This sound shift occurred between the 6th and 8th century and separated high German from the rest of the West Germanic languages. This explains why English and German today are phonologically different to some extent. The main changes affected the German voiceless plosives P, T and K, which changed to Africans F, Z and K in the same place of articulation at the beginning of a word or a syllable in Germanation or after a consonant. Here are some examples. English path, ten or kind became fat, zin and in some German varieties kind. And here is the second group of changes. After vowels, the three plosives, the voiceless plosives P, T and K became fricatives. Labiodental fricative F, alveolar fricative S and vela fricative H. So almost again the same place of articulation. And examples are verbs such as sleep, eat and make, which in German come out as schlafen, essen and machen. So as a first summary, we can say that English is an Indo-European language belonging to the Anglo-Phrygian branch of the West Germanic group. But when did English occur? The earliest period in the history of the English language is referred to as the Old English period. The origin of Old English goes back to the 5th century after Christ when Germanic tribes invaded Britain. These tribes were the Saxons coming from the north of Germany, the Angles from the area which is now Schleswig-Holstein south of Denmark north of Germany and the Jutes from the northern parts of Denmark. Linguistically the Old English period is generally defined as from 600 to 1100. Due to the strong Germanic and especially the strong Saxon influence, the Old English period is often also referred to as Anglo-Saxon English. The geographical extension of Old English was possibly approximately identical with today's England, so something like that area. Due to the various invasions, however, Old English underwent a number of linguistic influences. From the 5th century onwards, Germanic tribes invaded Britain and settled in most parts of England. The Celtic population came under Germanic domination or fled to Scotland, Wales, Cornwall or Ireland. Due to the strong Germanic influence, only a few words survived in Old English from the languages used before. Most words were West Germanic, though some words were introduced by the Vikings, that is, those tribes coming from North Germanic areas from the late 8th century onwards. In summary, we can say that Old English was influenced by the following languages. We can observe Celtic influences, Scandinavian influences as a head term from influences from the North Germanic languages and, of course, Latin influences. Let's look at them in more detail. The Celtic influence was only slight. Only a few words were borrowed from Celtic, primarily those describing geographical features such as Aberdeen, the mouth of the river Dee. And scholars believe that few common nouns in Old English are of Celtic origin. Among these are Bannock, Cart, Down or Mattock. Although other Celtic words which have not been preserved in the literature may have been in use during the Old English period, most present-day English words of Celtic origin, that is, from Welch, Scottish Gaelic or Irish, are comparatively recent borrowings. In the late 8th century, the Vikings began to invade Britain. They occupied vast areas, especially north of the River Humber, the so-called Dane Law. Well, let's mark this area here. The Dane Law is originally the body of law that prevailed in the part of England occupied by the Danes. It comprised four main regions, in the North, the North Humbrian region, then the areas around it including the boroughs of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Stanford, the East Anglian region and the Southeast Midlands. Though the English kings soon brought the Dane Law back under their rule, they did not attempt to interfere with the laws and customs of the area, many of which survived until even after the Norman conquest in 1066. Several Scandinavian, that is, in particular Old Norse, words entered Old English. Words pertaining to the sea and battle were introduced first. Shortly after the initial invasions, other words were taken over. Law terminology, very interestingly, the verb form of to be are. And widely used words such as take, cut, both ill, ugly and so on and so forth. The Latin influence, well, the first Roman expedition to Britain was undertaken by Julius Caesar in 55 or 54 BC. But the Romans didn't start to conquer Britain until 45 after Christ. The Roman influence was not very large. Rather, most Latin words were brought to Britain by the Germanic invaders who had previously come into contact with the Roman culture and Christianity. Typical examples of these words are altar, mass, priest, psalm, temple, kitchen, palm or pear. Considering these various influences, it is not surprising that Old English was not a uniform version of English. Hence, there were some varieties differing according to dialect, area and historical period. Surviving texts from the Old English period occur in four main varieties. We have the West Saxon variety. We have the Kentish variety. We have Mershin and North Humbrian. And in fact, these two are sometimes referred to as Anglian as a common head term. Despite some phonological differences, for example, the present day English verb to hear was Heran in West Saxon and Heran in Anglian. The Old English dialects differed only slightly, in particular in terms of grammar and vocabulary. At the end of the Old English period, the West Saxon kingdom, Wessex, became dominant and the West Saxon variety became the literary standard. However, it is not the direct ancestor of present day English, which is rather derived from an Anglian dialect. The most important dialect of Old English for modern scholars, however, is still West Saxon, in which the majority of texts were written. And its 10th century form indeed became something of a standard for texts written across much of England. So, now we know the main parts of the early story of English. Its ancestor languages are Indo-European and Germanic. It belongs to the Anglo-Fryzian branch of West Germanic and is referred to as Old English in its earliest form. Old English was used between 600 and 1100 after Christ. But what were the properties of Old English? Well, this story cannot be told in one e-lecture, let alone in this one. So, I invite you to join me again in further e-lectures about the linguistics of Old English, from phonology to syntax and further details about the history of that time. So, see you again.