TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………...………..2-4
CHAPTER I THE CONTACT OF ENGLISH WITH OTHER LANGUAGES………………..5-7
THE CELTIC
INFLUENCE THE
APPLICATION OF NATIVE WORDS CHAPTER II THE SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENE: THE VIKING AGE………………..….8-10
THE
SCANDINAVIAN INVASIONS OF ENGLAND THE
SETTLEMENT OF THE DANES IN ENGLAND CHAPTER III THE AMALGAMATION OF THE TWO RACES..........................................11-13
THE
RELATION OF THE TWO LANGUAGES THE TESTS
OF BORROWED WORDS CHAPTER IV THE SCANDINAVIAN PLACE NAMES…...................................................14-16
THE
EARLIEST BORROWING SCANDINAVIAN
LOAN-WORDS AND THEIR CHARACTER CHAPTER V CELTIC PLACE –NAMES…………………………….……………...…..…17-19
CELTIC
LOAN-WORDS THE
RELATION OF BORROWED AND NATIVE WORDS CHAPTER VI FORM WORDS………………………………….………………….………20-22
SCANDINAVIAN
INFLUENCE OUTSIDE THE STANDARD SPEECH HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………….……23-28
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………….…………………………..……29
INTRODUCTION
The essence of history is change taking place in time. Anything which endures in time has a history, because in this world of flux anything which endures in time suffers change. But if history is to be meaningful, there must also be continuity. A people, a nation, or a language may change over a long period so greatly as to become something vastly different from what it was at the beginning. But this great change is the accumulation of many small changes. At any stage in its history, the people, nation, or language is fundamentally the same entity that it was in the immediately preceding stage, albeit changed in detail. It has preserved its identity.
The preservation of identity through continuity of change, then, characterizes things which have a history. It is easier to see this in the case of concrete objects, like the Great Pyramid or Keats's Grecian urn. Their continuity is physical; the actual stuff of which they are made has endured through centuries. Their history is primarily what has happened to them and around them; the change they have suffered has chiefly been change of environment, rather than change of their own nature. Indeed, what fascinated Keats about the urn was its placid unchanging ness in the midst of changing generations of men. Its history is entirely what can be called "outer history."
According to the Bible: ’In the beginning was the Word’. By the Talmud: ‘God created the world by a Word, instantaneously, without toil or pains’. But I think whatever more mystical meaning these pieces of scripture might have, they both point to the primacy of language in the way human beings conceive of the world.
I agree with the theory that language figures centrally in our lives. I think we discover our identity as individuals and social beings when we acquire it during childhood. It serves as a means of cognition and communication: it enables us to think for ourselves and to cooperate with people in our community. It provides for present needs and future plans, and at the same time carries with it the impression of things past.
I want note in passing, incidentally, that it is speech that the ogre cannot master. Whether this necessarily implies that language is also beyond his reach is another matter, for language does not depend on speech as the only physical medium for its expression. Auden may not imply such a distinction in these lines, but it is one which, as we shall see presently, it is important to recognize.
It has been suggested that language is so uniquely human, distinguishes us so clearly from ogres and other animals, that our species might be more appropriately named homo loquens than homo sapiens. ............
