English
The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a postulated prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.
Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during the Late Neolithic period (6400 to 3500 BC). Mainstream scholars place them in the Pontic–Caspian steppe across Eurasia (this steppe extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania, through Moldova, and southern and eastern Ukraine, through the Northern Caucasus of southern Russia, and into the Lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan, adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to the east, both forming part of the larger Eurasian Steppe).[1] Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the Middle Neolithic period (5500 to 4500 BC)[Dates are inconsistent] or even the Early Neolithic period (7500 to 5500 BC) and suggest alternative origin hypotheses.
By the early second millennium BC, descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had reached far and wide across Eurasia, including Anatolia (Hittites), the Aegean (the linguistic ancestors of Mycenaean Greece), the north of Europe (Corded Ware culture), the edges of Central Asia (Yamnaya culture), and southern Siberia (Afanasievo culture).[2]
Serving as a Paleolithic backdrop to those linguistic developments, it is estimated that permanent and continuous habitation in Britain by homo sapiens has occurred since 12,000 BCE so it would appear that the continental origins of Celtic languages would involve all the linguistic mechanisms of a dynamic history based in struggles between dialects of Indo-European ancestry, and also between Indo-European dialect-speakers and non-Indo-Europeans (for example the Paleolithic Britons from 12,000 BCE.
The Celtic languages originated on the Continent but came to Britain thousands of year before Julius Caesar (ie the time of Jesus). However, around the time of Christ, and well after the complete establishment in Britain of a tree of languages that originated, itself, in Ancient Europe, the Roman Empire arrived in Britain.
The domination of the European landscape by the War Machine of Emperor Julius Caesar, brought with it the Latin language. Latin, a language which derives substantial parts of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, as well as an Indian connection, became the language of Power in Britain mainly in the forms of Roman Law and culture (eg Roman Numerals), and, hundreds of years later, in the rituals of the Catholic Church. Eventually the Empire of Rome declined and disappeared, marked in Britain by the year 450, the commonly defined beginning of the “settlements” (invasions) by the teutonic Angles, Saxons and Jutes
Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of the Roman Empire’s rule in Roman Britain in the 5th century, which involved incursions by people called Angles, Saxons and Jutes, until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the Anglo-Saxons stretched north to present day Lothian in southeastern Scotland, whereas it did not initially include western areas of England such as Cornwall, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumbria.
The 5th and 6th centuries involved the collapse of Roman economic networks and political structures and also saw a radical change to a new Anglo-Saxon language and culture. This change was driven by movements of invading peoples (Teutonic Tribes: Angle, Saxons, Jutes and others from present day Denmark and Northern Germany) as well as changes which were happening in both northern Gaul and the North Sea coast of what is now Germany and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxon language, also known as Old English, was a close relative of languages spoken in the latter regions (Gaul/Germany/Netherlands), and genetic studies have confirmed that there was significant migration to Britain from there which started before the end of the Roman period. Surviving written accounts suggest that Britain was divided into small “tyrannies” which initially took their bearings to some extent from Roman norms.
By the late 6th century, England was dominated by small kingdoms ruled by dynasties who were pagan and which identified themselves as having differing continental ancestries. A smaller number of kingdoms maintained a British and Christian identity, but by this time they were restricted to the west of Britain. The most important Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th and 6th centuries are conventionally called a Heptarchy, meaning a group of seven kingdoms, although the number of kingdoms varied over time. The most powerful included Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. During the 7th century the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were converted to Christianity by missionaries from Ireland and the continent.
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Germanic settlers who became one of the most important cultural groups in Britain by the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period in Britain is considered to have started by about 450 and ended in 1066, with the Norman Conquest.[1] Although the details of their early settlement and political development are not clear, by the 8th century an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity which was generally called Englisc had developed out of the interaction of these settlers with the existing Romano-British culture. By 1066, most of the people of what is now England spoke Old English, and were considered English. Viking and Norman invasions changed the politics and culture of England significantly, but the overarching Anglo-Saxon identity evolved and remained dominant even after these major changes.[2] Late Anglo-Saxon political structures and language are the direct predecessors of the high medieval Kingdom of England and the Middle English language. Although the modern English language owes less than 26% of its words to Old English, this includes the vast majority (over 80%) of everyday words.[3]
In the early 8th century, the earliest detailed account of Anglo-Saxon origins was given by Bede (d. 735), suggesting that they were long divided into smaller regional kingdoms, each with differing accounts of their continental origins. As a collective term, the compound term Anglo-Saxon, commonly used by modern historians for the period before 1066, first appears in Bede’s time, but it was probably not widely used until modern times.[4] Bede was one of the first writers to prefer “Angles” (or English) as the collective term, and this eventually became dominant. Bede, like other authors, also continued to use the collective term “Saxons”, especially when referring to the earliest periods of settlement. Roman and British writers of the 3rd to 6th century described those earliest Saxons as North Sea raiders, and mercenaries. Bede believed the earliest settlers were really from a range of different tribes in northern Europe, notably including the people of what he called “Old Saxony” in what is now northern Germany, the Jutes of what is now Jutland in western Denmark, and the English (Angles) themselves, whose homeland he placed between the former two.
It would appear that the English Culture and Language must have been part of an education system in order to explain the strength and resilience of that Culture and Language. This system must have both accommodated and withstood the major influences of Latin (historically), Norse and French, as well as Celtic dialects, for as long as Teutonic people inhabited Britain.
In modern times, the term “Anglo-Saxons” is used by scholars to refer collectively to the Old English speaking groups in Britain. As a compound term, it has the advantage of covering the various English-speaking groups on the one hand, and to avoid possible misunderstandings from using the terms “Saxons” or “Angles” (English), both of which terms could be used either as collectives referring to all the Old English speakers, or to specific tribal groups. Although the term “Anglo Saxon” was not used as a common term until modern times, it is not a modern invention because it was also used in some specific contexts already between the 8th and 10th centuries. Its first recorded use was by Continental scholars in the mid-eighth century.[6]
Before the 8th century, the most common collective term for the Old-English speakers was “Saxons”, a term originally associated since the 4th century not with a specific country or nation, but with raiders in North Sea coastal areas of Britain and Gaul. An early reference to the Angli is in the writing of 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius, which he apparently heard through Frankish diplomats. He never mentions the Saxons, but he states that a large island called Brittia, which was not far from the Rhine delta. He had heard it was settled by three nations, the Angili, Frissones (Frisians), and Brittones, who were each ruled by their own king. Each nation was so prolific that Brittia sent large numbers of individuals every year to the Franks, who planted them in unpopulated regions of their territory.[7]
By the 8th century the Frisians and Saxons living on the continent (both of whom Procopius never mentions) were seen as two distinct countries, and writers such as Bede and some of his contemporaries including Alcuin, and Saint Boniface, began to refer to the overall group in Britain as the “English” people (Latin Angli, gens Anglorum or Old English Angelcynn). In Bede’s work the term “Saxon” is also used to refer sometimes to the Old English language, and also to refer to the early pagan Anglo-Saxons before the arrival of Christian missionaries among the Anglo-Saxons of Kent in 597.[8] The term “Saxon”, on the other hand, was at this time increasingly used by mainland writers to designate the northeastern neighbours of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia. Bede therefore called these the “Old Saxons” (antiqui saxones), and he believed that there was no longer any country of Angles in Germany, as it had become empty due to emigration.
Similarly, a non-Anglo-Saxon contemporary of Bede, Paul the Deacon, referred variously to either the English (Angli), or Anglo-Saxons (Latin plural genitives Saxonum Anglorum, or Anglorum Saxonum), which helped him distinguish them from the European Saxons whom he also discussed. In England itself this compound term also came to be used in some specific situations, both in Latin and Old English. Alfred the Great, the king of the West Saxons, adopted the title Anglosaxonum Rex in the late 880s, indicating that he had been accepted as king by all English who were not under Viking rule. However, the term “English” continued to be used as a common collective term, and indeed became dominant. The increased use of these new collective terms, “English” or “Anglo-Saxon”, represents the strengthening of the idea of a single unifying cultural unity among the Anglo-Saxons themselves, who had previously invested in identities which differentiated various regional groups.[8]
In contrast, Irish and Welsh speakers long continued to refer to Anglo-Saxons as Saxons. The word Saeson is the modern Welsh word for “English people”; the equivalent word in Scottish Gaelic is Sasannach and in the Irish language, Sasanach.[9] Catherine Hills suggests that it is no accident “that the English call themselves by the name sanctified by the Church, as that of a people chosen by God, whereas their enemies use the name originally applied to piratical raiders”.[10]
In the 8th century, Vikings began raiding England, and by the second half of the 9th century Scandinavians began to settle in eastern England, (bringing their Old Norse language).
Old Norse was a North Germanic language spoken in Scandinavia and in Norse settlements during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages (approximately the 8th–14th centuries).[1] It is the conventional term for the medieval West and East Scandinavian dialects (often labelled Old West Norse and Old East Norse) that developed from Proto-Norse and later evolved into the modern North Germanic languages, including Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.[2]
Old Norse is attested in runic inscriptions (written in the Younger Futhark) and in numerous medieval manuscripts written with the Latin alphabet; its literary corpus includes the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Icelandic sagas, skaldic verse, law codes, and religious texts.[3][4] Contact between Old Norse speakers and other languages — particularly Old English and the Celtic languages — left a substantial legacy of loanwords and toponyms; many common English words such as Wednesday and Thursday (from the names honouring their gods Woden/Odin and Thor), Friday (from the day honouring Frigga or Freya – goddess of married love and domestic affairs), egg, knife, sky, and window derive from Old Norse.
Opposing the Vikings from the south, the royal family of Wessex gradually became dominant, and in 927 King Æthelstan was the first king to rule a single united Kingdom of England. After his death however, the Danish settlers and other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms reasserted themselves. Wessex agreed to pay the so-called Danegeld to the Danes, and in 1017 England became part of the North Sea (Viking) Empire of King Cnut, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway. After Cnut’s death in 1035, England was ruled first by his son Harthacnut, and then by his English half-brother Edward the Confessor. Edward had been forced to live in exile, and when he died in 1066, one of the claimants to the throne was William, the Duke of Normandy.
William’s 1066 invasion of England ended the Anglo-Saxon period. The Normans persecuted the Anglo-Saxons and overthrew their ruling class, substituting their own leaders to oversee and rule England.[1] However, Anglo-Saxon identity survived beyond the Norman Conquest,[2] came to be known as Englishry under Norman rule, and through social and cultural integration with Romano-British Celts, Danes and Normans became the modern English people.
The Normans were a people with ancestry in France, although their ruling class originated as “Norsemen” (hence “Norman”) after acquiring territory in France, and thus the partial dominance of the Norman culture and Law, brought with it words of French origin.
Middle English (abbreviated to ME)[1] denotes the forms of the English language that were spoken in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century, roughly coinciding with the High and Late Middle Ages.[2] Middle English was the language spoken by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400). Middle English had significant regional variety and churn in its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography.[3] The main dialects were Northern, East Midland, West Midland, and Southern in England, as well as Middle Scots and the Irish Fingallian and Yola.
The Middle English dialects influenced and transformed those of Old English due to contact with Anglo-Norman French and Old Norse, and continued to evolve in England into Early Modern English, also known as Elizabethan English or King James English. Early Modern English was the language of Shakespeare (1564–1616). Middle English and Early Modern English are noticeably more rhythmic and poetic than Modern English, when spoken traditionally.
Nevertheless, the connections of the language of English people to Old English were strong. It is estimated that over 80% of the 1,000 most common, high-frequency words in modern English derive directly from Old English (Anglo-Saxon). These foundation words represent core daily life, family, basic actions, and nature, staying remarkably resilient over a thousand years. Core Categories & Examples: Family & People: mann (man), mōdor (mother), fæder (father), bearn/cild (child). Body Parts: heafod (head), hand (hand), fōt (foot), mearh (bone/marrow). Basic Actions: beran (bear), cuman (come), sittan (sit), etan (eat), drincan (drink). Nature & Elements: eorðe (earth), water (water), fȳr (fire), sunne (sun), mōna (moon). Function Words: ic (I), wē (we), and (and), in (in), under (under).
So Modern English comes from linguistic evolution traced as far back as Proto-Indo-Europen, through the branches of Indo-European dialects and , later, of the Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon (Germanic), Old Norse (North Germanic) and French tongues, making it a language founded entirely in Continental Europe and in India, yet transforming uniquely from those foundations, under repeated waves of invasion and colonisation. This absorption of invaders has later been followed by Britain’s own colonial extension of influence around parts of the world, such as in North America, Australasia, the Indian sub-continent and parts of Africa, to take its current place as a language larger and more powerful than the political British Empire ever was. English has systems for incorporating the humanistic, mathematical, medical and scientific languages and symbols, and having relinquished most overt political and international control from its former empire, it can use Ancient Greek, Latin, French, German and other languages, and some of Indian and Arabic origin (eg Hindu-Arabic numerals) to be able to claim to be the Western World’s dominant commercial and technical language.
It is worth noting that the numeric symbols inherited by the British from the Romans were completely useless to do mathematics with. It was left to Arab and Indian mathematicians to carry the science of mathematics through the Middle Ages. The earliest European evidence of the use of Hindu-Arabic numbers dates to the 10th century in Spain, however the main process that succeeded in supplanting Roman numbers occurred between the 14th and 17th centuries. Until then, Algebra (Arabic: al jabr, “the numbers”), and mathematics generally, was impossible. It was the resistance of merchants to these changes that delayed the process.
Generally common merchants can count. They usually cannot do mathematics, nor do they want to.
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