The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1961, Síða 18

16
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Summer 1961
1. Modern English and its Ancestor
Languages
English has descended from the
branch of the Indo-European family
of languages known as the Nordic,
Teutonic or Germanic group of langu-
ages. Its ancestor languages, or dialects
or elements of ancestor languages are
four in number. There is West Saxon,
the language of King Alfred, Anglian,
the language of Mercia and the Ang-
lias, and Kentish, the language of the
Jutes who settled in Kent. Then there
is the fourth element—Norse—which,
because there were two migrations dif-
fering in times of over a century, may
be considered as one element in two
parts. For present purposes the first
three elements need not be discussed.
Towards the end of the eighth cen-
tury migrations of Norsemen com-
menced to what they called “The Wes-
tern Islands’’, the British Isles and the
islands around them. These people
came from the west coast of Norway
and the language they spoke was the
chief dialect of Norse spoken at that
time and is commonly referred to as
Old Norse. This language, whether it
be called Old Norse, Old Icelandic or
just Icelandic, is, as will be shown, the
language which has been preserved in
Iceland. Some of these people sailed
to Ireland and went as far south as
Dublin. Others went to the north of
Scotland, to the Isle of Man, the He-
brides, and the Shetland and Orkney
Islands.
The second Norse migration started
about a century later and came from
present Sweden and Denmark. These
Norsemen were called Danes and at
one time the Danes occupied all of
Northern England. King Canute, it
will be recalled, became King of all
of Anglo-Saxon and Norse England.
Some of the Norsemen who had settled
in Ireland earlier came to Eng-
land during this time. It is therefore
obvious that immediately prior to the
Norman conquest the fourth philo-
logical element was the language
spoken in a large part of what may be
referred to as Anglo-Saxon as distinct
from Celtic England and Scotland. Dr.
J. A. H. Murray, (1837-1915), the noted
British lexicographer, who edited the
New English Dictionary, says: (Enc.
Brit., 11th Ed. Vol. IX p. 592).
“For three centuries therefore,
there was no standard form of
speech which claimed any pre-
eminence over the others. The
writers in each district wrote in
the dialect familiar to them; and
between extreme forms the dif-
ference was so great as to amount
to unintelligibility. Works writ-
ten for Southern Englishmen had
to be translated for the benefit of
the North.”
If one speaks with historic accuracy
the four elements, Saxon, Anglian,
Kentish and Norse are the languages
or dialects which are the ancestor
languages of English. But the four
originals together with the changing
dialects spoken during the three cen-
turies referred to by Dr. Murray, are
commonly and very loosely grouped
together as Old English or Anglo-
Saxon, and in that enlarged meaning
Anglo-Saxon is the ancestor language
to Modern English. But though the
one is descended from the other, they
are, from the point of view of intelligi-
bility, distinct languages.
“Looked upon by themselves, either
as vehicles of thought or objects of
study and analysis, Old Englosh or
Anglo-Saxon and Modern English are,
for all practical ends, distinct lan-