From Tribes to Scribes
a glimpse into the origins of the English language
‘Weweregoingintobattlebuttheslopeweencountered…’
‘What’s it say, Cassius?’
‘Hm. Looks like we were going in to bat.’
‘But cricket hasn’t been invented yet.’
‘No, hang on a sec — we were going into battle, but the slop -’
‘Slop? Sounds messy.’
‘Ah — it’s slope. But the slope…wee -?’
‘Give it up, Cass.’
Why would you invent a way of writing which didn’t put any spaces between words? But the Romans did just that. It was called Scriptio Continua and didn’t even have punctuation to help the reader make sense of it.
The Roman Empire at its height was vast, covering most of Europe as well as large areas of Africa, and the Middle East. Latin left its mark in many of these countries and England was no exception. We owe 60% of our language to the Romans.
But all good things must come to an end and this illustrious empire lost its sparkle and faded away, leaving each country to its own devices.
Britain was now vulnerable to other invaders and different tribes came swooping in from all directions. The Jutes and the Angles came from an area around Denmark. The Saxons came from the area we now know as The Netherlands and the Picts came down from Scotland.
A maelstrom of invaders — and what a mix of languages there must have been.
Some of these ancient languages still survive.
Welsh is one of the oldest languages still being used today and has been spoken for around 4,000 years. It’s derived from Celtic, which was a language spoken in many parts of Europe. It evolved and divided into three versions — Welsh, Cornish and Breton.
The Welsh speakers settled in the western area of Britain, the Cornish speakers in the southern tapering part and the Bretons in Northern France.
What were these languages like? Probably not something we’d recognise as English.
Here is a sample of Breton:
‘Dieub ha par en o dellezegezh hag o gwirioù eo ganet an holl dud. Poell ha skiant zo dezho ha dleout a reont bevañ an eil gant egile en ur spered a genvreudeuriezh.’
This is a sample of Cornish:
‘Pub den oll yw genys rydh hag kehaval yn dynita ha gwiryow. Yth yns i kemynnys gans reson ha kowses hag y tal dhedha gul dhe unn orth y gila yn spyrys a vrederedh.’
This is a sample of Welsh:
‘Genir pawb yn rhydd ac yn gydradd â’i gilydd mewn urddas a hawliau. Fe’u cynysgaeddir â rheswm a chydwybod, a dylai pawb ymddwyn y naill at y llall mewn ysbryd cymodlon.’
All of them mean the same; they are Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
So where did our familiar English words come from?
There was an element of German to the languages of these tribes, which makes it different from the European Romance languages — Italian, French, Spanish and a few others — which evolved from Latin.
During the fifth century, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes eventually intermingled and the language became more standard. During the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, those troublesome Vikings set their sights on this small island and brought elements of their own Germanic-based tongue with them. In 1066 the French invader Guillaume — or William the Conqueror — became King and inevitably, many French words dripped into the mix.
We are, as someone put it, ‘a mongrel race’ and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing. Mongrels are a lot healthier than pure breeds and the English language is lusty, strong and expressive, each variation of a word adding a different nuance of meaning. It therefore lends itself to accurate descriptions, useful in science — as well as wonderful poetry, a balm for the soul.
English is still evolving. The Oxford English Dictionary recently added several new words. Nomophobia is the anxiety people feel when they do not have access to a mobile phone. There’s also Lightsabre — the Star Wars weapon, Sim — a computer programme and Chirpse — to flirt with.
If Chaucer could step forward into 2020 he’d be utterly baffled by the way we speak — and who knows what English will sound like in five hundred years time? If we could be transported into that future, the weird babblings of those people would probably have us running for the hills.
