English and German A Comparison of both Languages 1 Introduction The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the major differences in the histories of German and English and so help students better understand how languages which are related and stem from a common ancestor –in this case Germanic –can come to have such diverging forms today. 2 The Germanic Languages 3 4 Like German, English is an Indo- European language. Both belong to the German group of languages found in northern and north- western Europe. You can tell that German and English are genetically related. 5 English is a Germanic language as are German, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic. This means that it belongs to an early grouping of Indo-European which distinguishes itself from other languages of this family by having undergone a series of changes to consonants in initial position. In general, stops become fricatives due to the operation of the Germanic Sound Shift (sometimes also called Grimm’s Law). This is assumed to have taken place many centuries BC. The operation of this law can be recognised by comparing words in Latin with their cognates (etymologically related forms) in English as in the following table. Latin English Old English pes [p] foot [f] fot tres [t] three [þ] þreo collis [k] hill [x] hyl quod [kw] what [xw] hwæt 6 7 8 9 10 11 The History of English 12 Periods in the history of English 0)Runic period, pre-5c 1) Old English (450-1066) 2) Middle English (1066-1500) 3) Early Modern English (1500-1800) 4)Late Modern English (1800-) 13 CeCeltltiicc BBrriittaainin Historical distribution of Celts in Europe 14 TThhee RRoommaannss iinn BBrrititaainin In 55 BC the emperor Julius Caesar invades Britain establishing Roman rule in the south and south-eeaast. The Romans build roads and viaducts as well as baths in centres in England. The most famous of these is the city of Bath itself. In 410 the Romans leave Britain because of pressure in Italy from Germanic raiders. The departure of the Romans left a political vacuum in England which was eventually filled by the Germanic tribes who came from the North Sea coastal areas around 450 AD. 15 The source areas of Germanic tribes who came to England in the middle of the 5th century AD. 16 17 The Anglo-Saxons lands of England began to be christianised in 597 when St Augustine arrived on a mission initiated by Pope Gregory. Augustine established his centre in the south, in Canterbury, Kent. 18 In the Old English period, the people who wrote were all monks at monasteries. They used a form of the Latin alphabet which had been developed previously in Ireland as this country was converted to Christianity before England. 19 England during the Viking period Invasions started at the end of late 8th century, first plunderings, later settlement in Scotland and the north of England 20 21 Open page of Beowulf manuscript. This epic is the first in England and was probably composed in Mercia (central England) in the 8th century but the only surviving manuscript dates from about 1000 CE. 22 There is a considerable body of poetry from the Old English period. The monk Caedmon (7th century) was the first to compose a hymn. Later poetry was both of a religious and a secular nature. 23 England at the time of the Norman Invasion William the Conqueror 24 Who were the Normans? The Normans were original descendants of Vikings who had settled in the north of France some centuries before and had adopted the French language of the region. In the dispute over the successor of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), the Norman lord, William, Duke of Normandy (c. 1027-1087), who felt he had a claim to the English throne, enforced this by successfully invading England in 1066. 25 26 Middle English dialect areas 27 The Canterbury Tales are the major work of Middle English literature and Chaucer is regarded as second only to Shakespeare among English authors Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1399) 28 The introduction of printing to England Printing was introduced to England in 1476 by William Caxton (c. 1442-1491). This led to an increasing regularisation of orthography and morphology. 29 House of Henry VIII (1509-1547), known popularly Tudor for his six wives, two of whom he had executed, introduced the Reformation into England and established the English monarch as head of the Church of England (the Anglican Church). 30 The Great Vowel Shift Themajor change to affect the sound system of Middle English is that which resulted in a re-alignment of the system of long vowels and diphthongs which is traditionally known as the Great Vowel Shift. Essentially long vowels are raised one level and the two high vowels are diphthongised. The shift took several centuries to complete and is still continuing in Cockney (popular London speech). The shift of short /u/ to a lower vowel as in present-day southern English but, which began in the mid 17th century, is not part of the vowel shift. 31 32 Tudor England (16th century) 33 34 35 The King James bible of 1611 The Book of Common Prayer (known as the Authorized Version) (revised version of 1662) 36 37 38 The legacy of Samuel Johnson Johnson’s dictionary became the standard work of English lexicography because of its range, objectivity and use of quotations from major authors to back up definitions given. It was not until over a century later that it was superseded by the dictionary which was to become the Oxford English Dictionary. 39 Robert Lowth (1710-1787) Author of a normative grammar A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) which achieved great popularity for the manner in which it made recommendations for grammatical usage, something which was interpreted as very prescriptive, even though this may not have been intended as such. Lowthwas professor of poetry in Oxford and later bishop of Oxford and of London (as of 1777). 40 41 The English concern with pronunciation Pronunciation in English is a yardstick of one‘s language. More than European countries, the English judge the standardness of someone’s speech by its phonetics. The ideal which arose during the 18th century and established itself in the 19th century was that one’s speech was not to betray where one came from, i.e. regional accents were frowned upon. 42 English dialects (present-day) 43 The codification of Received Pronunciation Daniel Jones (1881-1967) major English phonetician of the 20th century 44 45 46 47 The dominance of London in England is obvious in the linguistic innovations which spread from London and the Home Counties to other parts of the country and not the other way around. 48 TThehe OOxxffoorrdd EEngnglilishsh DiDiccttiionaonaryry 49 A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles A proposal was made by Richard Trench in 1857 to the Philological Society to design a new dictionary which would serve as a definitive work on the vocabulary of English with complete historical coverage. The Scotsman James Murray (1837-1915) became the main editor (see inset on right). The first letter was published as a volume in 1888 and all the 12 volswere completed in 1928. A thirteenth supplement volume came out in 1933 (after which it was called the Oxford English Dictionary published by Oxford University Press. The twenty-volume second edition appeared in 1989 (this is also available electronically). Work on a much expanded third edition is underway at present. 50 51 52 For more information on the history of English please consult the following website, accessible at: http://www.uni-due.de/SHE 53 The History of German 54 Periods in the history of German 0)Runic period, pre-5c 1) Old High German (500-1050) 2) Middle High German (1050-1350) 3) Early New High German (1350-1650) 4)New High German (1650-) 55 Old High German 56 Runes are an early type of writing used primarily for inscriptions on stone by Germanic speakers. Celtic runes, collectively known as Ogam, also existed at the same time (first few centuries CE). 57 Earliest forms of continental Germanic languages.Note that Slavic peoples occupied the area east of the rivers Elbe and Saale. The Lombards were a Germanic group which lived south of the Alps for several centuries. 58 The written documents of Old High German were produced in monastaries like St Gallen (in present-day Switzerland), Reichenau or Fulda (probably where the Hildebrandslied was written down); this situation is similar to that of Old English. One of the main pieces of Old High German epic poetry is the Muspilli (now in the Bayersche Staatsbibliothek) probably written about 870. It deals with the theme of the afterlife, what happens to the soul after death. 59 The Hildebrandslied (see the two pages of the manuscript on the following slide) is a poem of alliterative verse, some 68 lines of which have survived. It was written down in the early 9th century in a mixture of Old Bavarian and Old Saxon. The poem is an item of oral literature and was composed some time before the date given here. 60 Hildebrandslied 61 Middle High German 62 Middle High German Middle High German refers to dialects spoken in the central and southern parts of German from the latter half of the eleventh century onwards. These were distinguished from forms of Low German and early Dutch found in the north of Germany, especially in the coastal areas. A general form of Middle High German was the Dichtersprache based on south-wester dialects, such as Swabian and Alemannic.