The primary sources for what developed as the English language were the Germanic languages spoken by a group of tribes from northern Europe who moved into the British Isles in the fifth century. In one early account, these tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes were described as “God’s wrath toward Britain.” It is from the names of the first two that we have the term Anglo-Saxons to describe these people, and from the name of the first tribe that we get the word for their language Englisc and their new home Engla-land.

From this early version of Englisc, now called Old English, we have many of the most basic terms in the language: mann (“man”), wı¯ f (“woman”), cild (“child”), hu¯ s (“house”), mete (“food”), etan (“eat”), drincan (“drink”) and feohtan (“fight”). These pagan settlers also gave us some weekday names, commemorating their gods Woden and Thor. However, they did not remain pagan for long. From the sixth to the eighth century, there was an extended period during which these Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity and a number of terms from Latin (the language of the religion) came into English at that time. The origins of the contemporary English words angel, bishop, candle, church, martyr, priest and school all date from this period.

From the eighth century through the ninth and tenth centuries, another group of northern Europeans came first to plunder and then to settle in parts of the coastal regions of Britain. They were the Vikings and it is from their language, Old Norse, that the original forms of give, law, leg, skin, sky, take and they were adopted. It is from their winter festival jo´ l that we have Yule as a term for the Christmas season.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

قسم الشؤون الطبية يقدم الخدمات الصحية والعلاجية لزائري مدينة سامراء

العتبة العباسية المقدسة تقدم خدماتها لزائري مرقد الإمامين العسكريين (عليهما السلام) في سامراء

المجمَع العلمي ووفد وزارة التربية يبحثان سبل التعاون المشترك

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يصدر العدد 192 من مجلة الرياحين للأطفال

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

كنز غذائي على طبقك.. ماذا تفعل السبانخ بجسمك؟

ما لا يتوقعه أحد.. "سر غذائي" في الجبن الدسم

لتحسين الهضم والنوم.. هذا أفضل وقت لتناول العشاء

10 طرق بسيطة وغير مألوفة لحرق المزيد من السعرات يوميا

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

سابقة بعالم الطيران.. طائرة تقرر الهبوط بنفسها بعد ظرف طارئ

"الإنفلونزا الخارقة" تكتسح دول العالم.. وتثير قلقا كبيرا

مرحلة ما قبل الأعراض.. دواء جديد يستهدف "شرارة" الزهايمر

إزالة ثاني أكسيد الكربون من الغلاف الجوي.. ما دور المحيطات والبحار؟

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Why that order?

A note on geopolitical terminology

Saussure and the Course in General Linguistics

Structural linguistics

Meet the family

Nineteenth-century philology

The prescriptive tradition

Diachronic and synchronic variation

Semantic changes

Syntactic changes

Sound changes

Middle English