Beowulf: A quick lesson on linguistics Mr. Gillespie Advanced Placement English

The Earliest English Literature The Anglo-Saxon corpus of poetry and prose, dating back to around the 7 th century, provides the earliest glimpse of our linguistic roots. It is the origins of our language, our history, our literature, our art, and our identity.

It starts with the Angles and Saxons and Jutes— Germanic speaking raiders who began to settle on the Western Shores of Britain in the mid 400’s.

Angle-land, where they speak Anglish!

What does Old English sound like? Good question. To be truthfully unhelpful, no one really knows. But! A great deal of scholarship has been devoted to the subject and linguists, those who study language, have a sufficent set of criteria. –Alphabetical logic: We know how the Roman alphabet sounds so it is reasonable to assume that missionaries transcribed what they heard accurately. –Comparative Reconstruction: Working backwards. Several sounds of Modern English have close similarities with Old English. The problems are the vowel sounds. –Poetic evidence: The way poets rhyme and alliterate can provide helpful clues. So can the rythmical lines of verse, which can show the way a word is stressed. Compare modern English 'Good day' with the Old English Gódne dæg, modern Dutch Goedendag, or modern German Guten Tag.

Recognize this? Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum si þin nama gehalgod tobecume þin rice gewurþe þin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice.

Beowulf in Old English Here are the opening lines of the poem:

The Preface (lines 1-ff)

What happened to Old English? The French. Seriously, the French. In 1066, William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel from Normandy and defeated King Alfred at the Battle of Hastings. A new social, political, and linguistic era began. We’ll see more of this when we discuss Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, the great works of Middle English!