What language did the Anglo-Saxons speak?
Anglo-Saxons
Many Anglo-Saxon people needed to learn Norman French to communicate with their rulers, but it is clear that among themselves they kept speaking Old English, which meant that England was in an interesting tri-lingual situation: Anglo-Saxon for the common people, Latin for the Church, and Norman French for the administrators, the nobility, and the law courts. In this time, and due to the cultural shock of the Conquest, Anglo-Saxon began to change very rapidly, and by 1200 or so, it was no longer Anglo-Saxon English, but what scholars call early Middle English. But this language had deep roots in Anglo-Saxon, which was being spoken a lot later than 1066. Research in the early twentieth century, and still continuing today, has shown that a form of Anglo-Saxon was still being spoken, and not merely among uneducated peasants, into the thirteenth century in the West Midlands. This was J.R.R. Tolkien's major scholarly discovery when he studied a group of texts written in early Middle English called the Katherine Group, because they include the Life of St. Katherine (also, the Life of St. Margaret, the Life and the Passion of St. Juliana, Ancrene Wisse, and Hali Meithhad—these last two teaching how to be a good anchoress and arguing for the goodness of virginity). Tolkien noticed that a subtle distinction preserved in these texts indicated that Old English had continued to be spoken far longer than anyone had supposed. In Old English there is a distinction between two different kinds of verbs.
Anglo-Norman language
In general, the Norman and French borrowings concerned the fields of culture, aristocratic life, politics and religion, and war whereas the English words were used to describe everyday experience. When the Normans arrived in England, their copyists wrote English as they heard it, without realising the peculiarities of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon pronunciation and spelling and so the spelling changed. There appeared different regional Modern-English written dialects, the one that the king chose in the 15th century becoming the standard variety.
History of Anglo-Saxon England
The four main kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon England were:
History of French
After the conquest of England in 1066, the Normans's language developed into Anglo-Norman. Anglo-Norman served as the language of the ruling classes and commerce in England from the time of the conquest until the Hundred Years' War, by which time the use of French-influenced English had spread throughout English society.
West Germanic languages
Of modern German varieties, Low German is the one that most resembles modern English. The district of Angeln (or Anglia), from which the name "English" derives, is in the extreme northern part of Germany between the Danish border and the Baltic coast. The area of the Saxons (parts of today's Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony) lay south of Anglia. The Anglo-Saxons, two Germanic tribes, were a combination of a number of peoples from northern Germany and the Jutland Peninsula.
Etymology
When the Normans conquered England in 1066 (see Norman Conquest), they brought their Norman language with them. During the Anglo-Norman period, which united insular and continental territories, the ruling class spoke Anglo-Norman, while the peasants spoke the vernacular English of the time. Anglo-Norman was the conduit for the introduction of French into England, aided by the circulation of Langue d'oïl literature from France.
History of English
The dialects spoken by the Germanic settlers developed into a language that would come to be called Anglo-Saxon, or now more commonly Old English. It displaced the so-called indigenous Brittonic Celtic (and the Latin of the former Roman rulers) in parts of the areas of Britain that later formed the Kingdom of England, while Celtic languages remained in most of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, and many compound Celtic-Germanic placenames survive, hinting at early language mixing. Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which continue to be found in dialects of Modern English. The four main dialects were Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon; the last of these formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian.
History of English
Old English consisted of a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant; however, a greater input to Middle English came from the Anglian dialects. Global variation among different English dialects and accents remains significant today. Scots, a form of English traditionally spoken in parts of Scotland and the north of Ireland, is sometimes treated as a separate language.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
Before WASP came into use in the 1960s the term "Anglo Saxon" filled some of the same purposes. "Anglo-Saxons" by 1900 was often used as a synonym for all people of English descent and sometimes more generally, for all the English-speaking peoples of the world. It was often used in claims for the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, much to the annoyance of outsiders. For example, Josiah Strong boasted in 1890:
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary is a dictionary of Old English, a language that is also known as Anglo-Saxon. Four editions of the dictionary were published. It has often (especially in earlier times) been considered the definitive lexicon for Old English. It is often referred to by the names of its compilers, for example "Bosworth" or "Bosworth & Toller".
Anglo-Norman language
When the Normans invaded England, Anglo-Saxon literature had reached a very high level of development. The important Benedictine monasteries both wrote chronicles and guarded other works in Old English. However, with the arrival of the Norman, Anglo-Saxon literature came to an end and literature written in Britain was in Latin or Anglo-Norman. The Plantagenet kings encouraged this Anglo-Norman literature. Nevertheless, from the beginning of the 14th century, some authors chose to write in English, such as Geoffrey Chaucer. The authors of that period were influenced by the works of contemporary French writers whose language was prestigious. Chaucer is considered to be the father of the English language and the creator of English as a literary language.
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
Explaining linguistic change, and particularly the rise of Old English, is crucial in any account of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. The modern consensus is that the spread of English can be explained by a fairly small number of Germanic-speaking immigrants becoming politically dominant, in a context where Latin had lost its usefulness and prestige due to the collapse of the Roman economy and administration.
Scythians
Based on such accounts of Scythian founders of certain Germanic as well as Celtic tribes, British historiography in the British Empire period such as Sharon Turner in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons", made them the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons.
Anglo-Normans
The invading Normans came from the duchy of Normandy in the kingdom of France. They formed a ruling class in Britain, distinct from (although inter-marrying with) the native populations. Over time their language evolved from the continental Old Norman to the distinct Anglo-Norman language. Anglo-Normans quickly established control over all of England, as well as parts of Wales (the Cambro-Normans). After 1130, parts of southern and eastern Scotland came under Anglo-Norman rule (the Scoto-Normans), in return for their support of David I's conquest. The Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169 saw Anglo-Normans (or Cambro-Normans) settle vast swaths of Ireland, becoming the Hiberno-Normans.
English language in Europe
English is descended from the language spoken by the Germanic tribes of the German Bight along the southern coast of the North Sea, the Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes. According to the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", around 449 AD, Vortigern, King of the Britons, issued an invitation to the "Angle kin" (Angles, led by Hengest and Horsa), to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the southeast. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles and Jutes). The Chronicle documents the subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Wessex.
Anglo-Saxon burial mounds
The Anglo-Saxon peoples had migrated to Britain during the fifth century CE, settling primarily along the eastern areas of what is now England. They were adherents of a pagan religion.
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
But the consensus among experts today, influenced by research in contact linguistics, is that political dominance by a fairly small number of Old English-speakers could have driven large numbers of Britons to adopt Old English while leaving little detectable trace of this language-shift. The collapse of Britain's Roman economy and administrative structures seems to have left Britons living in a technologically similar society to their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, making it unlikely that Anglo-Saxons would need to borrow words for unfamiliar concepts. If Old English became the most prestigious language in a particular region, speakers of other languages may have found it advantageous to become bilingual and, over a few generations, stop speaking the less prestigious languages (in this case British Celtic and/or British Latin). This account, which demands only small numbers of politically dominant Germanic-speaking migrants to Britain, has become 'the standard explanation' for the gradual death of Celtic and spoken Latin in post-Roman Britain.
Avebury
In the Early Mediaeval period, which began in the 5th century following the collapse of Roman rule, Anglo-Saxon tribes from continental Europe migrated to southern Britain, where they may have come into conflict with the Britons already settled there. Aubrey Burl suggested the possibility that a small group of British warriors may have used Avebury as a fortified site to defend themselves from Anglo-Saxon attack. He gained this idea from etymological evidence, suggesting that the site may have been called "weala-dic", meaning "moat of the Britons", in Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons.
Anglo-Saxon runes
Anglo-Saxon runes are runes used by the early Anglo-Saxons as an alphabet in their writing. The characters are known collectively as the futhorc (or "fuþorc"), from the Old English sound values of the first six runes. The futhorc was a development from the 24-character Elder Futhark. Since the futhorc runes are thought to have first been used in Frisia before the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, they have also been called Anglo-Frisian runes. They were likely used from the 5th century onward, recording Old English and Old Frisian.
Ancient history
Anglo-Saxon is the term usually used to describe the peoples living in the south and east of Great Britain from the early 5th century AD. Benedictine monk Bede identified them as the descendants of three Germanic tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, from the Jutland peninsula and Lower Saxony (, Germany). The Angles may have come from Angeln, and Bede wrote their nation came to Britain, leaving their land empty. They spoke closely related Germanic dialects. The Anglo-Saxons knew themselves as the "Englisc," from which the word "English" derives.
Sub-Roman Britain
While pushed back politically and linguistically, British scholars and ecclesiastics had a significant impact on the Anglo-Saxon newcomers through literacy, ecclesiastical social constructs and historical memory of the Roman period in Britain, particularly after the Christianizing of the Anglo-Saxons. Coming from a fully oral cultural background, the Anglo-Saxons were heavily influenced by the more developed Christianized and literate culture of the Britons. British scholars were often employed at Anglo-Saxon courts to assist in the management of the kingdoms. This reintroduced British culture to those parts of Britain lost to the British politically. The epitome of this process is the adoption of the legendary British war leader, King Arthur, as the national hero of the English, due to the literary work of Welsh historians.
Anglo-Saxon architecture
Anglo-Saxon architecture was a period in the history of architecture in England, and parts of Wales, from the mid-5th century until the Norman Conquest of 1066. Anglo-Saxon secular buildings in Britain were generally simple, constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. No universally accepted example survives above ground.
Norse activity in the British Isles
During the Early Medieval period, Ireland and Britain were culturally, linguistically and religiously divided into various peoples. The languages of the Celtic Britons and Gaels were descended from the Celtic languages spoken by those of Iron Age Europe. In Ireland, parts of western Scotland, as well as the Isle of Man, people were speaking an early form of Gaelic known as Old Irish. There may have been another pre-Indo-European language spoken by the Erainn up until the 8th century in what is today Kerry, but this is likely to have been Celtic or some other Indo-European language. In Western Britain, which includes; Cornwall, Cumbria, Wales, and Southwest Scotland, the Celtic Brythonic languages were spoken, with modern descendants such as Welsh and Cornish still being used. In Northern Britain, past the Forth and Clyde rivers which constitutes a large portion of modern-day Scotland, dwelled the Picts who spoke the Pictish language. Due to the scarcity of writing in Pictish, all of which can be found in Ogham, views are conflicted as to whether Pictish was Celtic like the southernly languages, or perhaps even a non-Indo-European language like Basque. However, most inscriptions and place names hint towards the Picts being Celtic in language and culture. Most peoples of Britain and Ireland had already predominantly converted to Christianity from their older, pre-Christian polytheistic religions. In contrast to the rest of the isles though, much of southern Britain was considered to be part of Anglo-Saxon England, where Anglo-Saxon migrants from continental Europe had settled during the 5th century CE, bringing with them their own Germanic language (known as Old English), a polytheistic religion (Anglo-Saxon paganism) and their own distinct cultural practices. By the time of the Viking incursions though, Anglo-Saxon England had too become mostly Christian.
History of Anglo-Saxon England
There are records of Germanic infiltration into Britain that date before the collapse of the Roman Empire. It is believed that the earliest Germanic visitors were eight cohorts of Batavians attached to the 14th Legion in the original invasion force under Aulus Plautius in AD 43. There is a recent hypothesis that some of the native tribes, identified as Britons by the Romans, may have been Germanic-language speakers, but most scholars disagree with this due to an insufficient record of local languages in Roman-period artefacts.
English people
This belief is now regarded by many historians as incorrect, on the basis of more recent genetic and archaeological research. Based on a re-estimation of the number of settlers, some have taken the view that it is highly unlikely that the British Celtic-speaking population was substantially displaced by the Anglo-Saxons and that instead a process of acculturation took place, with an Anglo-Saxon ruling elite imposing their culture on the local populations. Research into the genetic history of the British Isles, conducted by Stephen Oppenheimer in 2007 appears to support this theory, not showing a clear dividing line between the English and their 'Celtic' neighbours but a gradual clinal change from west coast Britain to east coast Britain, originating from upper palaeolithic and Mesolithic era variations in a pre-Indo-European population, which Oppenheimer argues form the basis of the modern population of the British Isles rather than Germanic tribes or Celts. More recent genetic studies of ancient British DNA have refuted the hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon invaders formed an elite class largely separate from the indigenous population, finding that samples from culturally Anglo-Saxon graveyards contained individuals who were more Celtic, suggesting a high level of intermingling between the Anglo-Saxons and the native Britons.
Old English (disambiguation)
Old English is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons until the 12th century.
English society
After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, society seemed fixed and unchanging for several centuries, but gradual and significant changes were still taking place, the exact nature of which would not be appreciated until much later. The Norman lords spoke Norman French, and in order to work for them or gain advantage, the English had to use the Anglo-Norman language that developed in England. This became a necessary administrative and literary language (see Anglo-Norman literature), but despite this the English language was not supplanted, and after gaining much in grammar and vocabulary began in turn to replace the language of the rulers. At the same time the population of England more than doubled between Domesday and the end of the 13th century, and this growth was not checked by the almost continual foreign warfare, crusades and occasional civil anarchy.
Kingdom of England
The Anglo-Saxons referred to themselves as the "Engle" or the "Angelcynn", originally names of the Angles. They called their land "Engla land", meaning "land of the English", 
by Æthelweard Latinized "Anglia", from an original "Anglia vetus", the purported homeland of the Angles (called "Angulus" by Bede). The name "Engla land" became "England" by haplology during the Middle English period ("Engle-land", "Engelond"). The Latin name was "Anglia" or "Anglorum terra", the Old French and Anglo-Norman one "Angleterre". By the 14th century, "England" was also used in reference to the entire island of Great Britain.
Anglo-Saxon riddles
Anglo-Saxon riddles are part of Anglo-Saxon literature. The riddle was a major, prestigious literary genre in Anglo-Saxon England, and riddles were written both in Latin and Old English verse. The most famous Anglo-Saxon riddles are in Old English and found in the tenth-century Exeter Book, while the pre-eminent Anglo-Saxon composer of Latin riddles was the seventh- to eighth-century scholar Aldhelm.
History of German
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is a West Germanic language. It is documented from the 9th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in Denmark by Saxon peoples. It is closely related to Old Anglo-Frisian (Old Frisian, Old English), partially participating in the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law.
England
As its name suggests, the English language, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the principal tongue spoken by 98% of the population. It is an Indo-European language in the Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic family. After the Norman conquest, the Old English language was displaced and confined to the lower social classes as Norman French and Latin were used by the aristocracy.
Anglo-Saxons
Outside Anglophone countries, both in Europe and in the rest of the world, the term "Anglo-Saxon" and its direct translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the United States, and other countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand – areas which are sometimes referred to as the Anglosphere. The term "Anglo-Saxon" can be used in a variety of contexts, often to identify the English-speaking world's distinctive language, culture, technology, wealth, markets, economy, and legal systems. Variations include the German "Angelsachsen", French "Anglo-Saxon", Spanish "anglosajón", Portuguese "Anglo-saxão", Russian "англосаксы", Polish "anglosaksoński", Italian "anglosassone", Catalan "anglosaxó" and Japanese "Angurosakuson". As with the English-language use of the term, what constitutes the "Anglo-Saxon" varies from speaker to speaker.
History of Anglo-Saxon England
If the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" is to be believed, the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which eventually merged to become England were founded when small fleets of three or five ships of invaders arrived at various points around the coast of England to fight the Sub-Roman British, and conquered their lands. The language of the migrants, Old English, came over the next few centuries to predominate throughout what is now England, at the expense of British Celtic and British Latin.
Anglo-Saxons
Use of the term "Anglo-Saxon" assumes that the words "Angles", "Saxons" or "Anglo-Saxon" have the same meaning in all the sources. This term began to be used only in the 8th century to distinguish "Germanic" groups in Britain from those on the continent (Old Saxony in Northern Germany). Catherine Hills summarised the views of many modern scholars in her observation that attitudes towards Anglo-Saxons, and hence the interpretation of their culture and history, have been "more contingent on contemporary political and religious theology as on any kind of evidence."
Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages
Chapter 2, 'The Rise of English', focuses on the much debated question of whether English, and particularly Old English, shows any sign of contact between the West Germanic-speaking immigrants who became the Anglo-Saxons and the speakers of British Celtic and Latin whom these immigrants encountered during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain around the fifth century CE. The chapter argues that Middle English betrays the belated appearance of contact features, which had been previously obscured by the literary conservatism of Anglo-Saxon writing, but focuses on Old English phonology. It argues that this contains features strikingly similar to Old Irish (particularly regarding the Old English vowel-changes known as '"i"-umlaut' and 'breaking'), and that in these respects Old Irish may provide good evidence for the kind of Celtic spoken in south-eastern Roman Britain at the time of the Anglo-Saxon settlements. Thus it argues that Old English does show Celtic influence.
19th-century Anglo-Saxonism
19th-century Anglo-Saxonism was a period of intellectual discourse across mainly English-speaking territories in the 19th-century, in which a racial, linguistic and cultural idealogy was theorized and promoted across the existing and former British Empire.
19th-century Anglo-Saxonism
Anglo-Saxonism of the era sought to emphasize Britain's cultural and racial ties with Germany, frequently referring to Teutonic peoples as a source of strength and similarity. Contemporary historian Robert Boyce notes that many 19th-century British politicans promoted these Germanic links, such as Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer who said that it was "in the free forests of Germany that the infant genius of our liberty was nursed", and Thomas Arnold who claimed that "Our English race is the German race; for though our Norman fathers had learned to speak a stranger’s language, yet in blood, as we know, they were the Saxon’s brethren both alike belonging to the Teutonic or German stock". American scholar Mary Dockray-Miller expands on this concept to suggest that pre-World War I Anglo-Saxonism ideology helped establish the "primacy of northern European ancestry in United States culture at large".
Anglo-Saxons
Near the end of the Old English period the English language underwent a third foreign influence, namely the Scandinavian influence of Old Norse. In addition to a great many place names, these consist mainly of items of basic vocabulary, and words concerned with particular administrative aspects of the Danelaw (that is, the area of land under Viking control, which included extensive holdings all along the eastern coast of England and Scotland). The Scandinavians spoke Old Norse, a language related to Old English in that both derived from the same ancestral Proto-Germanic language. It is very common for the intermixing of speakers of different dialects, such as those that occur during times of political unrest, to result in a mixed language, and one theory holds that exactly such a mixture of Old Norse and Old English is thought to have accelerated the decline of case endings in Old English. The influence of Old Norse on the lexicon of the English language has been profound: responsible for such basic vocabulary items as "sky", "leg", the pronoun "they" and hundreds of other words.
Norman conquest of England
One of the most obvious effects of the conquest was the introduction of Anglo-Norman, a northern Old Norse-influenced dialect of Old French, as the language of the ruling classes in England, displacing Old English. Norman French words entered the English language, and a further sign of the shift was the usage of names common in France instead of Anglo-Saxon names. Male names such as William, Robert and Richard soon became common; female names changed more slowly. The Norman invasion had little impact on placenames, which had changed significantly after earlier Scandinavian invasions. It is not known precisely how much English the Norman invaders learned, nor how much the knowledge of Norman French spread among the lower classes, but the demands of trade and basic communication probably meant that at least some of the Normans and native English were bilingual. Nevertheless, William the Conqueror never developed a working knowledge of English and for centuries afterwards English was not well understood by the nobility.
British Latin
In most of what was to become England, the Anglo-Saxon settlement and the consequent introduction of Old English appear to have caused the extinction of Vulgar Latin as a vernacular. The Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic people, spread westward across Britain in the 5th century to the 7th century, leaving only Cornwall and Wales in the southern part of the country and the Hen Ogledd in the north under British rule. The demise of Vulgar Latin in the face of Anglo-Saxon settlement is very different from the fate of the language in other areas of Western Europe which were subject to Germanic migration, like France, Italy and Spain, where Latin and the Romance languages continued.
History of English
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon settlers from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands, displacing the Celtic languages that previously predominated.
Anglo-Saxon model
The Anglo-Saxon model or Anglo-Saxon capitalism (so called because it is practiced in English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland) is a capitalist model that emerged in the 1970s based on the Chicago school of economics. However, its origins date to the 18th century in the United Kingdom under the ideas of the classical economist Adam Smith.
Sub-Roman Britain
Two contrasting models of the end of sub-Roman Britain have been described by Richard Reece as "decline and immigration" and "invasion and displacement". It has long been held that the Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain in large numbers in the 5th and 6th centuries, substantially displacing the British people. The Anglo-Saxon historian Frank Stenton in 1943, although making considerable allowance for British survival, essentially sums up this view, arguing "that the greater part of southern England was overrun in the first phase of the war". This interpretation was based on the written sources, particularly Gildas but also the later sources such as the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, that cast the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons as a violent event. The toponymic and linguistic evidence was also considered to support this interpretation, as very few British place names survived in eastern Britain, very few British Celtic words entered the Old English language and the Brythonic language and peoples migrated from south-western Britain to Armorica, which eventually became Brittany. This interpretation particularly appealed to earlier English historians, who wanted to further their view that England had developed differently from Europe, with a limited monarchy and love of liberty. This, it was argued, came from the mass Anglo-Saxon invasions. While this view was never universal – Edward Gibbon believed that there had been a great deal of British survival – it was the dominant paradigm. Though many scholars would now employ this argument, the traditional view is still held by many other historians, Lawrence James writing in 2002 that England was "submerged by an Anglo-Saxon current which swept away the Romano-British."
History of Anglo-Saxon England
Anglo-Saxon England was early medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066. It consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927 when it was united as the Kingdom of England by King Æthelstan (r. 927–939). It became part of the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway in the 11th century.
History of English
The Scandinavians, or Norsemen, spoke dialects of a North Germanic language known as Old Norse. The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thus spoke related languages from different branches (West and North) of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammatical systems were more divergent. Probably significant numbers of Norse speakers settled in the Danelaw during the period of Scandinavian control. Many place-names in those areas are of Scandinavian provenance (those ending in "-by", for example); it is believed that the settlers often established new communities in places that had not previously been developed by the Anglo-Saxons. The extensive contact between Old English and Old Norse speakers, including the possibility of intermarriage that resulted from the acceptance of Christianity by the Danes in 878, undoubtedly influenced the varieties of those languages spoken in the areas of contact. Some scholars even believe that Old English and Old Norse underwent a kind of fusion and that the resulting English language might be described as a mixed language or creole. During the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the first half of the 11th century, a kind of diglossia may have come about, with the West Saxon literary language existing alongside the Norse-influenced Midland dialect of English, which could have served as a koine or spoken lingua franca. When Danish rule ended, and particularly after the Norman Conquest, the status of the minority Norse language presumably declined relative to that of English, and its remaining speakers assimilated to English in a process involving language shift and language death. The widespread bilingualism that must have existed during the process possibly contributed to the rate of borrowings from Norse into English.
History of English
The Old English of the Anglo-Saxon era developed into Middle English, which was spoken from the Norman Conquest era to the late 15th century. A significant influence on the shaping of Middle English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavians who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries; this contact led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. Another important influence came from the conquering Normans, who spoke a Romance langue d'oïl called Old Norman, which in Britain developed into Anglo-Norman. Many Norman and French loanwords entered the language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the church, the court system and the government. The system of orthography that was established during the Middle English period is largely still in use today – later changes in pronunciation, however, combined with the adoption of various foreign spellings, mean that the spelling of modern English words appears highly irregular.
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
Catherine Hills points out that it is too easy to consider Anglo-Saxon archaeology solely as a study of ethnology and to fail to consider that identity is "less related to an overall Anglo-Saxon ethnicity and more to membership of family or tribe, Christian or pagan, elite or peasant". "Anglo-Saxons" or "Britons" were no more homogeneous than nationalities are today, and they would have exhibited diverse characteristics: male/female, old/young, rich/poor, farmer/warrior—or even Gildas' "patria" (fellow citizens), "cives" (indigenous people) and "hostes" (enemies)—as well as a diversity associated with language. Beyond these, in the early Anglo-Saxon period, identity was local: although people would have known their neighbours, it may have been important to indicate tribal loyalty with details of clothing and especially fasteners. It is also unlikely that people would have thought of themselves as Anglo-Saxon: instead they were part of a tribe or region, descendants of a patron or followers of a leader. It is this identity that archaeological evidence seeks to understand and determine, considering how it might support separate identity groups, or identities that were inter-connected.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
Like the newer term "WASP," the old term "Anglo-Saxon" was used derisively by writers hostile to an informal alliance between Britain and the U.S. The negative use was especially common among Irish Americans and writers in France. "Anglo-Saxon", meaning in effect the whole Anglosphere, remains a term favored by the French, used disapprovingly in contexts such as criticism of the Special Relationship of close diplomatic relations between the US and Britain and complaints about perceived "Anglo-Saxon" cultural or political dominance. It also remains in use in Ireland as a term for the British or English, and sometimes in Scottish Nationalist discourse. Irish-American humorist Finley Peter Dunne popularized the ridicule of "Anglo Saxon", even calling President Theodore Roosevelt one. Roosevelt insisted he was Dutch. "To be genuinely Irish is to challenge WASP dominance," argues California politician Tom Hayden. The depiction of the Irish in the films of John Ford was a counterpoint to WASP standards of rectitude. "The procession of rambunctious and feckless Celts through Ford's films, Irish and otherwise, was meant to cock a snoot at WASP or 'lace-curtain Irish' ideas of respectability."
English language in Europe
After Scots and Frisian, the next closest relative is modern Low German of the eastern Netherlands and northern Germany, which was the old homeland of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain. Other less closely related living languages include Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages (which do not include Finnish). Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker, as English absorbed a tremendous amount of vocabulary from the Norman language after the Norman conquest and from French in later centuries; as a result, a substantial proportion of English vocabulary is very close to the French, with some slight spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.) and some occasional lapses in meaning.
Normans
Eventually, the Normans merged with the natives, combining languages and traditions, so much so that Marjorie Chibnall says "writers still referred to Normans and English; but the terms no longer meant the same as in the immediate aftermath of 1066." In the course of the Hundred Years' War, the Norman aristocracy often identified themselves as English. The Anglo-Norman language became distinct from the Latin language, something that was the subject of some humour by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Anglo-Norman language was eventually absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon language of their subjects (see Old English) and influenced it, helping (along with the Norse language of the earlier Anglo-Norse settlers and the Latin used by the church) in the development of Middle English. It in turn evolved into Modern English.
Anglo-Saxon paganism
The pre-Christian society of Anglo-Saxon England was illiterate. Thus there is no contemporary written evidence produced by Anglo-Saxon pagans themselves. Instead, our primary textual source material derives from later authors, such as Bede and the anonymous author of the "Life of St Wilfrid", who wrote in Latin rather than in Old English. These writers were not interested in providing a full portrait of the Anglo-Saxons' pre-Christian belief systems, and thus our textual portrayal of these religious beliefs is fragmentary and incidental. Also perhaps useful are the writings of those Christian Anglo-Saxon missionaries who were active in converting the pagan societies of continental Europe, namely Willibrord and Boniface, as well as the writings of the 1st century AD Roman writer Tacitus, who commented upon the pagan religions of the Anglo-Saxons' ancestors in continental Europe. The historian Frank Stenton commented that the available texts only provide us with "a dim impression" of pagan religion in Anglo-Saxon England, while similarly, the archaeologist David Wilson commented that written sources "should be treated with caution and viewed as suggestive rather than in any way definitive".
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century, and the direct ancestors of the majority of the modern British people. They comprise people from Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe, their descendants, and indigenous British groups who adopted many aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language; the cultural foundations laid by the Anglo-Saxons are the foundation of the modern English legal system and of many aspects of English society; the modern English language owes over half its words – including the most common words of everyday speech – to the language of the Anglo-Saxons. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement and up until the Norman conquest.
The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including regional government of shires and hundreds. During this period, Christianity was established and there was a flowering of literature and language. Charters and law were also established. The term "Anglo-Saxon" is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. In scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English.
Anglo-Saxons
Some of the characteristics of the language were: adjectives, pronouns and (sometimes) participles that agreed with their antecedent nouns in case, number and gender; finite verbs that agreed with their subject in person and number; and nouns that came in numerous declensions (with deep parallels in Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit). Verbs came in nine main conjugations (seven "strong" and two "weak"), each with numerous subtypes, as well as a few additional smaller conjugations and a handful of irregular verbs. The main difference from other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, is that verbs can be conjugated in only two tenses (vs. the six "tenses" – really tense/aspect combinations – of Latin), and have no synthetic passive voice (although it did still exist in Gothic). Gender in nouns was grammatical, as opposed to the natural gender that prevails in modern English.
Anglo-Saxons
The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity, and was integral to the establishment of various kingdoms. Threatened by extended Danish invasions and military occupation of eastern England, this identity was re-established; it dominated until after the Norman Conquest. The visible Anglo-Saxon culture can be seen in the material culture of buildings, dress styles, illuminated texts and grave goods. Behind the symbolic nature of these cultural emblems, there are strong elements of tribal and lordship ties. The elite declared themselves as kings who developed "burhs", and identified their roles and peoples in Biblical terms. Above all, as Helena Hamerow has observed, "local and extended kin groups remained...the essential unit of production throughout the Anglo-Saxon period." The effects persist in the 21st century as, according to a study published in March 2015, the genetic makeup of British populations today shows divisions of the tribal political units of the early Anglo-Saxon period.
English literature
After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives, and the Norman dialects of the ruling classes became Anglo-Norman. From then until the 12th century, Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English. Political power was no longer in English hands, so that the West Saxon literary language had no more influence than any other dialect and Middle English literature was written in the many dialects that corresponded to the region, history, culture, and background of individual writers.
Sumorsaete
The native Britons of the Southwest at this time spoke a variant of the Common Brittonic language ancestral to Cornish. Anglo-Saxon settlers introduced Old English. The Anglo-Saxons established control over much of what is now England by 600, but were held off at British-held Somerset. However, by the early 8th century King Ine of Wessex had pushed the boundaries of the West Saxon kingdom far enough west to include Somerset. The Saxon royal palace in Cheddar was used several times in the 10th century to host the Witenagemot.
Anglo-Norman language
Anglo-Norman, also known as Anglo-Norman French, was a dialect of French that was used in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
Historically, "Anglo-Saxon" referred to the language of indigenous inhabitants of England before 1066, especially in contrast to Norman French influence after that. Since the 19th century it has been in common use in the English-speaking world, but not in Britain itself (in this context), to refer to Protestants of principally English descent. The "W" and "P" were added in the 1950s to form a humorous epithet with an undertone of "waspishness".
Anglo-Norman language
During the 15th century, English became the main spoken language, but Latin and French continued to be exclusively used in official legal documents until the beginning of the 18th century. Nevertheless, the French language used in England changed from the end of the 15th century into Law French. This variety of French was a technical language, with a specific vocabulary, where English words were used to describe everyday experience, and French grammatical rules and morphology gradually declined, with confusion of genders and the adding of "-s" to form all plurals. Law French was banished from the courts of the common law in 1731, almost three centuries after the king ceased speaking primarily French.
Anglo-Saxon mission
Anglo-Saxon missionaries were instrumental in the spread of Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 8th century, continuing the work of Hiberno-Scottish missionaries which had been spreading Celtic Christianity across the Frankish Empire as well as in Scotland and Anglo-Saxon England itself during the 6th century (see Anglo-Saxon Christianity).
Anglo-Saxons
The term "Anglo-Saxon" is sometimes used to refer to peoples descended or associated in some way with the English ethnic group, but there is no universal definition for the term. In contemporary Anglophone cultures outside Britain, "Anglo-Saxon" may be contrasted with "Celtic" as a socioeconomic identifier, invoking or reinforcing historical prejudices against non-English British immigrants. "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant", i.e. WASP, is a term especially popular in the United States that refers chiefly to old wealthy families with mostly English ancestors. As such, WASP is not a historical label or a precise ethnological term, but rather a (often derogatory) reference to contemporary family-based political, financial and cultural power— e.g., The Boston Brahmin. The French often use "Anglo-Saxon" to refer to the combined power of Britain and the US today.
Magic in Anglo-Saxon England
Either way, the Anglo-Saxon populace of England adopted many cultural traits that differed from those in the preceding Iron Age and Romano-British periods. They adopted Old English, a Germanic language that differed markedly from the Celtic and Latin languages previously spoken, whilst they apparently abandoned Christianity, a monotheistic religion devoted to the worship of one God, and instead began following Anglo-Saxon paganism, a polytheistic faith revolving around the veneration of several deities. Differences to people's daily material culture also became apparent, as those living in England ceased living in roundhouses and instead began constructing rectangular timber homes that were like those found in Denmark and northern Germany. Art forms also changed as jewellery began exhibiting the increasing influence of Migration Period Art from continental Europe.
Brittonicisms in English
Brittonicisms in English are the linguistic effects in English attributed to the historical influence of Brittonic speakers as they switched language to English following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon political dominance in Britain.
The research into this topic uses a variety of approaches to approximate the Romano-British language spoken in Sub-Roman Britain on the eve of the Anglo-Saxon arrival. Besides the earliest extant Old Welsh texts, Breton is useful for its lack of English influence.
Anglo-Saxons
The Old English ethnonym ""Angul-Seaxan"" comes from the Latin "Angli-Saxones" and became the name of the peoples Bede calls Anglorum and Gildas calls Saxones. Anglo-Saxon is a term that was rarely used by Anglo-Saxons themselves; it is not an autonym. It is likely they identified as "ængli", "Seaxe" or, more probably, a local or tribal name such as "Mierce", "Cantie", "Gewisse", "Westseaxe", or "Norþanhymbre". Also, the use of Anglo-Saxon disguises the extent to which people identified as Anglo-Scandinavian after the Viking age, or as Anglo-Norman after the Norman conquest in 1066.
Anglo-Norman language
Middle English was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman and, later, Anglo-French. W. Rothwell has called Anglo-French 'the missing link' because many etymological dictionaries seem to ignore the contribution of that language in English and because Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French can explain the transmission of words from French into English and fill the void left by the absence of documentary records of English (in the main) between 1066 and c. 1380.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the "Chronicle" was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the "Chronicle" was still being actively updated in 1154.
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
One theory, first set out by Edward Augustus Freeman, suggests that the Anglo Saxons and the Britons were competing cultures, and that through invasion, extermination, slavery, and forced resettlement the Anglo-Saxons defeated the Britons and consequently their culture and language prevailed.
This view has influenced much of the linguistic, scholarly and popular perceptions of the process of anglicisation in Britain. It remains the starting point and 'default position', to which other hypotheses are compared in modern reviews of the evidence. Widespread extermination and displacement of the native peoples of Britain is still considered a viable possibility by certain scholars. Our best contemporary source, Gildas, certainly suggests that just such a change of populations did take place. However, Freeman's ideas did not go unchallenged, even as they were being propounded. In particular, the essayist Grant Allen believed in a strong Celtic contribution to Englishness.
Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge
The study of Anglo-Saxon England and its neighbouring regions has deep roots at Cambridge, beginning with the sixteenth-century Archbishop Matthew Parker. The first half of the seventeenth century saw Abraham Wheelocke hold a readership in Anglo-Saxon, and in 1657 John Spelman bestowed on William Somner the annual stipend of the Anglo-Saxon lecture founded by his father, Sir Henry Spelman, at Cambridge, enabling him to complete the first Old English dictionary. After a lull in interest in Old English, in the nineteenth century, John Mitchell Kemble developed the study of Old English and Anglo-Saxon archaeology at Trinity College, and Joseph Bosworth, another Anglo-Saxonist who was associated with Trinity, endowed the Elrington and Bosworth Chair in Anglo-Saxon, established in 1878, and first held by Walter William Skeat. Strengths at Cambridge in Old Norse were built up by Eiríkur Magnússon (1833–1913) and in Celtic studies by Edmund Crosby Quiggin (1875–1920).
Anglo-Americans
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language who comprise the majority of people who speak English as a first language. This usage originated in the discussion of the history of English-speaking people of the United States and the Spanish-speaking people residing in the western United States during the Mexican–American War.
List of English words of French origin
Most of the French vocabulary now appearing in English was imported over the centuries following the Norman Conquest of 1066, when England came under the administration of Norman-speaking peoples. William the Conqueror invaded the British Isles, distributing lands and property to the Normans. As a result, Anglo-Norman French became the language of culture and the administration. The majority of the population of England continued to use their Anglo-Saxon language, but it was influenced by the language of the ruling elite, resulting in doublets. Consider for example the words for the meats eaten by the Anglo-Norman nobility and the corresponding animals raised by the Anglo-Saxon peasants: / , / , / , / , or pairs of words pertaining to different registers of language: / , / , / , / , / , / , / . Words of French origin often refer to more abstract or elaborate notions than their Anglo-Saxon equivalents (e.g. / , / ), and are therefore of less frequent use in everyday language. This may not, however, be the case for all English words of French origin. Consider, for example: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and .
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
All linguistic evidence from Roman Britain suggests that most inhabitants spoke British Celtic and/or British Latin. However, by the eighth century, when extensive evidence for the post-Roman language situation is next available, it is clear that the dominant language in what is now eastern and southern England was Old English, whose West Germanic predecessors were spoken in what is now the Netherlands and northern Germany. Old English then continued spreading westwards and northwards in the ensuing centuries. This development is strikingly different from, for example, post-Roman Gaul, Iberia, or North Africa, where Germanic-speaking invaders gradually switched to local languages. Old English shows little obvious influence from Celtic or spoken Latin: there are for example vanishingly few English words of Brittonic origin. Moreover, except in Cornwall, the vast majority of place-names in England are easily etymologised as Old English (or Old Norse, due to later Viking influence), demonstrating the dominance of English across post-Roman England. Intensive research in recent decades on Celtic toponymy has shown that more names in England and southern Scotland have Brittonic, or occasionally Latin, etymologies than was once thought, but even so, it is clear that Brittonic and Latin place-names in the eastern half of England are extremely rare, and although they are noticeably more common in the western half, they are still a tiny minority─2% in Cheshire, for example.
Celtic language decline in England
The consensus among experts today is therefore that political dominance by a fairly small number of Old English-speakers could have driven large numbers of Britons to adopt Old English while leaving little detectable trace of this language-shift. If Old English became the most prestigious language in a particular region, speakers of other languages there would have sought to become bilingual and, over a few generations, stop speaking the less prestigious languages (in this case British Celtic and/or British Latin). The collapse of Britain's Roman economy seems to have left Britons living in a technologically similar society to their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, making it unlikely that Anglo-Saxons would need to borrow words for unfamiliar concepts. Sub-Roman Britain saw a greater collapse in Roman institutions and infrastructure when compared to the situation in Roman Gaul and Hispania, perhaps especially after 407 A.D., when it is probable that most or all of the Roman field army stationed in Britain was withdrawn to support the continental ambitions of Constantine III. This would have led to a more dramatic reduction in the status and prestige of the Romanized culture in Britain, meaning that incoming Anglo-Saxons had little incentive to adopt British Celtic or Latin, while local people were more likely to abandon their languages in favour of the now higher status language of the Anglo-Saxons. In these circumstances, it is plausible that Old English would borrow few words from the lower-status language(s). Comparable language-shifts might be the eastward spread of Gaelic across what is now Scotland during the early Middle Ages; the seventh- to ninth-century spread of Slavonic dialects in the Balkan region of the Eastern Roman Empire under the Bulgarian Empire; or the later spread of Middle High German into previously Slavonic-speaking regions.
Anglo-Norman language
When William the Conqueror led the Norman conquest of England in 1066, he, his nobles, and many of his followers from Normandy, but also those from northern and western France, spoke a range of langues d'oïl (northern varieties of Gallo-Romance). One of these was Old Norman, also known as "Old Northern French". Other followers spoke varieties of the Picard language or western French. This amalgam developed into the unique insular dialect now known as Anglo-Norman French, which was commonly used for literary and eventually administrative purposes from the 12th until the 15th century. It is difficult to know much about what was actually spoken, as what is known about the dialect is restricted to what was written, but it is clear that Anglo-Norman was, to a large extent, the spoken language of the higher social strata in medieval England.
Saxons
"England" in Scottish Gaelic is "Sasann" (older spelling: "Sasunn", Genitive: "Sasainn"). Other examples include the Welsh "Saesneg" (the English language), Irish "Sasana" (England), Breton "saoz(on)" (English, "saozneg" "the English language", Bro-saoz "England"), and Cornish "Sowson" (English people), "Sowsnek" (English language), and "Pow Sows" for 'Land [Pays] of Saxons'.
Foreign language influences in English
The core of English language descends from Old English, the language brought with the Angles, Saxon, and Jutish settlers to what was to be called England in and after the 500s. The bulk of the language in spoken and written texts is from this source. As a statistical rule, around 70 percent of words in any text are Anglo-Saxon. Moreover, the grammar is largely Anglo-Saxon.
Anglo-Saxons
The most noticeable feature of the Anglo-Saxon legal system is the apparent prevalence of legislation in the form of law codes. The early Anglo-Saxons were organised in various small kingdoms often corresponding to later shires or counties. The kings of these small kingdoms issued written Laws, one of earliest of which is that attributed to Ethelbert, king of Kent, ca.560–616. The Anglo-Saxon law codes follow a pattern found in continental Europe where other groups of the former Roman empire encountered government dependent upon written sources of law and hastened to display the claims of their own native traditions by reducing them to writing. These legal systems should not be thought of as operating like modern legislation, rather they are educational and political tools designed to demonstrate standards of good conduct rather than act as criteria for subsequent legal judgment.
German diaspora
The Anglo-Saxon tribe were the population in Britain descended from the Germanic tribes who migrated from continental Europe and settled the south and east of the island beginning in the early 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of English history after their initial settlement through their creation of the English nation, up to the Norman conquest; that is, between about 550 and 1066.[1][2] The term Anglo-Saxon is also used for the language, today more correctly called Old English, that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England (and parts of south-eastern Scotland) between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century, after which it is known as Middle English.[3]
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain describes the process which changed the language and culture of most of what became England from Romano-British to Germanic. The Germanic-speakers in Britain, themselves of diverse origins, eventually developed a common cultural identity as Anglo-Saxons. This process occurred from the mid-fifth to early seventh centuries, following the end of Roman power in Britain around the year 410. The settlement was followed by the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the south and east of Britain, later followed by the rest of modern England.
Anglo-Saxons
The early Anglo-Saxon period covers the history of medieval Britain that starts from the end of Roman rule. It is a period widely known in European history as the Migration Period, also the "Völkerwanderung" ("migration of peoples" in German). This was a period of intensified human migration in Europe from about 400 to 800. The migrants were Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii, and Franks; they were later pushed westwards by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, and Alans. The migrants to Britain might also have included the Huns and Rugini.
Languages of the United Kingdom
The Scots language originated from Northumbrian Old English. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria stretched from south Yorkshire to the Firth of Forth from where the Scottish elite continued the language shift northwards. Since there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots. Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Focused broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other. Consequently, Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, but with its own distinct dialects. Alternatively Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way Norwegian is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish.
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
An idiosyncratic view that has won extensive popular attention is Stephen Oppenheimer's suggestion that the lack of Celtic influence on English is because the ancestor of English was already widely spoken in Britain by the Belgae before the end of the Roman period. However, Oppenheimer's ideas have not been found helpful in explaining the known facts: there is no evidence for a well established Germanic language in Britain before the fifth century, and Oppenheimer's idea contradicts the extensive evidence for the use of Celtic and Latin.
Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England
Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms began in AD 597, influenced by Celtic Christianity from the north-west and by the Roman church from the south-east, gradually replacing Anglo-Saxon polytheism which had been introduced to what is now England over the course of the 5th and 6th centuries with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. The first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine took office in 597 AD. In 601, he baptized the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Æthelberht of Kent. The last pagan Anglo-Saxon/Jutish king, Arwald, died in 686.
History of English
For centuries after the Conquest, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles spoke Anglo-Norman, a variety of Old Norman, originating from a northern langue d'oïl dialect. Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman and English, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people. Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman, and later Anglo-French (see characteristics of the Anglo-Norman language).
Until the 14th century, Anglo-Norman and then French were the language of the courts and government. Even after the decline of Norman, standard French retained the status of a formal or prestige language, and about 10,000 French (and Norman) loan words entered Middle English, particularly terms associated with government, church, law, the military, fashion, and food (see English language word origins and List of English words of French origin). The strong influence of Old Norse on English (described in the previous section) also becomes apparent during this period. The impact of the native British Celtic languages that English continued to displace is generally held to be much smaller, although some attribute such analytic verb forms as the continuous aspect ("to be doing" or "to have been doing") to Celtic influence. Some scholars have also put forward hypotheses that Middle English was a kind of creole language resulting from contact between Old English and either Old Norse or Anglo-Norman.
Sub-Roman Britain
According to research led by University College London, Anglo-Saxon settlers could have enjoyed a substantial social and economic advantage over the native Celtic Britons who lived in what is now England, for more than 300 years from the middle of the 5th century. However, this scenario, assuming that the Anglo-Saxons were just Germanic Ingaevones, has been questioned.
Anglo-Saxon paganism
Britons who found themselves in the areas now dominated by Anglo-Saxon elites possibly embraced the Anglo-Saxons' pagan religion in order to aid their own self-advancement, just as they adopted other trappings of Anglo-Saxon culture. This would have been easier for those Britons who, rather than being Christian, continued to practise indigenous polytheistic belief systems, and in areas this Late Iron Age polytheism could have syncretically mixed with the incoming Anglo-Saxon religion. Conversely, there is weak possible evidence for limited survival of Roman Christianity into the Anglo-Saxon period, such as the place-name "ecclēs", meaning 'church', at two locations in Norfolk and Eccles in Kent. However, Blair suggested that Roman Christianity would not have experienced more than a "ghost-life" in Anglo-Saxon areas. Those Britons who continued to practise Christianity were probably perceived as second-class citizens and were unlikely to have had much of an impact on the pagan kings and aristocracy which was then emphasising Anglo-Saxon culture and defining itself against British culture. If the British Christians were able to convert any of the Anglo-Saxon elite conquerors, it was likely only on a small community scale, with British Christianity having little impact on the later establishment of Anglo-Saxon Christianity in the seventh century.
Anglo-Saxons
The earliest historical references using this term are from outside Britain, referring to piratical Germanic raiders, 'Saxones' who attacked the shores of Britain and Gaul in the 3rd century AD. Procopius states that Britain was settled by three races: the Angiloi, Frisones, and Britons. The term "Angli Saxones" seems to have first been used in continental writing of the 8th century; Paul the Deacon uses it to distinguish the English Saxons from the continental Saxons ("Ealdseaxe", literally, 'old Saxons'). The name therefore seemed to mean "English" Saxons.
History of Anglo-Saxon England
Alfred is remembered as a literate king. He or his court commissioned the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", which was written in Old English (rather than in Latin, which was the language of the European annals). Alfred's own literary output was mainly of translations, but he also wrote introductions and amended manuscripts.
Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery
According to the monk Bede, writing in his "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum" in the 8th century, the Anglo-Saxon age began when three tribal groups from Northern Germany and Southern Denmark – the Saxons, Angles and Jutes – began to migrate into Britain, where they were initially employed as mercenaries by the indigenous Romano-British population following the collapse of Roman Imperial rule. Archaeological evidence corroborates this, but also indicates the likely presence of a fourth continental tribal group settling in Britain during the 5th and 6th centuries, the Frisians. It is likely that the new settlers did not adhere strictly to their old tribal and ethnic ties, with new syncretic blends developing and new identities forged as they mixed with one another and with the indigenous British population. There is evidence that these colonists maintained ties with the Germanic-language cultures of Scandinavia, Germany and Northern France; they certainly traded with these societies for luxury goods, and told epic stories such as "Beowulf" which were set in their ancestral lands.
Germanic peoples
The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain resulted in Anglo-Saxon (or English) displacement and cultural assimilation of the indigenous culture, the Brythonic-speaking British culture, causing the foundation of a new kingdom, England. As in what became England, indigenous Brythonic Celtic culture in some of the south-eastern parts of what became Scotland (approximately the Lothian and Borders region) and areas of what became the Northwest of England (the kingdoms of Rheged, Elmet, etc.) succumbed to Germanic influence c.600—800, due to the extension of overlordship and settlement from the Anglo-Saxon areas to the south. Cultural and linguistic assimilation occurred less frequently between the Germanic Anglo-Saxons and the indigenous people who resided in the Roman dominated areas of England, particularly in the regions that remained previously unconquered. Anglo-Saxons occupied Somerset, the Severn valley, and Lancaster by c. 700 where they remained dominant. Over time, the Anglo-Saxons, with their distinct culture and language, displaced much of the extant Roman influence of old.
On the European continent, the eastern remnant of Francia developed into the Kingdom of Germany, which became the most important part of the Holy Roman Empire proclaimed by Otto I in 962 AD. The Holy Roman Empire included all remaining Germanic-speaking groups from the 10th century. In the Late Medieval to Early Modern period, some groups split off the Empire before a "German" ethnicity had formed, consisting of Low Franconian (Dutch, Flemish) and Alemannic (Swiss) populations.
Middle English
The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not result in immediate changes to the language. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as they had before the Conquest. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, only dialects that derived from the dialects of the same regions in the Anglo-Saxon period.
Anglo-Saxons
"Anglo-Saxon" in linguistics is still used as a term for the original West Germanic component of the modern English language, which was later expanded and developed through the influence of Old Norse and Norman French, though linguists now more often refer to it as Old English.
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It is a West Germanic language, closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages. It has been documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it gradually evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken throughout modern northwestern Germany, primarily in the coastal regions and in the eastern Netherlands by Saxons, a Germanic tribe who inhabited the region of Saxony. It partially shares Anglo-Frisian's (Old Frisian, Old English) Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law which sets it apart from Low Franconian and Irminonic languages, such as Dutch, Luxembourgish and German.
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
Little is known about the everyday spoken language of people living in the migration period. Old English is a contact language and it is hard to reconstruct the pidgin used in this period from the written language found in the West Saxon literature of some 400 years later. Two general theories are proposed regarding why people changed their language to Old English (or an early form of such): either a person or household changed so as to serve an elite, or a person or household changed through choice as it provided some advantage economically or legally.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
In 1700 this race numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In 1800, Anglo-Saxons (I use the term somewhat broadly to include all English-speaking peoples) had increased to about 20,500,000, and now, in 1890, they number more than 120,000,000.
Old English
Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea Germanic) dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England. This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements where Old Norse was spoken. Celtic speech also remained established in certain parts of England: Medieval Cornish was spoken all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon, while Cumbric survived perhaps to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria, and Welsh may have been spoken on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border. Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law.
Anglo-Saxons
What survives through writing represents primarily the register of Anglo-Saxon, and this is most often in the West Saxon dialect. Little is known about the everyday spoken language of people living in the migration period. Old English is a contact language and it is hard to reconstruct the pidgin used in this period from the written language found in the West Saxon literature of some 400 years later. Two general theories are proposed regarding why people changed their language to Old English (or an early form of such): either, a person or household changed so as to serve an elite; or, a person or household changed through choice as it provided some advantage economically or legally. Over time, Old English developed into four major dialects: Northumbrian, spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian, spoken in the Midlands; Kentish, spoken in Kent in the far southeastern part of the island; and West Saxon, spoken in the southwest. All of these dialects have direct descendants in modern England, and American regional dialects also have their roots in the dialects of Old English. "Standard" Modern English (if there is such a thing), or at least modern English spelling, owes most to the Anglian dialect, since that was the dialect of London.
Anglo-Saxon burial mounds
Tumulus burials were not restricted to the Anglo-Saxons, but had a long pedigree in prehistoric and early mediaeval Europe. By this latter date, when the Anglo-Saxon society existed, such burials were not restricted to any one cultural or ethnic group, with Germanic-speaking, Slavic-speaking and Celtic-speaking peoples of the period all taking part in such a burial practice for elite members of their societies.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
Outside of Anglophone countries the term "Anglo-Saxon" and its translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the United States, and other countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Variations include the German: "Angelsachsen", French: "le modèle anglo-saxon," Spanish: "anglosajón", Dutch: "Angelsaksisch model", and Italian: "Paesi anglosassoni."
Old Saxon
Old Saxon (or Old Low German) probably evolved primarily from Ingvaeonic dialects in the West Germanic branch of Proto-Germanic in the 5th century. However, Old Saxon, even if it is considered as an Ingvaeonic language, is not a pure Ingvaeonic dialect as Old Frisian and Old English are, the two latter sharing some other Ingvaeonic characteristics, like the great vowel shift that took place in both Old English and Old Frisian. This, plus the large number of different forms that the language took, often showing different West-Germanic features, led some philologists to mistakenly think that Old Dutch and Old Saxon were variations of the same language, and that Old Saxon was indeed an Istvaeonic language.
Anglo-Saxons
The first of King Alfred's three-fold Anglo-Saxon society are praying men; people who work at prayer. Although Christianity dominates the religious history of the Anglo-Saxons, life in the 5th/6th centuries was dominated by 'pagan' religious beliefs with a Scando-Germanic heritage.
Anglo-Saxons
Throughout the history of the Anglo-Saxons studies producing a dispassionate narrative of the people has been difficult. In the early Middle Ages the views of Geoffrey of Monmouth produced a personally inspired history that wasn't challenged for five hundred years. In the Reformation, churchmen looking for signs of an English church reinterpreted Anglo-Saxon Christianity. In the 19th century the term "Anglo-Saxon" was broadly used in philology, and is sometimes so used at present. In Victorian Britain, some writers such as Robert Knox,
James Anthony Froude, Charles Kingsley and Edward A. Freeman used the term "Anglo-Saxon" to justify racism and imperialism, claiming that the "Anglo-Saxon" ancestry of the English made them racially superior to the colonised peoples. Similar racist ideas were advocated in the 19th-century United States by Samuel George Morton and George Fitzhugh. These views have influenced how versions of early English history are embedded in the sub-conscious of people "re-emerging in school textbooks and television programmes and still very congenial to some strands of political thinking."