The Mother Tongue (Bill Bryson)

Résumé du document

In the fourth chapter of Mother Tongue (Penguin 31/10/1991), "The First Thousand years", Bill Bryson highlights the history of the development of the English tongue. In a small area of northern Germany, the country language is very closed to the Old English. This place was indeed the former seat of the Angles, a Germanic tribe which went to Britain 1,500 years ago. Similarly, in a small corner of northern Holland and western Germany exists a dialect, the Frisian, which looks very like English. In fact, this dialect corresponds to the old German, which has been very little altered by time.

In about A.D. 450, the Angles, Frisian, Saxons and Jutes moved from Germany, after the withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain. They set up in different parts of Britain, establishing seven small kingdoms and bringing divergences in speech. The Saxons became the dominant group. The Angles and Jutes disappeared, even if the new nation has been named "England" and its language "English". There is not any testimony available of this time because the Anglo-Saxons were illiterate. They used a runic alphabet but not as a way of communicating. The first trace of a written sentence dated from between A.D. 450 and 480. The Anglo-Saxons were also pagan and their gods gave the name to the days of the week.

Extraits

[...] The book Eneydos, written by William Caxton in 1490 showed the problems of misunderstanding between the different dialects of Britain. In the 16th century, the English of London was taking more and more importance. But the English of East Midlands (the place of the famous universities) was still eminent. During this period the modernisation of English was very significant. The modern English has been mostly made by a combination between the English of East Midlands and the English of London. [...]

[...] In about A.D the Angles, Frisian, Saxons and Jutes moved from Germany, after the withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain. They set up in different parts of Britain, establishing seven small kingdoms and bringing divergences in speech. The Saxons became the dominant group. The Angles and Jutes disappeared, even if the new nation has been named “England” and its language “English”. There is not any testimony available of this time because the Anglo- Saxons were illiterate. They used a runic alphabet but not as a way of communicating. [...]

[...] With this subtle language, the English culture flourished soon. The main cultural and teaching place was Northumbria. But England has been at this time violently attacked by the Vikings, who were though closely related to the Anglo-Saxons. In 878, after an English victory, Britain has been divided between the English in the south and the Danes in the north. This decision created an important linguistic division of dialects. In the north, the language has been strongly influenced by the Danish, who add some Scandinavian words. [...]

[...] Then, the pronouns, the irregular plurals, the irregular verbs developed. These evolutions of languages boosted the creation of writers like Shakespeare, who played the best with the English tongue. Indeed, he used 2,000 words and inventing original phrases. But since all his manuscripts have disappeared, we can not be sure about what is really Shakespeare's work. Since this time, there still have been changes in the English tongue, like the introduction of the progressive verb form. But even if the English has been reassessed, a lot of authors have for a long time written in Latin or in French. [...]

[...] There, the colony of Brittany has been founded. However, the history of this period is not sure, insofar as its main account has been written 300 years later and was moreover based on hearsay. The Romans and Celts did not leave many traces in the English vocabulary. Yet, the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary had been influenced by the Celtic language before the invasion of Britain. The Anglo-Saxon language and culture developed quickly with the beginning of literacy, which was brought with Christianity by Saint Augustine in 597. [...]