Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Early English took on a few words from Latin/Celtic, such as ‘win’ (wine), ‘cetel’ (cattle) and ‘streat’ (street), but the great majority of English words today come from Old English – you, man, son, daughter, friend, house and so on. Also the northern words ‘owt’ (anything) and ‘nowt’ (nothing), from ‘awiht’ and ‘nawiht’.¹¹⁴ The ending ‘-ing’ in place names means ‘the people of . . .’ – Reading, Dorking, Hastings; the ending ‘-ham’ means farm, as in Birmingham, Fulham, Nottingham; ‘-ton’ means enclosure or village, as in Taunton, Luton, Wilton. The Germanic tribes brought with them the runic alphabet, known as the futhorc after the first letters of that alphabet. Runes were made up mainly of straight lines, so they could more easily be cut into stone or wood. The language had twenty-four letters, lacking j, q, v, x and z but including æ, Þ, ð and uu, later changed to w.¹¹⁵

‘Englisc’, as it was originally called, did not begin to grow until the Viking invasions, when endings such as ‘-by’ were added to places, to indicate farm or town: Corby, Derby, Rugby. The Danes made personal names by adding ‘-son’ to the name of the father: Johnson, Hudson, Watson. Other Old Norse words taken into Englisc at this time included ‘birth’, ‘cake,’ ‘leg’, ‘sister’, ‘smile’, ‘thrift’ and ‘trust’.¹¹⁶

The language came under most threat in the three hundred years following the battle of Hastings in 1066. When William the Conqueror was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day that year the service was carried out in English and Latin but he himself spoke French throughout. French became the language of the court, and of the courts, and of Parliament. But, while English survived, words from French were transferred. Mainly, they described the new social order: army (armée), throne (

trone), duke (duc), govern (governer), but also cooking: pork (porc), sausages (saussiches), biscuit (bescoit

), fry (frire) and vinegar (vyn egre).¹¹⁷ Old English didn’t simply die out: often it adapted. For example, the Old English ‘æppel’ was used to mean any kind of fruit, but after the French word fruit came in, the Old English retreated, to mean just one kind of fruit, the apple.¹¹⁸ Other French words that entered English at this time included chimney, chess, art, dance, music, boot, buckle, dozen, person, country, debt, cruel, calm and honest. The word ‘checkmate’ comes from the French eschec mat, which in turn comes from the Arabic

Sh hmt, meaning ‘the king is dead’.¹¹⁹ These were the words that became Middle English.¹²⁰

Middle English began to replace French in England only at the end of the fourteenth century. England had been changed, as everywhere had been changed, by the Black Death, which had carried off many churchmen, Latin- and French-speakers. The Peasants’ Revolt also had a great deal to do with the resurgence of English, as the language of the protestors. When Richard II addressed Wat Tyler and his troops at Smithfield, Bragg says, he spoke in English. And Richard is the first recorded monarch using only English since the Conquest. In 1399, when Henry, Duke of Lancaster, crowned himself, after deposing Richard II, he too spoke in what the official history calls his ‘mother tongue’, English.¹²¹ ‘In the name of Fadir, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster challenge this reyme of Yngland and the corone with all the members and the appurtenances, als I that am disendit be right lyne of the blode comying fro the gude lorde Kyng Henry Therde . . .’¹²² About a quarter of the words used by Chaucer are from the French, though often they have meanings now lost (‘lycour’ = moisture, ‘straunge’ = foreign, distant), but he used English with a confidence that showed a corner had been turned.¹²³

This confidence was reflected in the desire to translate the Bible into English. Although John Wycliffe is remembered as the man who first attempted this, Bragg says it was Nicholas Hereford, of Queen’s College, Oxford, who did most of the work. His scriptoria, organised in secrecy at Oxford, produced many manuscripts – at least 175 survive.¹²⁴

In the bigynnyng God made of nouyt heuene and erthe

Forsothe the erthe was idel and voide, and derknessis weren on the face of depthe; and the Spiryt of the Lord was borun on the watris.

And God seide, Liyt be maad, and liyt was maad.