Old english vocabulary кратко

Обновлено: 02.07.2024

As to the origin English words may be classified into two large sets: native and borrowed words. A native word is a word which belongs to the original English word stock, as known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. Native words being only30 percent of the English vocabulary are the most frequently used words as they constitute 80 percent of the 500 most frequent words compiled by Thorndyke and Longe (The Teachers’ Wordbook of 30,000 words. New York, 1959).

Native words comprise Indo-European, Common Germanic and English Proper.

The oldest layer of words in English are those of Indo-European origin, having common roots in all or most languages of Indo-European group. They denote elementary concepts without which no human communication is possible. There are several semantic groups in them :

1. Words denoting kinship, e.g. father (Vater, pater, padre), mother (Mutter, мать), son (Sohn, сын), daughter (Tochter, дочь), brother (Bruder, брат);

2. Words denoting parts of human body, e.g. foot (пядь), nose, lip, heart (сердце),ear, tooth, eye;

3. Words denoting animals, e.g. cow, swine, goose, wolf (Wolf, волк) ;

4. Words denoting plants, e.g. tree, birch (береза), corn (зерно);

5. Words denoting time of day, e.g. day, night;

6. Words denoting heavenly bodies and phenomena of nature, e.g. sun (die Sohne, солнце), moon, star, water (Wasser, вода),wind, wood, hill, stone;

7. Numerals from one to a hundred;

8. Numerous adjectives, e.g. red (cf. Ukr. рудий, R. рыжий),new, glad (гладкий), sad (сыт), quick, slow;

9. Pronouns – personal (except they which is a Scandinavian borrowing) and demonstrative;

10. Numerous verbs, e.g. be (быть), stand (стоять), sit (сидеть), eat (есть), know (знать).

A much larger group of native vocabulary are Common Germanic words (German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic). They represent words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main semantic groups are the same as in words of Indo-European origin:

1. Words denoting parts of human body, e.g. head, hand, arm, finger, bone;

2. Words denoting plants, e.g. oak, fir, grass;

3. Words denoting animals, e.g. bear, fox, calf;

4. Words denoting natural phenomena, e.g. rain, frost, storm, flood, ice;

5. Words denoting periods of time and seasons of the year, e.g. time, week, winter, spring, summer;

6. Words denoting landscape features, e.g. sea, land, ground, earth;

7. Words denoting human dwellings and furniture, e.g. house, room, bench;

8. Words denoting sea-going vessels, e.g. boat, ship;

9. Adjectives, e.g. green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good;

10. Verbs, e.g. see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink, bake, buy, drive, keep, learn, meet, rise, send, shoot;

11. Words denoting artefacts and materials, e.g. bridge, shop, coal, iron, lead, cloth;

12. Words denoting abstract notions, e.g. care, evil, hope, life, need;

13. Adverbs, e.g. down, out, before;

14. Words denoting articles of clothes, e.g. hat, short, shoe.

English Proper words in contrast to Indo-European and Common Germanic words can be approximately dated, words of this group appeared in the English language not earlier than the 5 th century, they are specifically English having no cognates in other languages. Some examples of English Proper words are: bird, boy, girl, lord, lady, woman, daisy, always. The English Proper element also contains all the later formations, i.e. words which were made after the 5 th century according to English word-building patterns both from native and borrowed morphemes, e.g. ‘beautiful’ built from the French borrowed root and the native suffix belongs to the English Proper words. It is natural that the number of such words is immense.

Most of the native words have undergone great changes in their semantic structure and as a result are nowadays polysemantic, e.g. the word ‘finger’ denotes not only a part of a hand as in Old English but also 1) the part of a glove covering one of the fingers; 2)a finger-like part in various machines; 3) a hand of a clock; 4) an index; 5) a unit of measurement. Most of words of the native origin are highly polysemantic.

Most native words possess a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency. Many of them enter a number of phraseological units, e.g. the word ‘heel’ enters the following units: ‘heel over head’ or ‘head over heels’; ‘ cool one’s heel’; show a clean pair of heels’; take to one’s heels’; turn on one’s heels’ etc.

Besides, the great stability and semantic peculiarities of native words account for their great derivational potential. Most words of this group make up large clusters of derived and compound words in the present-day language, e.g. the word ‘wood’ is the basis for the formation of the following words: ‘wooden, woody, wooded, woodcraft, woodcutter, woodwork’ and many others.

On the whole, the native element has been playing a significant role in the English language due to the fact that the native words are marked by stability, specific semantic characteristics, wide collocability, great derivational potential, wide spheres of application and high frequency value.

The OE vocabulary was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes.

Native words.

- common IE words;

- common Germanic words;

- specifically OE words.

Words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. Among these words we find names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals. Verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities.

foeder – Vater; bropor – Bruder; modor – Mutter; dohtor – Tochter; sunu – Sohn;

mona – Mond; niht – Nacht; woeter – Wasser; fyr – Feuer;

The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life.

screap – sheep; macian – make; hus – house; drincan – drink; land – land; safe – sea; wisdom – wisdom;

Specifically OE, that is words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few: OE clipian - call, OE brid – bird, wifman – woman and several others.

Foreign elements in the OE vocabulary.

OE borrowings come from two sources: Celtic and Latin.

Borrowings from Celtic.

There are very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary, for there must have been little intermixture between the Germanic settlers and the Celtic in Britain. Borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources. Various Celtic designations of river and water were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Esk, Exe, Avon; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, makes a compound place-name, e.g.: Celtic plus Latin: Man-chester, Win-chester, Lan-caster; Celtic plus Germanic: York-shire, Corn-wall, Devon-shire, Canter-bury.

Latin influence on the OE vocabulary.

Early OE borrowings from Latin belong to war, trade, agriculture, building and home life. Among the Latin loan-words adopted in Britain were some place-names made of Latin and Germanic components, e.g. Portsmouth, Greenport, Greenwich.

belt - belt; butere - butter; camp - field, battle; candel - candle; catt - cat; ceaster - city; cetel - kettle; cupp - cup; cycene - kitchen; cyse - cheese;

The introduction of Christianity in the late 6th c. Numerous Latin words which found their way into the English language during these five hundred years clearly fall into two main groups: words pertaining to religion; words connected with learning.

orgel – organ; papa – pope; regol – religious rule;

Translation-loans. The Latin impact on the OE vocabulary was not restricted to borrowing of words. There were also other aspects of influence. The most important of them is the appearance of the so-called translation-loans – words and phrases created on the pattern of Latin words as their literal translations. The earliest instances of translation-loans are names of the days of the week found not only in OE but also in other Old Germanic languages. OE Mōnan-dæз (Monday) day of the moon, Lunae dies.

Word-building means in Old English.

Word Structure. According to their morphological structure OE words fell into three main types:

- simple words (root-words) containing a root-morpheme and no derivational affixes, e.g. land, зōd.

- derived words consisting of one root-morpheme and one or more affixes, e.g. be-зinnan.

- compound words, whose stems were made up of more than one root-morpheme, e.g. mann-cynn.

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The OE vocabulary was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes.

The vocabulary of Old English was rather extensive. It is said to have contained about 50 000 words. These words were mainly native words. They could be divided into a number of strata. The oldest stratum was composed of words coming from the Common Indo-European parent tongue.

Old English New English Latin Russian

modor mother mater мать

niht night nox ночь

neowe new novus новый

beran bear ferre брать

Old English New English German

eorQe earth Erde

The third stratum, and that not very extensive, was made up of words that existed only in English, for instance, the word clypian(to call), the root preserved in the now somewhat obsolete word yclept(named).

The vocabulary was changing all the time, old words becoming extinct and new words entering the Language, enriching it.

As is known, there are two principal ways of enriching the vocabulary of a language: internal means — those that are inherent in the language itself, and external means, which result from contacts between peoples. The English-speaking people of the period mainly used internal means of enriching the vocabulary to adapt their language to the expression of more varied or new notions.

While creating new words the English language, as we have mentioned above, principally resorted to its own, internal means: word derivation, primarily affixation and vowel interchange, and word composition.

— Word derivation

In Old English affixation was widely used as a word-building means.

There were very many suffixes, with the help of which new nouns, adjectives, adverbs and sometimes verbs were formed, for instance:

— noun suffixes of concrete nouns:

-ere fisc+ere (fisher) denoting the doer

-estre spinn+estre (spinster) of the action

— noun suffixes of abstract nouns:

-dom freo+dom (freedom)

-ful car+ful (careful)

Prefixes were used on a limited scale and they generally had a negative meaning:

mis- mis+daid (misdeed)

Vowel interchange:

singan (to sing)

deman (to deem)

— Word composition

Word composition was a well-developed means of enriching vocabulary in Old English.

As we understand, borrowings into a language are a result of contacts with other nations. The Germanic tribes had but few contacts with other nations at the beginning of A.D., consequently the number of borrowed words in Old English was not great. The main borrowings that we can single out in Old English were Latin and Celtic borrowings.

— Latin borrowings

The first Latin borrowings entered the language before the Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians invaded the British Isles, i.e. at the time when they still lived on the continent. Due to trade relations with their southern powerful neighbour — the Roman empire — Germanic tribes learned a number of products that had been unknown to then, and, consequently, their names. So the first stratum of borrowings are mainly words connected with trade. Many of them are preserved in Modern English, such as:

pound, inch, pepper, cheese, wine, apple, pear, plum, etc.

The second stratum of words was composed of loan Latin words that the Germanic tribes borrowed already on British soil from the romanized Celts, whom they had conquered in the 5th century. Those were words connected with building and architecture, as the preserved nowadays:

tile, street, wall, mill, etc.

They denoted objects which the Germanic invaders encountered on the British Isles.

The third stratum of Latin loan words was composed of words borrowed after the introduction of the Christian religion. They are generally of a religious nature, such as the present-day words:

bishop, devil, apostle, monk.

As Latin was the language of learning at the time, there also entered the language some words that were not directly connected with religion, such as:

master, school, palm, lion, tiger, plant, astronomy, etc.

— Celtic borrowings

The Celtic language left very few traces in the English language, because the Germanic conquerors partly exterminated the local population, partly drove them away to the less fertile mountaineous parts of the country, where they were not within reach of the invaders. The Celtic-speaking people who remained on the territory occupied by the Germanic tribes were slaves, and even those were not very numerous. It is small wonder therefore that the number of Celtic loan words was limited. Among the few borrowed words we can mention:

down (the downs of Dover), binn (bin - basket, crib, manger).

Some Celtic roots are preserved in geographical names, such as:

kil (church — Kilbrook), ball (house — Ballantrae), esk (water — river Esk)and some others.

Internal means of enriching vocabulary

Means of enriching vocabulary

General characteristics

Old English

Old English New English Latin Russian

modor mother mater мать

niht night nox ночь

neowe new novus новый

beran bear ferre брать

Old English New English German

eorQe earth Erde

The vocabulary was changing all the time, old words becoming extinct and new words entering the Language, enriching it.

— Word derivation

In Old English affixation was widely used as a word-building means.

There were very many suffixes, with the help of which new nouns, adjectives, adverbs and sometimes verbs were formed, for instance:

— noun suffixes of concrete nouns:

-ere fisc+ere (fisher) denoting the doer

-estre spinn+estre (spinster) of the action

— noun suffixes of abstract nouns:

-dom freo+dom (freedom)

-ful car+ful (careful)

Prefixes were used on a limited scale and they generally had a negative meaning:

mis- mis+daid (misdeed)

Vowel interchange:

singan (to sing)

deman (to deem)

— Word composition

Word composition was a well-developed means of enriching vocabulary in Old English.

— Latin borrowings

pound, inch, pepper, cheese, wine, apple, pear, plum, etc.

tile, street, wall, mill, etc.

They denoted objects which the Germanic invaders encountered on the British Isles.

The third stratum of Latin loan words was composed of words borrowed after the introduction of the Christian religion. They are generally of a religious nature, such as the present-day words:

bishop, devil, apostle, monk.

As Latin was the language of learning at the time, there also entered the language some words that were not directly connected with religion, such as:

master, school, palm, lion, tiger, plant, astronomy, etc.

— Celtic borrowings

down (the downs of Dover), binn (bin - basket, crib, manger).

Some Celtic roots are preserved in geographical names, such as:

kil (church — Kilbrook), ball (house — Ballantrae), esk (water — river Esk)and some others.

The history of words throws light on the history of the speaking community and its contacts with other people.

According to some rough counts OE vocabulary had between 23 000 and 24 000 lexical units. About only 15% of them survived in ModE.

In OE there were an extremely low percentage of borrowings from other languages (only 3% as compared to 70% in ModE). Thus OE from the point of view of its vocabulary was a thoroughly Germanic language.

Native OE words can be subdivided into 3 following layers:

Common IE words – the oldest and the largest part of the OE vocabulary that was inherited by the Proto-Germanic, and later by all the Germanic languages, from the Common Indo-European Language.

family relations (father, mother, daughter, brother, etc. (except aunt, uncle – words of the Germanic origin));

parts of human body (eye, nose, heart, arm, etc.);

natural phenomena, plants, animals (tree, cow, water, sun, wind, etc.).

Parts of speech:

nouns (eye, brother, etc.);

verbs (basic activities of man) (to be, can, may, to know, to eat, to stand, to sit, etc.);

adjectives (essential qualities) (new, full, red, right, young, long, etc.);

pronouns (personal and demonstrative) (I, my, this, that, those, these, etc.);

numerals (most of them) (1-10, 100, 1000, etc.);

prepositions (for, at, of, to, etc.).

Common Germanic words – the part of the vocabulary that was shared by most Germanic languages. These words never occurred outside the Germanic group of languages. This layer was smaller than the IE layer.

nature, plants, animals (earth, fox, sheep, sand, etc.);

sea (starve, sea, etc.);

everyday life (hand, sing, find, make, etc.).

Parts of speech:

nouns (horse, rain, ship, bridge, life, hunger, ground, death, winter, evil, etc. );

verbs (to like, to drink, to bake, to buy, to find, to fall, to fly, to make, etc.);

adjectives (broad, sick, true, dead, deaf, open, clean, bitter, etc.);

pronouns (such, self, all, etc.);

adverbs (often, again, forward, near, etc.).

Specifically Old English words – native words that occur only in English and do not occur in other Germanic and non-Germanic languages. They are very few and are mainly derivatives and compounds (e.g. fisher, understand, woman, etc.).

Borrowed words – this part of OE vocabulary, as it has already been mentioned above, was a small portion of words that remained on the periphery of OE vocabulary. The words were mainly borrowed from:

Latin (around 500 words only) (abbat, anthem, alms, etc. );

Celtic dialects:

common nouns (bin, cross, cradle, etc.) – most of them died out, some survived only in dialects;

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Old English Course Pack. (на сайте Оксфордского университета)

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A grammar of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, with a praxis. A new ed. enl. and improved by the author. Rask, R. (1830)
Altwestsächsische Grammatik. Cosijn, P. J. (1888)
Angelsächsische Grammatik. Müller, Th.
A manual of Anglo-Saxon for beginners; comprising a grammar, reader, and glossary, with explanatory notes. Shute, S. M.
An elementary Old English grammar, early West Saxon. Wyatt, A. J. (1897)
Angelsächsische Grammatik. Sievers, E. (1898)
An Old English grammar. Sievers, E. (1887)
Studies in the Dialects of the Kentish Charters of the Old English Period. Bryan, W.F. (1915)
The language of the Northumbrian gloss to the Gospel of St. Luke. Kellum, M.D. (1906)
The prepositions in, on, to, for, fore, and æt in Anglo-Saxon prose. Belden, H.M. (1897)

Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader. (грамматика, хрестоматия, словарь; копия доступна здесь; в формате html)

Hwæt! Old English in Context. Ball, C. (несколько тематических уроков; имеется также внушительный список ссылок; в настоящий момент не работает )

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A glossary of the Old English Gospels; Latin-Old English, Old English-Latin. Harris, M.A. (1902)
A glossary of the old Northumbrian Gospels (Lindisfarne Gospels or Durham book). Cook, A.S. (1894)
An English-Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. Skeat, W.W. (1879)
Anglo-Saxon and Old English vocabularies (Volume 1). Wright, Th. ([второй том])
Old English glosses : chiefly unpublished. Napier, A.S.
The student's dictionary of Anglo-Saxon. Sweet, H. (1897)

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Anglo-Saxon prose reader, for beginners, in oldest English. Baskervill, W. M. (1898)
An Old and Middle English reader on the basis of Julius Zupitza's Alt- und mittel-englisches übungsbuch. MacLean, G.E. (1893)
An anglo-Saxon reader. Wyatt, A.J. (1919)
An Anglo-Saxon reader in prose and verse, with grammar, metre, notes and glossary. Sweet, H. (1894) (издание 1884 года; издание 1888 года)
A second Anglo-Saxon reader; archaic and dialectal. Sweet, H. (1887)
Introduction to Anglo-Saxon : an Anglo-Saxon reader, with philological notes, a brief grammar, and a vocabulary. March, F.A. (1880) (издание 1870 года; издание 1879 года; издание 1896 года)
Maldon and Brunnanburh: Two Old English Songs of Battle. Crow, Ch.L. (1897)
Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben. (1880) [Второй том] [Третий том] [Четвёртый том] [Пятый том]

Англосаксонская хроника

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. (сайт Т. Джебсона; оцифрованные варианты рукописи)
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (A-Prime). The Parker Manuscript. (копия)
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle. (перевод Дж. Ингрэма) (копия; копия)

Аполлоний Тианский

Беовульф. (краткий пересказ, частичный подстрочный перевод на русский язык)
Беовульф. (буквальный перевод отрывков, выпоненный И.В. Стариковым)
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Beowulf; edited, with introd., bibliography, notes, glossary, and appendices.Sedgefield, W.J. (1913)
Beowulf ( Project Gutenberg). (издание Дж. Харрисона)
Beowulf in hypertext. (гипертекстовая версия)
Beowulf. (подстрочный перевод на новоанглийский язык)
Beowulf. (Labyrith Library)
Beowulf on Steorarume.

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The Norton Anthology of English Literature. (аудиозаписи отрывков из произведений на древне- и среднеанглийском языках)

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