LINGUIS 155AC Lecture 4: LINGUIS 155AC Lecture 4/5: History of English
12 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
English belongs to west germanic branch of indo- european. Pre-literate culture, people started fanning out to form new languages. Spread out to india, the west, beginning from southern turkey during neolithic revolution. Effective conquerors or agriculturalists that moved into areas. Germanic language but does not seem that. Mixture of english, french, latin, greek and increasingly other languages. Anglo saxons through britain in 5th century. The first documented language in britain was a celtic language. 400 b. c. e celts, covered large part of europe, british isle, spain. Place names: london, devon, dover, thames, avon, cornwall etc. Few place names (win(chester)), lan(caster)), start with celtic word but end w/roman. Names in u. s. , many originate from native american names. 55 bce julius caesar - britain brought back news of the people and their language. Romans lived in military camps, subjects still remain in britain until 476 c. e. Old english originally used a runic alphabet used for short practical messages and graffiti.
