1. The old Germanic languages, their classification and principalfeatures
The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance ofwhat is known as the Proto-Germanic language. As the Indo-Europeans extendedover a large territory, the ancient Germans or Teutons moved further north thanother tribes and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the regionof the Elbe. PG is an entirely pre-historical language: it was never recordedin written form. The first mention of Germanic tribes was made by Pitheas, aGreek historian and geographer of the 4 th . C.B.C. in COMMENTARIES ONTHE GALLIC WAR. In the 1 st c. A.D. Pliny the Elder, a prominentRoman scientist and writer, in NATURAL HISRORY made a classified list ofGermanic tribes grouping them under six headings. Tacitus - the Roman historian- Compiled a detailed description of the life and customs of the ancientTeutons. According to this division PG split into three branches: East Germanic(Vindili in Pliny's classification), North Germanic (Hillevonies) and WestGermanic (which embraces Ingveones, Istevones and Herminones),
East Germanic . The EastGermanic subgroup was formed by the tribes who returned from Scandinavia at thebeginning of our era. The most numerous and powerful of them were Goths. Theirwestern branch, the Visigote , invaded Roman territory. Linguisticallythe Western Goths were soon absorbed by the native population, the RomanisedCelts. The Eastern Goths, Ostrogote , consolidated into a powerful tribalalliance in the lower basin of the Dniester. They set up a kingdom in NorthernItaly. The Gothic language, now dead, has been preserved in written records ofthe 4 th - 6 th century. The Goths were the first of theTeutons to become Christian. In the 4 th c. Ulfilas, a West Gothicbishop, made a translation of the Gospels from Greek into Gothic using amodified form of the Greek alphabet. It is written on red parchment with silverand golden letters and is known as the SILVER CODEX. It is one of the earliesttexts in thelanguages ​​of the Germanic group.
North Germanic . The NorthGermanic tribes lived on the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula andin Northern Denmark. They didn't take part in the migrations and wererelatively isolated. The speech of the North Germanic tribes showed littledialectal variation until the 9 th c. and called Old Norse or OldScandinavian. It has come down to us in runic inscriptions. RI were carved onobjects made of hard material in an original Germanic alphabet known as therunic alphabet or the runes. The principal linguistic differentiation inScandinavia corresponded to the political division into Sweden, Denmark andNorway. The earliest written records in Old Danish, Old Norwegian and OldSwedish date from the 13 th c. Later Danish and Swedish developedinto national literary languages. Norwegian was the last to develop into anindependent national language.
Also this group include the Icelandic and Faroese languages, whoseorigin goes back to the Viking Age. In the Faroe Islands the West Norwegiandialects brought by the Scandinavians developed into a separate language calledFaroese. For many centuries all writing was done in Danish, it was until 18 th c. Faroese is spoken nowadays by about 30.000 people. Icelandic developed as aseparate language in spite of the political dependence of Iceland upon Denmarkand the dominance of Danish in official spheres. Icelandic has retained a morearchaic vocabulary and grammatical system, Written records date from the 12 th and 13 th c. The most important records are: the ELDER EDDA-acollection of heroic songs of the 12 th c., the YOUNGER EDDA (a text-bookfor poets) and Old Icelandic Sagas.
West Germanic . Thewould-be West Germanic tribes dwelt in the Lowlands between the Oder and theElbe bordering on the Slavonian tribes in the East and the Celtic tribes in theSouth. The West Germans include several tribes: the Franconians (or Franks),occupied the lower basin of the Rhine. They divided into Low, Middle and HighFranconians. The Angles anf the Frisians, the Jutes and the Saxons inhabitedthe coastal area of ​​the modern Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany andthe southern part of Denmark. A group of tribes known as High Germans (theAlemanians, the Swabians, the Bavarians, the Thuringians and others) lived inthe mountainous southern regions of the Federal Republic of Germany. In theEarly Middle Ages the Franks consolidated into a powerful tribal alliance.Towards the 8th c. their kingdom grew into one of the largest states in WesternEurope. In the 9 th c. it broke up into parts. Its western parteventually became the basis of France. The eastern part, the east FranconianEmpire, comprised several kingdoms: Swabia or Alemania, Bavaria, EastFranconian and Saxony, Lorraine and Friesland. The Franconian dialects werespoken in the extreme north of the Empire; in the later Middle Ages theydevelop into Dutch - the language of the Low Countries (the Netherlands) andFlemish - the language of Flanders. The earliest texts in Low Franconian datefrom the 10 th c. The modern language of the Netherlands, formerlycalled Dutch, and its variant in Belgium, known as the Flemish dialect, are nowtreated as a single language, Netherlandish (20 mln people). The High German group of tribes did not go far in their migration. The High German dialectsconsolidated into a common language known as Old High German. The first writtenrecords in OHG date from the 8 th and 9 th c. Towards the12 th c. High German had intermixed with neighboring tongues,especially Middle and High Franconian, and eventually developed into theliterary German language. (100 mln people) Yiddish grew from the High Germandialects which were adopted by numerous Jewish communities in the 11 th and 12 th c. These dialects blended with elements of Hebrew and Slavonic.At the later stage of the great migration period - in the 5 th c. - Agroup of West Germanic tribes started out on their invasion of the BritishIsles. They were The Angles, part of the Saxon and Frisian, and, probably, theJutes. Their dialects in the British Isles developed into the English language.
2. The chronological division of the History of English. Generalcharacteristics of the OE language
The historical development of a language is a continuousuninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformation. Thecommonly accepted, traditional periodisation divides English history into threeperiods: Old English, Middle English, and New English, with boundaries attachedto definite dates and historical events affecting the language. OE begins withthe Germanic settlement of Britain (5 th c.) or with beginning ofwriting (7 th c.) and ends on the Norman Conquest (1066), ME beginswith the Norman Conquest and ends on the introduction of printing (1475), whichis the start of the Modern or New English; the New period lasts to the presentday. The History of the English language can be subdivided into seven periods.
The first -pre-written or pre-historical period, which may be termed Early Old English,lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing,that is from the 5 th to the close of the 7 th c. It is thestage of tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders (Angels, Saxon, Jutesand Frisians) The tribal dialects were used for oral communication, there wereno written form of English . The second historical period extends fromthe 8 th c. till the end of the 11 th ...
