a chemical in order to close it and prevent it from becoming infected. The
ancient Greeks used to cauterize a wound as we do, and the grandparent word
of cauterize is kauterion, a branding iron. The Greek not only sealed
wounds with heat, but they used much the same process in art for sealing
fast the colours of their painting. It was customary then to use wax
colours fixed with heat or, as they expressed it, encauston, burned in. In
Latin this word changed to encaustum, and it became the name for a kind of
purple ink that the emperors used when they signed their official
documents. In Old French encaustum became enque. English adopted the word
as enke or inke, that is how today we have our ink, coloured liquid used
for writing or printing.”
“The start of spoken language is buried in mystery and in a tangle of
theories,” Professor History begins his lecture. “The history of written
language also disappears in the jungles, in the deserts and far fields of
unrecorded time. But at least the words that have to do with writing tell
us much about the early beginning of the art and the objects that were used
to record the written symbols.
The word write was spelled writan in Old English. It first meant to
scratch, and it is exactly what the primitives did on their birch-bark or
shingles with sharp stones and others pointed instruments. In the more
sophisticated lands that surrounded the Mediterranean the papyrus plant was
used instead of the bark of the trees; as you already know, that gave us
the word paper.
Pen with which we write now, in its Latin form penna, meant a feather and
in some ancient collections you can still see quill pens. And pencil that
we hold inherits its name from the Latin penicillum, meaning a little tail,
and this refers to the time when writing was done with a tiny brush that
looked indeed like a little tail.
The term letter designating a written symbol, a letter of the alphabet is
thought to be relative to the Latin word linere, to smear, to leave a dirty
mark on some surface. Isn’t it a good description of some of the early
writing?
But what is written should be read. In read we have an odd little word,
from the Old English raedan, which meant first to guess, to discern. And
again it is just what you had to do to interpret what was scratched on
wooden shingles. Anything that had to be interpreted was called a raedels.
Later on people began to think that the word raedels was a plural because
of the “s” on the end. A new singular, raedel was formed and here is the
ancestor of our word riddle. Finally the word read took on its modern
meaning: if you can read, you have the ability to look at and understand
what is written.
Of course the basis of all writing is language. But it is first of all, a
spoken activity, and hence this noun is derived from a word referring to
the organ of speech primarily involved. In this case it is the French word
language, which goes back to the Latin lingua, tongue. The English, though,
retained their native word to name that soft movable part inside your mouth
whish you see for tasting and licking and for speaking”, a tongue.
Sometimes you may hear the word tongue used in the meaning of language, but
it is an old-fashioned and literary use.
If you want to read what is written in a foreign language, you need a
dictionary. The term dictionary comes from the Latin word dictio, from
dico, say or speak. A dictionary is really a record of what people say, of
the pronunciation, spellings, and meanings that they give to words.”
In Old English there was a different word with which the Englishmen called
bread, it was half. But then as a result of the Vikings invasion and
Scandinavian influence on the English language a new word of the same
meaning entered the English vocabulary from Scandinavian: cake. Since the
English had already their own word (half), they started to use the word
cake for a special type of bread. First it referred to a small loaf of
bread of flat and round shape. From the 15th century it began to mean sweet
food, as it does now.
To the Scandinavians, living in Britain, called their bread by the word
brauth. The English had a similar word – bread meaning a lump, a piece of
bread. Under the influence of the Scandinavian language the word bread
widened its meaning and began to mean bread in general, while the word loaf
(from Old English half) narrowed its meaning, now it is a large lump of
bread which we slice before eating.
The Great Englishman Caxton, who introduced printing in Britain in 1476,
wrote in a preface to one of the books about a funny episode with egg. The
thing is that in Old English the word egg had a different form which
spelled as ey in Middle English; its plural form was eyren. And again the
Scandinavians brought with them to Britain their word egg. It first spread
in the northern English dialects, the southerners did not know it and used
their native word.
Caxton tells the readers that once English merchants from the northern
regions were sailing down the Thames, bound for the Netherlands. There was
no wind and they landed at a small southern village. The merchants decided
to buy some food. They came to a house and one of them asked a woman if she
could sell them eggs. The woman answered that she did not understand him
because she did not know French. The merchant became very angry and said
that he did not speak French either. Then another merchant helped. He said
they wanted eyren, the woman understood him and brought them eggs.
For rather a long period of time two words existed in Britain: a native
English word eyren was used in the South, and the Scandinavian borrow eggs
in the North. The Scandinavian word has won after, as you can see.
D). The Norman French.
I made another excursion into the past. The Time Масhinе has саrried me
into the 11th century, into the year of 1066. An аwful picture ореns before
my eyes: а great battle at Hastings, the English king Наrold is killed, the
English are defeated, the Norman invaders have won а victory. Тhe Normans
саmе frоm across the British Сhannеl, from the part of France called
Normandy. Тhеу conquered the English under the head of their leader, Duke
William, who later got the name of William the Conqueror. Тhе Normans
brought into Britain not оn1у their king, but their French language as
well. So it еxplаins why there are so many French words in the English
vocabulary.
The successful Norman invasion of England in 1066 brought Britain into the
mainstream of western European culture. Previously most links had been with
Scandinavia. Only in Scotland did this link survive; the western isles
(until the thirteenth century) and the northern islands (until the
fifteenth century) remaining under the control of Scandinavian kings.
Throughout this period the English kings also ruled over areas of land on
the continent were often at war with the French kings in disputes over
ownership.
Unlike the Germanic invasions, the Norman invasion was small-scale. There
was no such thing as a Norman area of settlement. Instead, the Norman
soldiers who had been a part of the invading army were given the ownership
of land – and of the people living on it. A strict feudal system was
imposed. Great nobles, or barons, were responsible directly to the king;
lesser lords, each owing a village, were directly responsible to a baron.
Under them were the peasants, tied by a strict system of mutual duties and
obligations to the local lord, and forbidden to travel without his
permission. The peasants were the English-speaking Saxons. The lords and
the barons were the French-speaking Normans. This was the beginning of the
English class system.
The existence of two words for the larger farm animals in modern English is
a result of the class divisions established by the Norman conquest. There
are the words for the living animals (e.g. cow, pig, sheep), which have
their origins in Anglo-Saxon, and the words for the meat from the animals
(e.g. beef, pork, mutton.), which have their origins in the French language
that the Normans brought to England. Only the Normans normally ate meat;
the poor Anglo-Saxon peasants did not!
The strong system of government which the Normans introduced meant that the
Anglo-Norman kingdom was easily the most powerful political force in
British Isles. Not surprisingly therefore, the authority of the English
monarch gradually extended to other parts of these islands in the next 250
years. But the end of the thirteenth century, a large part of eastern
Ireland was controlled by Anglo-Norman lords in the name of the English
king and the while of Wales was under his direct rule (at which time the
custom of naming the monarch’s eldest son the “Prince of Wales” began).
Scotland managed to remain politically independent in the medieval period,
but was obliged to fight occasional wars to do so.
II. Middle English. (1100-1500)
The English which was used from about 1100 to about 1500 is called Middle
English. The cultural story of this period is different. Two hundred and
fifty years after the Norman Conquest, it was a Germanic language (Middle
English) and not the Norman (French) language which had become the dominant
one in all classes of society of England. Furthermore, it was the Anglo-
Saxon concept of common law, and not Roman law, which formed the basis of
the legal system.
Despite English rule, northern and central Wales was never settled in great
