1. English originated from Germanic tribes like the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes colonizing Celtic Britain, gradually dominating as the main language over 300 years. 2. The Frisian language, spoken in the Netherlands, is closely related to Old English. 3. Latin was introduced to England by Irish missionaries in the 7th century, influencing the development of English by contributing religious and scholarly words.

1. THE COMMON
TONGUE
CHAPTER 1
BY GEORGE LASLUISA

2. ENGLISH CAME FROM:
• Germanic Warrior tribes colonizing Celtic Britons.
or
• Peaceful farmers looking for rich pastures.
• It took more than three hundred years for English to dominate as main
language.

3. FRISIAN LANGUAGE
• Similar to antique English. Can be identified by listening and reading
similarities.
• Laam – Lamb
• Stoarm – Storm
• Sliepe – Sleep
• Frisian came from Proto IndoEuropean.

4. Proto Indo-
European
Celtic Hellenic Germanic
East Germanic
extinct
North Germanic
Old Norse
West Germanic
Dutch German English Frisian
Focus on
Western Indo-
European

5. CLAIMING TERRITORY
• “-ing” means “the people of”
• Ealing, Dorking, Worthing, etc.
• “-ton” means “village”
• Wilton, Ashton, Burton, etc.
• “-ham” means “farm”
• Birmingham, Tottenham, Nottingham, etc.

6. LOAN WORDS
• In 635, Aidan arrived North England. Their successors fed English with
Church Latin.
• Started as pagan English, words about spiritual and religious beliefs.
• Took on Latin, Latin smuggled on Greek.

7. ANGLES, SAXONS AND JUTES
• The Jutes were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of their
time in the Nordic Iron Age.
• The Saxons were a Germanic people whose name was given in the early
Middle Ages to a large country near the North Sea coast of what is now
Germany.
• The Angles were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great
Britain in the post-Roman period.

8. THE RUNIC ALPHABET
• A script from The Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
• Named as “futhorc” just like its first letters.
• Runes are the letters in a set of related
alphabets known as runic alphabets.

9. OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET
• Aidan and other Irish missionaries brought to Northumbria the first
manuscripts in the Roman alphabet.

10. ENGLISH IS BEING WRITTEN
• In the early 80th century was written the Lindisfarne Gospels in
Northumbria and The Ecclesiastical History of English People in Jarrow in
the monastery of St. Paul.
• During the seventh, eight century is dated The Wanderer, The Seafarer
and Beowulf.
• The Exeter Book is a tenth-century book which is an anthology of Anglo-
Saxon poetry.

11. THE GREAT SCAPE
CHAPTER 2

12. Norwegian Vikings
Northern and western rim of
scotland to Northwest of
England.
Danish Vikings
Occupied Midlands and east of
the country.

13. ALFRED AND THE BATTLE OF
ETHANDUNE
• Danes destroyed manuscripts and burned the great library of Jarrow.
• In 865, they settled in East Anglia and attacked south.
• In 878, they won and almost disappeared the last old kingdom.
• Alfred was the leader of the Wessex the last English army who escaped.
• Alfred used for first time the word “Englisc” to describe the language.
• He conducted an intense program to educate in English.
• In 878, Alfred joined 4000 men from Wiltshire and Somerset.
• In the last attack the Danes surrendered and their leader was baptized as Christian.

14. AFTER WAR
• Alfred knew the Danish will not subjugate.
• He divided the land, to the north and east for the Danelaw under Danish
rule.
• The south and west for the core of the new England.
• Crossing was not allowed, save for specific purposes or trading.
• Trade refined the language and made it more flexible.
• English had an immense capacity to absorb, to convert, to take on board
other languages.

15. VIKING NAMING REMAINS
• Ending “-by” means “farm or town”
• Corby, Thornby, Rugby, etc.
• Ending “-thorpe“ means “village”
• Scunthorpe, Althorp, etc.
• Ending “-thwaite“ is “a portion of land”.
• Ruthwaite, Micklethwaite, etc.
• Ending “-toft” means “homestead”
• Lowestoft, Eastoft, Sandtoft, etc.
• The word “dale” was “valley”
• Langdale, Patterdale, etc.

16. OLD ENGLISH STRUCTURE
• It was commonly Subject + Verb + Object, but it has not a rule.
• It was necessary to use forms to give meaning to verbs and directional to
point out the subject or the object.
• Commerce needed fast talking and high comprehension, it was the end of
word endings.
• Prepositions came in and made the order of words important.

17. DIALECTS
• In Britain, hybrid county dialects are disappearing due to people moving to
bigger or main cities of a language.
• Wigton Dialect: ‘I’ pronounced ‘Aah’, ‘the’ as ‘t’
• For Romany ‘horse’ was ‘grey’ or ‘book’ as ‘byeuk’
• Anglo-Saxon ‘to go’ is ‘gaan’, ‘gangan’, ‘gan’
• Old Nrose ‘Leika’ is ‘play’
• Scandinavian ‘clarty’ is ‘muddy’

18. BATTLE OF MALDON
• In 991, Danes attacked again and won.
• But thanks to Alfred, the language was already settled and cannot be
extinguished.
• There is a poem to describe the Battle of Maldon that was written in Old
English.
• Even Latin was thought using English as basis.
• Pupils expressed their own feelings and beliefs in English as natural.