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UNIT 2. GERMANIC AND OLD ENGLISH WRITING
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| UNIT 2. GERMANIC AND OLD ENGLISH WRITING
Writing is such a specialized form of behavior, in fact, that it evolved late in human culture. Speech is prehistoric; history itself comes into being the moment we have written records. The alphabet that the English use today was borrowed from the Greeks by the Romans and exported to most of Europe, including Ireland, from which the Roman alphabet came into England (the earliest survivng writings in Old English in the Roman alphabet date from about 700 A.D.). For hundreds of years before that time, however, the pre-Christian Angles and Saxons had an angular script called ‗ runes‘, meaning ‗ secret‘. Judging from the inscriptions that have survived, runes were used primarily for memorials and charms.Historian Tacitus wrote that ancient Germans attached great importance to fortune-telling by means of casting lots: putting on a piece of cloth sticks with carved marks and reading prayers, a priest chose at random 3 sticks and told fortunes reading the marks. Those magic words were letters of runic writing. The term ‗ runes‘ was formed from the stem meaning ‗ secret‘ (cf. Gothic ‗ rūna‘ – secret and German verb ‗ raunen‘ – to whisper secretly, stealthily). Runes were an early adaptation of the Greek alphabet that came into England through Scandinavia instead of Ireland. The Greeks in their turn had adapted the alphabet from the pre- 11 Semitic peoples of Sumer (the Sumerian writing system was invented around 1000 B.C.). Runic alphabet consisted of 24 marks (not always). These marks represented combinations of vertical and slanting lines. The knowledge of runes was the professional secret of priests and was passed on from generation to generation. The main ‗ function‘ of runes was to protect the owner of the thing from evil and enemies, to protect the dead and keep them in grave. Runes were carved on wood, bone, tomb-stones, some time later on metal, especially on gold. Unfortunately it was very difficult to preserve wooden things, so very few of them are left. Altogether there were discovered about 150 things with runes that date from the 3 rd to the 8 th c. These things are parts of armour (spears, handles of swords, shields), adornments and amulets (ring, bracelet), tomb-stones, etc. Most of the inscriptions represent separate words (mainly proper names). It is possible that for ancient Germans each rune, even when used separately, had a magic meaning. Then it is clear why very often they wrote down the whole alphabet or the part of it: they thought it would bring them luck and protect them from misfortunes. The two best known runic inscriptions in England are the earliest Old English records: 1) the inscription on a box called the ‗ Franks Casket‘ and 2) a short text on the cross known as the ‗ Ruthwell Cross‘. The total number of the runic inscriptions in Old English is about 40. A specific use of runes found its reflection in the vocabulary of Germanic languages. E.g. German Buchstabe (Buche + Stab), ‗ letter‘, at first meant ‗ beechwood stick‘ (Old English bochst æf), the English verb (to) read at first meant ‗ to guess‘, the verb (to) write before had the meaning ‗ to scratch‘. During the process of Christianization (4-12 th c.) the Germans got acquainted with Latin writing (Goths with Greek). Gradually Latin writing supplanted runes. In Scandinavia, where runes turned out to be stabler, runic writing didn‘t disappear completely but was carried to parchment and was used not only for religious rites but (as, for example, in Denmark in the 13 th c.) also for writing laws and was used for this purpose up to the 16 th c. As for the Old English language, our knowledge of it comes not from the runic inscriptions but from the manuscripts written in Latin characters. Latin script (or Roman alphabet) appeared in England due to the Christian missionaries. The first attempt to introduce the Christian religion to Anglo-Saxon Britain was made in the 6 th c. In less than a century practically all England was Christianized. Christianization of the country gave a strong impetus to the development of culture and learning. All over the country monasteries and monastic schools were founded. In the period from the 5 th till the 11 th c (OE period) the relative weight of OE kingdoms and their influence on each other was variable. At different times four of the OE kingdoms secured supremacy in the country. Those kingdoms were Kent, 12 Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, and accordingly there existed in the OE language 4 principal dialects: Kentish, Northumbrian, Mercian and Wessex. All OE written records can be divided into prosaic and poetic. OE prosaic works have been preserved in all dialects but mainly in Wessex. One of the most famous written records in Wessex dialect is ― The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles ǁ . It represents a number of brief annals of the year‘s happenings made at various monasteries. It dates from the 7 th c. Among the poetic works the most famous is ― Beowulf ǁ , it was written by an unknown author and the dialect of the work cannot be defined definitely either. Though the OE scribes took the Latin alphabet as the basis for their writing system, they found it insufficient for their needs. Thus they borrowed 2 letters from the runic alphabet: letter ‗ thorn‘ and letter ‗ wynn‘. The OE writing was mainly a phonetical writing, i.e. every symbol stood for a certain sound, while nowadays, the English writing and phonetical systems have many disparities. So it is clear, that in the course of history the English writing underwent considerable changes which resulted in the present-day writing. жүктеу/скачать 0,78 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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