Halleck's New English Literature. Reuben Post Halleck
of "good."
The Norman Conquest helped to lop off these endings, which German has never entirely lost. We, however, no longer decline articles or ordinary adjectives. Instead of having our attention taken up with thinking of the proper endings, we are left free to attend to the thought rather than to the vehicle of its expression. Although our pronouns are still declined, the sole inflection of our nouns, with the exception of a few like ox, oxen, or mouse, mice, is the addition of 's, s, or es for the possessive and the plural. Modern German, on the other hand, still retains these troublesome case endings. How did English have the good fortune to lose them?
Whenever two peoples, speaking different languages, are closely associated, there is a tendency to drop the terminations and to use the stem word in all grammatical relations. If an English-speaking person, who knows only a little German, travels in Germany, he finds that he can make himself understood by using only one form of the noun or adjective. If he calls for "two large glasses of hot milk," employing the incorrect expression, zwei gross Glass heiss Milch, he will probably get the milk as quickly as if he had said correctly, zwei grosse Gläser heisse Milch. Neglect of the proper case endings may provoke a smile, but the tourist prefers that to starvation. Should the Germans and the English happen to be thrown together in nearly equal numbers on an island, the Germans would begin to drop the inflections that the English could not understand, and the German language would undergo a change.
If there were no books or newspapers to circulate a fixed form of speech, the alteration in the spoken tongue would be comparatively rapid.
Such dropping of terminations is precisely what did happen before the
Norman Conquest in those parts of England most overrun by the Danes.
There, the adjectives lost their terminations to indicate gender and
case, and the article "the" ceased to be declined.
Even if the Normans had not come to England, the dropping of the inflections would not have ceased. Many authorities think that the grammatical structure of English would, even in the absence of that event, have evolved into something like its present form. Of course the Norman Conquest hastened many grammatical changes that would ultimately have resulted from inherent causes, but it did not exercise as great an influence as was formerly ascribed to it. Philologists find it impossible to assign the exact amount of change due to the Conquest and to other causes. Let us next notice some changes other than the loss of inflections.
Change in Gender.—Before any one could speak Anglo-Saxon correctly, he had first to learn the fanciful genders that were attached to nouns: "trousers" was feminine; "childhood," masculine; "child," neuter. During this period the English gradually lost these fanciful genders which the German still retains. A critic thus illustrates the use of genders in that language: "A German gentleman writes a masculine letter of feminine love to a neuter young lady with a feminine pen and feminine ink on masculine sheets of neuter paper, and incloses it in a masculine envelope with a feminine address to his darling, though neuter, Gretchen. He has a masculine head, a feminine hand, and a neuter heart."
Prefixes, Suffixes, and Self-explaining Compounds.—The English tongue lost much of its power of using prefixes. A prefix joined to a well-known word changes its meaning and renders the coining of a new term unnecessary. The Anglo-Saxons, by the use of prefixes, formed ten compounds from their verb fl=owan, "to flow." Of these, only one survives in our "overflow." From sittan, "to sit," thirteen compounds were thus formed, but every one has perished. A larger percentage of suffixes was retained, and we still have many words like "wholesome-ness," "child-hood," "sing-er."
The power of forming self-explaining compounds was largely lost. The Saxon compounded the words for "tree," and "worker," and said tr=eow-wyrhta, "tree-wright," but we now make use of the single word "carpenter." We have replaced the Saxon b=oc-craeft, "book-art," by "literature"; =aefen-gl=om, "evening-gloom," by "twilight"; mere-sw=in, "sea-swine," by "porpoise"; =eag-wraec, "eye-rack," by "pain in the eye"; leornung-cild, "learning-child," by "pupil." The title of an old work, Ayen-bite of In-wit, "Again-bite of In-wit," was translated into "Remorse of Conscience." Grund-weall and word-hora were displaced by "foundation" and "vocabulary." The German language still retains this power and calls a glove a "hand-shoe," a thimble a "finger-hat," and rolls up such clumsy compound expressions as Unabhängigkeits-erklärung.
We might lament this loss more if we did not remember that Shakespeare found our language ample for his needs, and that a considerable number of the old compounds still survive, as home-stead, man-hood, in-sight, break-fast, house-hold, horse-back, ship-man, sea-shore, hand-work, and day-light.
Introduction of New Words and Loss of Old Ones.—Since the Normans were for some time the governing race, while many of the Saxons occupied comparatively menial positions, numerous French words indicative of rank, power, science, luxury, and fashion were introduced. Many titles were derived from a French source. English thus obtained words like "sovereign," "royalty," "duke," "marquis," "mayor," and "clerk." Many terms of government are from the French; for instance, "parliament," "peers," "commons." The language of law abounds in French terms, like "damage," "trespass," "circuit," "judge," "jury," "verdict," "sentence," "counsel," "prisoner." Many words used in war, architecture, and medicine also have a French origin. Examples are "fort," "arch," "mason," "surgery." In fact, we find words from the French in almost every field. "Uncle" and "cousin," "rabbit" and "falcon," "trot" and "stable," "money" and "soldier," "reason" and "virtue," "Bible" and "preach," are instances in point.
French words often displaced Saxon ones. Thus, the Saxon Haelend, the Healer, gave way to the French Savior, wanhope and wonstead were displaced by despair and residence. Sometimes the Saxon stubbornly kept its place beside the French term. The English language is thus especially rich in synonyms, or rather in slightly differentiated forms of expression capable of denoting the exact shade of thought and feeling. The following words are instances:—
SAXON FRENCH
body corpse folk people swine pork calf veal worth value green verdant food nourishment wrangle contend fatherly paternal workman laborer
English was enriched not only by those expressions, gained from the daily speech of the Normans, but also by words that were added from literary Latin. Thus, we have the Saxon "ask," the Norman-French "inquire" and "question," and the Latin "interrogate." "Bold," "impudent," "audacious"; "bright," "cheerful," "animated"; "earnings," "wages," "remuneration," "short," "brief," "concise," are other examples of words, largely synonymous, from the Saxon, the Norman-French, and the Latin, respectively. These facts explain why modern English has such a wealth of expression, although probably more than one half of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary has been lost.
The Superiority of the Composite Tongue.—While we insist on the truth that Anglo-Saxon gained much of its wonderful directness and power from standing in close relations to earnest life, it is necessary to remember that many words of French origin did, by an apprenticeship at the fireside, in the field, the workshop, and the laboratory, equally fit themselves for taking their place in the language. Such words from French-Latin roots as "faith," "pray," "vein," "beast," "poor," "nurse," "flower," "taste," "state," and "fool" remain in our vocabulary because they were used in everyday life.
Pure Anglo-Saxon was a forcible language, but it lacked the wealth of expression and the flexibility necessary to respond to the most delicate touches of the master-musicians who were to come. When Shakespeare has Lear say of Cordelia:—
"Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman,"
we find that ten of the thirteen words are Saxon, but the other three of Romance (French) origin are as necessary as is a small amount of tin added to copper to make bronze. Two of these three words express varying shades of quality.
Lounsbury well says: "There result, indeed, from the union of the foreign and native elements, a wealth of phraseology and a many-sidedness in English, which give it in these respects a superiority over any other modern cultivated