A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 | Page 4

spoken in the Netherlands is called
+Dutch+; the Low German spoken in Friesland-- a prosperous
province of Holland-- is called +Frisian+; and the Low German
spoken in Great Britain is called +English+. These three languages
are extremely like one another; but the Continental language that is
likest the English is the Dutch or Hollandish dialect called Frisian. We
even possess a couplet, every word of which is both English and
Frisian. It runs thus--
Good butter and good cheese Is good English and good Fries.
10. +Dutch and Welsh-- a Contrast.+-- When the Teuton conquerors
came to this country, they called the Britons foreigners, just as the
Greeks called all other peoples besides themselves barbarians. By this
they did not at first mean that they were uncivilised, but only that they
were not Greeks. Now, the Teutonic or Saxon or English name for
foreigners was +Wealhas+, a word afterwards contracted into
+Welsh+. To this day the modern Teuts or Teutons (or Germans, as we
call them) call all Frenchmen and Italians Welshmen; and, when a
German, peasant crosses the border into France, he says: "I am going
into Welshland."

11. +The Spread of English over Britain.+-- The Jutes, who came from
Juteland or Jylland-- now called Jutland-- settled in Kent and in the
Isle of Wight. The Saxons settled in the south and western parts of
England, and gave their names to those kingdoms-- now counties--
whose names came to end in +sex+. There was the kingdom of the East
Saxons, or +Essex+; the kingdom of the West Saxons, or +Wessex+;
the kingdom of the Middle Saxons, or +Middlesex+; and the kingdom
of the South Saxons, or +Sussex+. The Angles settled chiefly on the
east coast. The kingdom of +East Anglia+ was divided into the regions
of the +North Folk+ and the +South Folk+, words which are still
perpetuated in the names Norfolkand Suffolk. These three sets of
Teutons all spoke different dialects of the same Teutonic speech; and
these dialects, with their differences, peculiarities, and odd habits, took
root in English soil, and lived an independent life, apart from each
other, uninfluenced by each other, for several hundreds of years. But,
in the slow course of time, they joined together to make up our
beautiful English language-- a language which, however, still bears in
itself the traces of dialectic forms, and is in no respect of one kind or of
one fibre all through.
CHAPTER I.
THE PERIODS OF ENGLISH.
1. +Dead and Living Languages.+-- A language is said to be dead when
it is no longer spoken. Such a language we know only in books. Thus,
Latin is a dead language, because no nation anywhere now speaks it. A
dead language can undergo no change; it remains, and must remain, as
we find it written in books. But a living language is always changing,
just like a tree or the human body. The human body has its periods or
stages. There is the period of infancy, the period of boyhood, the period
of manhood, and the period of old age. In the same way, a language has
its periods.
2. +No Sudden Changes-- a Caution.+-- We divide the English
language into periods, and then mark, with some approach to accuracy,
certain distinct changes in the habits of our language, in the inflexions

of its words, in the kind of words it preferred, or in the way it liked to
put its words together. But we must be carefully on our guard against
fancying that, at any given time or in any given year, the English
people threw aside one set of habits as regards language, and adopted
another set. It is not so, nor can it be so. The changes in language are as
gentle, gradual, and imperceptible as the changes in the growth of a tree
or in the skin of the human body. We renew our skin slowly and
gradually; but we are never conscious of the process, nor can we say at
any given time that we have got a completely new skin.
3. +The Periods of English.+-- Bearing this caution in mind, we can go
on to look at the chief periods in our English language. These are five
in number; and they are as follows:--
I. Ancient English or Anglo-Saxon, 449-1100 II. Early English,
1100-1250 III. Middle English, 1250-1485 IV. Tudor English,
1485-1603 V. Modern English, 1603-1900
These periods merge very slowly, or are shaded off, so to speak, into
each other in the most gradual way. If we take the English of 1250 and
compare it with that of 900, we shall find a great difference; but if we
compare it with the English of 1100 the difference is not so marked.
The difference between the English of the nineteenth and the English of