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

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 the fourteenth century is very great, but the difference between the English of the fourteenth and that of the thirteenth century is very small.
4. +Ancient English or Anglo-Saxon, 450-1100.+-- This form of English differed from modern English in having a much larger number of inflexions. The noun had five cases, and there were several declensions, just as in Latin; adjectives were declined, and had three genders; some pronouns had a dual as well