History of English I

‘Fyrst ‘forth gewat ‘flota waes on ‘ythum
‘Bat under ‘beorge. ‘Beornas ge’arwe
On ‘stefn ‘stigon. ‘Streamas ‘wundon,
‘sund with ‘sande. ‘Secgas ‘baeron
On ‘bearm ‘nacan ‘beorhte ‘fraetwe,
‘Guth-searo ge’atolic. ‘Guman ‘ut scufon,
‘Weras on ‘wilsith ‘wudu ‘bundenne.
Ge’wat tha ofer ‘waeg-holm ‘winde ge’fysed
‘Flota ‘fami-heals ‘fugle ‘gelicost.

English is a stress-rhythm language
In speaking English, we place stresses at
equal time intervals, or, in other words,
the stresses are evenly spaced. When
there are more unstressed syllables, we
pronounce them faster, when there are
fewer unstressed syllables, we pronounce
them slower – the important thing is that the
interval between two stressed syllables should be
equal.

French, for instance, is a length-rhythm
language: almost all syllables of equal
length.

Thus, English speech as occurring in real
time can be described as follows (capital X –
a stressed syllable,small x, an unstressed
syllable):
xXxxxxXx Xxxx Xxx X
as against French
XxxXxxxxXxX

The stress-rhythm nature of the English
language goes back to Old English times.
Ilse Lehiste: indigenous poetry is closely
linked to the phonetic nature of the
language.

Old English/Anglo-Saxon poetic metre
In Old English poetry the number of
syllables per line was not important (just
the opposite of French, e.g. Alexandrine –
12 syllables per line, the number of stresses
not important). What counted was the
number of stresses.
Four stresses per line, the stresses evenly
spaced (e.g. occur at equal time intervals)

A pause (in Latin called caesura) in the
middle of the line. Two stresses before the
pause, two stresses after the pause.
The number of unstressed syllables
between the stressed syllables is not
significant, varies.

Unlike, e.g., in Estonian folk poetry, the
stresses fall on notional words.
´Fyrst ´forth gewat ´flota waes on ´ythum
´bat under ´beorge ‘beornas ‘gearwe

The old meter has actually survived!
Althought Chaucer brought continental
meters to Britain, the English language still shines
through English poetry.
Cf Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”
To be or not to be, that is the question
Officially iambic pentameter, i.e.,
To ‘be or ‘not to ‘be that ‘is the ‘question
actually only four stresses:
To ´be or ńot to be, ´that is the ´question

The same applies to Chaucer himself:
´Whan that A´prille with his śhoures śoote
(Although “should” be
Whan ´that A´prille ´with his śhoures śoote –
iambic pentameter)

The tension between the formal meter (i.e.
iambic pentameter) and the “real” one (i.e.
the one that sounds natural and that all
actors actually use) creates a specific poetic
effect.

Alliteration
Old English poetry: initial rhymes (important
for remembering! After all, the poetry was
mainly oral, only selected poems written
down by clerks at the command of
noblemen/kings).
Alliteration – consonants at the beginning of
words are repeated.
Alliteration applied to stressed syllables.

Alliteration bound together the two halves
of the line.
Therefore, the third stressed syllable
(first in the second half) had to alliterate
with at least one stressed syllable in the
first half of the line.

´Fyrst ´forth gewat ´flota waes on ´ythum
Ideally, all four stressed syllables ought to
have alliterated, but this was seldom
feasible.
The best example in our texts:
Ge´wat ofer ´way-holm, ´winde ge´fysed
(if we believe that /w/ and /f/ are relatively close as sounds).

Since every second half line was
paraphrased (not repeated exactly, but the
same scene often viewed from a different
perspective) by the contents of the first half
of the next line, remembering was ensured
with the help of both sense and sound.