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GERMANIC ALPHABET. OLD GERMANIC TEXTS.

Germanic tribes used 3 different alphabets for their writhing. The earliest of these was the Runic alphabet, each separate letter was called a rune. There were 24 runes arranged in a peculiar order, made up of vertical strokes and that is why the early runes were not written, first runic were on wood, stone, bone or metal. This alphabet originated at some time in the 2nd and 3rd century in territories with Roman culture. This alphabet was used by Goths, Scandinavians.

Next comes Ulfula’s Gothic alphabet (4th).This is the alphabet of Ulfula’s Gothic translation of the bible, peculiar alphabet, with some mixture of Latin and Runic.

The latest alphabet to be used by Germanic tribes is the Latin alphabet. It superceded when parchment and papyrus started to be used as the material for writing. This alphabet is the combination of Latin with runes and some other innovations is called “insular writing”.

The oldest longer document is Ulfula’s Bible (4th century). Then the old high German’s “song of Hildebrandt” fragment of an epic (8th), and old Icelandic epic text “older Edda”(13th).

 

5. ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The English L. originated from Angola Frisian dialects, which made part of west Germanic Group. The Germanic tribes which conquered Britain in the 5th century belonged to 3 tribes.

The earliest mention of the British isles is in the 4th century B.C., when the Greek explorer Rytheas, of Massilia sailing round Europe, landed in Kent.

At this time Britain was inhabited by Celtic Tribes, who spoke various Celtic languages. Those L. are divided into 2 groups:

- the Gallo-Bretons:

1) Gallic, which was spoken in Gaul(France);

2)British, represented by Welsh in Wales, Cornish, in Cornwall, and Briton in Brittany.

- the Gallic

1) Irish

2) Scots

3) Manx

 


Date: 2015-01-12; view: 2957


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THE SUBJECT OF HISTORY ENGLISH | THE ROMAN CONQUEST.
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