Before the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came to England their Germanic tongue had already been influenced by two other languages. What were they?
This is for school trivia...help...
2007-09-19 07:07:31 · 4 answers · asked by comfortably n 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Old Norse (origin of modern Icelandic) and Latin, which was already influencing other European languages as a scholarly tongue.
2007-09-19 07:15:22 · answer #1 · answered by Doethineb 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Their language, which later gave rise to Old English and then Modern English, was influenced by Late Vulgar Latin as well as Old Norse, which was also a Germanic tongue in that it derived from Proto-Germanic.
2007-09-19 14:19:48 · answer #2 · answered by baldisempire 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Celtic and Latin.
There were some Celtic influences on the Anglo-Saxon language, primarily from the Gauls who were living in the German Rhineland. (St. Jerome writing around the year 400 A.D. informs us that Celtic was still spoken in Augusta Trevorum, the modern German city of Trier).
Some of these early Celtic loanwords appear to have been "iron," "cloak" and "gown" cf. Gallic isarno-, clocca and gunna. Also "leather" cf. Irish láthair (leather) also borrowed into German as Leder as in Lederhosen.
The Anglo-Saxons also borrowed some Celtic words from the semi-Romanized Britons who were living in England after they arrived there including possibly "dad" and "daddy" cf. Welsh tad "father."
Anglo-Saxon contacts with Roman traders along the Rhine River brought in Latin words like belt < balteus, cup< cuppa, pepper < piprum, wine < winum, chalk< calx, cheese , caseus and cheap < caupo/ cauponis.
Some additional Latin words were borrowed by the Anglo-Saxons haver they arrived in Britain from the semi-Romanized Britons. From British Vulgar Latin came words like critter < creatura, camp < campus, mile < mille passus and pillow < pulvinus.
After Christianity was introduced into England in the late 6th century more Latin words came into Anglo-Saxon from Church Latin e.g. candle < candela and minister (origninally "servant in Latin).
Anglo-Saxon originally had tafol"table" from tabula, munt "mountain" from montis and liwa "league" from Gallo-Latin legua but they were later replaced by the Norman French form of these words : table, mountain, league.
2007-09-19 15:53:02 · answer #3 · answered by Brennus 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Well one is definitely Latin, it's influenced everything. As for the second...French? I'm really not sure. Possibly Danish or Dutch.
2007-09-19 14:16:59 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋