It is important to notice here that neither the Anglian nor the Saxon borrowed much from the language of the conquered Britons. The largest single class of Celtic words in Anglo-Saxon is in connection with geographical names, such as Aberdeen, mouth of the Dee, Incheape, island cape, and kill, meaning church, in Kildare. Only ten common nouns borrowed from Celtic in Anglo Saxon are given by Skeat (Principles of English Etymology), among these being bannock, cart, Blown, mattock. It is possible, however, that other Celtic words were in use that have not been preserved in literature. A few Latin words were evidently introduced through the Celtic. Some of these are geographical names, having different forms of the word castra, camp, ns the last part; among the others may he noted lake, mount, street, wine. A few Latin words were brought to Britain from the Continent. where the Teutons had already conic into contact with Roman cul ture. It may be inferred that all Latin deriva tives found in Anglo-Saxon and in other early Germanic languages are pre-insular. Among these have been suggested chalk, coulter, mint. But by far the largest borrowing of Latin words during the Anglo-Saxon period came as a result of the introduction of Christianity in Kent in 597. Not only ecclesiastical words directly connected with the new faith, but many general words found their way into the language. The total number of Latin words introduced at this time is esti mated by Skeat at l 10. From among these may be taken 'the following examples: Altar, mass, priest, psalm, temple, kitchen, palm, pear, tunic. It should be noted that several of these words are of Greek origin. Not a few Scandinavian words were borrowed, mainly as a result of the Danish invasions. Several of these occur for the first time in the accounts of the engagements between the English and the Danes given in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. Thus earl, first applied only to Danish leaders, later took the place of the Eng lish alderman. Other words are husband, knife, lake, window. Great difficulty is often experi enced in determining the Seandinavian clement in Anglo-Saxon, owing to the close resemblance be Northumbrian and Norse.
The early part of the Middle English period, sometimes called Seini-Saxtm, is a period of transition, and. like every transition era, it is marked by confusion. The absence of any recog nized standard dialect added greatly to the con fusion. The monks of the tine, accustomed to the use of money:11 Latin, had in a great meas ure forgotten the grammar of their native lan guage, and when they attempted to write it, did so very badly. The Chronicle. which in its latest forms comps; (limn to 1151. and Lavairm's Brut, 1\ ri t I ,n about 1100 or 1200,. exhibit t races of the breaking up of the grammar. During the English period all the important cha-nges took place that resulted in transforming English from a highly inflected into a practically uninflected language. It should be remembered, however, that the tendency of English to substitute an analytical for a synthetical structure; that is, to indicate syntactical relations by the use of par tides and by the position of words in the sen tence, is not peculiar to our language. Among
the Scandinavian languages, Danish and Swedish belong now to about the same stage as English, and Dutch is no less distinctly analytical. Ger man, on the other hand, is still a highly inflected language. Beginning with the noun in English we find that, as early as 1200, the three or four eases in the singular had been reduced to two in the majority of nouns, and that in the plural the com mon form in es had been adopted. During the latter part of the period almost all nouns were de clined in practically their present manner. The apostrophe in the genitive singular was intro duced to indicate the original e of the ending, and it was later extended to the plural. The sim plification of the declension of the noun was effected by two principles—one. phonetic. the weakening of all the vowels of the endings to e and the dropping of final a, which reduced all vowel endings to the one form ; the other logical, the principle of analogy, by which the various dcelensions of Anglo-Saxon were reduced to the most prominent one, the strong masculine end in the plural in as, later weakened to es. Only one original weak plural. oxen. has sur vived in Modern English, kinc and brethren being later formations. Several representatives of the so-called mutation class, or nouns showing a modification of the root vowel in the plural, as man, men, are still found, and there are also a few nouns having the same form in the plural as in the singular, as deer, survivals of Anglo Saxon neuters. Along with the leveling of in flections there has been a change from the gram matical to the natural gender. This was a neces sary result of the loss of distinctive inflectional endings. In the adjective there has been a com plete loss of inflections. since comparison belongs not to inflection, but to composition. In this respect English has gone further than Danish, in which a distinctive form has been retained for the definite and the plural. The definite form of the adjective is still used by Chaucer. In the de elension of the pronoun the dual number has been lost, and the dative and accusative have been reduced to a common form, derived in most in stances from the dative. One entirely new form, its, has been developed in the seventeenth century, the original genitive being his, which is the only form used in the King .Tames translation of the Bible. The relatives who, which. that, were in troduced in the Middle English period, and the plural of the demonstrative they was substituted for the original plural hi of the third personal pronoun. In the conjugation of the verb the principal change has been in the loss of about two-thirds of the strong class, most of them pass ing over to the weak conjugation. With a very few exceptions all verbs borrowed from foreign languages during the Middle and Modern periods are weak. This tendency is the result of analog-. The conjugation has also been greatly simplified by the loss of endings and the use of a common form for the singular and plural of strong verbs.