is however applied to all Germanic dialects spoken in England after the 5th century. The language of the period extending to the end of the 10th century is distinguished as old Anglo-Saxon, with two principal dialects, the Saxon and Anglian, or southern and northern, of which the Anglian or northern was the most affected by Norse influences. The language of the subsequent period was a strange mixture of Anglo-Saxon with the Norse of the Danes and Norwegians, and the Norse-French of the Norman conquerors; and the literary documents are characterized by a considerable loss of the inflectional forms. Modern Anglo-Saxon or English is divided into three periods: old English, middle English, and modern English. Old English continued to disregard the old inflectional forms, especially in the declension of substantives. Middle English is characterized by an almost total absence of declensions of nouns and adjectives, and a great diminution of strong verbs. Modern English continued the same decline, and has now been stripped of all inflectional forms with the exception of the s and st of the present and the ed and en of the preterite of verbs, the ing of the present participle, the s of the genitive and plural, the degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs, and a few pronominal cases. Old Norse is the dialect which from an unknown period to the 11th century was spoken in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the adjacent islands. It is believed that it was split at a very early date into two sister dialects, one the mother of old Norse or Icelandic, the other the parent of Swedish and Danish. The first germs of Swedish and Danish are considered to have existed long before the 11th century in the dialects of the Scandinavian tribes. Swedish scholars distinguish between the East and West Scandinavian, which division they consider as having taken place before the Northmen settled in Norway and Sweden. The stationary existence of the Norse language in Icelandic, in which it has been preserved almost intact to the present day, is explained by the secluded position of the island, and the zeal with which the old songs and sagas, as collected and fixed in the two Eddas, have been cultivated by the inhabitants.
—In regard to the degree of relationship in which these languages stand to each other, and in which they stand collectively to cognate languages, the six old Teutonic tongues may be classified in three groups: 1, the Low German, with the Gothic and its nearest relatives Anglo-Saxon, old Saxon, and old Frisian; 2, the old High German; 3, the old Norse. The affinities between these languages and the modern tongues derived from them are illustrated in the foregoing table. The first ten cardinal numbers have been chosen for this purpose, as numerals are preferable for comparative purposes to any other class of words on account of the invariableness of their meaning. The Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit forms have been added to show the degree of relationship of the Germanic to the cognate groups of the Aryan or Indo-European family of languages. The primitive tongue is understood to be the mother of all, and gives the forms from which linguistic scholars derive those of the most ancient as well as of the modern Aryan dialects. The changes which the words have undergone in these languages have been discovered to appear in each according to fixed principles, which in linguistic science are known as Grimm's law.
GENERAL TABLE OF GRIMM'S LAW.
| I. | II. | III. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 1. | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. | 6. | 7. | 8. | 9. | ||||||||||||
|
gh (h) | dh (h) | bh (h) | g | d | b | k | t | p | |||||||||||
| χ | θ | φ | γ | δ | β | κ | τ | π | ||||||||||||
| h, f (g, v) | f (d, b) | f (b) | g | d | b | c, qu | t | p | ||||||||||||
| g | d | b | k | t | (p) | h, g (f) | th, d | f, b | ||||||||||||
| k | t | p | ch | z | ph (f) | h, g, k | d | f, v | ||||||||||||
The law is stated by Max Müller as follows: “If the same roots or the same words exist in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, Lithuanian, Gothic, and High German, then wherever the Hindoos and the Greeks pronounce an aspirate, the Goths and the Low Germans generally, the Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, &c., pronounce the corresponding hard check. . . . Secondly, if in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Slavonic, and Celtic we find a soft check, then we find a corresponding hard check in Gothic, a corresponding breath in old High German. . . . Thirdly, when the six first named languages show a hard consonant, then Gothic shows the corresponding breath, old High German the corresponding soft check.” In illustration of the different formulas we add examples for each class and division. 1. Sansk. hansa, Gr. χήν, Lat. anser (=hänser), Goth. gans, O. H. Ger. kans, Ger. Gans, Eng. goose; Sansk. hyas, Gr. χθές, Lat. heri, Goth. gistra, O. H. Ger. këstar, Ger. gestern, Eng. yesterday. 2. Sansk. dhrish, Gr. θαρσεῖν, Goth. ga-daursan, O. H. Ger. tarran, Eng. to dare. 3. Sansk. bhri, Gr. φέρω, Lat. fero, Goth. baira, O. H. Ger. piru, Eng. to bear. 4. Sansk. jnâ, Gr. γνῶμι, Lat. gnosco, Goth, kan, O. H. Ger. chan, Ger. kennen, Eng. to know. 5. Sansk. pâd-as, Gr. ποδ-ός, Lat. ped-is (pes), Goth. fôt-us, O. H. Ger. vuoz, Ger. Fuss, Eng. foot. 6. Goth. hilpa, O. H. Ger. hilfu, Ger. helfen, Eng. help. 7. Sansk.
