Subject Area: Linguistics

This course provides an introduction to some thirteen centuries of the English language. Obviously, an in-depth study of this in one semester is not feasible. We will look at a number of primary sources provided online, both in the original and in Modern English translation, and use these for close study of the forms of the changing language, as well as for contemporary commentary on the events and concerns of the times. Throughout, we will take the view that, although there were many changes in the language over this time, we are still speaking substantially the same language that developed in England during the first 300-400 years after the Angles, Saxons and Jutes settled there.