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The History of English Podcast
Episode 32: The Oldest English
00:37:58
We explore the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and their regional Old English dialects. The ‘Saxons’ soon become the ‘English.’ And ‘English’ provides the name of a new nation.
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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 32, the Oldest English. Over the past few episodes, we've looked at the gradual conquest of Southern and Central Britain by the Anglo Saxons. This time we're going to begin looking at the Anglo Saxons in the years at the end or near the end of the conquest. By the end of the 6th century, the Anglo Saxons had established several independent kingdoms throughout Southern and Central Britain and they were speaking a common language. So in this episode, we'll look at these earliest Anglo Saxon kingdoms and their language, which is the oldest form of English. But before I begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com and a quick note about that other website, the podbean website, that's historyofenglishpodcast.podbean.com that site is still up and I'm going to leave it up for now, but eventually I'm going to discontinue that site. So I wanted to give you a heads up if you happen to subscribe to the podcast through the Podbean site. Of course, you can always subscribe through itunes and you can always listen to the episodes through the main website, which again is historyofenglishpodcast.com so again, just a little note about that as we move forward. Okay, so let's turn to this episode, to the earliest Anglo Saxon kingdoms. And let's begin by looking at the landscape of Britain at the end of the 6th century. Now, for over a century and a half, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, they fought the native Britons for control of much of the island. The period from around the year 450 until around the year 600 was a transitional period in which the Anglo Saxons killed, expelled and subjugated the native Britons, and they began to farm the land and they built permanent settlements and they established their own kingdoms in the process. And early on, there were many different kingdoms, at least a dozen. But as we know, written sources from that period were so scarce that we can't say very much with any certainty about the Anglo Saxon kingdoms during that period. But by the beginning of the seventh century, the various kingdoms had begun to coalesce into seven distinct kingdoms. Modern historians refer to these seven kingdoms as the Heptarchy, based on the Greek word for seven. In reality, the actual number of kingdoms varied a little bit over time, since they often fought each other. And in the process, some of them were conquered or they fractured, but for the most part, These kingdoms endured from the 6th century until the arrival of the Vikings late in the 8th century. At that point, all this changed and the various kingdoms began to coalesce into a single kingdom known as Angeland, literally Angle Land, or as we would later know it, England. But for now, a few centuries earlier, the Anglo Saxons were still divided into several separate kingdoms. As we look at these early kingdoms, we can use the River Thames as a landmark. The Thames runs in an eastward direction across southern Britain. Of course, along the way it flows through London. And as a very general rule, the Saxons settled in the region south of the Thames, and the Angles settled in the region north of the Thames, and the Jutes settled in a small region around the mouth of the river in the southeastern corner of Britain. Of course, the earliest settlements weren't that precise, but those general settlement patterns meant that those specific groups were the dominant groups within those respective regions. So, for example, there may have been a mixture of groups south of the Thames, but the Saxons were the dominant group there. So Saxon kings emerged as the leaders there, and Saxon names and dialects dominated those regions as well. So over time, later people just thought of it as the Saxon region. And the same basic process happened north of the Thames with respect to the Angles. So when we speak of the regions of the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes, we have to keep in mind that this is a bit of an oversimplification, and it reflects the long term dominance of those particular groups within those regions over time. And this is also very important from a linguistic perspective, because it helps to explain why the language of the Anglo Saxons was so uniform early on. No particular Germanic tribe or group remained in isolation long enough to preserve their own dialect. A blended language emerged very quickly, even though regional dialects did also exist. So the language of the Anglo Saxons blended together and it became distinct from the original languages back on the continent. And this process helps to explain how a common culture emerged very quickly on the island, even though the immigrants were composed of different Germanic tribes. So let's look more closely at the various Anglo Saxon kingdoms which emerged very early on. The Saxon region south of the Thames was divided into three separate kingdoms. The kingdom of the East Saxons was Essex, the kingdom of the South Saxons was Sussex, and the kingdom of the West Saxons was Wessex. Now, very early on, there was also likely a kingdom of Middle Saxons in the same region, and that's ultimately the origin of the name Middlesex, which still exists in the region today. Of course, all of these places had one thing in common, that ending S, E X, which meant Saxons, and that's a strong indication that all of these regions were mainly settled and occupied by Saxons. Throughout these various Saxon kingdoms in the south of Britain, it appears that a more or less common dialect was spoken, and this is sometimes called the West Saxon dialect, because the West Saxons eventually emerged as the most dominant group within this region. And in fact, the West Saxon dialect became the standard written dialect of Old English. Now, whereas the Saxons tended to settle south of the Thames, the Angles tended to settle north, north of the river. In the east were the Eastern Angles in the region, which was called, appropriately enough, East Anglia. The East Angles were divided into two groups, the northern folk and the Southern folk. And those terms eventually evolved into Norfolk and Suffolk, terms which still exist today. Other Angles settled further inland in the central part of the island. The kingdom which emerged there was called Mercia. In Old English, it was called Mierce. The name was derived from the Germanic root word marko, which meant borderland. And as we've seen in earlier episodes, that root word gave us modern English words like mark and marker. And in the last episode, we saw that the Franks gave us the word march from the same root word. And you might also remember that the early Germanic tribes called a tribal group along the Danube the Marcomanni, which meant bordermen. Well, here the Angles used the same root word in the same way. Again, as the Angles gradually spread westward into Central Britain, they came to be known as the Mirka, which meant border people. But the K sound changed in Old English and it shifted to a ch sound in a lot of words. So this region of Central Britain came to be known as, and then later Mercia. But again, even though this was a border region, from the perspective of the early Angles who had settled in the east, it was actually located in the center of the island between the Eastern Angles and the Welsh in the west. About a century or so later, this particular kingdom of Mercia would emerge as the dominant Anglo Saxon kingdom in the period before the Vikings arrived. Now, linguistically, Mercia and East Anglia were very closely related. And historical linguists think that the people within these two kingdoms spoke a common dialect, which is usually called Mercian because of the later dominance of the Mercians. So as the Angles spread westward from East Anglia, they took their dialect with them. Now, north of Mercia and East Anglia was another region settled by the Angles. This region was located north of the River Humber, and accordingly, it was called Northumbria, which meant the people living north of the Humber. At one time, the term Southumbria was used to refer to the people who lived south of the Humber in northern Mercia. But that term eventually fell out of use. Early on, the kingdom of Northumbria was divided into even smaller kingdoms. But early in the seventh century, the those separate kingdoms began to combine into a single entity. Now, even though the kingdom of Northumbria was settled by Angles, the dialects spoken in that region were distinct from the dialects spoken down in Mercia and East Anglia. So linguists refer to that particular Old English dialect as the Northumbrian dialect. But in situations where all of the Anglian dialects are the same, linguists will sometimes lump them together and refer to them collectively as. As the Anglian dialect. So those were the kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons, three of each. But there was one other kingdom along the southeastern coast of England near the mouth of the River Thames, and it was called Kent, which was a name derived from an earlier Celtic name. Now, the later historian Bede attributed the settlement of Kent to the Jute's. And as I discussed in an earlier episode, many modern historians aren't entirely sure if the people of this region came from the land of the Jutes in Denmark. The archaeological evidence shows a lot of Frankish influence in the region. So it could have been settled by Jutes who came directly from Denmark, as beads suggest, or it could have been settled by Jutes who originated in Denmark, but had settled in Gaul for a while before moving on to Britain. Or it could have simply had a ruling family which originated in the homeland of the Jutes, but the actual population could have been a mixture of peoples. Now, this last option would make some sense, because the location of Kent made it a center for trade and immigration. It was the closest point to Northern Gaul, being only about 50 miles or so across the channel. And since it was near the entrance of the Thames, which was the primary route to London and other places further inland, there was a lot of traffic through the region. And that traffic probably accounts for some of the continental artifacts which are found in the region. Now, linguistically, Kent was somewhat unique. The dialect spoken there was distinct from the dialect spoken in the other regions, but it was definitely part of the same overall language which was being spoken throughout the various kingdoms at this point in the early 7th century, the old English dialect spoken in Kent is simply known as Kentish. Now, you may be wondering how modern linguists know that there were four distinct Old English dialects during this early period. Well, as writing was gradually introduced into these regions, various written documents began to pop up throughout the regions. And early on, there were no dictionaries so there was no standard spellings. Words were spelled phonetically exactly like they were pronounced. And since a lot of these early writings were religious in nature, we have different versions of the same text written in these various languages. And by comparing these texts, linguists can discern clear and consistent spelling differences between the various regions. And these differences reflect the variation in the dialects between these regions. And some of those differences persist to this day. In fact, modern English dialects in Britain can vary tremendously from one region to the next. And some of that modern variation can be traced all the way back to these original dialect differences. So this was the basic state of things through the 7th and 8th centuries. Over time, the balance of power shifted from one kingdom to the next. But all of that changed with the arrival of the vikings in the 9th century. The Vikings destroyed many of these kingdoms. It was kind of like knocking all the pieces off the game board. But the West Saxon kingdom held on under its king Alfred. And afterwards, the various Anglo Saxon people coalesced under the leadership of Alfred's successors. And at that point, we finally have a single unified Anglo Saxon kingdom. And since the West Saxons were the rulers, all of the government documents were written in the West Saxon dialect. And as a practical matter, the West Saxon dialect became the standard written version of Old English. But the Mercian dialect dominated central England, including the areas around London. So modern English pronunciation and grammar actually owes more to the Mercian dialect, but the written version of the language evolved out of the West Saxon dialect. And this is just one of those weird aspects of English. Now, in reality, the reason why one dialect would serve as the root of spoken English and the other dialect would serve as the root of written English is because both of those dialects were so similar to each other. So it didn't really create any problems. So, for example, the original version of the word old was slightly different in the Anglian dialects north of the Thames and the Saxon dialects south of the Thames. The Anglian version was ald, spelled a L, D in documents from the Anglian regions. But the Saxon version was aild, with a slightly different vowel pronunciation. At the beginning, the Anglian version has a single vowel sound, but in the Saxon version, the vowel is broken into two separate vowels, a and ah. So instead of ah, you get ea, and instead of ald, you get aald. Linguists call this type of vowel a diphthong. And they were much more common in the West Saxon dialect than in the other dialects of Old English. And Old English spelling reflects that feature of the West Saxon dialect. So for another example of this aspect of the West Saxon dialect. Consider the original version of the word next. In the Anglian dialects, it was naesta, but in the West Saxon dialect, it was ny, sta, so nesta and naesta. So you can hear that diphthong in the later West Saxon version. It's subtle, but it's there. How about the word well, as in drinking? Well, the Anglian version was wela, but the West Saxon version was so weyla and wiela. Again, the difference is subtle, but the Anglian version is closer to modern English because it doesn't have that diphthong in it. But the standard Old English spelling reflects the West Saxon pronunciation. One of the best examples of this is the word yeah, as in the short form of the word yes. Now, parents hate to hear their children say yeah instead of yes. But yea is an old form of the word which has been around since those very first Anglo Saxons. And it was once used very prominently. The Anglians pronounced it as ye, but the West Saxons pronounced it as yea. Another good example of that is the word year. Our pronunciation today is closer to the Anglian pronunciation of yare, but the West Saxon pronunciation was y. But again, the modern spelling has that ea in the middle Y, E, A, r, and that reflects the diphthong of the West Saxon dialect. And the word milk was pronounced almost exactly the same in the Anglian dialects as it's pronounced today, but the West Saxons pronounced it as maeolic. The word seventh in the Anglian dialects was selvanda, but in the West Saxon dialect, it was selvatha. So each had a different ending, and it was actually the West Saxon version which had the th sound, which we still have today. Another type of difference between these dialects was the vowel sound. Before an m or n sound. The Anglian dialects would sometimes precede those consonants with an o sound, but the West Saxons rarely did that. So the original version of the word land was lond in the West Saxon dialect, and it was spelled just like we do today, L, A, N, D. But the Anglian dialects to the north pronounced it as lond, and it was spelled L O N D There. Now, in prior episodes, I've given the Lord's Prayer as an example of Old English, but the example I read previously was the West Saxon version. So I thought it would be interesting to read the first line of the Lord's Prayer in each dialect so you can hear the very subtle differences between them. Of course, the passage is our Father who art in heaven in modern English, but the word order was different in Old English. So in Old English it was literally father, our, thou art in heaven. In West Saxon it was. In Northumbrian it was. In Mercian it was. Now, there isn't much difference there. You have to listen very closely for the differences. For example, the word father is slightly different in each case. The first vowel sound changed in each case. So in West Saxon it was fatter. In Northumbrian it was fatter very close to our Modern English father. But in Mercian it was ther. Also, in the Anglian dialects, the passage simply reads thuart or thwart, meaning thou art. But the West Saxon version uses thut, and that extra in the middle meant witch. So the West Saxon version literally read thou which art in heaven, but the others were simply thou art in heaven. Okay, so the main point of all that was to help you see that there were some very specific, noticeable and consistent differences between the various dialects. And the examples I gave were intended to illustrate some of those differences. So they were all pretty similar. But if you read entire passages in the different dialects, the differences actually become much more apparent. Nevertheless, the differences were manageable. And despite the differences, they all apparently had the same name for their respective dialects. And that common name which they all used was English. The Mercians, the Northumbrians, the East Anglians, the Saxons, the Kentish, they all called their language English, a term which was clearly derived from the name of the Angles. So why did they all apparently use the same name? Well, all we can do is make some guesses. First, we know that they all use the term English by looking at the earliest writings around the island. For example, the King of Wessex, named Ina, he issued a set of laws around the year 694. This was within the first century that the Anglo Saxons had adopted writing, and his laws refer to the various Anglo Saxon tribes as English, not Saxons. It appears that the term English was in common use throughout the island long before the word England existed. England didn't really exist until much later, when there was a unified nation. At this early point, there were separate independent kingdoms. So the people didn't refer to a single unified political entity yet, but they did refer to themselves as the English, and they referred to their language as English. In fact, English was the only term used by the Anglo Saxon writers from the very beginning to describe the language of the Germanic invaders, including the Saxons and the others. So a lot of people today think that the word English, England, came first and that the word English came later, meaning the language of the people of England. But in Reality, it was the opposite. The word English came first as the name of the people in their language, and the word England came later as the various kingdoms began to coalesce into a single nation. But this raises an interesting question. Why did the early Anglo Saxons all call themselves English? Why didn't they call themselves Saxons? After all, that was what they were called by everyone else. Remember the Saxon shore and all of the other early writers who used the term Saxons to refer to the North Sea invaders? Well, in the last episode, I actually mentioned part of the answer to that question. When the Anglo Saxons started to arrive in the 4th and 5th centuries, the Saxons were a much more powerful tribe in northern Europe. The Angles were smaller and weaker neighbors to the east. So there was a natural tendency to refer to all of these earlier invaders as Saxons. Both the continental writers and the native Romano British writers, both of whom wrote in Latin, they all used the term Saxons initially. But remember that only a portion of the Saxons migrated to Britain, but virtually all of the Angles migrated. So within Britain itself, the early Anglian kingdoms north of the Thames emerged as the dominant kingdoms. Initially, the center of power was down in Kent in the southeast. But very quickly thereafter, the power shifted to the north, first to East Anglia, then to Northumbria, and then later to Mercia. The Saxon regions never really enjoyed the same degree of power and prestige, at least early on, as I've mentioned, the Viking invasion changed all of that. The Vikings destroyed most of the Anglian regions and that left the West Saxons down in Wessex, the dominant kingdom by default. But that didn't happen until much later in the 9th and 10th centuries. So early on, the Saxons kind of took a back seat to the Angles. And to the extent that there were actual differences between the Angles and the Saxons, the Anglian culture tended to dominate. At first. There's evidence that the early Anglo Saxons began to use the term angely very early on as a general term for all Anglo Saxons, without distinction between the Angles and the Saxons. This suggests that from the very beginning, they tended to see themselves as part of the same overall ethnic group, speaking the same languages and worshipping the same gods. And this was in contrast to the people who they considered the foreigners, the Welsh, who spoke a completely different language and worshiped different gods and who they were now living among. So within Britain, the invaders increasingly saw themselves as part of a larger common group. Very early on, this Anglian influence began to be noticed back on the continent, and the writers there began to shift their terminology from Saxons to Angles. You might remember that the Byzantine Writer Procopius, writing around the year 553, he described the inhabitants of Britain as Angles, Frisians and Britons. He didn't use the term Saxons at all. So he was reflecting this increasing tendency to use the term Angles in place of the earlier term Saxons. About a half a century later, in the year 597, Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Britain to convert the Anglo Saxons to Christianity. He sent that initial mission to Kent, whose King Ethelbert was the most powerful Anglo Saxon king at the time. And Pope Gregory addressed Ethelbert in writing with the term Rex Anglorum, which meant King of the Angles. But Ethelbert was the King of Kent. He wasn't technically Anglian, nor was he Saxon. But by that point, the term Angles was applied to all of them. Around this time, the native Anglo Saxons sometimes used the term Anglican, which was literally angle kin or Angle kindred. It meant the English race. Sometimes the context suggests that it was used solely in reference to the Angles, but sometimes it was used to refer to both the Angles and the Saxons. And I think there's actually an analogy here to the modern term Yankee in the United States. People outside of the United States use the term Yankee or Yank as a general term for all Americans. But within the United States, it can have different meanings. It can be used as a general term, as in Yankee Doodle Dandy. It can also be used as a specific term for people from New England and within many parts of the South. It can refer to anyone from outside of the south, but even there, it isn't always consistent. Pretty much everyone in the south would agree that a New Yorker is a Yankee. But what about someone from Iowa or someone from California? Or what about Arizona or New Mexico? The answer would probably depend on who you ask. So those terms can have different meanings depending on how they're being used and who's using them. Well, the term Angles was kind of the same way. It had different meanings early on, depending on the context. By the 8th century, the Latin term Anglorum was in very broad use as a term for all of the Anglo Saxons. During that period, the Northumbrian monk Bede wrote his history of England. It was titled in Latin, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. The title literally meant the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and it was the history of all of the Anglo Saxons. So by this point, we have the native Old English word Anglican and the Latin term Anglorum. Both refer to all of the Anglo Saxons. And around this time, we start to see the first use of the term Anglo Saxon, which was generally used in the context of distinguishing the Germanic people of Britain from their relatives back on the continent in Old Saxony. Now, up to this point, all these terms were used in reference to the people themselves, and the term English was used in reference to their language, but it wasn't really used in a unified political sense yet. There were still separate kingdoms, and during Bede's time, he lived in what he called one of the districts of the English. In other words, in one of the regions where the English lived. So the term English was still used as a term for the people in their language, but it wasn't a geographic term yet. But shortly after the time of Bede, the Viking invasions began. And it's at that point, as I've mentioned earlier, that we start to see the first references to a nation or country of Angles. The term was Angloland, literally the land of the Angles. But there was still no such unified political entity. But by early in the 10th century, the region finally had a king named Aethelstan, who could legitimately claim to be the king of all of Angeland. And by the year 1000, Angeland was the standard name for the country. Of course, the name later evolved over time and eventually became England. So the point of that discussion was to see how the term Angles initially applied to a specific tribe. Then it came to refer to all of the Germanic people of Britain and their languages. Then it was applied to the land where they lived. But that process took many centuries. As I noted earlier, during those intervening centuries, the real power in Anglo Saxon England shifted from one kingdom to the next. And while this sometimes happened by force when one kingdom invaded another, sometimes it may have actually been a product of mutual consent. Be tells us that the earliest Anglo Saxon kingdoms would select one of the kings as something akin to an overlord. This process died out over time, and we don't have good records from the time when it was a common practice, but it reinforces the view that these early Anglo Saxons may have lived in different kingdoms with different kings, but they recognized a commonality between them. They had shared interests, and they selected an overlord to protect those interests. It's probably not a coincidence that this overlord was in place during during the time in which the Anglo Saxons were busy fighting the native Celtic Britons. And that probably tended to bring them together somewhat. But when that conquest was complete, the position of the overlord kind of died out and the infighting between the Anglo Saxon kingdoms began to increase. Bede used a Latin term to describe this early type of Overlord he used the term imperium. But the later Anglo Saxon writers used the Old English term Bretwalda. The etymology of this word is unclear. Walda meant a ruler in Old English. We also see it in the name Oswald, which combined the Old English word os meaning God, and the word weld meaning ruler. So it meant divine ruler. Now, some linguists thought that the Bret part in Bretwalda referred to Britain, so Bretwalda meant British ruler. But Old High German in southern Germany had basically the same term. So the Brett part apparently didn't mean Britain. Whatever the title meant, it was not hereditary. It was apparently applied by common consent. Now, earlier I mentioned that the king of Kent named Ethelbert was the king who Pope Gregory and Augustine approached when they wanted to convert the Anglo Saxons. Well, one of the reasons why they contacted Ethelbert first is, is because he was the Bretwalder at the time and they knew that they would need his support if they wanted to convert the Germanic pagans. After Ethelbert, the Bretwalders were the king of East Anglia and then the kings of Northumbria. And even though the term fell out of use, the decline of the Northumbrians was immediately followed by the rise of the Mercian kings, especially the King Offa. Now, before Ethelbert, there were a couple of Bretwalders from the Saxon regions, But note that all of the later Bretwalders were in the Anglian regions north of the Thames. And that reflects the general shift in power to the Anglian regions during the early centuries of the Anglo Saxons. I want to conclude this episode about the oldest English by making a couple of quick notes about the oldest English kings, specifically their names. You may have noticed by now that the Anglo Saxon kings had some funny sounding names. I mean, we're accustomed to king names like William, Henry, John, James and Charles, but those names came with the arrival of the Normans after 1066. In earlier episodes, we saw how names like William and Charles were French names with Germanic origins, and Henry was originally the French Henri. But the Anglo Saxon king names reflect their Germanic language. Obviously they were quite different. So we've already seen names like Ethelbert, Atha and Aethelstan. We can add names like Ethelfrith, Redwald, Oswi, Ethel, Bald, Ethelwolf and Ethelred. Many of these names were simply combinations of a small handful of Anglo Saxon root words. So, for example, Ethel was a common prefix and it meant noble. Interestingly, it's the ultimate origin of the feminine name Ethel today. Now, wolf was a common suffix, of course it meant wolf. And we see it in the name Ethelwolf, meaning noble wolf. We also see it in the fictional name Beowulf. The Bea part either meant bee or bear. There's some dispute about that. The name Wulfric combined worth with that word rik, which we keep coming across. Remember that rik meant wealthy, powerful or kingdom. So Wulfric meant powerful wolf. The name Godric meant powerful God. The name Godwin combined God with the word win, which meant friend in Old English. Another Old English word for God was us. Now, earlier we saw that word was combined with the word wailed to produce the name Oswald or Oswald, meaning God, ruler or divine ruler. And that name Oswald has survived into Modern English. The prefix os also gave us the name Oscar. Oscar combined the word os with the Old English word gar, meaning spear. Now, you might remember that we saw that word back in the episode about Germanic mythology. That word gar was combined with the word leek to produce the word garlic, because a clove of garlic is shaped like a spear. Well, meant God, spear. And some other Anglo Saxon names have survived the centuries as well. Names like Edward, Edwin, Alfred and Harold. Now, Edward combined the word ed, meaning blessed and weird, meaning warden or guardian. Again, we saw that word in the last episode. So Edward meant blessed guardian. Now Edwin combined ed with when, which we saw earlier in Godwin. Remember, it meant friend. So Edwin was blessed friend. Now, the name Alfred used the word elf, meaning supernatural. And we still have it in the modern word elf, elf and elves, as in Santa's Helpers. The second part of the name of Alfred was red, meaning advice or counsel. So Alfred literally meant supernatural advisor. So that word red at the end of Alfred meant advice or counsel. That process meant you had to review and consider things. And it's in this sense that we get the modern version of the same word, which is read. And something that you have to review and consider and figure out is sometimes called a riddle, another word which came from the same Old English word read, meaning advice or counsel. So as you can see, some of those Anglo Saxon names have survived the centuries and they reflect this Anglo Saxon tendency to combine two words together to make a new word, or in this case, a new name. This process is called compounding. And the Anglo Saxons loved to do, gave us modern words like rainbow and butterfly. Butterfly, supposedly because its excrement resembled butter. The word husband combined the Old English word for house, which was hus, and dweller, which was banda. So a house dweller was, was a husbanda or husband. Today, the word woman combined the words for wife and Man. Remember that man originally had a more general sense as a person, So a woman was a wife person. Another Old English word for man was guma. Now, way back in an earlier episode, I mentioned that the original Indo European language had an aspirated G sound. That sound became a regular G sound in the Germanic languages, but the aspiration led to an H sound in Latin. So the Indo European word gosti gave us the word guest from Old English and the word host from Latin. Well, here's another example of that. The original Indo European root word gave us the Latin word homo, meaning man, as in homo sapiens, probably the word human. But the Old English version had the Germanic G sound and was pronounced guma, also, again meaning man. Well, a man who was getting married was a bride's man, a bridgma. And that word eventually became bridegroom. And today it's basically been shortened to just groom. So that means groom is cognate with human. But the point here is that the Anglo Saxons loved to make these compounds, and bridegroom is another example of that. Now, earlier I mentioned the word garlic, which is another example of this meaning spear, leek or spear onion. We've also seen words like mermaid, meaning sea maiden or sea girl, and werewolf, meaning man, wolf. This process also created some words with funny imagery that we don't have anymore. So a skeleton was a banhus, literally a bone house, and the body was fleshamme, a flesh home. A library was a buchard, a book hoard. And we'll see a lot more example of this type of compounding as we continue to look at Old English. And speaking of book hoard or library, we're now at the point where we need to explore how the Anglo Saxons began to write down all of those words. And next time we'll do just that. And interestingly, this process was directly tied to the spread of Christianity, because the Roman religion was accompanied by the Roman Alphabet. So next time, we'll look at the arrival of Christian missionaries and the beginning of written English. So until next time, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast.