Сочинение: The Development of the Germanic Script

· religious/magic inscriptions: prayers and curses, formulas on charms, etc.

· inscriptions related to trade and politics: There are many examples of trade communication: stock orders and descriptions, excuses for not having payed on time, trade name tags for bags or cases of produce, etc. The trade inscriptions are often carved on wooden rune sticks. Political inscriptions are to do with matters of the law, historical figures state that they were somewhere hiding from the enemy, secret messages to do with the fighting of wars, etc.

· personal letters: love letters, greetings between friends, proposals, etc.

· rude messages, similar to modern graffiti or sms today

· Art and craft-signatures: Goldsmiths, blacksmiths, wood carvers, church builders, etc., often put their name on what they made. Objects also somtimes had names carved onto them – either the name of the object itself, or the name of the person who owned it.

The origins of the runic alphabet are uncertain. Many characters of the Elder Futhark bear a close resemblance to characters from the Latin alphabet. Other candidates are the 5th to 1st century BC Northern Italic alphabets: Lepontic, Rhaetic and Venetic, all of which are closely related to each other and descend from the Old Italic alphabet [5].

2.3 Written records

The best known runic insctiptions in England are the earliest extant OE written records. One of them is an inscription on a box called the “ Franks Casket ”, the other is a short text on a stone cross in Dumfriesshire near the village of Ruthwell known as the “Ruthwell Cross”. Both records are in the Northumbrian dialect.

The Franks Casket eas discovered in the early years of the 19^th c. in France, and was presented to the British Museum by a British archeologist. A. W. Franks. The Casket is a small box made of whale bone; its four sides are carved: there are pictures in the centre and runic inscriptions around. The around them, in alliterative verse, tellsthe story of the whale bone, of which the Cascet is made [2, 65].

The Ruthwell Cross is a 15ft tall stone cross inscribed and ornamented on all sides. The principal inscription has been reconstructed into a passage from an OE religious poem, THE DREAM OF THE ROOD, which was also found in another version in a later manuscript.

Many runic inscriptions have been preserved on weapons, coins, amulets, tombstones, rings, various cross fragments. Some runic insertions occur in OE manuscripts written in Latin characters. The total number of runic inscriptions in OE is about forty; the last of them belong to the end of the OE period.

3. Ulfila`s Gothic alphabet

We cannot leave unnoticed such important stage of RA development as Ulfila`s Gothic alphabet . It has got nothing in common with “gothic” variants of Romanticism period. The real Gothic writing system was used by the Goths on Gothland Island and later on the territory of Poland, Lithuania and even North Black Sea coast.

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed to Ulfilas (or Wulfila) which was used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. Before its creation in the 4^th century, the Goths had used runes to write their language. The new alphabet was created by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible into Gothic, and it is largely derived from an uncial form of the Greek alphabet, though some elements have been borrowed from the Latin and Runic alphabets as well. Ulfilas is thought to have consciously chosen to avoid the use of the older Runic alphabet for this purpose, as it was heavily connected with ancient heathen beliefs and customs. Also, the Greek-based script probably helped to integrate of the Gothic nation into the dominant Greco-Roman culture around the Black Sea. The individual letters, however, still bore names derived from those of their Runic equivalents. During 5 following centuries it was used by west Goths in Spain and in the South of France [6].

The best preserved Gothic manuscript, the Codex Argenteus, dates from the 6th century and was preserved and transmitted by northern Ostrogoths in modern Italy. It contains a large part of the four Gospels. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the Codex Argenteus is replete with borrowed Greek words and Greek usages. The syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek.

4. Latin alphabet

4.1 General information

Our knowledge of the OE language comes mainly from manuscripts written in Latin characters. The Latin alphabet , introduced by Irish Christian missionaries, began to replace the Anglo-Saxon futhorc from about the seventh century. First the scripts shifted to a half-incial script of the Latin alphabet. This was replaced by insular script, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12^th century when continental carolingian minuscule replaced the insular [3, 22]. Like elsewhere in Western Europe Latin in England was the language of the church and also the language if writing and education. The monks were practically the only literate people; they read and wrote Latin and therefore began to use Latin letters to write down English words. Like the scribes of other countries, British scribes modified the Latin script to suit their needs: they changed the shape of some letters, added new symbols to indicate sounds, for which Latin had no equivalents, attached new sound values to Latin letters [2, 65].

The first English words to be written down with the help of Latin characters were personal names and place names insrted I latin texts; then came glosses and longer textual insertions.

All over the country, in the kingdoms of England, all kinds of legel documents were written and copied. At first they ere made in Latin letters, later they erer made in the local dialects. Many documents have survived on single sheets or have been copied into large manuscripts: various wills, grants, deals of purchase, agreements, proceedings of church councils, laws, etc. Most of them are commonly known under the general heading of “Anglo-Saxon Charters”, the earliest are in Kentish and Mercian (8-9^th c.); later laws and characters are written in West Saxon though they do not necessarily come from Wessex: West Saxon as the written form of language was used in different regions.

Glosses to the Gospels and other religious texts were made in many English monasteries, for the benefit of those who did not know enough Latin. Their chronology, is uncertain but, undoubtedly, they constitute early samples of written English glossaries in the 8^th c. Mercian, consisting of words to the Latin text arranged alphabetically, the interlinear glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels; sepaate words and word-for-word translations scribbed betweeen the Latin lines of beautifully ornamented manuscripts, and the glosses in the Durham Ritual, both in the 10^th c. Northumbrian; and also the Gospels in Mercian and Northumbrian of the same century.

4.2 Written records

Among the earliest insertions in Latin texts are pieces of OE poetry. Bede’s HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENRIS ANGLORUM (written in Latin in the 8^th c.) contains an English fragment of five lines known as “ Bede’s Deaht Song ” and a religious poem of nine lines, “Cadmon’s Hymn”.

OE poetry constitutes a most precious literary relic and quite a substantial portion of the records in the vernacular. All in all we have about 30, 000 lines of OE verse from many poets of some three centuries. The names of the poets are unknown except Cadmon and Cynewulf, two early Northumbrian authors.

OE poetry manily restricted to three subjects: heroic, religious and lyrical. It is believed that many OE poems, espacially those dealing with heroic subjects, ere composed a long time before they were written down; they were handed down from generation to generation in oral form. Perhaps, they were first recorded in Northumbria some time in the 8^th c., but have survived onle in West Saxon copies made a long time after-wards – the 10^th or 11^th c.

The greatest poem of the time was BEOWULF, an epic of the 7^th or 8^th c. It was originally composed in the Mercian or Northumbrian dialect, but has come down to us in a 10^th c. West Saxon copy. It is valued both as a source of linguistic material and as a work of art; it is the oldest poem in Germanic literature. An Old English poem such as Beowulf is very different from modern poetry. Anglo-Saxon poets typically used alliterative verse, a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. This is a technique in which the first half of the line (the a-verse) is linked to the second half (the b-verse) through similarity in initial sound. In addition, the two halves are divided by a caesura: "Oft Scyld Scefing \\ sceaþena þreatum".

Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. The poet who composed Beowulf, while objective in telling the tale, nonetheless utilizes a certain style to maintain excitement and adventure within the story. An elaborate history of characters and their lineages are spoken of, as well as their interactions with each other, debts owed and repaid, and deeds of valor.