INVESTIGATION OF PAST

Investigation of Past



Investigation of Past

Introduction

This paper highlights the problems and issues faced by a primary school teacher while trying to investigate the past classroom experience during the Anglo-Saxon period. English is a particularly noteworthy example in this respect. While English began as a Germanic language, and is typically categorised as such, the Norman Conquest led to the eventual blending of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French into a new language (Graham, 2007, 23). Many new spelling conventions were adopted from French as well; other changes are believed to have been made by scribes in order to make handwriting clearer, sometimes at the expense of phonological accuracy. For example, the replacement of u by o in ton and woman was supposedly motivated by the desire to break the confusion of a succession of a large number of vertical strokes (Gentry, 2006, 31).

As the need to represent new ideas increased, Latin and Greek elements (prefixes, roots, and suffixes) were used to build new word forms (Ganske, 2006, 28). The sound-letter relationships in such multisyllabic words are further complicated by the English pattern of distributing stress unequally across syllables depending on the number of syllables per word, as in the following set of words from the same root: oppose, opposite, and opposition. In such cases, spelling tends to preserve and make visible connections that may not be as apparent in pronunciation (Cooper, 2008, 46).

Discussion

During the Age of Discovery, contact with new peoples and other European languages in new environments led to a large number of adoptions and adaptations of foreign words that did not always correspond to typical English letter-sound relationships. Contrast, for example, the borrowings of vanilla and tortilla from Spanish (Clarke, 2007, 81). Note, too, the various pronunciations of ch in child (Anglo-Saxon), chef (French) and chorus (Greek) but the /ch/ sound in cello (Italian). The spread of English-speaking peoples to new parts of the word and the military, political, and commercial prominence of British and later British institutions and culture have led to the development of varieties of English across the globe (Brown, 2008, 36).

History of Education in Anglo-Saxon Period

The seventh century AD saw the reintroduction of word separation in Indo-European languages, initially undertaken by Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes (Bradley, 2008, 19). For the next 10 centuries, discontinuous writing spread throughout the rest of Europe. At this historical juncture, the activity of reading aloud slowly began to give way to silent reading. Scriptura continua had made it necessary for the readers' eyes to wander along the text ahead of their voice so they could identify “readable” units of language. The spaces between words, however, afforded readers more flexibility in terms of eye movement across the pages (Bear, 2007, 85). Quickly jumping from word to word was now possible, and the advantage of hearing your own reading aloud diminished in importance. Today, the structure of the written language continues to influence the manner in which reading was undertaken, even though similar languages with different scripts do exist and are often ...