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153-459: The Geats ( / ɡ iː t s , ˈ ɡ eɪ ə t s , j æ t s / GHEETS , GAY -əts, YATS ; Old English : gēatas [ˈjæɑtɑs] ; Old Norse : gautar [ˈɡɑu̯tɑr] ; Swedish : götar [ˈjø̂ːtar] ), sometimes called Goths , were a large North Germanic tribe who inhabited Götaland ("land of the Geats") in modern southern Sweden from antiquity until

306-613: A definite article ("the"), a demonstrative adjective ("that"), and demonstrative pronoun . Other demonstratives are þēs ("this"), and ġeon ("that over there"). These words inflect for case, gender, and number. Adjectives have both strong and weak sets of endings, weak ones being used when a definite or possessive determiner is also present. Verbs conjugate for three persons : first, second, and third; two numbers: singular, plural; two tenses : present, and past; three moods : indicative , subjunctive , and imperative ; and are strong (exhibiting ablaut) or weak (exhibiting

459-416: A transit , a surveyor tried to achieve straightness by looking along the rods and commanding the gromatici to move them as required. Using the gromae they then laid out a grid on the plan of the road. If the surveyor could not see his desired endpoint, a signal fire would often be lit at the endpoint in order to guide the surveyor. The libratores then began their work using ploughs and, sometimes with

612-885: A Roman official to be sent, on service either civil or military, where we do not find roads. They reach the Wall in Britain ; run along the Rhine , the Danube , and the Euphrates ; and cover, as with a network, the interior provinces of the Empire. A road map of the empire reveals that it was generally laced with a dense network of prepared viae . Beyond its borders there were no paved roads; however, it can be supposed that footpaths and dirt roads allowed some transport. There were, for instance, some pre-Roman ancient trackways in Britain, such as

765-398: A back vowel ( /ɑ/ , /o/ , /u/ ) at the time of palatalization, as illustrated by the contrast between fisċ /fiʃ/ ('fish') and its plural fiscas /ˈfis.kɑs/ . But due to changes over time, a knowledge of the history of the word in question is needed to predict the pronunciation with certainty (for details, see palatalization ). In word-final position, the pronunciation of sċ

918-595: A common ethnonym. It was originally an adjective referring to those belonging to the Swedish tribe, who are called svear in Swedish. As early as the 9th century, svear had been vague, both referring to the Swedish tribe and being a collective term including the Geats, and this is the case in Adam of Bremen 's work where the Geats ( Goths ) appear both as a proper nation and as part of the Sueones . The merging/assimilation of

1071-406: A dental suffix). Verbs have two infinitive forms: bare and bound; and two participles : present and past. The subjunctive has past and present forms. Finite verbs agree with subjects in person and number. The future tense , passive voice , and other aspects are formed with compounds. Adpositions are mostly before but are often after their object. If the object of an adposition is marked in

1224-407: A directional straightness. Many long sections are ruler-straight, but it should not be thought that all of them were. Some links in the network were as long as 55 miles (89 km). Gradients of 10%–12% are known in ordinary terrain, 15%–20% in mountainous country. The Roman emphasis on constructing straight roads often resulted in steep slopes relatively impractical for most commercial traffic; over

1377-517: A following ⟨m⟩ or ⟨n⟩ . Modern editions of Old English manuscripts generally introduce some additional conventions. The modern forms of Latin letters are used, including ⟨g⟩ instead of insular G , ⟨s⟩ instead of insular S and long S , and others which may differ considerably from the insular script, notably ⟨e⟩ , ⟨f⟩ and ⟨r⟩ . Macrons are used to indicate long vowels, where usually no distinction

1530-467: A friction that led to the erosion of the complicated inflectional word endings. Simeon Potter notes: No less far-reaching was the influence of Scandinavian upon the inflexional endings of English in hastening that wearing away and leveling of grammatical forms which gradually spread from north to south. It was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss. There was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength. The strength of

1683-467: A great public service like that of the roads. Gaius Gracchus , when Tribune of the People (123–122 BC), paved or gravelled many of the public roads and provided them with milestones and mounting-blocks for riders. Gaius Scribonius Curio , when Tribune (50 BC), sought popularity by introducing a Lex Viaria , under which he was to be chief inspector or commissioner for five years. Dio Cassius mentions that

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1836-644: A higher-level division where one or more hærrad made up a bo linked to a kongsgård . Today, the merger of the two nations is complete, as there is no longer any tangible identification in Götaland with a Geatish identity, apart from the common tendency of residents of the provinces of Västergötland and Östergötland to refer to themselves as västgötar (West Geats) and östgötar (East Geats), similarly to how residents of other provinces refer to themselves. The dialects spoken in those provinces and some surrounding areas are also collectively called götamål . Although

1989-529: A layer of fine concrete, the nucleus, went onto the pavement or statumen . Into or onto the nucleus went a course of polygonal or square paving stones, called the summa crusta . The crusta was crowned for drainage. An example is found in an early basalt road by the Temple of Saturn on the Clivus Capitolinus . It had travertine paving, polygonal basalt blocks, concrete bedding (substituted for

2142-588: A little strange. Moreover, when Beowulf dies he is buried in a mound at a place called Hrones-naesse , meaning "the cape of whales". Whales have for obvious reasons never lived in Vänern, where, according to Birger Nerman , Beowulf is buried. However, an expanse of water separates the island of Gotland from the Swedes. The island lies east of Denmark/Dacia and whales were once common in the Baltic Sea where Gotland

2295-530: A period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion . While indicating that the establishment of dates is an arbitrary process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections, a synthetic language . Perhaps around 85% of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are

2448-513: A regulation width (see Laws and traditions above), but actual widths have been measured at between 3.6 feet (1.1 metres) and more than 23 feet (7.0 metres). Today, the concrete has worn from the spaces around the stones, giving the impression of a very bumpy road, but the original practice was to produce a surface that was no doubt much closer to being flat. Many roads were built to resist rain, freezing and flooding. They were constructed to need as little repair as possible. Roman construction took

2601-426: A road, though privately constructed, became a public road when the memory of its private constructors had perished. Siculus Flaccus describes viae vicinales as roads " de publicis quae divertunt in agros et saepe ad alteras publicas perveniunt " (which turn off the public roads into fields, and often reach to other public roads). The repairing authorities, in this case, were the magistri pagorum or magistrates of

2754-552: Is also sparse early Northumbrian evidence of a sixth case: the locative . The evidence comes from Northumbrian Runic texts (e.g., ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ on rodi "on the Cross"). Adjectives agree with nouns in case, gender, and number, and can be either strong or weak. Pronouns and sometimes participles agree in case, gender, and number. First-person and second- person personal pronouns occasionally distinguish dual-number forms. The definite article sē and its inflections serve as

2907-422: Is as follows. The sounds enclosed in parentheses in the chart above are not considered to be phonemes : The above system is largely similar to that of Modern English , except that [ç, x, ɣ, l̥, n̥, r̥] (and [ʍ] for most speakers ) have generally been lost, while the voiced affricate and fricatives (now also including /ʒ/ ) have become independent phonemes, as has /ŋ/ . The open back rounded vowel [ɒ]

3060-621: Is evidenced by the continued variation between their successors in Middle and Modern English. In fact, what would become the standard forms of Middle English and of Modern English are descended from Mercian rather than West Saxon, while Scots developed from the Northumbrian dialect. It was once claimed that, owing to its position at the heart of the Kingdom of Wessex, the relics of Anglo-Saxon accent, idiom and vocabulary were best preserved in

3213-668: Is followed by Middle English (1150 to 1500), Early Modern English (1500 to 1650) and finally Modern English (after 1650), and in Scotland Early Scots (before 1450), Middle Scots ( c.  1450 to 1700) and Modern Scots (after 1700). Just as Modern English is not monolithic, Old English varied according to place. Despite the diversity of language of the Germanic-speaking migrants who established Old English in England and southeastern Scotland, it

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3366-835: Is much freer. The oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system , but from about the 8th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet . Englisċ , from which the word English is derived, means 'pertaining to the Angles '. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in many parts of Britain in the 5th century. By the 9th century, all speakers of Old English, including those who claimed Saxon or Jutish ancestry, could be referred to as Englisċ . This name probably either derives from Proto-Germanic *anguz , which referred to narrowness, constriction or anxiety, perhaps referring to shallow waters near

3519-552: Is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles , Saxons and Jutes . As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain : Common Brittonic , a Celtic language ; and Latin , brought to Britain by

3672-864: Is possible to reconstruct proto-Old English as a fairly unitary language. For the most part, the differences between the attested regional dialects of Old English developed within England and southeastern Scotland, rather than on the Mainland of Europe. Although from the tenth century Old English writing from all regions tended to conform to a written standard based on Late West Saxon, in speech Old English continued to exhibit much local and regional variation, which remained in Middle English and to some extent Modern English dialects . The four main dialectal forms of Old English were Mercian , Northumbrian , Kentish , and West Saxon . Mercian and Northumbrian are together referred to as Anglian . In terms of geography

3825-434: Is replaced by ⟨þ⟩ ). In contrast with Modern English orthography , Old English spelling was reasonably regular , with a mostly predictable correspondence between letters and phonemes . There were not usually any silent letters —in the word cniht , for example, both the ⟨c⟩ and ⟨h⟩ were pronounced ( /knixt ~ kniçt/ ) unlike the ⟨k⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ in

3978-523: Is situated. The name of the Gutes in Swedish, Gutar , is an ablaut-grade of the same name as that of the Geats in Beowulf. These facts made the archaeologist Gad Rausing come to the conclusion that the weather-Geats may have been Gutes. This was supported by another Swedish archaeologist Bo Gräslund . According to Rausing, Beowulf may be buried in a place called Rone on Gotland, a name corresponding to

4131-678: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , called the Jutes īutna , īotum or īutum . Moreover, Schück pointed out that when Alfred the Great's translation mentions the Jutes for the second time (book IV, ch. 14(16)) it calls them ēota and in one manuscript ȳtena . Björkman proposed in 1908 that Alfred the Great's translation of Jutes as Geats was based on a confusion between the West Saxon form Geotas ("Jutes") and Gēatas ("Geats"). As for

4284-483: The Etruscans . The Viae terrenae were plain roads of leveled earth. These were mere tracks worn down by the feet of humans and animals, and possibly by wheeled carriages. The Viae glareatae were earthen roads with a gravel surface or a gravel subsurface and paving on top. Livy speaks of the censors of his time as being the first to contract for paving the streets of Rome with flint stones, for laying gravel on

4437-694: The Gautigoths (cf. Geat/Gaut ), the Ostrogoths (cf. the Swedish province of Östergötland ) and Vagoths ( Gutar ?) ‒ this implies that the Geats were Goths rather than vice versa. The word Goth is also a term used by the Romans to describe related, culturally linked tribes like the Tervingi and the Greuthungs , so it may be correct to label Geats as Goths. Scandinavian burial customs, such as

4590-733: The Hrones in Hrones-naesse . Not far from there lies a place called Arnkull corresponding to the Earnar-naesse in Beowulf, which according to the poem was situated closely to Hrones-naesse. This theory does not exclude the ancient population of Västergötland and Östergötland from being Geats, but rather holds that the Anglo-Saxon name Geat could refer to West-geats (Västergötland), East-geats (Östergötland) as well as weather-geats (Gotland), in accordance with Jordanes account of

4743-565: The Late Middle Ages . They are one of the progenitor groups of modern Swedes , along with the tribes of Swedes and Gutes . The name of the Geats also lives on in the Swedish provinces of Västergötland and Östergötland , the western and eastern lands of the Geats, and in many other toponyms . The Swedish dialects spoken in the areas that used to be inhabited by Geats form a distinct group, Götamål . The etymology of

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4896-652: The Latin alphabet was introduced and adapted for the writing of Old English , replacing the earlier runic system. Nonetheless, the largest transfer of Latin-based (mainly Old French ) words into English occurred after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and thus in the Middle English rather than the Old English period. Another source of loanwords was Old Norse , which came into contact with Old English via

5049-573: The Norse sagas name several Geatish kings , but only Hygelac finds confirmation in Liber Monstrorum where he is referred to as "Rex Getarum" and in a copy of Historiae Francorum where he is called "Rege Gotorum". These sources concern a raid into Frisia , ca 516, which is also described in Beowulf . C. 551, some decades after Hygelac's raid, Jordanes described the Geats as a nation which

5202-491: The Roman conquest . Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms : Kentish , Mercian , Northumbrian , and West Saxon . It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian, and Scots from Northumbrian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England

5355-531: The Second Triumvirate obliged the Senators to repair the public roads at their own expense. The second category included private or country roads, originally constructed by private individuals, in whom their soil was vested and who had the power to dedicate them to the public use. Such roads benefited from a right of way in favor either of the public or of the owner of a particular estate. Under

5508-631: The Sweon , which fits the historical position of the Geats between the Danes and the Swedes. Moreover, the story of Beowulf, who leaves Geatland and arrives at the Danish court after a naval voyage, where he kills a beast, finds a parallel in Hrólf Kraki's saga . In this saga, Bödvar Bjarki leaves Gautland and arrives at the Danish court after a naval voyage and kills a beast that has been terrorizing

5661-641: The Tees , originally the settlement of the Geatlings . It has also been suggested that East Anglia was settled by Geats at this time, or by Wulfings who also came from Götaland, bringing the traditions of Beowulf with them. Any peace that eventually settled in southern Scandinavia was most likely due to exhaustion, and a Danish archaeologist has summarized that in the mid-6th century, and after, Scandinavia "went down to hell". Scandinavian wares appear to have stopped arriving in England, c. 550, suggesting that contact

5814-692: The Via Labicana in 421 BC; and the Via Salaria in 361 BC. In the Itinerary of Antoninus , the description of the road system is as follows: With the exception of some outlying portions, such as Britain north of the Wall, Dacia , and certain provinces east of the Euphrates, the whole Empire was penetrated by these itinera (plural of iter ). There is hardly a district to which we might expect

5967-415: The cantons . They could require the neighboring landowners either to furnish laborers for the general repair of the viae vicinales , or to keep in repair, at their own expense, a certain length of road passing through their respective properties. With the conquest of Italy, prepared viae were extended from Rome and its vicinity to outlying municipalities, sometimes overlying earlier roads. Building viae

6120-424: The censor who had ordered their construction or reconstruction. The same person often served afterwards as consul, but the road name is dated to his term as censor. If the road was older than the office of censor or was of unknown origin, it was named for its destination or the region through which it mainly passed. A road was renamed if the censor ordered major work on it, such as paving, repaving, or rerouting. With

6273-463: The civil engineer looked over the site of the proposed road and determined roughly where it should go, the agrimensores went to work surveying the road bed. They used two main devices, the rod and a device called a groma , which helped them obtain right angles. The gromatici , the Roman equivalent of rod men, placed rods and put down a line called the rigor . As they did not possess anything like

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6426-543: The dialect of Somerset . For details of the sound differences between the dialects, see Phonological history of Old English § Dialects . The language of the Anglo-Saxon settlers appears not to have been significantly affected by the native British Celtic languages which it largely displaced . The number of Celtic loanwords introduced into the language is very small, although dialect and toponymic terms are more often retained in western language contact zones (Cumbria, Devon, Welsh Marches and Borders and so on) than in

6579-609: The kingdom of Northumbria . Other parts of the island continued to use Celtic languages ( Gaelic – and perhaps some Pictish – in most of Scotland, Medieval Cornish all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon , Cumbric perhaps to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria , and Welsh in Wales and possibly also on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border ); except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements, where Old Norse

6732-523: The stone circles (domarringar), which are most common in Götaland and Gotland , and stelae (bautastenar) appeared in what is now northern Poland in the 1st century AD, suggesting an influx of Scandinavians during the formation of the Gothic Wielbark culture . Moreover, in Östergötland , in Sweden, there is a sudden disappearance of villages during this period. Contemporary accounts beginning in

6885-626: The ö monophthong of modern Swedish and the au diphthong of Old Norse correspond to the ēa diphthong of Old English . Thus, Gēatas is the Old English form of Old Norse Gautar and modern Swedish Götar . This correspondence seems to tip the balance for most scholars. It is also based on the fact that in Beowulf , the Gēatas live east of the Dani (across the sea) and in close contact with

7038-495: The 10th century however indicate that they were still politically independent, sometimes opposing Norwegian kings. It has been suggested that their absence from older sources is instead due to their being an inland people. The nature and the processes of how Geats and Swedes came to form one kingdom have been much debated among Swedish scholars. The scarcity and sometimes debated veracity of sources has left much room open for interpretation. The oldest medieval Swedish sources present

7191-579: The 17th century the name Göta älv , 'River of the Geats', replaced the earlier names Götälven and Gautelfr . The etymology of the word Gaut (as mentioned above) derives from the Proto-Germanic word * geutan , and the extended meaning of "to pour" is "flow, stream, waterfall", which could refer to Trollhättan Falls or to the river itself. The short form of Gautigoths was the Old Norse Gautar , which originally referred to just

7344-422: The 8th century, the runic system came to be supplanted by a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish Christian missionaries. This was replaced by Insular script , a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental Carolingian minuscule (also known as Caroline ) replaced the insular. The Latin alphabet of

7497-463: The Danes for two years (see also Origins for Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki ). There is a hypothesis that the Jutes also were Geats, and which was proposed by Pontus Fahlbeck in 1884. According to this hypothesis the Geats would have not only resided in southern Sweden but also in Jutland , where Beowulf would have lived. The Geats and the Jutes are mentioned in Beowulf as different tribes, and whereas

7650-530: The Danes/Dacians and be separated from the Swedes by wide waters. Some researchers have found it a little far-fetched that wide waters relates to Vänern in Västergötland or Mälaren. The weather in weather-geats , and sea-geats marks a people living at a windy, stormy coast by the sea. The Geats of Västergötland were historically an inland people, making an epithet such as weather- or sea-

7803-555: The English People attributed to Alfred the Great where the Jutes ( iutarum , iutis ) once are rendered as gēata (genitive) and twice as gēatum (dative) (see e.g. the OED which identifies the Geats through Eotas , Iótas , Iútan and Geátas ). Fahlbeck did not, however, propose an etymology for how the two ethnonyms could be related. Fahlbeck's theory was refuted by Schück who in 1907 noted that another Old English source,

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7956-406: The English language; some of them, such as Pope Gregory I 's treatise Pastoral Care , appear to have been translated by Alfred himself. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, but Alfred chiefly inspired the growth of prose. A later literary standard, dating from the late 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester , and

8109-550: The Geatish provinces and then through Närke and Västmanland to be judged to be the lawful king by the lawspeakers of their respective things . One of these Swedish kings was Ragnvald Knaphövde , who in 1125 was riding with his retinue in order to be accepted as king by the different provinces. According to material appended to the oldest manuscript of the Westrogothic law , he decided not to demand hostages as he despised

8262-527: The Geats are called gēatas , the Jutes are called ēotena (genitive) or ēotenum (dative). Moreover, the Old English poem Widsith also mentions both Geats and Jutes, and it calls the latter ȳtum . However, Fahlbeck proposed in 1884 that the Gēatas of Beowulf referred to Jutes and he proposed that the Jutes originally also were Geats like those of southern Sweden. This theory was based on an Old English translation of Venerable Bede 's Ecclesiastical History of

8415-590: The Geats' old connection with the Goths. They argued that since the Goths and the Geats were the same nation, and the Geats were part of the kingdom of Sweden, this meant that the Swedes had defeated the Roman empire. The earliest attestation of this claim comes from the Council of Basel , 1434, during which the Swedish delegation argued with the Spanish about who among them were the true Goths. The Spaniards argued that it

8568-549: The Geats, and was slain near Falköping . In a new general law of Sweden that was issued by Magnus Eriksson in the 1350s, it was stated that twelve men from each province, chosen by their things, should be present at the Stone of Mora when a new king was elected. The distinction between Swedes and Geats lasted during the Middle Ages, but the Geats became increasingly important for Swedish national claims of greatness due to

8721-497: The Great . From that time on, the West Saxon dialect (then in the form now known as Early West Saxon) became standardised as the language of government, and as the basis for the many works of literature and religious materials produced or translated from Latin in that period. The later literary standard known as Late West Saxon (see History , above), although centred in the same region of the country, appears not to have been directly descended from Alfred's Early West Saxon. For example,

8874-481: The Middle Ages. Still others have put emphasis on how it was individual rulers, not ethnic groups, who were driving the process towards a unified kingdom, and that the process was very complicated. Papal letters from the 1080s style the recipients as "king of the Swedes" or "king of the West Geats". In another papal letter from the 1160s, the title rex Sweorum et Gothorum is first attested. The Swedish kings began

9027-410: The Northumbrian dialect retained /i(ː)o̯/ , which had merged with /e(ː)o̯/ in West Saxon. For more on dialectal differences, see Phonological history of Old English (dialects) . Some of the principal sound changes occurring in the pre-history and history of Old English were the following: For more details of these processes, see the main article, linked above. For sound changes before and after

9180-828: The Northumbrian region lay north of the Humber River; the Mercian lay north of the Thames and south of the Humber River; West Saxon lay south and southwest of the Thames; and the smallest, Kentish region lay southeast of the Thames, a small corner of England. The Kentish region, settled by the Jutes from Jutland, has the scantest literary remains. The term West Saxon actually is represented by two different dialects: Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon. Hogg has suggested that these two dialects would be more appropriately named Alfredian Saxon and Æthelwoldian Saxon, respectively, so that

9333-412: The Old English period is also often attributed to Norse influence. The influence of Old Norse certainly helped move English from a synthetic language along the continuum to a more analytic word order , and Old Norse most likely made a greater impact on the English language than any other language. The eagerness of Vikings in the Danelaw to communicate with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours produced

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9486-478: The Old English period, see Phonological history of English . Nouns decline for five cases : nominative , accusative , genitive , dative , instrumental ; three genders : masculine, feminine, neuter; and two numbers : singular, and plural; and are strong or weak. The instrumental is vestigial and only used with the masculine and neuter singular and often replaced by the dative . Only pronouns and strong adjectives retain separate instrumental forms. There

9639-404: The Ridgeway and the Icknield Way . The Laws of the Twelve Tables , dated to about 450 BC, required that any public road (Latin via ) be 8 Roman feet (perhaps about 2.37 m) wide where straight and twice that width where curved. These were probably the minimum widths for a via ; in the later republic, widths of around 12 Roman feet were common for public roads in rural regions, permitting

9792-423: The Scandinanian tribes Gautigoth, Ostrogoth and Vagoth. Old English language Old English ( Englisċ or Ænglisc , pronounced [ˈeŋɡliʃ] ), or Anglo-Saxon , was the earliest recorded form of the English language , spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages . It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in

9945-411: The Scandinavian rulers and settlers in the Danelaw from the late 9th   century, and during the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the early 11th   century. Many place names in eastern and northern England are of Scandinavian origin. Norse borrowings are relatively rare in Old English literature, being mostly terms relating to government and administration. The literary standard, however,

10098-411: The Swedes more pagan, which was why the Christian Swedish king Inge the Elder fled to Västergötland when deposed in favour of Blot-Sweyn , a king more favourable towards Norse paganism , in the 1080s. Inge would retake the throne and rule until his death c. 1100. In his Gesta Danorum (book 13), the Danish 12th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus noted that the Geats had no say in the election of

10251-470: The Swedish kingdom as retaining differences between provinces, in laws as well as in weights and measures. Some scholars have argued that the Geats were subjugated by the Swedes, and have suggested various dates for such an event, from the 6th to the 9th centuries. Others have wanted to see a more gradual merging, and that the Geats were slowly subsumed into the more powerful kingdom of Sweden, and in many respects they maintained their own cultural identity during

10404-553: The Viking influence on Old English appears from the fact that the indispensable elements of the language – pronouns , modals , comparatives , pronominal adverbs (like hence and together ), conjunctions and prepositions – show the most marked Danish influence; the best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in the extensive word borrowings because, as Jespersen indicates, no texts exist in either Scandinavia or Northern England from this time to give certain evidence of an influence on syntax. The effect of Old Norse on Old English

10557-426: The Wends" was copied from the Danish title, while the Danish kings called themselves "Kings of the Gotlanders" (which, like "Geats", was translated into "Goths" in Latin). "Wends" is a term normally used to describe the Slavic peoples who inhabited large areas of modern east Germany and Pomerania. See further in the Misplaced Pages articles King of the Goths and King of the Wends . The titles, however, changed in 1973 when

10710-452: The basic elements of Modern English vocabulary. Old English is a West Germanic language , and developed out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea Germanic) dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England . This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland , which for several centuries belonged to

10863-495: The beginnings of the compound tenses of Modern English . Old English verbs include strong verbs , which form the past tense by altering the root vowel, and weak verbs , which use a suffix such as -de . As in Modern English, and peculiar to the Germanic languages, the verbs formed two great classes: weak (regular), and strong (irregular). Like today, Old English had fewer strong verbs, and many of these have over time decayed into weak forms. Then, as now, dental suffixes indicated

11016-494: The borrowing of individual Latin words based on which patterns of sound change they have undergone. Some Latin words had already been borrowed into the Germanic languages before the ancestral Angles and Saxons left continental Europe for Britain. More entered the language when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity and Latin-speaking priests became influential. It was also through Irish Christian missionaries that

11169-405: The causeway to more than 5 feet (1.5 metres) above the marsh. In the provinces, the Romans often did not bother with a stone causeway but used log roads ( pontes longi ). The public road system of the Romans was thoroughly military in its aims and spirit. It was designed to unite and consolidate the conquests of the Roman people, whether within or without the limits of Italy proper. A legion on

11322-432: The censorial responsibility passed to the commanders of the Roman armies and later to special commissioners, and in some cases perhaps to the local magistrates. In the provinces, the consul or praetor and his legates received authority to deal directly with the contractor. The care of the streets and roads within the Roman territory was committed in the earliest times to the censors. They eventually made contracts for paving

11475-725: The charges for using the roads. Costs of services on the journey went up from there. Financing road building was a Roman government responsibility. Maintenance, however, was generally left to the province. The officials tasked with fund-raising were the curatores viarum . They had a number of methods available to them. Private citizens with an interest in the road could be asked to contribute to its repair. High officials might distribute largesse to be used for roads. Censors, who were in charge of public morals and public works, were expected to fund repairs suâ pecuniâ (with their own money). Beyond those means, taxes were required. A via connected two cities. Viae were generally centrally placed in

11628-650: The city Göteborg ( Gothenburg ) has formerly been considered to have been named after the river Göta älv , it may instead have been named after the Geats ('fortress of the Geats') when it was founded in 1621. Until 1973 the official title of the Swedish king was "King of Sweden" (earlier: of the Swedes), the Geats/Goths and the Wends (with the formula Sveriges, Götes och Vendes konung , in Latin N.N. Dei Gratia, Suecorum, Gothorum et Vandalorum Rex ). The title "King of

11781-423: The city proper) who were both part of the collegia known as the vigintisexviri (literally meaning "Twenty-Six Men"). Augustus, finding the collegia ineffective, especially the boards dealing with road maintenance, reduced the number of magistrates from 26 to 20. Augustus abolished the duoviri and later granted the position as superintendent (according to Dio Cassius) of the road system connecting Rome to

11934-412: The city wall and the first milestone beyond. In case of an emergency in the condition of a particular road, men of influence and liberality were appointed, or voluntarily acted, as curatores or temporary commissioners to superintend the work of repair. The dignity attached to such a curatorship is attested by a passage of Cicero . Among those who performed this duty in connection with particular roads

12087-499: The cluster ending in the palatal affricate is sometimes written ⟨nċġ⟩ (or ⟨nġċ⟩ ) by modern editors. Between vowels in the middle of a word, the pronunciation can be either a palatalized geminate /ʃː/ , as in fisċere /ˈfiʃ.ʃe.re/ ('fisherman') and wȳsċan , /ˈwyːʃ.ʃɑn 'to wish'), or an unpalatalized consonant sequence /sk/ , as in āscian /ˈɑːs.ki.ɑn/ ('to ask'). The pronunciation /sk/ occurs when ⟨sc⟩ had been followed by

12240-461: The coast, or else it may derive from a related word *angô which could refer to curve or hook shapes including fishing hooks. Concerning the second option, it has been hypothesised that the Angles acquired their name either because they lived on a curved promontory of land shaped like a fishhook , or else because they were fishermen (anglers). Old English was not static, and its usage covered

12393-492: The condition of the public highways. Their names occur frequently in the inscriptions to restorers of roads and bridges. Thus, Vespasian , Titus , Domitian , Trajan , and Septimius Severus were commemorated in this capacity at Emérita. The Itinerary of Antoninus (which was probably a work of much earlier date and republished in an improved and enlarged form under one of the Antonine emperors ) remains as standing evidence of

12546-533: The construction of sewers and removed obstructions to traffic, as the aediles did in Rome. It was in the character of an imperial curator (though probably armed with extraordinary powers) that Corbulo denounced the magistratus and mancipes of the Italian roads to Tiberius . He pursued them and their families with fines and imprisonment and was later rewarded with a consulship by Caligula , who also shared

12699-473: The countryside. The construction and care of the public roads, whether in Rome, in Italy, or in the provinces, was, at all periods of Roman history, considered to be a function of the greatest weight and importance. This is clearly shown by the fact that the censors, in some respects the most venerable of Roman magistrates, had the earliest paramount authority to construct and repair all roads and streets. Indeed all

12852-598: The custom of styling themselves as also the kings of the Geats in the 1270s. In the 11th century, the Swedish House of Munsö became extinct with the death of Emund the Old . Stenkil , a Geat, was elected king of the Swedes, and the Geats would be influential in the shaping of Sweden as a Christian kingdom. However, this election also ushered in a long period of civil unrest between Christians and pagans and between Geats and Swedes. The Geats tended to be more Christian, and

13005-485: The dative case, an adposition may conceivably be located anywhere in the sentence. Remnants of the Old English case system in Modern English are in the forms of a few pronouns (such as I/me/mine , she/her , who/whom/whose ) and in the possessive ending -'s , which derives from the masculine and neuter genitive ending -es . The modern English plural ending -(e)s derives from the Old English -as , but

13158-431: The east. However, various suggestions have been made concerning possible influence that Celtic may have had on developments in English syntax in the post–Old English period, such as the regular progressive construction and analytic word order , as well as the eventual development of the periphrastic auxiliary verb do . These ideas have generally not received widespread support from linguists, particularly as many of

13311-652: The first paved road—the Appian Way . Unless these allusions are just simple anachronisms, the roads referred to were probably at the time little more than levelled earthen tracks. Thus, the Via Gabiana (during the time of Porsena ) is mentioned in about 500 BC; the Via Latina (during the time of Gaius Marcius Coriolanus ) in about 490 BC; the Via Nomentana (also known as "Via Ficulensis"), in 449 BC;

13464-645: The former diphthong /iy/ tended to become monophthongised to /i/ in EWS, but to /y/ in LWS. Due to the centralisation of power and the destruction wrought by Viking invasions, there is relatively little written record of the non-West Saxon dialects after Alfred's unification. Some Mercian texts continued to be written, however, and the influence of Mercian is apparent in some of the translations produced under Alfred's programme, many of which were produced by Mercian scholars. Other dialects certainly continued to be spoken, as

13617-507: The fourth century further associated these groups with the earlier Getae of Dacia, but this is now disputed. The Götaland theory (Swedish "Västgötaskolan") is a disparate group of theories, which have attempted to prove that some events and even places that are traditionally placed around Mälaren , especially ones that are associated with the formation of medieval Sweden, instead should be located to Västergötland. The methods ranged from relatively scholarly efforts to dowsing . This "school"

13770-531: The futhorc. A few letter pairs were used as digraphs , representing a single sound. Also used was the Tironian note ⟨⁊⟩ (a character similar to the digit 7) for the conjunction and . A common scribal abbreviation was a thorn with a stroke ⟨ꝥ⟩ , which was used for the pronoun þæt ( that ). Macrons over vowels were originally used not to mark long vowels (as in modern editions), but to indicate stress, or as abbreviations for

13923-469: The gravel), and a rain-water gutter. Romans preferred to engineer solutions to obstacles rather than circumvent them. Outcrops of stone, ravines, or hilly or mountainous terrain called for cuts and tunnels. An example of this is found on the Roman road from Căzănești near the Iron Gates . This road was half carved into the rock, about 5   ft to 5   ft 9   in (1.5 to 1.75   m);

14076-416: The habit of condemning well-born citizens to work on the roads. Under the rule of Claudius, Corbulo was brought to justice and forced to repay the money which had been extorted from his victims. Special curatores for a term seem to have been appointed on occasion, even after the institution of the permanent magistrates bearing that title. The emperors who succeeded Augustus exercised a vigilant control over

14229-544: The heading of viae privatae were also included roads leading from the public or high roads to particular estates or settlements; Ulpian considers these to be public roads. Features off the via were connected to the via by viae rusticae , or secondary roads. Both main or secondary roads might either be paved or left unpaved with a gravel surface, as they were in North Africa. These prepared but unpaved roads were viae glareae or sternendae ("to be strewn"). Beyond

14382-402: The help of legionaries , with spades excavated the road bed down to bedrock or at least to the firmest ground they could find. The excavation was called the fossa , the Latin word for ditch. The depth varied according to terrain. The method varied according to geographic locality, materials available, and terrain, but the plan or ideal at which the engineer aimed was always the same. The road

14535-606: The inhabitants of Västergötland , or the western parts of today's Götaland , a meaning which is retained in some Icelandic sagas. The earliest known surviving mention of the Geats appears in Ptolemy (2nd century AD), who refers to them as Goutai . In the 6th century, Jordanes writes of the Gautigoths and Ostrogoths (the Ostrogoths of Scandza ); and Procopius refers to Gautoi . The Norse Sagas know them as Gautar ; Beowulf and Widsith as Gēatas . Beowulf and

14688-657: The inscriptions on the Franks Casket ) date to the early 8th century. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 8th century. With the unification of several of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (outside the Danelaw ) by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect (Early West Saxon). Alfred advocated education in English alongside Latin, and had many works translated into

14841-547: The king, only the Swedes. When the West Geatish law or Westrogothic law was put to paper, it reminded the Geats that they had to accept the election of the Swedes: Sveær egho konong at taka ok sva vrækæ meaning "It is the Swedes who have the right of choosing ["taking"] and also deposing the king" and then he rode Eriksgatan "mæþ gislum ofvan" – "with hostages from above [the realm]" through Södermanland ,

14994-411: The land where they were living, but this is not generally accepted to be the case, partly because that would mean that the names' similarity would be coincidental. A more specific theory about the word Gautigoths is that it means the Goths who live near the river Gaut , today's Göta älv ( Old Norse : Gautelfr ). It might also have been a conflation of the word Gauti with a gloss of Goths . In

15147-423: The largest tribes. Procopius and Jordanes both mention the Geats, but after them, foreign sources about Scandinavia are scarce until the 9th century, when Anglo-Saxon and Frankish sources do shed some light on the area. In these, the Geats are absent, which has led some scholars to conclude that they were no longer an independent nation and had been subsumed by the Swedes. Norwegian and Icelandic scaldic sources from

15300-449: The latter applied only to "strong" masculine nouns in the nominative and accusative cases; different plural endings were used in other instances. Old English nouns had grammatical gender , while modern English has only natural gender. Pronoun usage could reflect either natural or grammatical gender when those conflicted, as in the case of ƿīf , a neuter noun referring to a female person. In Old English's verbal compound constructions are

15453-428: The mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman (a type of French ) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what

15606-601: The minute care which was bestowed on the service of the public roads. Ancient Rome boasted impressive technological feats, using many advances that were lost during the Middle Ages . Some of these accomplishments would not be rivaled in Europe until the Modern Age . Many practical Roman innovations were adopted from earlier designs. Some of the common, earlier designs incorporated arches . Roman road builders aimed at

15759-456: The modern knight ( /naɪt/ ). The following table lists the Old English letters and digraphs together with the phonemes they represent, using the same notation as in the Phonology section above. After /n/ , /j/ was realized as [dʒ] and /ɣ/ was realized as [ɡ] . The spellings ⟨ncg⟩ , ⟨ngc⟩ and even ⟨ncgg⟩ were occasionally used instead of

15912-505: The naive reader would not assume that they are chronologically related. Each of these four dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the islands. Of these, Northumbria south of the Tyne , and most of Mercia , were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. The portion of Mercia that was successfully defended, and all of Kent , were then integrated into Wessex under Alfred

16065-421: The name Geat (Old English Geatas , from a Proto-Germanic * Gautaz , plural * Gautōz ) is similar to that of Goths and Gutes (* Gutô , plural * Gutaniz ). The names derive from ablaut grades of the Proto-Germanic word * geutaną , meaning "to pour". They have the literal meaning "they who pour their seed". (For more information see Goths § Etymology .) The names could also allude to watercourses in

16218-547: The new king Carl XVI Gustaf decided that his royal title should simply be "King of Sweden". The disappearance of the old title was his decision alone. Geatas was originally Proto-Germanic * Gautoz and Goths and Gutar ( Gotlanders ) were * Gutaniz . * Gautoz and * Gutaniz are two ablaut grades of a Proto-Germanic word * geutan with the meaning "to pour" (modern Swedish gjuta , modern German giessen ). The word comes from an Indo-European root meaning to pour, offer sacrifice. There were consequently two derivations from

16371-491: The office of curator of each of the great public roads a perpetual magistracy rather than a temporary commission. The persons appointed under the new system were of senatorial or equestrian rank, depending on the relative importance of the roads assigned to them. It was the duty of each curator to issue contracts for the maintenance of his road and to see that the contractor who undertook said work performed it faithfully, as to both quantity and quality. Augustus also authorized

16524-474: The origins of the ethnonym Jute , it may be a secondary formation of the toponym Jutland, where jut is derived from a Proto-Indo-European root * eud meaning "water". Since the 19th century, there has also been a suggestion that Beowulf's people were Gutes (from the island of Gotland in Sweden). According to the poem, the weather-geats or sea-geats , as they are called are supposed to have lived east of

16677-436: The passing of two carts of standard (4 foot) width without interference to pedestrian traffic. Actual practices varied from this standard. The Tables command Romans to build public roads and give wayfarers the right to pass over private land where the road is in disrepair. Building roads that would not need frequent repair therefore became an ideological objective, as well as building them as straight as practicable to construct

16830-512: The past tense of the weak verbs, as in work and worked . Old English syntax is similar to that of modern English . Some differences are consequences of the greater level of nominal and verbal inflection, allowing freer word order . Old English was first written in runes , using the futhorc —a rune set derived from the Germanic 24-character elder futhark , extended by five more runes used to represent Anglo-Saxon vowel sounds and sometimes by several more additional characters. From around

16983-413: The paving of the streets of Rome or at least shared that responsibility with the quattuorviri viarum . It has been suggested that the quaestors were obliged to buy their right to an official career by personal outlay on the streets. There was certainly no lack of precedents for this enforced liberality, and the change made by Claudius may have been a mere change in the nature of the expenditure imposed on

17136-627: The quaestors. The official bodies which first succeeded the censors in the care of the streets and roads were: Both these bodies were probably of ancient origin. The first mention of either body occurs in the Lex Julia Municipalis in 45 BC. The quattuorviri were afterwards called quattuorviri viarum curandarum . The extent of jurisdiction of the duoviri is derived from their full title as duoviri viis extra propiusve urbem Romam passus mille purgandis . Their authority extended over all roads between their respective gates of issue in

17289-408: The rest of Italy and provinces beyond. In this capacity he had effectively given himself and any following emperors a paramount authority which had originally belonged to the city censors. The quattuorviri board was kept as it was until at least the reign of Hadrian (117 to 138 AD). Furthermore, he appointed praetorians to the offices of "road-maker" and assigning each one with two lictors , making

17442-624: The rest of the road, above the Danube , was made from wooden structure, projecting out of the cliff. The road functioned as a towpath, making the Danube navigable. Tabula Traiana memorial plaque in Serbia is all that remains of the now-submerged road. Roman bridges were some of the first large and lasting bridges created. River crossings were achieved by bridges, or pontes . Single slabs went over rills. A bridge could be of wood, stone, or both. Wooden bridges were constructed on pilings sunk into

17595-817: The richest and most significant bodies of literature preserved among the early Germanic peoples. In his supplementary article to the 1935 posthumous edition of Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader , Dr. James Hulbert writes: Roman roads At the peak of Rome's development, no fewer than 29 great military highways radiated from the capital, and the empire's 113 provinces were interconnected by 372 great roads. The whole comprised more than 400,000 kilometres (250,000 miles ) of roads, of which over 80,500 kilometres (50,000 mi) were stone-paved. In Gaul alone, no less than 21,000 kilometres (13,000 mi) of roadways are said to have been improved, and in Britain at least 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi). The courses (and sometimes

17748-407: The river, or on stone piers. Stone arch bridges were used on larger or more permanent crossings. Most bridges also used concrete, which the Romans were the first to use for bridges. Roman bridges were so well constructed that many remain in use today. Causeways were built over marshy ground. The road was first marked out with pilings. Between them were sunk large quantities of stone so as to raise

17901-464: The roads outside the city, and for forming raised footpaths at the sides. In these roads, the surface was hardened with gravel, and although pavements were introduced shortly afterwards, the blocks were laid on a bed of small stones. Examples include the Via Praenestina and Via Latina . The best sources of information as regards the construction of a regulation via munita are: After

18054-525: The role as the heroic ancestors. The Geats were traditionally divided into several petty kingdoms , or districts, which had their own things (popular assemblies) and laws. The largest one of these districts was Västergötland (West Geatland), and it was in Västergötland that the Thing of all Geats was held every year, in the vicinity of Skara . Despite the name, the thing was only for the inhabitants of Västergötland and Dalsland . The equivalent in Östergötland

18207-567: The same Proto-Germanic ethnonym. It is a long-standing controversy whether the Goths were Geats. Both Old Icelandic and Old English literary sources clearly separate the Geats (Isl. Gautar , OEng Geatas ) from the Goths/ Gutar (Isl. Gotar , OEng. Gotenas ); but the Gothic historian Jordanes wrote that the Goths came originally to Dacia from the island of Scandza . Moreover, he described that on this island there were three tribes called

18360-462: The secondary roads were the viae terrenae , "dirt roads". The third category comprised roads at or in villages, districts , or crossroads , leading through or towards a vicus or village. Such roads ran either into a high road or into other viae vicinales , without any direct communication with a high road. They were considered public or private, according to the fact of their original construction out of public or private funds or materials. Such

18513-445: The shortest possible roads, and thus save on material. Roman law defined the right to use a road as a servitus , or liability. The ius eundi ("right of going") established a claim to use an iter , or footpath, across private land; the ius agendi ("right of driving"), an actus , or carriage track. A via combined both types of servitutes , provided it was of the proper width, which was determined by an arbiter . The default width

18666-430: The street inside Rome, including the Clivus Capitolinus , with lava, and for laying down the roads outside the city with gravel. Sidewalks were also provided. The aediles , probably by virtue of their responsibility for the freedom of traffic and policing the streets, co-operated with the censors and the bodies that succeeded them. It would seem that in the reign of Claudius the quaestors had become responsible for

18819-483: The surfaces) of many Roman roads survived for millennia; some are overlaid by modern roads. "The extraordinary greatness of the Roman Empire manifests itself above all in three things: the aqueducts, the paved roads, and the construction of the drains." Dionysius of Halicarnassus , Ant. Rom. 3.67.5 Livy mentions some of the most familiar roads near Rome, and the milestones on them, at times long before

18972-617: The term viae regales compare the roads of the Persian kings (who probably organized the first system of public roads) and the King's Highway . With the term viae militariae compare the Icknield Way ( Icen-hilde-weg , or "War-way of the Iceni"). There were many other people, besides special officials, who from time to time and for a variety of reasons sought to connect their names with

19125-535: The terms via munita and vía publica became identical. Viae were distinguished according to their public or private character, as well as according to the materials employed and the methods followed in their construction. Ulpian divided them up in the following fashion: According to Isidore of Sevilla , the Romans borrowed the knowledge of construction of viae munitae from the Carthaginians , though certainly inheriting some construction techniques from

19278-409: The theorized Brittonicisms do not become widespread until the late Middle English and Early Modern English periods, in addition to the fact that similar forms exist in other modern Germanic languages. Old English contained a certain number of loanwords from Latin , which was the scholarly and diplomatic lingua franca of Western Europe. It is sometimes possible to give approximate dates for

19431-564: The time still lacked the letters ⟨j⟩ and ⟨w⟩ , and there was no ⟨v⟩ as distinct from ⟨u⟩ ; moreover native Old English spellings did not use ⟨k⟩ , ⟨q⟩ or ⟨z⟩ . The remaining 20 Latin letters were supplemented by four more: ⟨ æ ⟩ ( æsc , modern ash ) and ⟨ð⟩ ( ðæt , now called eth or edh), which were modified Latin letters, and thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ , which are borrowings from

19584-416: The two nations took a long time, however. In the early-20th century, Nordisk familjebok noted that svensk had almost replaced svear as a name for the Swedish people. At the same time, the Swedish ancestors were often referred to as Geats, especially when their heroism or connection to the Goths was to be stressed. This practice disappeared during the 19th century, when the vikings gradually took over

19737-413: The urban administration, both abolished and created new offices in connection with the maintenance of public works, streets, and aqueducts in and around Rome. The task of maintaining the roads had previously been administered by two groups of minor magistrates, the quattuorviri (a board of four magistrates to oversee the roads inside the city) and the duoviri (a board of two to oversee the roads outside

19890-404: The usual ⟨ng⟩ . The addition of ⟨c⟩ to ⟨g⟩ in spellings such as ⟨cynincg⟩ and ⟨cyningc⟩ for ⟨cyning⟩ may have been a means of showing that the word was pronounced with a stop rather than a fricative; spellings with just ⟨nc⟩ such as ⟨cyninc⟩ are also found. To disambiguate,

20043-474: The various functionaries, including emperors, who succeeded the censors in this portion of their duties, may be said to have exercised a devolved censorial jurisdiction. The devolution to the censorial jurisdictions became a practical necessity, resulting from the growth of the Roman dominions and the diverse labors which detained the censors in the capital city. Certain ad hoc official bodies successively acted as constructing and repairing authorities. In Italy,

20196-609: The water would flow out from between the stones and fragments of rubble instead of becoming mud in clay soils. According to Ulpian , there were three types of roads: The first type of road included public high or main roads, constructed and maintained at the public expense, and with their soil vested in the state. Such roads led either to the sea, to a town, to a public river (one with a constant flow), or to another public road. Siculus Flaccus , who lived under Trajan (98–117), calls them viae publicae regalesque , and describes their characteristics as follows: Roman roads were named after

20349-478: The word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population which existed in the Danelaw, these endings must have led to much confusion, tending gradually to become obscured and finally lost. This blending of peoples and languages resulted in "simplifying English grammar". The inventory of Early West Saxon surface phones

20502-403: The years the Romans realized this and built longer but more manageable alternatives to existing roads. Roman roads generally went straight up and down hills, rather than in a serpentine pattern of switchbacks. As to the standard Imperial terminology that was used, the words were localized for different elements used in construction and varied from region to region. Also, in the course of time,

20655-485: Was Julius Caesar , who became curator (67 BC) of the Via Appia and spent his own money liberally upon it. Certain persons appear also to have acted alone and taken responsibility for certain roads. In the country districts, the magistri pagorum had authority to maintain the viae vicinales . In Rome each householder was legally responsible for the repairs to that portion of the street which passed his own house; it

20808-509: Was Lionga thing . Unlike the Swedes, who used the division hundare , the Geats used hærrad (modern Swedish härad ), like the Norwegians and the Danes. Surprisingly, it would be the Geatish name that became the common term in the Swedish kingdom. This is possibly related to the fact that several of the medieval Swedish kings were of Geatish extraction and often resided primarily in Götaland. In Västergötland and Dalsland, there were also

20961-513: Was "bold, and quick to engage in war". The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain included many North Germanic people who were losers in the brutal tribal warfare of Scandinavia. The place-name -gate marks the site of Geatish settlement, often alongside strategically important Roman roads and nearby Visigothic and/or Jutish settlements. Defeated Jutes like Hengest and his brother Horsa fled to Kent, while Geats defeated by encroaching Swedes moved to Yorkshire where they founded Gillingshire by

21114-467: Was a military responsibility and thus came under the jurisdiction of a consul. The process had a military name, viam munire , as though the via were a fortification. Municipalities, however, were responsible for their own roads, which the Romans called viae vicinales . Roads were not free to use; tolls abounded, especially at bridges. Often they were collected at the city gate. Freight costs were made heavier still by import and export taxes. These were only

21267-443: Was an allophone of short /ɑ/ which occurred in stressed syllables before nasal consonants (/m/ and /n/). It was variously spelled either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩. The Anglian dialects also had the mid front rounded vowel /ø(ː)/ , spelled ⟨œ⟩, which had emerged from i-umlaut of /o(ː)/ . In West Saxon and Kentish, it had already merged with /e(ː)/ before the first written prose. Other dialects had different systems of diphthongs. For example,

21420-439: Was based on the West Saxon dialect , away from the main area of Scandinavian influence; the impact of Norse may have been greater in the eastern and northern dialects. Certainly in Middle English texts, which are more often based on eastern dialects, a strong Norse influence becomes apparent. Modern English contains many, often everyday, words that were borrowed from Old Norse, and the grammatical simplification that occurred after

21573-527: Was better to be descended from the heroic Visigoths than from stay-at-homers. This cultural movement, which was not restricted to Sweden went by the name Gothicismus or in Swedish Göticism , i.e. Geaticism . After the 15th century and the Kalmar Union , the Swedes and the Geats appear to have begun to perceive themselves as one nation, which is reflected in the evolution of svensk into

21726-519: Was broken. According to Procopius there were 13 "very numerous nations" on the Scandinavian peninsula in the 6th century, which is supported by recent archaeological analyses. Several scholars consider this to be a reasonable number of independent kingdoms at the time, with each consisting of one or more tribes, as reported by Jordanes. However, by 1350, these 13 kingdoms had been reduced in number to only two, Norway and Sweden. The Geats were one of

21879-419: Was brought to prominence in the 1980s following a TV series by Dag Stålsjö . While some serious scholars have attempted to place more emphasis on the Geats in the early history of Sweden than was traditional, Västgötaskolan has never reached any acceptance. The generally accepted identification of Old English Gēatas as the same ethnonym as Swedish götar and Old Norse gautar is based on the observation that

22032-448: Was constructed by filling the fossa . This was done by layering rock over other stones. Into the fossa was placed large amounts of rubble , gravel and stone, whatever fill was available. Sometimes a layer of sand was put down, if it was locally avbailable. When the layers came to within 1 yd (1 m) or so of the surface, the subsurface was covered with gravel and tamped down, a process called pavire , or pavimentare . The flat surface

22185-481: Was either /ʃ/ or possibly /ʃː/ when the preceding vowel was short. Doubled consonants are geminated ; the geminate fricatives ⟨ff⟩ , ⟨ss⟩ and ⟨ðð⟩ / ⟨þþ⟩ / ⟨ðþ⟩ / ⟨þð⟩ are always voiceless [ff] , [ss] , [θθ] . The corpus of Old English literature is small but still significant, with some 400 surviving manuscripts. The pagan and Christian streams mingle in Old English, one of

22338-616: Was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham ("the Grammarian"). This form of the language is known as the " Winchester standard", or more commonly as Late West Saxon. It is considered to represent the "classical" form of Old English. It retained its position of prestige until the time of the Norman Conquest, after which English ceased for a time to be of importance as a literary language. The history of Old English can be subdivided into: The Old English period

22491-562: Was made between long and short vowels in the originals. (In some older editions an acute accent mark was used for consistency with Old Norse conventions.) Additionally, modern editions often distinguish between velar and palatal ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ by placing dots above the palatals: ⟨ċ⟩ , ⟨ġ⟩ . The letter wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ is usually replaced with ⟨w⟩ , but ⟨æ⟩ , ⟨ð⟩ and ⟨þ⟩ are normally retained (except when ⟨ð⟩

22644-411: Was spoken and Danish law applied. Old English literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century. The oldest surviving work of Old English literature is Cædmon's Hymn , which was composed between 658 and 680 but not written down until the early 8th century. There is a limited corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries, but the oldest coherent runic texts (notably

22797-603: Was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century. Old English is one of the West Germanic languages , and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon . Like other old Germanic languages, it is very different from Modern English and Modern Scots, and largely incomprehensible for Modern English or Modern Scots speakers without study. Within Old English grammar nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, and word order

22950-425: Was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Old Norse and Old English resembled each other closely like cousins, and with some words in common, speakers roughly understood each other; in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. It is most important to recognize that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of

23103-504: Was the latitudo legitima of 8 feet. Roman law and tradition forbade the use of vehicles in urban areas, except in certain cases. Married women and government officials on business could ride. The Lex Julia Municipalis restricted commercial carts to night-time access in the city within the walls and within a mile outside the walls. Roman roads varied from simple corduroy roads to paved roads using deep roadbeds of tamped rubble as an underlying layer to ensure that they kept dry, as

23256-422: Was the duty of the aediles to enforce this responsibility. The portion of any street which passed a temple or public building was repaired by the aediles at the public expense. When a street passed between a public building or temple and a private house, the public treasury and the private owner shared the expense equally. The governing structure was changed by Augustus , who in the course of his reconstitution of

23409-400: Was then the pavimentum . It could be used as the road, or additional layers could be constructed. A statumen or "foundation" of flat stones set in cement might support the additional layers. The final steps utilized lime-based mortar , which the Romans had discovered. They seem to have mixed the mortar and the stones in the ditch. First a small layer of coarse concrete , the rudus , then

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