Uterque Lingua / Ægðer Gereord: Ælfric’s Grammatical Vocabulary and the Winchester Tradition

At least since D. A. Bullough’s seminal essay, scholars have recognized the bilingual tradition of education in Anglo-Saxon England that began with Alfred and was amplified by the scholars of the Benedictine revival, particularly Æthelwold at Winchester.¹ Increasingly, Anglo-Saxon students studied in both languages, Latin and English—uterque lingua, in Asser’s terms.² While Latin continued to be taught and used as the primary language of scholarship, English became an important second language, and scholars like Æthelwold devoted increasing attention to the creation and maintenance of English as a language of education.³ Within this tradition, Ælfric, a student of Æthelwold and the most prolific English writer of the Anglo-Saxon period, occupies a central place, and among Ælfric’s works, his grammar constitutes a prime exemplar of the bilingual educational tradition.

Ælfric wrote his grammar around 995 A.D., and it was apparently a best seller, since it has survived in fifteen manuscripts.⁴ As a translation and redaction of a Latin grammar called Excerptiones de Prisciano,⁵ Ælfric’s grammar embodies the tradition of uterque lingua, since the language that it treats is Latin, but the language it is written in is English. Ælfric himself used the term uterque lingua in justifying his translation, as he tells his students that he hopes that it will help them implant both languages into their tender minds:

Ego Ælfricus, ut minus sapiens, has excerptiones de Prisciano minore vel maiore vobis puerulis tenellis ad vestram linguam transferre studui, quatinus, perlectis octo partibus Donati, in isto libello potestis utramque linguam, videlicet Latinam et Anglicam, vestre tenerritudini inserere interim, usque quo ad perfectiora perveniatis studia.

(I Ælfric, as one knowing little, have applied myself to translating into your language these excerpts from the lesser and greater Priscian for you tender little boys, so that, having read through Donatus’s eight parts of speech, you may in this book apply to your tenderness both languages, namely Latin and English, in the time until you reach more perfect studies.)⁶

Then in his English preface, Ælfric renders uterque lingua as ægðer gereord:

Ne cweðe ic na forði, þæt ðeos boc mæge micclum to lare fremian, ac heo byð swaðeah sum angyn to ægðrum gereorde, gif heo hwam licað.⁷

(I do not at all say, however, that this book will help greatly in learning, but it will be, nevertheless, a certain beginning for both languages, if it pleases anyone.)

If uterque lingua is a term of art meaning instruction in both languages, as Bullough suggests, Ælfric could do no better to illustrate such a bilingual tradition than to render the Latin term itself into English. His translating the Latin term embodies the very tradition that the term names.

It is just such translation of Latin terms, particularly the grammatical vocabulary, that gives Ælfric’s grammar a thoroughly bilingual feel. While Ælfric rendered nearly every Latin grammatical term into English at least once in his grammar, some terms he rendered only once and then used the Latin term for the rest of the grammar. The result is an almost macaronic text, with English and Latin grammatical terms intermeshed throughout the grammar. Why Ælfric would have alternated between languages for his grammatical terms is a puzzle, and it is that puzzle, along with the relationship of Ælfric’s grammatical terminology to the tradition of uterque lingua from the Winchester school, that this paper will examine.

The macaronic nature of Ælfric’s grammar is immediately apparent in the grammatical terminology. Ælfric rendered into English practically every Latin term at least once, usually at the Latin term’s first occurrence. Thus Ælfric used over two hundred English grammatical terms, most of which he presumably coined. But in subsequent references to any given grammatical concept, Ælfric sometimes used the English term by itself, sometimes the Latin, and sometimes both. An example of an English term that he used almost exclusively by itself is nama (name), which renders the Latin term nomen (noun). Ælfric mentioned nouns 229 times; 224 of those times he...