Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
, spoken in
England and southern and eastern
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
in the early
Middle Ages. It was brought to
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...
by
Anglo-Saxon settlers in 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 a time, by
Anglo-Norman (a
relative of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
in England and
Early Scots in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
.
Old English developed from a set of
Anglo-Frisian
The Anglo-Frisian languages are the Anglic (English, Scots, and Yola) and Frisian varieties of the West Germanic languages.
The Anglo-Frisian languages are distinct from other West Germanic languages due to several sound changes: besides th ...
or
Ingvaeonic
North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic , is a postulated grouping of the northern West Germanic languages that consists of Old Frisian, Old English, and Old Saxon, and their descendants.
Ingvaeonic is named after the Ingaevones, a West Ge ...
dialects originally spoken by
Germanic tribes traditionally known as the
Angles
The Angles ( ang, Ængle, ; la, Angli) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name is the root of the name ...
,
Saxons and
Jutes
The Jutes (), Iuti, or Iutæ ( da, Jyder, non, Jótar, ang, Ēotas) were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nation ...
. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language
replaced the languages of
Roman Britain:
Common Brittonic, a
Celtic language
The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
; and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, brought to Britain by
Roman invasion. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
The Heptarchy were the seven petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England that flourished from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century until they were consolidated in the 8th century into the four kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, Wes ...
:
Mercian,
Northumbrian,
Kentish 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 was subject to strong
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
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 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.
Etymology
''Englisċ'', from which the word ''English'' is
derived, means 'pertaining to the Angles'. In Old English, this word was derived from ''Angles'' (one of the
Germanic tribe
This list of ancient Germanic peoples is an inventory of ancient Germanic cultures, tribal groupings and other alliances of Germanic tribes and civilisations in ancient times. The information comes from various ancient historical documents, beginn ...
s who conquered parts of Great Britain in the 5th century). During the 9th century, all invading Germanic tribes were referred to as ''Englisċ''. It has been hypothesised that the Angles acquired their name because their land on the coast of
Jutland (now mainland
Denmark and
Schleswig-Holstein) resembled a
fishhook
A fish hook or fishhook, formerly also called angle (from Old English ''angol'' and Proto-Germanic ''*angulaz''), is a hook used to catch fish either by piercing and embedding onto the inside of the fish mouth (angling) or, more rarely, by impal ...
.
Proto-Germanic also had the meaning of 'narrow', referring to the shallow waters near the coast. That word ultimately goes back to Proto-Indo-European ', also meaning 'narrow'.
Another theory is that the derivation of 'narrow' is the more likely connection to
angling
Angling is a fishing technique that uses a fish hook or "angle" (from Old English ''angol'') attached to a fishing line to tether individual fish in the mouth. The fishing line is usually manipulated via a fishing rod, although rodless techni ...
(as in
fishing), which itself stems from a
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root meaning ''bend, angle''. The semantic link is the fishing hook, which is curved or bent at an angle. In any case, the Angles may have been called such because they were a
fishing people or were originally descended from such, and therefore England would mean 'land of the
fishermen
A fisher or fisherman is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish.
Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishers and fish farmers. Fishers may be professional or recreati ...
', and English would be 'the fishermen's language'.
History
Old English was not static, and its usage covered 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 the basic elements of
Modern English vocabulary.
Old English is a
West Germanic language, and developed out of
Ingvaeonic
North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic , is a postulated grouping of the northern West Germanic languages that consists of Old Frisian, Old English, and Old Saxon, and their descendants.
Ingvaeonic is named after the Ingaevones, a West Ge ...
(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
The Heptarchy were the seven petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England that flourished from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century until they were consolidated in the 8th century into the four kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, Wes ...
which became the
Kingdom of England
The Kingdom of England (, ) was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from 12 July 927, when it emerged from various History of Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Kingdom of Scotland, ...
. This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
, which for several centuries belonged to the
kingdom of Northumbria
la, Regnum Northanhymbrorum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Northumbria
, common_name = Northumbria
, status = State
, status_text = Unified Anglian kingdom (before 876)North: Anglian kingdom (af ...
. Other parts of the island continued to use
Celtic languages (
Gaelic – and perhaps some
Pictish
Pictish is the extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geographica ...
– 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
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
was spoken and
Danish law applied.
Old English literacy developed after
Christianisation
Christianization ( or Christianisation) is to make Christian; to imbue with Christian principles; to become Christian. It can apply to the conversion of an individual, a practice, a place or a whole society. It began in the Roman Empire, conti ...
in the late 7th century. The oldest surviving work of
Old English literature
Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work '' Cædmo ...
is ''
Cædmon's Hymn
''Cædmon's Hymn'' is a short Old English poem attributed to Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate and unmusical cow-herder who was, according to the Northumbrian monk Bede (d. 731), miraculously empowered to sing in honour of God the Creator. The p ...
'', 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 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
The Danelaw (, also known as the Danelagh; ang, Dena lagu; da, Danelagen) was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercian ...
) 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 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
Æthelwold of Winchester (also Aethelwold and Ethelwold, 904/9 – 984) was Bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984 and one of the leaders of the tenth-century monastic reform movement in Anglo-Saxon England.
Monastic life had declined to ...
, and 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:
*Prehistoric Old English (c. 450 to 650); for this period, Old English is mostly a
reconstructed language as no literary witnesses survive (with the exception of limited
epigraphic evidence). This language, or closely related group of dialects, spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and pre-dating documented Old English or Anglo-Saxon, has also been called Primitive Old English.
*Early Old English (c. 650 to 900), the period of the oldest manuscript traditions, with authors such as
Cædmon,
Bede,
Cynewulf
Cynewulf (, ; also spelled Cynwulf or Kynewulf) is one of twelve Old English poets known by name, and one of four whose work is known to survive today. He presumably flourished in the 9th century, with possible dates extending into the late 8th ...
and
Aldhelm.
*Late Old English (c. 900 to 1170), the final stage of the language leading up to the Norman conquest of England and the subsequent transition to
Early Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
.
The Old English period is followed by
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
(12th to 15th century),
Early Modern English
Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle E ...
(c. 1480 to 1650) and finally
Modern English (after 1650), and in Scotland
Early Scots (before 1450),
Middle Scots
Middle Scots was the Anglic language of Lowland Scotland in the period from 1450 to 1700. By the end of the 15th century, its phonology, orthography, accidence, syntax and vocabulary had diverged markedly from Early Scots, which was virtually ...
(c. 1450 to 1700) and
Modern Scots
Modern Scots comprises the varieties of Scots traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, from 1700.
Throughout its history, Modern Scots has been undergoing a process of language attrition, whereby successive generations ...
(after 1700).
Dialects
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 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 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 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 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, the former
diphthong tended to become monophthongised to in EWS, but to in LWS.
Due to the centralisation of power and the 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 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 the
dialect of Somerset.
For details of the sound differences between the dialects, see .
Influence of other languages
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 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
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...
auxiliary verb "
do". These ideas have generally not received widespread support from linguists, particularly as many of 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
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, which was the scholarly and diplomatic ''
lingua franca'' of Western Europe. It is sometimes possible to give approximate dates for 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
The Angles ( ang, Ængle, ; la, Angli) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name is the root of the name ...
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 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
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
rather than the Old English period.
Another source of loanwords was
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
, which came into contact with Old English via the Scandinavian rulers and settlers in the
Danelaw
The Danelaw (, also known as the Danelagh; ang, Dena lagu; da, Danelagen) was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercian ...
from the late 9th century, and during the rule of
Cnut and other Danish kings in the early 11th century. Many
place-names
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
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, 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
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old 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 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
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
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 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 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 for, as Jespersen indicates, no texts exist in either Scandinavia or in Northern England from this time to give certain evidence of an influence on syntax. The effect of Old Norse on Old English 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, they 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 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".
Phonology
The inventory of
Early West Saxon surface
phones is as follows.
The sounds enclosed in parentheses in the chart above are not considered to be
phonemes:
* is an
allophone of occurring after and when
geminated (doubled).
* is an allophone of occurring before
and
�
* are voiced allophones of respectively, occurring between
vowels or
voiced consonants when the preceding sound was stressed.
* are allophones of occurring at the beginning of a word or after a front vowel, respectively.
* is an allophone of occurring after or when doubled. At some point before the Middle English period, also became the pronunciation word-initially.
*the
voiceless sonorants occur after
in the sequences .
The above system is largely similar to
that of Modern English, except that (and for
most speakers) have generally been lost, while the voiced affricate and fricatives (now also including ) have become independent phonemes, as has .
The
open back rounded vowel
The open back rounded vowel, or low back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . It is called "turned script ''a''", being a rotated ...
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
The mid front rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages.
Although there is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the "exact" mid front rounded vowel between close-mid and open-mi ...
, spelled ⟨œ⟩, which had emerged from
i-umlaut of . In West Saxon and Kentish, it had already merged with before the first written prose.
Other dialects had different systems of diphthongs. For example, the Northumbrian dialect retained , which had merged with in West Saxon.
For more on dialectal differences, see
Phonological history of Old English (dialects).
Sound changes
Some of the principal
sound changes occurring in the pre-history and history of Old English were the following:
*Fronting of to except when
nasalised or followed by a
nasal consonant ("Anglo-Frisian brightening"), partly reversed in certain positions by later "a-restoration" or retraction.
*Monophthongisation of the diphthong , and modification of remaining diphthongs to the
height-harmonic type.
*Diphthongisation of long and short front vowels in certain positions ("breaking").
*Palatalisation of velars to in certain front-vowel environments.
*The process known as
i-mutation (which for example led to modern ''mice'' as the plural of ''mouse'').
*Loss of certain weak vowels in word-final and medial positions; reduction of remaining unstressed vowels.
*Diphthongisation of certain vowels before certain consonants when preceding a back vowel ("back mutation").
*Loss of between vowels or between a voiced consonant and a vowel, with lengthening of the preceding vowel.
*Collapse of two consecutive vowels into a single vowel.
*"Palatal umlaut", which has given forms such as ''six'' (compare German ''sechs'').
For more details of these processes, see the main article, linked above. For sound changes before and after the Old English period, see
Phonological history of English.
Grammar
Morphology
Nouns
decline
Decline may refer to:
*Decadence, involves a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, or skill over time
* "Decline" (song), 2017 song by Raye and Mr Eazi
* ''The Decline'' (EP), an EP by NOFX
*The Decline (band), Australian ...
for five
cases:
nominative,
accusative,
genitive,
dative,
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
; three
genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; and two
numbers
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
: 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
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
forms. There is also sparse early Northumbrian evidence of a sixth case: the
locative. The evidence comes from Northumbrian
Runic
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
texts (e.g., ''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 pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s occasionally distinguish
dual-number forms. The
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...
and its
inflections serve as a
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...
("the"), a
demonstrative adjective ("that"), and
demonstrative pronoun
Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular fram ...
. Other
demonstratives are ("this"), and ("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
A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
,
subjunctive, and
imperative;
and are strong (exhibiting ablaut) or weak (exhibiting 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 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
English nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are formed ...
ending ''-(e)s'' derives from the Old English ''-as'', but 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 , a neuter noun referring to a female person.
In Old English's verbal compound constructions are 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 .
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 the past tense of the weak verbs, as in ''work'' and ''worked''.
Syntax
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.
*Default word order is
verb-second in
main clauses, and verb-final in
subordinate clauses
*No
''do''-support in questions and negatives. Questions were usually formed by
inverting subject and
finite verb
Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
, and negatives by placing ''ne'' before the finite verb, regardless of which verb.
*Multiple negatives can stack up in a sentence intensifying each other (
negative concord).
*Sentences with subordinate clauses of the type "when X, Y" (e.g. "When I got home, I ate dinner") don't use a ''wh-''type conjunction, but rather a ''th-''type
correlative conjunction such as , otherwise meaning "then" (e.g. in place of "when X, Y"). The ''wh-''words are used only as
interrogatives and as
indefinite pronouns.
*Similarly, ''wh-'' forms were not used as
relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent.
An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the r ...
s. Instead, the indeclinable word is used, often preceded by (or replaced by) the appropriate form of the article/demonstrative .
Orthography
Old English was first written in
runes, using the
futhorc
Anglo-Saxon runes ( ang, rūna ᚱᚢᚾᚪ) are runes used by the early Anglo-Saxons as an alphabet in their writing system. The characters are known collectively as the futhorc (ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳ ''fuþorc'') from the Old English sound va ...
—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 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
Insular script was a medieval script system originating from Ireland that spread to Anglo-Saxon England and continental Europe under the influence of Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries took the script to continental Europe, where they found ...
, 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 the time still lacked the letters and , and there was no as distinct from ; moreover native Old English spellings did not use , or . The remaining 20 Latin letters were supplemented by four more: (, modern ''ash'') and (, now called
eth or edh), which were modified Latin letters, and
thorn and
wynn
Wynn or wyn (; also spelled wen, ƿynn, and ƿen) is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound .
History The letter "W"
While the earliest Old English texts represent this phoneme with the digraph , ...
, which are borrowings from 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
Conjunction may refer to:
* Conjunction (grammar), a part of speech
* Logical conjunction, a mathematical operator
** Conjunction introduction, a rule of inference of propositional logic
* Conjunction (astronomy), in which two astronomical bodies ...
''and''. A common
scribal abbreviation
Scribal abbreviations or sigla (singular: siglum) are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mechanica ...
was a
thorn with a stroke , which was used for the pronoun .
Macrons over vowels were originally used not to mark long vowels (as in modern editions), but to indicate stress, or as abbreviations for 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 in place of the
insular G
Insular G (font: Ᵹ ᵹ) is a form of the letter g somewhat resembling a tailed z, used in the medieval insular script of Great Britain and Ireland. It was first used in the Roman Empire in Roman cursive, then it appeared in Irish half uncial ...
, for
long S, and others which may differ considerably from the insular script, notably , and . Macrons are used to indicate long vowels, where usually no distinction 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
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...
and
palatal
The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity.
A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
and by placing dots above the palatals: , . The letter wynn is usually replaced with , but , eth and thorn are normally retained (except when eth is replaced by thorn).
In contrast with
Modern English orthography, that of Old English was reasonably
regular, with a mostly predictable correspondence between letters and
phonemes. There were not usually any
silent letter
In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign . Null is an unprono ...
s—in the word ''cniht'', for example, both the and were pronounced, unlike the and in the modern ''knight''. 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.
Doubled consonants are
geminated; the geminate fricatives /, and cannot be voiced.
Literature
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 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:
Some of the most important surviving works of Old English literature are ''
Beowulf'', an
epic poem
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
; the ''
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', a record of early English history; the
Franks Casket, an inscribed early whalebone artefact; and
Cædmon's Hymn
''Cædmon's Hymn'' is a short Old English poem attributed to Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate and unmusical cow-herder who was, according to the Northumbrian monk Bede (d. 731), miraculously empowered to sing in honour of God the Creator. The p ...
, a Christian religious poem. There are also a number of extant prose works, such as sermons and saints' lives, biblical translations, and translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers, legal documents, such as laws and wills, and practical works on grammar, medicine, and geography. Still, poetry is considered the heart of Old English literature. Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous, with a few exceptions, such as
Bede and
Cædmon. Cædmon, the earliest English poet known by name, served as a lay brother in the monastery at Whitby.
''Beowulf''
The first example is taken from the opening lines of the folk-epic ''
Beowulf'', a poem of some 3,000 lines and the single greatest work of Old English.
This passage describes how
Hrothgar's legendary ancestor
Scyld was found as a baby, washed ashore, and adopted by a noble family. The translation is literal and represents the original poetic word order. As such, it is not typical of Old English prose. The modern cognates of original words have been used whenever practical to give a close approximation of the feel of the original poem.
The words in brackets are implied in the Old English by noun case and the bold words in brackets are explanations of words that have slightly different meanings in a modern context. Notice how ''what'' is used by the poet where a word like ''lo'' or ''behold'' would be expected. This usage is similar to ''what-ho!'', both an expression of surprise and a call to attention.
English poetry is based on stress and alliteration. In alliteration, the first consonant in a word alliterates with the same consonant at the beginning of another word, as with and . Vowels alliterate with any other vowel, as with and . In the text below, the letters that alliterate are bolded.
Here is a natural enough Modern English translation, although the phrasing of the Old English passage has often been stylistically preserved, even though it is not usual in Modern English:
The Lord's Prayer
This text of the
Lord's Prayer is presented in the standardised Early West Saxon dialect.
Charter of Cnut
This is a proclamation from King
Cnut the Great to his
earl Thorkell the Tall
Thorkell the Tall, also known as Thorkell the High in the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' (Old Norse: Þorke(ti)ll inn hávi; no, Torkjell Høge; Swedish: ''Torkel Höge''; da, Torkild den Høje), was a prominent member of the Jomsviking order and ...
and the English people written in AD 1020. Unlike the previous two examples, this text is prose rather than poetry. For ease of reading, the passage has been divided into sentences while the
pilcrow
The pilcrow, ¶, is a handwritten or typographical character used to identify a paragraph. It is also called the paragraph mark (or sign or symbol), paraph, or blind P.
The pilcrow may be used at the start of separate paragraphs or t ...
s represent the original division.
The following is a natural Modern English translation, with the overall structure of the Old English passage preserved. Note that even though "earl" is used to translate its Old English cognate "eorl", "eorl" in Old English does not correspond exactly to "earl" of the later medieval period:
Dictionaries
Early history
The earliest history of Old English
lexicography lies in the
Anglo-Saxon period itself, when English-speaking scholars created English
glosses
A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal one or an interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different.
A collection of glosses is a ''g ...
on
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
texts. At first these were often
marginal or
interlinear glosses, but soon came to be gathered into word-lists such as the
Épinal-Erfurt,
Leiden and
Corpus
Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to:
Linguistics
* Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts
* Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files
* Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics
Music
* ...
Glossaries. Over time, these word-lists were consolidated and alphabeticised to create extensive Latin-Old English glossaries with some of the character of
dictionaries, such as the
Cleopatra Glossaries, the
Harley Glossary and the
Brussels Glossary. In some cases, the material in these glossaries continued to be circulated and updated in
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
glossaries, such as the
Durham Plant-Name Glossary and the
Laud Herbal Glossary.
Old English lexicography was revived in the early modern period, drawing heavily on Anglo-Saxons' own glossaries. The major publication at this time was
William Somner's ''Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum''. The next substantial Old English dictionary was
Joseph Bosworth's ''Anglo-Saxon Dictionary'' of 1838.
Modern
In modern scholarship, the following dictionaries remain current:
*
Cameron, Angus, et al. (ed.) (1983-). ''
Dictionary of Old English''. Toronto: Published for the Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Initially issued on microfiche and subsequently as a CD-ROM, the dictionary is now primarily published online a
https://www.doe.utoronto.ca This generally supersedes previous dictionaries where available. As of September 2018, the dictionary covered A-I.
*
Bosworth, Joseph and
T. Northcote Toller. (1898). ''
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. The main research dictionary for Old English, unless superseded by the ''Dictionary of Old English''. Various digitisations are available open-access, including a
http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/ Due to errors and omissions in the 1898 publication, this needs to be read in conjunction with:
** T. Northcote Toller. (1921). ''An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Supplement''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
** Alistair Campbell (1972). ''An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Enlarged addenda and corrigenda''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
*
Clark Hall, J. R. (1969). ''A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary''. 4th rev. edn by Herbet D. Meritt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Occasionally more accurate than Bosworth-Toller, and widely used as a reading dictionary. Various digitisations are available, includin
here
* Roberts, Jane and
Christian Kay, with Lynne Grundy, ''A Thesaurus of Old English in Two Volumes'', Costerus New Series, 131–32, 2nd rev. impression, 2 vols (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), also availabl
online A thesaurus based on the definitions in Bosworth-Toller and the structure of ''
Roget's Thesaurus''.
Though focused on later periods, the ''
Oxford English Dictionary'', ''
Middle English Dictionary
''The Middle English Dictionary'' is a dictionary of Middle English published by the University of Michigan. "Its 15,000 pages offer a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1175–1500, based on the analysis of a collection of ...
'', ''
Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue
The ''Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue'' (DOST) is a 12-volume dictionary that documents the history of the Scots language covering Older Scots from the earliest written evidence in the 12th century until the year 1700. DOST was compile ...
'', and ''
Historical Thesaurus of English'' all also include material relevant to Old English.
Modern legacy
Like other historical languages, Old English has been used by scholars and enthusiasts of later periods to create texts either imitating Old English literature or deliberately transferring it to a different cultural context. Examples include
Alistair Campbell and
J. R. R. Tolkien.
Ransom Riggs uses several Old English words, such as syndrigast (singular, peculiar), ymbryne (period, cycle), etc., dubbed as "Old Peculiar" ones.
A number of websites devoted to
Modern Paganism and
historical reenactment
Historical reenactment (or re-enactment) is an educational or entertainment activity in which mainly amateur hobbyists and history enthusiasts dress in historic uniforms or costumes and follow a plan to recreate aspects of a historical event or ...
offer reference material and forums promoting the active use of Old English. There is also an
Old English version of Wikipedia. However, one investigation found that many Neo-Old English texts published online bear little resemblance to the historical language and have many basic grammatical mistakes.
See also
*
Anglish
*
Exeter Book
The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Englis ...
*
Go (verb)
*
History of the Scots language
The history of the Scots language refers to how Anglic varieties spoken in parts of Scotland developed into modern Scots.
Origins
Speakers of Northumbrian Old English settled in south eastern Scotland in the 7th century, at which time ...
*
I-mutation
*
Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law
*
List of generic forms in place names in the United Kingdom and Ireland
*
List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English
This list contains Germanic elements of the English language which have a close corresponding Latinate form. The correspondence is semantic—in most cases these words are not cognates, but in some cases they are doublets, i.e., ultimately deriv ...
References
Bibliography
;Sources
*
;General
*
* Baugh, Albert C; & Cable, Thomas. (1993). ''A History of the English Language'' (4th ed.). London: Routledge.
* Blake, Norman (1992). ''The Cambridge History of the English Language: Vol. 2''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*
Campbell, A. (1959). ''Old English Grammar''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* (Reissue of one of 4 eds. 1877–1902)
*
Euler, Wolfram (2013). ''Das Westgermanische : von der Herausbildung im 3. bis zur Aufgliederung im 7. Jahrhundert; Analyse und Rekonstruktion'' (West Germanic: from its Emergence in the 3rd up until its Dissolution in the 7th century CE: Analyses and Reconstruction). 244 p., in German with English summary, London/Berlin 2013, .
*
* Hogg, Richard M. (ed.). (1992). ''The Cambridge History of the English Language: (Vol 1): the Beginnings to 1066''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Hogg, Richard; & Denison, David (eds.) (2006) ''A History of the English Language''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*
Jespersen, Otto (1909–1949) ''A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles''. 7 vols. Heidelberg: C. Winter & Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard
* Lass, Roger (1987) ''
The Shape of English: structure and history''. London: J. M. Dent & Sons
*
*
*
*
* Quirk, Randolph; & Wrenn, CL (1957). ''An Old English Grammar'' (2nd ed.) London: Methuen.
*
Ringe, Donald R and Taylor, Ann (2014). ''The Development of Old English: A Linguistic History of English, vol. II'', . Oxford.
* Strang, Barbara M. H. (1970) ''A History of English''. London: Methuen.
;External history
*
* Bremmer Jr, Rolf H. (2009). ''An Introduction to Old Frisian. History, Grammar, Reader, Glossary''. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
* Stenton, FM (1971). ''Anglo-Saxon England'' (3rd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
;Orthography/Palaeography
* Bourcier, Georges. (1978). ''L'orthographie de l'anglais: Histoire et situation actuelle''. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
*
Elliott, Ralph WV (1959). ''Runes: An introduction''. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
* Keller, Wolfgang. (1906). ''Angelsächsische Paleographie, I: Einleitung''. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
*
Ker, NR (1957). ''A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Ker, NR (1957: 1990). ''A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon''; with supplement prepared by Neil Ker originally published in ''Anglo-Saxon England''; 5, 1957. Oxford: Clarendon Press
* Page, RI (1973).
An Introduction to English Runes'. London: Methuen.
* Scragg, Donald G (1974). ''A History of English Spelling''. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
* Shaw, Philip A (2012). "Coins As Evidence". ''The Oxford Handbook of the History of English,'' Chapter 3, pp. 50–52. Edited by Terttu Nevalainen and Elizabeth Closs Traugott.
* Wełna, Jerzy (1986). "The Old English Digraph Again". ''Linguistics across Historical and Geographical Boundaries: Vol 1: Linguistic Theory and Historical Linguistics'' (pp. 753–762). Edited by Dieter Kastovsky and Aleksander Szwedek.
;Phonology
* Anderson, John M; & Jones, Charles. (1977). ''Phonological structure and the history of English''. North-Holland linguistics series (No. 33). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
* Brunner, Karl. (1965). ''Altenglische Grammatik (nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers neubearbeitet)'' (3rd ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
* Campbell, A. (1959). ''Old English Grammar''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
*
Cercignani, Fausto (1983). "The Development of */k/ and */sk/ in Old English". ''Journal of English and Germanic Philology'', 82 (3): 313–323.
* Girvan, Ritchie. (1931). ''Angelsaksisch Handboek''; E. L. Deuschle (transl.). (Oudgermaansche Handboeken; No. 4). Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink.
* Halle, Morris; & Keyser, Samuel J. (1971). ''English Stress: its form, its growth, and its role in verse''. New York: Harper & Row.
*
*
*
* Kuhn, Sherman M. (1970). "On the consonantal phonemes of Old English". In: J. L. Rosier (ed.) ''Philological Essays: studies in Old and Middle English language and literature in honour of Herbert Dean Merritt'' (pp. 16–49). The Hague: Mouton.
* Lass, Roger; & Anderson, John M. (1975). ''Old English Phonology''. (Cambridge studies in linguistics; No. 14). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Luick, Karl. (1914–1940). ''Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache''. Stuttgart:
Bernhard Tauchnitz.
*
*
* Minkova, Donka (2014). ''A Historical Phonology of English.'' Edinburgh University Press.
* Moulton, WG (1972). "The Proto-Germanic non-syllabics (consonants)". In:
F van Coetsem & HL Kufner (Eds.), ''Toward a Grammar of Proto-Germanic'' (pp. 141–173). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
* Sievers, Eduard (1893). ''Altgermanische Metrik''. Halle: Max Niemeyer.
* Wagner, Karl Heinz (1969). ''Generative Grammatical Studies in the Old English language''. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.
;Morphology
* Brunner, Karl. (1965). ''Altenglische Grammatik (nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers neubearbeitet)'' (3rd ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
* Campbell, A. (1959). ''Old English grammar''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Wagner, Karl Heinz. (1969). ''Generative grammatical studies in the Old English language''. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.
;Syntax
* Brunner, Karl. (1962). ''Die englische Sprache: ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung'' (Vol. II). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
* Kemenade, Ans van. (1982). ''Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English''. Dordrecht: Foris.
* MacLaughlin, John C. (1983). ''Old English Syntax: a handbook''. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
* Mitchell, Bruce. (1985). ''Old English Syntax'' (Vols. 1–2). Oxford: Clarendon Press (no more published)
** Vol.1: Concord, the parts of speech and the sentence
** Vol.2: Subordination, independent elements, and element order
* Mitchell, Bruce. (1990) ''A Critical Bibliography of Old English Syntax to the end of 1984, including addenda and corrigenda to "Old English Syntax" ''. Oxford: Blackwell
* Timofeeva, Olga. (2010) ''Non-finite Constructions in Old English, with Special Reference to Syntactic Borrowing from Latin'', PhD dissertation, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, vol. LXXX, Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
* Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. (1972). ''A History of English Syntax: a transformational approach to the history of English sentence structure''. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
* Visser, F. Th. (1963–1973). ''An Historical Syntax of the English Language'' (Vols. 1–3). Leiden: E. J. Brill.
;Lexicons
* Bosworth, J; & Toller, T. Northcote. (1898). ''
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Based on Bosworth's 1838 dictionary, his papers & additions by Toller)
* Toller, T. Northcote. (1921). ''An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Supplement''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Campbell, A. (1972). ''An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Enlarged addenda and corrigenda''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
*
Clark Hall, J. R.; & Merritt, H. D. (1969). ''A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary'' (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Cameron, Angus, et al. (ed.) (1983) ''
Dictionary of Old English''. Toronto: Published for the Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1983/1994. (Issued on microfiche and subsequently as a CD-ROM and on th
World Wide Web)
External links
Old English/Modern English TranslatorOld English Letters*
Another downloadable keyboard for Windows computers (Unicode, HTML entities, etc.)
*
The Lord's Prayer in Old English from the 11th century(video link)
*Over 100 Old English poems are edited, annotated and linked to digital images of their manuscript pages, with modern translations, in the ''Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project''
DM
;Dictionaries
Bosworth and Toller, ''An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online''*
*
;Lessons
Old English Onlineby Jonathan Slocum and Winfred P. Lehmann, free online lessons at th
Linguistics Research Centerat the
University of Texas at Austin
*
*
{{Authority control
Anglic languages
English, Old
Old English
Languages attested from the 5th century
5th-century establishments in England
Languages extinct in the 13th century
13th-century disestablishments in Europe
North Sea Germanic