Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the
English language, spoken in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
and southern and eastern
Scotland in the early
Middle Ages. It was brought to
Great Britain 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 Anglo-Norman may refer to:
*Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066
*Anglo-Norman language
**Anglo-Norman literature
*Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 1066 ...
(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 Englis ...
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
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, 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 ...
, brought to Britain by
Roman invasion
The Roman conquest of Britain refers to the conquest of the island of Britain by occupying Roman forces. It began in earnest in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, and was largely completed in the southern half of Britain by 87 when the Staneg ...
. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms:
Mercian,
Northumbrian,
Kentish and
West Saxon
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...
. 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 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
The grammar of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more inflected. As an old Germanic language, Old English has a morphological system that is similar to that of the Proto-Germanic reconstr ...
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
Derive may refer to:
*Derive (computer algebra system), a commercial system made by Texas Instruments
* ''Dérive'' (magazine), an Austrian science magazine on urbanism
*Dérive, a psychogeographical concept
See also
*
*Derivation (disambiguation ...
, means 'pertaining to the Angles'. In Old English, this word was derived from ''Angles'' (one of the
Germanic tribes 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.
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 (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', 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
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the C ...
. 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
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into t ...
, 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 the
kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island continued to use
Celtic languages (
Gaelic
Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Gaelic languages are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, an ...
– and perhaps some
Pictish – in most of Scotland,
Medieval Cornish all over
Cornwall and in adjacent parts of
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...
,
Cumbric perhaps to the 12th century in parts of
Cumbria, and
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
in
Wales and possibly also on the English side of the
Anglo-Welsh border
Welsh writing in English ( Welsh: ''Llenyddiaeth Gymreig yn Saesneg''), (previously Anglo-Welsh literature) is a term used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers.
The term ‘Anglo-Welsh’ replaced an earlier att ...
); except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements, where
Old Norse 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 the inscriptions on the
Franks Casket) date to the early 8th century. The
Old English Latin alphabet The Old English Latin alphabet generally consisted of about 24 letters, and was used for writing Old English from the 8th to the 12th centuries. Of these letters, most were directly adopted from the Latin alphabet, two were modified Latin letters ( ...
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
West Saxon is the term applied to the two different dialects Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon with West Saxon being one of the four distinct regional dialects of Old English. The three others were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian (the lat ...
(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, 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
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction:
* Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to ...
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
Cædmon (; ''fl. c.'' 657 – 684) is the earliest English poet whose name is known. A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he w ...
,
Bede,
Cynewulf 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.
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 Englis ...
(12th to 15th century),
Early Modern English (c. 1480 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).
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
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...
. 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 Tyne may refer to:
__NOTOC__ Geography
*River Tyne, England
*Port of Tyne, the commercial docks in and around the River Tyne in Tyne and Wear, England
*River Tyne, Scotland
*River Tyne, a tributary of the South Esk River, Tasmania, Australia
People ...
, 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 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 languages, 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 ...
, 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 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
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
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 Englis ...
rather than the Old English period.
Another source of loanwords was
Old Norse, which came into contact with Old English via the Scandinavian rulers and settlers in the
Danelaw from the late 9th century, and during the rule of
Cnut
Cnut (; ang, Cnut cyning; non, Knútr inn rÃki ; or , no, Knut den mektige, sv, Knut den Store. died 12 November 1035), also known as Cnut the Great and Canute, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway ...
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, was based on the
West Saxon dialect
West Saxon is the term applied to the two different dialects Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon with West Saxon being one of the four distinct regional dialects of Old English. The three others were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian (the lat ...
, 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 Englis ...
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 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
Early may refer to:
History
* The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.:
** Early Christianity
** Early modern Europe
Places in the United States
* Early, Iowa
* Early, Texas
* Early ...
surface
phones
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...
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
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct fr ...
(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 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 , spelled ⟨œ⟩, which had emerged from
i-umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...
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
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
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 for five
cases:
nominative,
accusative,
genitive,
dative,
instrumental; three
genders
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...
: 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 is also sparse early Northumbrian evidence of a sixth case: the
locative. The evidence comes from Northumbrian
Runic 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 pronouns occasionally distinguish
dual-number forms. The
definite article and its
inflections serve as a
definite article ("the"), a
demonstrative adjective ("that"), and
demonstrative pronoun. 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,
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
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') ...
are mostly before but are often after their object. If the
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
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 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 syntax, verb-second (V2) word order is a sentence structure in which the finite verb of a sentence or a clause is placed in the clause's second position, so that the verb is preceded by a single word or group of words (a single constituent). ...
in
main clauses, and verb-final in
subordinate clause
A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as t ...
s
*No
''do''-support in questions and negatives. Questions were usually formed by
inverting subject and
finite verb, 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
A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, d ...
).
*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
In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitute ...
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 pronouns. 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—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
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
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
Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one reg ...
(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
Thorn(s) or The Thorn(s) may refer to:
Botany
* Thorns, spines, and prickles, sharp structures on plants
* ''Crataegus monogyna'', or common hawthorn, a plant species
Comics and literature
* Rose and Thorn, the two personalities of two DC Comic ...
and
wynn , which are borrowings from the futhorc. A few letter pairs were used as
digraphs, representing a single sound. Also used was the
Tironian note
Tironian notes ( la, notae Tironianae, links=no) are a set of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of shorthand (Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after Tiro, a personal secretary to Marcus Tullius C ...
(a character similar to the digit 7) for the
conjunction ''and''. A common
scribal abbreviation 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, 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 and
palatal 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 letters—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
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct fr ...
; 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; the ''
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', a record of early English history; the
Franks Casket, an inscribed early whalebone artefact; and
Cædmon's Hymn, 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 (; ''fl. c.'' 657 – 684) is the earliest English poet whose name is known. A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he w ...
. 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
Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word ''eorl'', meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form ''jarl'', and meant " chieftain", particu ...
Thorkell the Tall 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
pilcrows 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 on
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, 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 ...
texts. At first these were often
marginal
Marginal may refer to:
* ''Marginal'' (album), the third album of the Belgian rock band Dead Man Ray, released in 2001
* ''Marginal'' (manga)
* '' El Marginal'', Argentine TV series
* Marginal seat or marginal constituency or marginal, in polit ...
or
interlinear
In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (annotation), gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another l ...
glosses, but soon came to be gathered into word-lists such as the
Épinal-Erfurt,
Leiden and
Corpus 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 Cleopatra Glossaries are three Latin-Old English glossaries all found in the manuscript Cotton Cleopatra A.iii (once held in the Cotton library, now held in the British Library). The glossaries constitute important evidence for Old English ...
, the
Harley Glossary The ''Harley Glossary'' is an Anglo-Saxon glossary, mostly providing glosses on Latin words. It mainly survives in the fragmentary British Library, MS Harley 3376 (which preserves the first six alphabetical sections, from "A" to "F"), but two fragme ...
and the
Brussels Glossary
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
. 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 Englis ...
glossaries, such as the
Durham Plant-Name Glossary
The ''Durham Plant-Name Glossary'' (MS Durham, Cathedral Library, Hunter 100) is a glossary translating Latin and Greek plant-names into Old English/ Middle English. It was copied in Durham in the early twelfth century. Its principal sources were ...
and the
Laud Herbal Glossary
The ''Laud Herbal Glossary'' (MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 587) is a twelfth-century copy of the single biggest compilation of plant-name glosses of its time in England, rooted in Anglo-Saxon sources. Its lemmata are mostly Latin, and th ...
.
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:
* Angus Cameron (academic), 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.
* Joseph Bosworth, 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'', ''Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue'', 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 (academic), 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 offer reference material and forums promoting the active use of Old English. There is also an :ang:HÄ“afodtramet, 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
* Linguistic purism in English, Anglish
* Exeter Book
* Go (verb)
* History of the Scots language
* 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
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.
* Alistair Campbell (academic), Campbell, A. (1959). ''Old English Grammar''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* (Reissue of one of 4 eds. 1877–1902)
* Wolfram Euler, 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.
* Otto Jespersen, 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.
* Donald Ringe, 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.
* Ralph Warren Victor Elliott, Elliott, Ralph WV (1959). ''Runes: An introduction''. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
* Keller, Wolfgang. (1906). ''Angelsächsische Paleographie, I: Einleitung''. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
* Neil Ker, 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.
* Fausto Cercignani, 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: Frans Van Coetsem, 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
Medieval languages, English, Old
Old English, 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