Old English Period

English is an official language of almost 60 sovereign states and it is most

commonly spoken in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada,
Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.
English language is a global lingua franca.
It developed from the Proto Indo European language which was spoken
5000 years ago and before 4500 years ago started to split into IndoEuropean languages.
One of the branches of Indo-European language is Germanic with its subbranches(north, east and west).
English belongs to the West Germanic branch of Indo European language.
The development of English language is divided into three main periods:
1)The Old English Period(mid 5th century c1100)
2)The Middle English Period(c1100 c1500)
3) Modern English Period (c1500 -

The early period

Before the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the natives of British isles spoke Celtic.
Many of these settlers were subjugated by the Romans who invaded
British Isles in the year 43BC and left by the 410AD. In the 5th century, the
Celtic people were attacked by the barbarians (Scots and Picts) so they
first called Romans to help them. However, Romans had to wage wars of
their own, so they refused to help them. Celts then decided to call
Germanic tribes in their aid who did came, but after defeating the
barbarians they called even more members of their tribes and decided to
stay. The battle for dominance between the Celts and the Germanic tribes
continued for several decades. By the 5th century the Germanic people
spread to all areas of the British Isles and the foundation for the
emergence of the English language was established. Old English
developed from a set of North Sea Germanic dialcts originally spoken by
Germanic tribes known as the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.

Runes
Old English was first written in the Runic alphabet. This alphabet was in
use in Scandinavia, British Isles and todays Germany. The Runic alphabet
had 34 letters and each letter had a name. Its name was derived from
the word ''rune'', which means ''whisper'' or ''mystery'' which may
suggest that those symbolls were originally used for mystical rituals.
Early inscriptions
There are less than 30 clear runic inscriptions in Old English. Two most
famous examples date from the 8th century:
1)The Ruthwell Cross(in Scotland) is a 5 metres high stone cross, it has
lines of runes inscribed on it which contain lines of the Old English poem
The Dream of the Rood
2)The Franks Casket is a whalebone box on which mythological and
religious scenes are illustrated.
The Old English Corpus
There is a dark age between the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and the
Old English manuscripts. The period of literacy began after the arrival of
Roman missionaries whose aim was to convert the Anglo-Saxons to
Christianity. Growth of monastic centres led to production of Latin
manuscripts. The first texts were glossaries of Latin words which were
translated into Old English. Very little material remains from this period.
Namely,most of it was burned during the 8th century invasion of Vikings.
The number of words in the corpus of Old English discovered-3.5 million.
Old English literature
There is often a disagreement about translating Old English texts. Were
the facsimile of Old English text to be printed, only the specialist would be
able to understand it. That is because English language has changed
drastically until the Modern Period. Old English poetic texts did not
contain titles, but to some works titles were added later by specialists(e.g.
epic Beowulf and a poem The Seafarer at first did not have a title).
Some famous texts from this period are: epic Beowulf, poems the
Seafarer, The Pearl, The Wifes Lament, The Husabands
message, Bedes Ecclasiastical History of the English People.
Old English letters

The Old English Latin alphabet consisted of 24 letters and it was used for
writing Old English from the 9th to the 12th centuries. Of these letters, 20
were adopted from the Latin alphabet. and were modified Latin
letters whereas and were borrowed from the runic alphabet.
was called thorn and it represent either of the th sounds [] or [] .
was a symbol called wynn and it represented letter w.]
Old English sounds
The First Vowel Shift(i-mutation)
The accent of the Anglo-Saxons changed after they arrived in Britain. Old
English vowels changed in quality between the time the Anglo-Saxons left
the continent and the time Old English was first written down. I-mutation
is a sound that change took place in the 7th century. In Germanic, there
were many words in which a vowel in a stressed syllable was immediately
followed by a high front vowel ([i]) or a vowel-like sound ([j]) in the next
syllable. The quality of this high front sound caused the preceding vowel
to change(mutate). Example: foo t (oo became eo ) came to be pronounced
with [i:]- Feo t (feet). Feo t(feet) emerged as an irregular noun in English.
All vowels in the context above were changed into front vowels and all
short front vowels and diphtongs were affected, too, being articulated
even further forward and higher in the mouth. For this reason we have in
Modern English such pairs as food-feed ; strong/strength. However, not all
such forms survived to Modern English such as book/beek.
Grammar of Old English
Language was much more inflected when compared to Modern Period.
Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners were fully inflected with five
grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and
instrumental), two grammatical numbers (singular and plural) and three
grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). First and second
person personal pronouns also had dual forms for referring to groups of
two people, in addition to the usual singular and plural forms.
Instrumental case occurred only in the masculine and neuter singular.
Nouns came in numerous declensions, verbs in nine conjugations(7
strong). Verbs could be conjugated in only two tenses and there was no
passive voice. The grammatical gender of a given noun did not
necessarily correspond to its natural gender, even for nouns which refered

o , n). Old
to people people (Seo o>sunn f.) (moo na > Moon m.) (woman> wlff
English had distinctly pronounced consonant clusters (lhrl, shel, lhnl, lhwl,
lknl, lgnl) which is not the case today.Example: hraefn(raven), hlud (loud).
In some cases, consonant clusters are still used, but not pronounced, in
words like: what, knee, whale.

Vocabulary

Celtic borrowings
Despite the fact that Celts were the natives of Britsh Isles, their
influence on the English language as it is today is very little. Celtic
communities were pushed back into the areas we now know as
Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and also Scottish borders. Only a few
Celtic borrowings have survived into Modern English: Avon, Dover,
Kent Some Celtic words: carr(rock), dunn(grey), torr(peak),
rice(rule)...
Latin loans
Latin has been a major influence on English throughout its
development. Some Latin loans from this period: cyse(cheese),
plante(plant), catte(cat), candel(candle).
Old Norse loans
Because Old English and Old Norse were in very close contact for
many years, numerous duplicate words emerged. Sometimes the
Old English word was kept instead of the Old Norse as in: path(OE)
vs reike(ON) or sorrow(OE) vs site(ON). In other cases, Old Norse
word was kept, like in: egg(ON) vs ey(OE) or silver(ON) vs
seolfor(OE). There were also cases when both words survived, for
example: sick(ON) and ill(OE) or skill(ON) and craft(OE).
Old English vs Modern English vocabulary
It is believed that there were 24000 lexical items in the Old English
period, but the lexicon was significantly different from the one in
the Modern Period-85% of Old English words are no longer used.
Also, Old English had only 3% of loan words in its vocabulary,
whereas 70% of Modern English vocabulary consists of loans. Old
English was Germanic, but it is no longer that way. Throughout
history, English language was subject to change, so today a great

part of its vocabulary comes from Latin or French(the most loans

from these languages date from the Middle English period) and
other foreign influences.

Old English dialects

Northumbrian-was spoken between the Humber and Mersey rivers.
Most of the earliest Old English texts are written in Northumbrian
dialect such as Hymn and Bedes Death Song as well as
inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket.
Mercian-was spoken in Midlands, between the river Thames and
river Humber. Mainly spoken in the early 8th century, but many later
West Saxon show the influence of Mercian.
Kentish-was spoken in present day Kent and Isle of Wight.
Area south of Thames and west as far as Cornwall was known as
Wessex, hence West Saxon dialect arose. Most of the Old English
corpus was writen in this dialect, under the influence of king Alfred.
In spite of that, Modern English descended from the Mercian dialect
which was spoken near London when the city became powerful in
Middle Ages.
The similarity between OE and MdE
The majority of words from the Cdmon extract are very close to
Modern English. In Cdmon we would have almost no difficulties
recognizing singan as sing, ondswarede as answered etc.
On the other hand, some of the words look very strange, because
they have disappeared from modern language. These include
gelimpice for suitable, neata for cattle, frumsceaft for creation and
also some grammatical words such as se for the.
The meaning of these words quite often shows up quickly, once
their parts are identified. Gebeorscipe seems to have nothing with
banquet until we notice its simply beer+ ship
Words that look familiar must be taken seriously, because the
Anglo-Saxon wif represented any woman, married or not, fowl
represented any bird, not just the domestic one.
Kennings

Kennings are vivid figurative descriptions, mostly used in Old Norse

poetry
They describe words indirectly, and often in compounds

For example, hron-rd (whale-road) represents the sea, bnhs

(body house) is the body etc.
They are sometimes difficult to interpret because of the vast
number of synonyms in Old English, which makes it hard to
distinguish nuances from meaning.
Lexical Invasions
The English vocabulary was changed multiple timeswith
newcomers. While invading the islands they brought they own
languages and left a fair bit behind. In the Anglo-Saxon period, two
major influences are the most important
Christian missionaries from Rome and Ireland introduced literacy,
and left a huge part of their vocabulary.
The new vocabulary included a lot of words related to church,
theology and learning, but also included many biological and
general words, most of which survived to this day.
Many Old English words were given a new Christian meaning
(Heaven, Hell, God, Gospel, Easter etc.)
The second big lexical invasion came as a result of the Viking raids
which lasted for around 200 years.
A lot of settlements with Danish names began showing up in
England
Many general words entered the language, and around 1.000
became part of Standard English from which nearly 150 appeared
in Old English manuscripts (fellow, score, take, landing etc. ) , as
well as many words which didnt survive in later English (words
which died after the Norman Conquest)
The closeness between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish settlers is
shown by the number of borrowings. Words like both, same,
get and give and many more came from the settlers.