Old English (
Englisc,
Ænglisc), also called
Anglo-Saxon, is an early form of the
English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now
England and south-eastern
Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon. It is a
West Germanic language and is closely related to
Old Frisian. It also experienced heavy influence from
Old Norse, a member of the related
North Germanic group of
languages.
Development
Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of approximately 700 years – from the
Anglo-Saxon migrations that created England in the 5th century to some time after the
Norman Conquest of 1066 when the language underwent a dramatic transition. During this early period it assimilated some aspects of the languages with which it came in contact, such as the
Celtic languages and the two dialects of Old Norse from the invading
Vikings, who occupied and controlled large tracts of land in northern and eastern England, which came to be known as the
Danelaw.
Germanic origins
The most important force in shaping Old English was its Germanic heritage in its vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar, which it shared with its related languages in
continental Europe. Some of these features are shared with the other
West Germanic languages with which Old English is grouped, while some other features are traceable to the reconstructed
Proto-Germanic language from which all
Germanic languages are believed to have derived.
Like other Germanic languages of the period, Old English was fully
inflected with five
grammatical cases (
nominative,
accusative,
genitive,
dative, and
instrumental, though the instrumental was very rare), which had
dual plural forms for referring to groups of two objects (but only in the personal pronouns) in addition to the usual singular and plural forms. It also assigned
gender to all
nouns, including those that describe inanimate objects: for example,
sēo sunne (the
Sun) was feminine, while
se mōna (the
Moon) was masculine (cf. modern German
die Sonne and
der Mond).
Latin influence
A large percentage of the educated and literate population of the time were competent in
Latin, which was the scholarly and diplomatic
lingua franca of Europe at the time. It is sometimes possible to give approximate dates for the entry of individual Latin words into Old English based on which patterns of linguistic change they have undergone. There were at least three notable periods of Latin influence. The first occurred before the ancestral
Saxons left continental Europe for Britain. The second began when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to
Christianity and Latin-speaking priests became widespread. The third and largest single transfer of Latin-based words happened after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when an enormous number of
Norman words began to influence the language. Most of these
Oïl language words were themselves derived from
Old French and ultimately from
classical Latin, although a notable stock of Norse words were introduced or re-introduced in
Norman form. The Norman Conquest approximately marks the end of Old English and the advent of
Middle English.
One of the ways the influence of Latin can be seen is that many Latin words for activities came to also be used to refer to the people engaged in those activities, an idiom carried over from Anglo-Saxon but using Latin words. This can be seen in words like
militia,
assembly,
movement, and
service.
The language was further altered by the transition away from the
runic alphabet (also known as
futhorc or fuþorc) to the
Latin alphabet, which was also a significant factor in the developmental pressures brought to bear on the language. Old English words were spelt as they were pronounced. The "silent" letters in many Modern English words were pronounced in Old English: for example, the
c in
cniht, the Old English ancestor of the modern
knight, was pronounced. Another side-effect of spelling words phonetically was that spelling was extremely variable – the spelling of a word would reflect differences in the phonetics of the writer's regional dialect, and also idiosyncratic spelling choices which varied from author to author, and even from work to work by the same author. Thus, for example, the word
and could be spelt either
and or
ond.
Norse influence
The second major source of loanwords to Old English was the Scandinavian words introduced during the Viking invasions of the
9th and
10th centuries. In addition to a great many
place names, these consist mainly of items of basic vocabulary, and words concerned with particular administrative aspects of the
Danelaw (that is, the area of land under Viking control, which included extensive holdings all along the eastern coast of
England and
Scotland). The Vikings spoke
Old Norse, a language related to Old English in that both derived from the same ancestral Proto-Germanic language. It is very common for the intermixing of speakers of different dialects, such as those that occur during times of political unrest, to result in a
mixed language, and one theory holds that exactly such a mixture of Old Norse and Old English helped accelerate the decline of case endings in Old English. Apparent confirmation of this is the fact that simplification of the case endings occurred earliest in the north and latest in the southwest, the area farthest away from Viking influence. Regardless of the truth of this theory, the influence of Old Norse on the English language has been profound: responsible for such basic vocabulary items as
sky,
leg, the
pronoun they, the verb form
are, and hundreds of other words.
Celtic influence
Traditionally, many maintain that the influence of Celtic on English has been small, citing the small number of Celtic loanwords taken into the language. The number of Celtic
loanwords is of a lower order than either Latin or
Scandinavian. However, a minority view is that distinctive Celtic traits can be discerned in syntax from the post-Old English period.
Dialects
Old English should not be regarded as a single monolithic entity just as
Modern English is also not monolithic. Within Old English, there was language variation. Thus, it is misleading, for example, to consider Old English as having a single sound system. Rather, there were multiple Old English sound systems. Old English has variation along regional lines as well as variation across different times. For example, the language attested in
Wessex during the time of
Æthelwold of Winchester, which is named Late
West Saxon (or Æthelwoldian Saxon), is considerably different from the language attested in Wessex during the time of
Alfred the Great's court, which is named Early West Saxon (or Classical West Saxon or Alfredian Saxon). Furthermore, the difference between Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon is of such a nature that Late West Saxon is not directly descended from Early West Saxon (despite what the similarity in name implies).
The four main
dialectal forms of Old English were
Mercian,
Northumbrian,
Kentish, and
West Saxon. Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of
Northumbria and most of
Mercia were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. The portion of Mercia and all of
Kent that were successfully defended were then integrated into Wessex.
After the process of unification of the diverse Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in 878 by Alfred the Great, there is a marked decline in the importance of regional dialects. This is not because they stopped existing; regional dialects continued even after that time to this day, as evidenced both by the existence of Middle and Modern English dialects later on, and by common sense–-people do not spontaneously adopt another dialect when there is a sudden change of political power.
thumb|The first page of the Beowulf manuscript
However, the bulk of the surviving documents from the Anglo-Saxon period are written in the dialect of Wessex, Alfred's kingdom. It seems likely that with consolidation of power, it became necessary to standardise the language of government to reduce the difficulty of administering the more remote areas of the kingdom. As a result, documents were written in the West Saxon dialect. Not only this, but Alfred was passionate about the spread of the
vernacular and brought many scribes to his region from Mercia in order that previously unwritten texts be recorded.
The
Church was affected likewise, especially since Alfred initiated an ambitious programme to translate religious materials into English. In order to retain his patronage and ensure the widest circulation of the translated materials, the monks and
priests engaged in the programme worked in his dialect. Alfred himself seems to have translated books out of Latin and into English, notably
Pope Gregory I's treatise on administration,
Pastoral CareBecause of the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is little or no written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred's unification.
Modern-day
Received Pronunciation is not a direct descendant of the best-attested dialect, Late West Saxon. It is rather a descendant of a Mercian dialect-—either East Mercian or South-East Mercian. Thus, Late West Saxon had little influence on the development of Modern English (by which is meant RP or some similar dialect, e.g.
General American) and the developments occurring in its antecedent, Middle English. Late West Saxon was still used after the Norman Conquest but Latin and Norman French then became the languages of the nobility and administration.
Grammar
Phonology
The inventory of classical Old English (i.e. Late West Saxon) surface
phones, as usually reconstructed, is as follows.
The sounds marked in
parentheses in the chart above are
allophones:
- is an allophone of occurring after and when geminated
- is an allophone of occurring before and
- are allophones of occurring in coda position after front and back vowels respectively
- is an allophone of occurring after a vowel, and, at an earlier stage of the language, in the syllable onset.
The
front mid rounded vowels occur in some
dialects of Old English, but not in the best attested
Late West Saxon dialect.
Morphology
Unlike modern English, Old English is a
language rich with
morphological diversity and is spelled essentially as it is pronounced. It maintains several distinct cases: the
nominative,
accusative,
genitive,
dative and (vestigially)
instrumental, remnants of which survive only in a few pronouns in modern English.
Syntax
Word order
The word order of Old English is widely believed to be subject-verb-object (
SVO) as in modern English and most
Germanic languages. The word order of Old English, however, was not overly important because of the aforementioned morphology of the language. As long as declension was correct, it did not matter whether you said, "My name is..." as "Mīn nama is..." or "Nama mīn is..."
Questions
Because of its similarity with
Old Norse, it is believed that the word order of Old English changed when asking a question, from SVO to
VSO; i.e. swapping the verb and the subject.
"I am..." becomes "Am I...?"
"Ic eom..." becomes "Eom ic...?"
Orthography
250px|thumb|The [[runic alphabet used to write Old English before the introduction of the
Latin alphabet.]]
Old English was first written in
runes (
futhorc) but shifted to a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish Christian missionaries. This was replaced by insular script, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental Carolingian minuscule (also known as Caroline
) replaced the insular.
The letter yogh was adapted from Irish ecclesiastical forms of Latin < > ; the letter ðæt < > (called eth
or edh
in modern English) was an alteration of Latin < >, and the runic letters thorn and wynn are borrowings from futhorc. Also used was a symbol for the conjunction and
, a character similar to the number seven (< >, called a Tironian note), and a symbol for the relative pronoun þæt
, a thorn with a crossbar through the ascender (< >). Macrons < > over vowels were rarely used to indicate long vowels. Also used occasionally were abbreviations for following m
’s or n
’s. All of the sound descriptions below are given using IPA symbols.Conventions of modern editions
A number of changes are traditionally made in published modern editions of the original Old English manuscripts. Some of these conventions include the introduction of punctuation and the substitutions of symbols. The symbols < > are used in modern editions, although their shapes in the insular script are considerably different. The insular symbols < > and < > are substituted by their modern counterpart < >. Insular < > is usually substituted with its modern counterpart < > (which is ultimately a Carolingian symbol). Additionally, modern manuscripts often distinguish between a velar and palatal < > and < > with diacritic dots above the putative palatals: < >, < >. The wynn
symbol < > is usually substituted with < >. Kentish < > is sometimes substituted with modern < >. Macrons are usually found in modern editions to indicate putative long vowels, while they are usually lacking in the originals. The decision to add macrons is usually etymologically based as they are printed even when these vowels are in unstressed positions where they would most probably be short. In older printed editions of Old English works, an acute accent mark was used to maintain cohesion between Old English and Old Norse printing.
The alphabetical symbols found in Old English writings and their substitute symbols found in modern editions are listed below:
Doubled consonants are geminated; the geminate fricatives ðð
/þþ
, ff
and ss
cannot be voiced.Literature
Old English literature, though more abundant than literature of the continent before AD 1000, is nonetheless scanty. In his supplementary article to the 1935 posthumous edition of Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader
, Dr. James Hulbert writes:In such historical conditions, an incalculable amount of the writings of the Anglo-Saxon period perished. What they contained, how important they were for an understanding of literature before the Conquest, we have no means of knowing: the scant catalogs of monastic libraries do not help us, and there are no references in extant works to other compositions....How incomplete our materials are can be illustrated by the well-known fact that, with few and relatively unimportant exceptions, all extant Anglo-Saxon poetry is preserved in four manuscripts.
Old English was one of the first vernacular languages to be written down. 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; and Caedmon'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 Caedmon.Comparison with other historical forms of English
Old English
is often erroneously used to refer to any form of English other than Modern English. The term Old English
does not refer to varieties of Early Modern English such as are found in Shakespeare or the King James Bible, nor does it refer to Middle English, the language of Chaucer and his contemporaries. The following timeline helps place the history of the English language in context. The dates used are approximate dates. Language change is gradual, and cannot be as easily demarcated as are historical or political events.
- 1650–present: Modern English (or Present-Day English) – The language as spoken today.
Examples
Beowulf
The first example is taken from the opening lines of the epic poem Beowulf. This passage describes how Hrothgar's legendary ancestor Scyld was found as a baby, washed up on the shore, and adopted by a noble family. The translation is quite 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 parentheses 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.
A semi-fluent translation in Modern English would be:
Listen! We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes, of the kings of the people, in the days of yore, [and] how those princes did deeds of glory. Often Scyld Scefing deprived armed bands of foes, many clans of mead-benches, [and] terrified warriors. Since he first was found helpless, he grew under the heavens, [and] thrived with honours, until each of the nearby peoples over the sea were obliged to pay him tribute. That was a good king! The Lord's Prayer
This text of The Lord's Prayer is presented in the standardised West Saxon literary dialectCharter of Cnut
This is a proclamation from King Canute the Great to his earl 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.Bibliography
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