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Old English language

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

   Old English/Anglo-Saxon
   Englisc
   Spoken in: parts of what is now England and southern Scotland
   Language extinction: developed into Middle English by the 12th century
   Language family: Indo-European
     Germanic
      West Germanic
       Anglo-Frisian
        Anglic
        Old English/Anglo-Saxon
   Language codes
   ISO 639-1: none
   ISO 639-2: ang
   ISO/FDIS 639-3: ang
   Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA
   chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

   Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English
   language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern
   Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. It
   is a West Germanic language and therefore is closely related to Old
   Frisian and Old Saxon. 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 fifth century to some time after the Norman invasion of
   1066, when the language underwent a major and 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 were occupying and
   controlling 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 sister languages in continental Europe. Some of these
   features were specific to the West Germanic language family to which
   Old English belongs, while some other features were inherited from the
   Proto-Germanic language from which all Germanic languages are believed
   to have been derived.

   Like other West Germanic languages of the period, Old English was fully
   inflected with five grammatical cases, 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 vs. der Mond).

Latin influence

   A large percentage of the educated and literate population ( monks,
   clerics, etc.) were competent in Latin, which was the 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 England. 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 occurred following the Norman invasion of 1066, after
   which an enormous number of Norman words entered the language. Most of
   these Oïl language words were themselves derived 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.

   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, such as
   the "k" in "knight", were in fact pronounced in Old English. For
   example, the 'hard-c' sound in cniht, the Old English equivalent of
   '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.

   Old English spelling can therefore be regarded as even more jumbled
   than modern English spelling, although it can at least claim to reflect
   some existing pronunciation, while modern English in many cases cannot.
   Most present day students of Old English learn the language using
   normalised versions and are only introduced to variant spellings after
   they have mastered the basics of the language.

Viking influence

   The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early
   10th century: ██  Old West Norse dialect ██  Old East Norse dialect ██
   Old Gutnish dialect ██  Crimean Gothic ██  Other Germanic languages
   with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility
   Enlarge
   The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early
   10th century: ██  Old West Norse dialect ██  Old East Norse dialect ██
   Old Gutnish dialect ██  Crimean Gothic ██  Other Germanic languages
   with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility

   The second major source of loanwords to Old English were the
   Scandinavian words introduced during the Viking invasions of the ninth
   and tenth 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 and the modern pronoun they.

Celtic influence

   It has traditionally been maintained 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
   remarkably lower order than either Latin or Scandinavian.

   Since the 1980s, a growing number of authors, including Hildegard
   Tristram, have argued that the effects of Celtic language contact have
   historically been underplayed. In recent years Celtic etymologies have
   been proposed for an increasing number of English dialect words.
   Tristram, Theo Vennemann and others have argued that distinctive Celtic
   traits are clearly discernable from the post-Old English period in the
   area of syntax.

Dialects

   To further complicate matters, Old English had many dialects. The four
   main dialect forms of Old English were Mercian, Northumbrian (known
   collectively as Anglian), Kentish, and West Saxon. Each of these
   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 develop new accents when
   there is a sudden change of political power.

   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,
   paperwork was 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 likewise affected,
   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 Care".

   Because of the centralisation of power and to the Viking invasions,
   there is little or no written evidence for the development of
   non-Wessex dialects after Alfred's unification.
   The first page of the Beowulf manuscript
   Enlarge
   The first page of the Beowulf manuscript

Corpus of literature

   Old English literature, though more abundant than literature of the
   continent before 1000 A.D., 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.

   Jorge Luis Borges, in 'An Autobiographical Essay', The Aleph & Other
   Stories, says:

     I knew that at home, on a certain top shelf, I had copies of Sweet’s
     Anglo-Saxon Reader and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. When the students
     came the next Saturday morning, we began reading these two books. We
     skipped grammar as much as we could and pronounced the words like
     German. All at once, we fell in love with a sentence in which Rome
     (Romeburh) was mentioned. We got drunk on these words and rushed
     down Peru Street shouting them at the top of our voices. And so we
     set out on a long adventure. I had always thought of English
     literature as the richest in the world; the discovery now of a
     secret chamber at the very threshold of that literature came to me
     as an additional gift. Personally, I knew that the adventure would
     be an endless one, and that I could go on studying Old English for
     the rest of my days.

Phonology

   The inventory of Old English surface phones, as usually reconstructed,
   is as follows.
     Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar
   Glottal
   Stop p  b     t  d     k  g
   Affricate         tʃ  (dʒ)
   Nasal m     n     (ŋ)
   Fricative   f  (v) θ  (ð) s  (z) ʃ (ç) (x)  (ɣ) h
   Approximant       r   j w
   Lateral approximant       l

   The sounds marked in parentheses in the chart above are allophones:
     * [dʒ] is an allophone of /j/ occurring after /n/ and when geminated
     * [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ occurring before /k/ and /g/
     * [v, ð, z] are allophones of /f, θ, s/ respectively, occurring
       between vowels or voiced consonants.
     * [ç, x] are allophones of /h/ occurring in coda position after front
       and back vowels respectively
     * [ɣ] is an allophone of /g/ occurring after a vowel

   Monophthongs    Short        Long
                Front  Back  Front   Back
   Close         i  y   u    iː  yː   uː
   Mid          e  (ø)  o   eː  (øː)  oː
   Open           æ     ɑ      æː     ɑː

   The front mid rounded vowels /ø(ː)/ occur in some dialects of Old
   English, but not in the best attested Late West Saxon dialect.
         Diphthongs       Short ( monomoraic) Long (bimoraic)
   First element is close         iy                iːy
   Both elements are mid          eo                eːo
   Both elements are open         æɑ                æːɑ

Standardised orthography

   Old English was at first written in runes ( futhorc), but shifted to
   the Latin alphabet, with some additions, after the Anglo-Saxons'
   conversion to Christianity. The letter yogh, for example, was adopted
   from Irish; the letter eth was an alteration of Latin "d", 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 (' '). Also
   used occasionally were macrons over vowels, abbreviations for following
   'm's or 'n's. All of the sound descriptions below are given using IPA
   symbols.

The alphabet

     * a: /ɑ/ (spelling variations like land/lond "land" suggest it may
       have had a rounded allophone [ɒ] before [n] in some cases)
     * ā: /ɑː/
     * æ: /æ/
     * ǣ: /æː/
     * b: /b/
     * c (except in the digraphs sc and cg): either /tʃ/ or /k/. The /tʃ/
       pronunciation is sometimes written with a diacritic by modern
       editors: most commonly ċ, sometimes č or ç. Before a consonant
       letter the pronunciation is always /k/; word-finally after i it is
       always /tʃ/. Otherwise a knowledge of the historical linguistics of
       the word in question is needed to predict which pronunciation is
       needed. (See Old English phonology#The distribution of velars and
       palatals for details.)
     * cg: [ddʒ] (the surface pronunciation of geminate /jj/);
       occasionally also for /gg/
     * d: /d/
     * ð/þ: /θ/ and its allophone [ð]. Both symbols were used more or less
       interchangeably (to the extent that if there was a rule, it was to
       avoid using ð word-initially, but this was by no means universally
       followed). Many modern editions preserve the use of these two
       symbols as found in the original manuscripts, but some attempt to
       regularise them in some fashion, for example using only the þ. See
       also Pronunciation of English th.
     * e: /e/
     * ē: /eː/
     * ea: /æɑ/; after ċ and ġ, sometimes /æ/ or /ɑ/
     * ēa: /æːɑ/; after ċ and ġ, sometimes /æː/
     * eo: /eo/; after ċ and ġ, sometimes /o/
     * ēo: /eːo/
     * f: /f/ and its allophone [v]
     * g: /g/ and its allophone [ɣ]; /j/ and its allophone [dʒ] (when
       after n). The /j/ and [dʒ] pronunciations are sometimes written ġ
       or ȝ by modern editors. Before a consonant letter the pronunciation
       is always [g] (word-initially) or [ɣ] (after a vowel). Word-finally
       after i it is always /j/. Otherwise a knowledge of the historical
       linguistics of the word in question is needed to predict which
       pronunciation is needed. (See Old English phonology#The
       distribution of velars and palatals for details.)
     * h: /h/ and its allophones [ç, x]. In the combinations hl, hr, hn
       and hw, the second consonant was certainly voiceless.
     * i: /i/
     * ī: /iː/
     * ie: /iy/; after ċ and ġ, sometimes /e/
     * īe: /iːy/; after ċ and ġ, sometimes /eː/
     * k: /k/ (rarely used)
     * l: /l/; probably velarised (as in Modern English) when in coda
       position.
     * m: /m/
     * n: /n/ and its allophone [ŋ]
     * o: /o/
     * ō: /oː/
     * oe: /ø/ (in dialects with this sound)
     * ōe: /øː/ (in dialects with this sound)
     * p: /p/
     * q: /k/ – Used before u representing the consonant /w/, but rarely
       used, being rather a feature of Middle English. Old English
       preferred cƿ or in modern print cw.
     * r: /r/; the exact nature of r is not known. It may have been an
       alveolar approximant [ɹ], as in most Modern English accents, an
       alveolar flap [ɾ], or an alveolar trill [r].
     * s: /s/ and its allophone [z]
     * sc: /ʃ/ or occasionally /sk/
     * t: /t/
     * u: /u/
     * ū: /uː/
     * ƿ ( wynn): /w/, replaced in modern print by w to prevent confusion
       with p.
     * x: /ks/ (but according to some authors, [xs ~ çs])
     * y: /y/
     * ȳ: /yː/
     * z: /ts/. Rarely used as ts was usually used instead, for example
       bezt vs betst "best", pronounced /betst/.

   Doubled consonants are geminated; the geminate fricatives ðð/þþ, ff and
   ss cannot be voiced.

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.

Misconceptions

   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. It is inaccurate to state that everyone stopped
   speaking Old English in 1099, and woke up on New Year's Day of 1100
   speaking Middle English. Language change is gradual, and cannot be as
   easily demarcated as historical or political events are.

   450–1100 Old English (Anglo-Saxon) – The language of Beowulf.

   1100–1500 Middle English – The language of Chaucer.

   1500–1650 Early Modern English (or Renaissance English) – The language
   of Shakespeare.

   1650–present Modern English (or Present-Day English) – The language as
   spoken today.

Examples

Beowulf

   The first example is taken from the epic poem Beowulf. The modern
   English translation is very literal, and does not fit modern word order
   ( SVO). The original word order has been followed to give a close
   approximation of the feel of the original poem.
   Line Original Translation
   Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum, Lo! We of the Spear-Danes in days gone
   by
   þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, of the kings, of fame have heard,
   hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. how those nobles did great deeds
   Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, Often Scyld Scefing, from the army
   of his enemies,
   monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, from many warriors, took the
   mead-benches
   egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð terrified the nobles. After he was
   first
   feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad discovered, a foundling, he
   gained a consolation
   weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, waxed under the heavens, prospered
   in glory,
   oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra until eventually everyone in
   surrounding tribes,
   ofer hronrade hyran scolde, over the whale-road, had to obey
   gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning! and yield to him. He was a good
   king!

The Lord's Prayer

   This text of The Lord's Prayer is presented in the standardised West
   Saxon literary dialect:

          Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
          Si þin nama gehalgod.
          To becume þin rice,
          gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
          urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
          and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum.
          and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. soþlice.

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