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 similar to Old Frisian and Old Saxon. It is also quite similar to Old Norse (and by extension, to modern Icelandic). 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 instrumental, remnants of which survive only in a few pronouns in modern English. ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... SIL International is a non-profit, Christian, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Royal motto: Dieu et mon droit (French: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population - Total (mid-2004) - Density Ranked 1st UK 50. ... Royal motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (Latin: No one provokes me with impunity) Scotlands location within the UK Languages with Official Status1 English Scottish Gaelic Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ... // Events Romulus Augustus, Last Western Roman Emperor Rome sacked by Visigoths in 410. ... (11th century - 12th century - 13th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 12th century was that century which lasted from 1101 to 1200. ... West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German. ... Old Frisian was the West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries by the people who, from their ancient homes in North Germany and Denmark, had settled in the area between the Rhine and Elbe on the European North Sea coast in the 4th and 5th centuries. ... Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is a Germanic language. ... This is the approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century. ... Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ... Diversity is the presence of a wide range of variation in the qualities or attributes under discussion. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun. ... The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. ... In linguistics, the instrumental case indicates that a noun is the instrument or means by which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. ...

Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of some 700 years – from the Anglo-Saxon migrations into England of the fifth century to some time after the Norman invasion of 1066, when the language underwent a major and dramatic transition. During this period it assimilated some aspects of the languages that it came in contact with, such as the Celtic languages and the two variants of the Scandinavian languages from the invading Norsemen who were occupying and controlling the Danelaw in northern and eastern England. A map showing the general locations of the major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms The Anglo-Saxons were originally a collection of differing Germanic tribes from Angeln—a peninsula in the southern part of Schleswig, protruding into the Baltic Sea, and what is now Lower Saxony, in the north-west coast of... Bayeux Tapestry depicting events leading to the Battle of Hastings The Norman Conquest was the conquest of the Kingdom of England by William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy), in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman control of England. ... Events January 6 - Harold II is crowned King of England the day after Edward the Confessor dies. ... Celtic languages are the languages descended from Proto-Celtic, both those spoken by the ancient Celts, and those used by their modern descendants, the Gaels, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons. ... This is the approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The Danelaw (from the Old English Dena lagu) was an area of England under the administrative control of the Vikings (or Danes, or Norsemen) from the late 9th century. ...

The term Old English does not strictly refer to older varieties of Modern English such as are found in Shakespeare or the King James Bible, which are called Early Modern English by linguists. In some older works (such as the 1913 edition of Webster's Dictionary), Old English refers to Middle English, or also more specifically Middle English as used from 1150 to 1350, with the older form of the language referred to exclusively as Anglo-Saxon. [1] For the 80s pop band, see Modern English (band). ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... This page is about the version of the Bible; for the Harvey Danger album, see King James Version (album). ... Early modern English is a name for the modern English language the way it was used between around 1485 and 1650. ... 1888 advertisement for Websters Dictionary Websters Dictionary is a common title given to English language dictionaries in the United States, deriving its name from American lexicographer Noah Webster. ... Middle English is the name given by historical philologists to the diverse forms of the English language spoken in England from around the 12th to the 15th centuries— from after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066 to the mid to late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard... Events Åhus, Sweden gains city privileges City of Airdrie, Scotland founded King Sverker I of Sweden is deposed and succeeded by Eric IX of Sweden. ... Events Hayam Wuruk becomes ruler of the Majapahit Empire The Black Death ravages Europe (1347-1351) Births Manuel II Palaeologus, future Byzantine Emperor John Montacute, 3rd Earl of Salisbury (approximate date). ...

Germanic origins

The most important shaping force on Old English was its Germanic heritage in vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar, that 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. West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German. ... Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, ca 500 BC-50 BC. The area south of Scandinavia is the Jastorf culture Proto-Germanic, the proto-language believed by scholars to be the common ancestor of the Germanic languages, includes among its descendants Dutch, Yiddish... The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family. ...

Though many of these links with the other Germanic languages have since been obscured by later linguistic influences, particularly Norman French, many remain even in modern English. Compare modern English 'Good day' with the Old English Gódne dæg, modern Dutch Goedendag, or modern German Guten Tag.

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, in addition to the usual singular and plural forms. It also assigned gender to all nouns, even to those that describe inanimate objects: for example, séo sunne (the Sun) was feminine, while se móna (the Moon) was masculine. Dual is the grammatical number used for two referents. ...

Latin influence

The influence of Latin on Old English should not be ignored. A large percentage of the educated and literate population (monks, clerics, etc.) were competent in Latin, which was then the prevalent lingua franca of Europe. 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, though this is not always reliable. 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. However, the largest single transfer of Latin-based words occurred following the Norman invasion of 1066, after which an enormous number of Norman French 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. Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... A Roman Catholic monk A monk is a person who practices monasticism, adopting a strict religious and ascetic lifestyle, usually in community with others following the same path. ... A cleric is: A member of the clergy of a religion, especially one that has trained or ordained priests, preachers, or other religious professionals; or A member of a character class in Dungeons & Dragons and similar fantasy role-playing games. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ... The Saxon people or Saxons were a large and powerful Germanic people located in what is now northwestern Germany and a small section of the eastern Netherlands. ... St Francis Xavier converting the Paravas: a 19th-century image of the docile heathen The historical phenomenon of Christianization, the conversion of individuals to Christianity or the conversion of entire peoples at once (a political shift as much as a spontaneous mass shift in individual consciences), also includes the practice... Bayeux Tapestry depicting events leading to the Battle of Hastings The Norman Conquest was the conquest of the Kingdom of England by William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy), in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman control of England. ... Events January 6 - Harold II is crowned King of England the day after Edward the Confessor dies. ... The Norman language is a Romance language, one of the Oïl languages. ... The langue doïl language family in linguistics comprises Romance languages originating in territories now occupied by northern France, part of Belgium and the Channel Islands. ... Middle English is the name given by historical philologists to the diverse forms of the English language spoken in England from around the 12th to the 15th centuries— from after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066 to the mid to late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard...

The language was further altered by the transition away from the runic alphabet (also known as futhorc) 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 of Modern English therefore did not often exist 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. Thus, for example, the word "and" could be spelt either and or ond. The Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes, formerly used to write Germanic languages, mainly in Scandinavia and the British Isles. ... The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc are a runic alphabet, extended from the Elder Futhark, consisting of 29, and later even 33 characters. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. ... In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the words pronunciation. ...

Therefore, Old English spelling can 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 students of Old English in the present day learn the language using normalised versions and are only introduced to variant spellings after they have mastered the basics of the language. English spelling (or orthography), although largely phonemic, has more complicated rules than many other spelling systems used by languages written in alphabetic scripts. ...

Viking influence

This is the approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century. The red area is the distribution of the dialect Old West Norse; the orange area is the spread of the dialect Old East Norse. The pink area is Old Gutnish and the green area is the extent of the 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 raids 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 they both derive from the same ancestral Germanic language. It is very common for the intermixing of speakers of different dialects, such as occurs during times of political unrest, to result in a simplified koine, 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 and the modern pronoun they. Download high resolution version (1235x909, 75 KB) File links The following pages link to this file: Old Norse language User:Wiglaf User:Wiglaf/maps ... Download high resolution version (1235x909, 75 KB) File links The following pages link to this file: Old Norse language User:Wiglaf User:Wiglaf/maps ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 10th century was that century which lasted from 901 to 1000. ... Old Gutnish was the dialect of Old Norse that was spoken on the island of Gotland. ... The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... This earthenware dish was made in 9th century Iraq. ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 10th century was that century which lasted from 901 to 1000. ... A century is one hundred of something, usually one hundred consecutive years, or 100 runs in cricket, or a bicycle ride of 100 miles in a day. ... In geography and cartography, a toponym is a place name, a geographical name, a proper name of locality, region, or some other part of Earths surface or its natural or artificial feature. ... The Danelaw (from the Old English Dena lagu) was an area of England under the administrative control of the Vikings (or Danes, or Norsemen) from the late 9th century. ... Old Norse or Danish tongue is the Germanic language once spoken by the inhabitants of the Nordic countries (for instance during the Viking Age). ... The word koine has several meanings: Koiné (Κοινή), a Greek dialect that developed from the Attic dialect (dialect of Athens) and became the spoken language of Greece at the time of the Empire of Alexander the Great. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. ...

Celtic influence

The number of Celtic loanwords is of a much lower order than either Latin or Scandinavian. As few as twelve loanwords have been identified as being entirely secure. Out of all the known and suspected Celtic loanwords, most are names of geographical features, and especially rivers. A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken into by one language from another but it is never given back. ...

Dialects

To further complicate matters, Old English was rich in dialect forms. The four main dialect forms of Old English were Kentish, Mercian, Northumbrian and West Saxon. Each of these dialects were 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 both successfully defended, were then integrated into Wessex. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... Kentish was spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent. ... Mercian was spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. ... Northumbrian was a dialect spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. ... Late West Saxon or West Saxon was one of four distinct dialects of Old English. ... Section from Shepherds map of the British Isles about 802 AD showing the kingdom of Northumbria Northumbria is primarily the name of an Anglian kingdom which was formed in Great Britain at the beginning of the 7th century, and of the much smaller earldom which succeeded the kingdom. ... Mercia, sometimes spelled Mierce, was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, in what is now England, in the region of the Midlands, with its heart in the valley of the River Trent and its tributary streams. ... The Kingdom of Kent was a kingdom of Jutes in southeast England, one of the seven traditional kingdoms of the so-called Anglo-Saxon heptarchy. ... Wessex was one of the seven major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (the Heptarchy) that preceded the Kingdom of England. ...

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. Events The Danes force king Alfred the Great of Wessex to retreat to a fort in Athelney, Somerset. ... Statue of Alfred the Great at Winchester Alfred (849? – 26 October 899) or Ælfred was king of the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex from 871 to 899. ...

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 remoter 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 were recorded. The Church was likewise affected, especially since Alfred initiated an ambitious programme to translate religious materials into the vernacular. 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". sheshoKKKK Categories: Sociolinguistics | Language varieties and styles ... This article considers Catholicism in the broadest ecclesiastical sense. ... Pope Saint Gregory I or Gregory the Great (c. ...

Due at least partially to 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.

Phonology and standardised orthography

Old English was at first written in runes (futhorc), but shifted to the Latin alphabet with some additions: the letter yogh, adopted from Irish; the letter eth and the runic letters thorn and wynn. Also used was a symbol for the conjunction 'and', a character similar to the number seven ('7'), 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 Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes, formerly used to write Germanic languages, mainly in Scandinavia and the British Isles. ... The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc are a runic alphabet, extended from the Elder Futhark, consisting of 29, and later even 33 characters. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. ... Yogh is a letter used in Middle English and Middle Scots, representing y (IPA: ) and various velar phonemes. ... Ð (capital Ð, lower-case ð) (or eth, eð or edh, Faroese: edd) is a letter used in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and present-day Icelandic and Faroese. ... Þþ The letter Þ (minuscule: þ), which is also known as thorn or þorn is a letter in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets. ... Categories: Language stubs | Old English language | Runes | Uncommon Latin letters ... A relative pronoun is a pronoun that introduces an adjective clause. ... Old English þæt symbol. ... A macron (from Gr. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ...

Consonants

• b: [b]
• c: unpredictably either [tʃ] (soft) or [k] (hard), except after an 's' (see sc) or before a 'g' (see cg). The soft-c is sometimes written with a diacritic by modern speakers for the sake of pronunciation, like so: 'ċ' or 'č' or 'ç'. Around the mid-fifth century, the soft-c developed in the following positions: at the beginning of a word, when before a front vowel; at the end of a word, when preceded by an i; in the middle of a word, when followed by an i or yod (that is /j/), or when preceded by an i and followed by a front vowel. However, subsequent sound change has largely obscured the original conditions. For example, drencan 'drench', derived from */drankjan/, is soft, but drincan 'drink', derived from */drinkan/, is hard. Similarly, swelc 'such', derived from */swalik/, is soft, but macian 'make', derived from */makójan/, is hard.
• cg: [dʒ]
• d: [d]
• ð/þ: initially, finally or between a vowel and a voiceless consonant: [θ]; between two vowels or between a vowel and a voiced consonant: [ð]. Both symbols were used more or less interchangeably (to the extent that 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.
• ðð/þþ: [θː]
• f: initially, finally or between a vowel and a voiceless consonant: [f]; between two vowels or between a vowel and a voiced consonant: [v].
• ff: [fː]
• g: various pronunciations, somewhat unpredictable. When written doubled, always a hard-g [g] (the doubled soft version is spelt cg). When following a nasal, unpredictably either [g] or [dʒ]. The exact same rules determined this distinction as determined the difference between soft and hard-c. Otherwise, unpredictably either palatal [j] or velar [ɣ]. Late in Old English, initial velar [ɣ] turned into [g]. The distinction between the palatal and velar sounds developed around the mid-fifth century, at the same time as the distinction between soft and hard-c, but according to different rules, with palatalisation occurring in more environments. Specifically, the palatal sound developed: at the beginning of a word, when before a front vowel; at the end of a word, when preceded by a front vowel; in the middle of a word, when not preceded or followed by a back vowel. These rules still work fairly well in determining the pronunciation of Old English words, although certain adjustments need to be made, particularly in weak verbs. The soft-g ([j]) is sometimes written with a diacritic by modern speakers for the sake of pronunciation, represented as 'ġ' or the number three ('3') – representing yogh (Ȝ ȝ), which is not to be confused with ezh (Ʒ ʒ), a similar looking letter.
• h: initial or following a consonant: [h]; following a back vowel or a diphthong beginning with a back vowel: [x]; following a front vowel or a diphthong beginning with a front vowel: either [ç] or [x], with the actual pronunciation unknown. Note that in the combinations hl, hr, hn and hw, the second consonant was certainly voiceless.
• k: [k] (rarely used)
• l: [l]; probably velarised (as in Modern English) when preconsonantal.
• m: [m]
• n: when before a 'g' or 'c': [ŋ]; otherwise [n].
• p: [p]
• q: [k] – Used before a '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]; probably velarised ([ɹ], as in Modern English) when preconsontal.
• s: initially, finally or between a vowel and a voiceless consonant: [s]; between two vowels or between a vowel and a voiced consonant: [z].
• sc: [ʃ] or unpredictably [sk]. However [ʃ] is by far the more common; [sk] is used only in a few words, the most common being ascian 'to ask'.
• ss: [sː]
• t: [t]
• ƿ (wynn): [w], replaced in modern print by w.
• x: [ks]; according to some authors, pronounced as if written 'hs'
• z: [ts] rarely used as 'ts' was usually used instead, for example 'bezt' vs 'betst', said as [betst] meaning 'best'.

Doubled consonants have doubly long durations; 'ðð'/'þþ', 'ff' and 'ss' are shown above only to demonstrate that they cannot be voiced as their single constituents can be. A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... Ð (capital Ð, lower-case ð) (or eth, eð or edh, Faroese: edd) is a letter used in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and present-day Icelandic and Faroese. ... Þþ The letter Þ (minuscule: þ), which is also known as thorn or þorn is a letter in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets. ... In English, the digraph <th> represents two phonemes, the voiced dental fricative /ð/ (as in this) and the voiceless dental fricative /θ/ (thing). ... Yogh is a letter used in Middle English and Middle Scots, representing y (IPA: ) and various velar phonemes. ... Ezh (capital , lowercase ) is a character in the IPA. Also called the tailed z, it represents a voiced postalveolar fricative (SAMPA: [Z]), appearing in e. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds) is a vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... Middle English is the name given by historical philologists to the diverse forms of the English language spoken in England from around the 12th to the 15th centuries— from after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066 to the mid to late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard... Categories: Language stubs | Old English language | Runes | Uncommon Latin letters ...

Following are some hints to help you in determining whether to pronounce a 'c' or 'g' hard (velar) or soft (palatal). If in doubt, assume 'c' is hard and 'g' is soft.

Rules for both 'c' and 'g':

• When initial (in word or stem), 'c' and 'g' are soft when followed by 'i', 'ea' or 'eo'. NOTE: This applies even in violation of the rule about following modern cognates. For example, West Saxon ceald 'cold' and cealf 'calf' had [tʃ]; the modern English forms are from Anglian dialect cald and calf with [k]. The verbs gievan, forgietan and beginnan ("give", "forget" and "begin", respectively), and related compounds, all had [j]. The modern [g] is due to Scandinavian influence or analogy with past-tense forms containing [g].
• When the last consonant of a verb stem, soft in all forms of weak verbs of first class (despite 'an' in the infinitive); hard in all forms of weak verbs of second class (despite 'ian' in the infinitive); generally hard in strong verbs. NOTE: This applies even in violation of the rule about following modern cognates: wyrcan and secan have [tʃ] despite their modern cognates 'work' and 'seek' having a [k] (cf. 'beseech' from the same verb as 'seek').
• Follow the pronunciation of modern cognates, if they exist, except for conflicts with the previous two rules.
• When initial, hard if followed by a consonant, back vowel, or 'y'.

Rules for 'g', if the above don't apply:

• Otherwise, assume that 'g' is soft unless adjacent to a back vowel ('a', 'o' or 'u').

Rules for 'c', if the above don't apply:

• At the beginning of a word, 'c' is usually soft if followed by a front vowel (unless it's an 'é' that is not part of a diphthong, that is 'éa' or 'éo').
• Learn some common words where 'c' is soft: swelc/swylc 'such'; hwelc/hwylc 'which'; ǽlc 'each'; ic 'I'; -lic '-ly'.
• At the end of a word, 'c' is hard unless preceded by 'i'.
• In the middle of a word, 'c' is hard unless there is an 'i' on one side and a front vowel on the other.

Vowels

Pure vowels and diphthongs in Old English have two degrees of length; though the distinction was originally unwritten, in our modern orthography we use acute accents (as in this article), macrons or following colons to denote long vowels and leave short ones unmarked. In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. ... The acute accent ( Â´ ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin script. ... A macron (from Gr. ...

Pure vowels

• a: [a] or [ɒ] before [n] in some cases (for example 'land', which was often said as [lɒnd])
• á: [aː] or [ɑː]
• æ: [æ]
• ǽ: [æː] or [ɛː]
• e: [e] or [ɛ]
• é: [eː]
• i: [ɪ]
• í: [iː]
• o: [ɒ] or [ɔ]
• ó: [oː]
• u: [ʊ]
• ú: [uː]
• y: [ʏ]
• ý: [yː]

Diphthongs

• ea: [æa]
• éa: [æːa]
• eo: [eɒ] or [eɔ] or [ɛɒ] or [ɛɔ]
• éo: [eːɒ] or [eːɔ]
• ie: [ɪe] or [ɪɛ] or [ɪʏ]
• íe: [iːe] or [iːɛ] or [iːy]

Old English grammar

Syntax

As a West Germanic language, Old English syntax has a great deal of common ground with Dutch and German. Old English is not dependent upon S (subject), V (verb), O (object) or "SVO" word order in the way that Modern English is. The syntax of an Old English sentence can be in any of these shapes: SVO order, VSO order, and OVS order. The only constant rule, as in German and Dutch, is that the verb must come as the second concept. That is, in the sentence 'in the town, we ate some food', it could appear as 'in the town, ate we some food', or 'in the town, ate some food we'. This variable word order is especially common in poetry. Prose, while still displaying variable word order, is much more likely to use SVO ordering. Similarly, word order became less flexible as time went on: the older a text is, the less likely it is to have a fixed word order. In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ... Verb Subject Object—commonly used in its abbreviated form VSO—is a term in linguistic typology. ... Object Verb Subject (OVS) is one of the permutations of expression used in linguistic typology. ... In verb-second (V2) word order, the finite verb of a sentence is always in the second position. ...

To further complicate the matter, prepositions may appear after their object, though they are not postpositions, as they may occur in front of the noun too, and usually do, for example:

 God cwæð him þus tó (lit.) God said him thus to that is God said thus to him 

Verbs

Verbs in Old English are divided into strong or weak verbs. For a fuller discussion of these, see Germanic weak verb and West Germanic strong verb. A strong inflection is an irregular inflection, in which the stem of a word changes. ... In Germanic languages, weak verbs are those verbs that have a regular inflection, in which the stem of a word is not changed by ablaut. ... In Germanic languages, weak verbs are those verbs that form their preterites and past participles by means of a dental suffix, an inflection that contains a /t/ or /d/ sound. ... In the Germanic languages, strong verbs are those which mark their past tenses by means of ablaut. ...

Strong verbs

Strong verbs use the Germanic form of conjugation (known as Ablaut). In this form of conjugation, the stem of the word changes to indicate the tense. Verbs like this persist in modern English, for example "sing, sang, sung" is a strong verb, as are swim/swam/swum and choose/chose/chosen. The root portion of the word changes rather than its ending. In Old English, there were seven major classes of strong verb; each class has its own pattern of stem changes. Learning these is a challenge for students of the language. In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ... In linguistics, the term ablaut (from German ab- in the sense down, reducing + Laut sound) designates a system of vowel gradations in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages. ...

The classes had the following distinguishing features to their infinitive stems:

1. iː + 1 consonant.
2. eːo or uː + 1 consonant.
3. Originally e + 2 consonants (This was no longer the case by the time of written Old English).
4. e + 1 consonant (usually l or r, plus the verb brecan 'to break').
5. e + 1 consonant (usually a stop or a fricative).
6. a + 1 consonant.
7. No specific rule – first and second have identical stems (eː or eːo), and the infinitive and the past participle also have the same stem.

The first preterite stem is used in the preterite tense, for the first and third persons singular. The second preterite stem is used for second person singular, and all persons in the plural (as well as the preterite subjunctive). Strong verbs also exhibit i-mutation of the stem in the second and third persons singular in the present tense. This article is about the grammatical term. ... First person can refer to the following: A grammatical person or a closely related Perspective (storytelling). ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is used for the grammatical categories a language uses to describe the relationship between the speaker and the persons or things she is talking about. ... The word singular may refer to one of several concepts. ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is used for the grammatical categories a language uses to describe the relationship between the speaker and the persons or things she is talking about. ... Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that is subjective, from the persons viewpoint, that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgement, necessity and statements that are contrary to fact. ... I-mutation is what umlaut is called when it applies to English. ... The present tense is the tense (form of a verb) that is often used to express: Action at the present time A state of being A habitual action An occurrence in the near future An action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present Contents // Categories: Grammatical...

The third class went through so many sound changes that it was barely recognisable as a single class. The first was a process called 'breaking'. Before <h>, and <r> + another consonant, <æ> turned into <ea>, and <e> to <eo>. Also, before <l> + another consonant, the same happened to <æ>, but <e> remained unchanged (except before combination <lh>).

The second sound-change to affect it was the influence of palatal sounds <g>, <c>, and <sc>. These turned anteceding <e> and <æ> to <ie> and <ea>, respectively.

The third sound change turned <e> to <i>, <æ> to <a>, and <o> to <u> before nasals.

Altogether, this split the third class into five sub-classes:

1. e + two consonants (apart from clusters beginning with l).
2. eo + r or h + another consonant.
3. e + l + another consonant.
4. g, c, or sc + ie + two consonants.
5. i + nasal + another consonant.

Regular strong verbs were all conjugated roughly the same, with the main differences being in the stem vowel. Thus stelan 'to steal' represents the strong verb conjugation paradigm.

In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... Imperative programming, as opposed to functional programming, is a sort of programming employing side-effect as central execution feature. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

Weak verbs

Weak verbs are formed principally by adding endings to past and participles. An example is walk/walked or look/looked. There are only three different classes of weak verb.

Linguistic trends have greatly favoured weak verbs over the last 1200 years. In Old English, especially early on, strong verbs were the dominant form of verb. Today, there are many more weak verbs than strong verbs. Some verbs that were originally strong (for example help) have become weak; most foreign verbs are adopted as weak verbs; and when verbs are made from nouns (for example "to scroll" or "to water") the resulting verb is weak. Additionally, weak verbs are easier to conjugate, since there are fewer different classes of them. In combination, these factors have drastically reduced the number of strong verbs, so that in modern English weak verbs are the dominant form (although occasionally a weak verb may turn into a strong verb through the process of analogy, such as spit or sneak, where spat and snuck are analogical formations rather than survivals from Old English).

There are three major classes of weak verbs. The first class displays i-mutation in the root, and the second class none. There is also a third class explained below.

Class one verbs with short roots exhibit gemination of the final stem consonant in certain forms. With verbs in <r> this appears as <ri> or <rg>, where <i> and <g> are pronounced [j]. Geminated <f> appears as <bb>, and that of <g> appears as <cg>. Class one verbs may receive an epenthetic vowel before endings beginning in a consonant. Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... In poetry and phonetics, epenthesis (Greek epi, on × en, in + thesis, putting) is the insertion of a phoneme or syllable into a word, usually to facilitate pronunciation. ...

Where class one verbs have gemination, class two verbs have <i> or <ig>, which is a separate syllable pronounced [i]. All class two verbs have an epenthetic vowel, which appears as <a> or <o>.

In the following table, three verbs are conjugated. Swebban 'to put to sleep' is a class one verb exhibiting gemination and an epenthetic vowel. Hǽlan 'to heal' is a class one verb exhibiting neither gemination nor an epenthetic vowel. Síðian 'to journey' is a class two verb.

During the Old English period the third class was significantly reduced; only four verbs belonged to this group: habban 'have', libban 'live', secgan 'say', and hycgan 'think'. Each of these verbs is distinctly irregular, though share some commonalities. In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... Imperative programming, as opposed to functional programming, is a sort of programming employing side-effect as central execution feature. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... Imperative programming, as opposed to functional programming, is a sort of programming employing side-effect as central execution feature. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

Anomalous verbs

Additionally there is a further group of four verbs which are anomalous, the verbs "will", "do", "go" and "be". These four have their own conjugation schemes which differ significantly from all the other classes of verb. This is not especially unusual: "will", "do", "go", and "be" are the most commonly used verbs in the language, and are very important to the meaning of the sentences they are used in. Idiosyncratic patterns of inflection are much more common with important items of vocabulary than with rarely-used ones.

Dón 'to do', gán 'to go', and willan 'will' are conjugated alike:

The verb 'to be' is actually composed of three different stems: In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

The present forms of wesan are almost never used. The béon forms are usually used in reference to future actions. The modern verb 'to be' takes its present indicative forms from sindon, its past indicative forms from wesan, its present subjunctive forms from béon, its past subjunctive forms from wesan, and its imperative and particicple forms from béon. In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

Nouns

Old English nouns were declined – that is, the ending of the noun changed to reflect its function in the sentence. There were five major cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental.

• The nominative case indicated the subject of the sentence, for example se cyning means 'the king'. It was also used for direct address. Adjectives in the predicate (qualifying a noun on the other side of 'to be') were also in the nominative.
• The accusative indicated the direct object of the sentence, for example Æþelbald lufode þone cyning means "Æþelbald loved the king", where Æþelbald is the subject and the king is the object. Already the accusative had begun to merge with the nominative; it was never distinguished in the plural, or in a neuter noun.
• The genitive case indicated possession, for example the þæs cyninges scip is "the ship of the king" or "the king's ship". It also indicated partitive nouns.
• The dative case indicated the indirect object of the sentence, for example hringas þæm cyninge means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king". There were also several verbs which took direct objects in the dative.
• The instrumental case indicated an instrument used to achieve something, for example lifde sweorde, "he lived by the sword", where sweorde is the instrumental form of sweord. During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having largely merged with the dative. Only pronouns and strong adjectives retained separate forms for the instrumental.

There were different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (for example, hring 'one ring') or plural (for example, hringas 'many rings'). The basic meaning of the Partitive case is partialness, without result or without specifying identity. In the Finnish language, its used to express unknown identities and irresultative actions. ...

Nouns are also categorised by grammatical gender – masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine and neuter words generally share their endings. Feminine words have their own subset of endings. The plural does not distinguish between genders. In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once (Hockett 1958: 231). ...

Furthermore, Old English nouns are divided as either strong or weak. Weak nouns have their own endings. In general, weak nouns are easier than strong nouns, since they had begun to lose their declensional system. However, there is a great deal of overlap between the various classes of noun: they are not totally distinct from one another.

Strong Nouns

Here are the strong declensional endings and examples for each gender:

For the '-u/–' forms above, the '-u' is used with a root consisting of a single short syllable or ending in a long syllable followed by a short syllable, while roots ending in long a syllable or two short syllables are not inflected. (A long syllable contains a long vowel or is followed by two consonants. Note also that there are some exceptions; for example, feminine nouns ending in -þu such as strengþu 'strength'.)

Note the syncopation of the second e in engel when an ending follows. This syncopation of the vowel in the second syllable occurs with two-syllable strong nouns which have a long vowel in the first syllable and a second syllable consisting of a short vowel and single consonant (for example, engel, wuldor 'glory', and héafod 'head'). However, this syncopation is not always present, so forms such as engelas may be seen. Syncope has two distinct and apparantly unrelated meanings, one in linguistics and another in medicne. ...

Weak Nouns

Here are the weak declensional endings and examples for each gender:

Irregular Strong Nouns

In addition, masculine and neuter nouns whose main vowel is short 'æ' and end with a single consonant change the vowel to 'a' in the plural:

Some masculine and neuter nouns end in -e in their base form. These drop the -e and add normal endings. Note that neuter nouns in -e always have -u in the plural, even with a long vowel:

Nouns ending in -h lose this when an ending is added, and lengthen the vowel in compensation (this can result in compression of the ending as well):

Nouns whose stem ends in -w change this to -u or drop it in the nominative singular. (Note that this '-u/–' distinction depends on syllable weight, as for strong nouns, above.) In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. ...

A few nouns follow the -u declension, with an entirely different set of endings. The following examples are both masculine, although feminines also exist, with the same endings (for example duru 'door' and hand 'hand'). Note that the '-u/–' distinction in the singular depends on syllable weight, as for strong nouns, above.

There are also some nouns of the consonant declension, which show i-umlaut in some forms.

Other such nouns include (with singular and plural nominative forms given):

Masculine: tóþ, téþ 'tooth'; mann, menn 'man'; fréond, fríend 'friend'; féond, fíend 'enemy' (cf. 'fiend')

Feminine: studu, styde 'post' (cf. 'stud'); hnitu, hnite 'nit'; ác, ǽc 'oak'; gát, gǽt 'goat'; bróc, bréc 'leg covering' (cf. 'breeches'); gós, gés 'goose'; burg, byrg 'city' (cf. German cities in -burg); dung, ding 'prison' (cf. 'dungeon' by way of French and Frankish); turf, tyrf 'turf'; grút, grýt 'meal' (cf. 'grout'); lús, lýs 'louse'; mús, mýs 'mouse'; neaht, niht 'night' Feminine with loss of -h in some forms: furh, fyrh 'furrow' or 'fir'; sulh, sylh 'plough'; þrúh, þrýh 'trough'; wlóh, wléh 'fringe'. Feminine with compression of endings: cú, cý 'cow' (cf. dialectal plural 'kine')

Family Members

Nouns of relationship:

Neuter nouns with -r in plural:

Other such nouns: cealf, cealfru 'calf'; ǽg, ǽru 'egg' (the form 'egg' is a borrowing from Old Norse); cild 'child' has either the normal plural cild or cildru (cf. 'children', with -en from the weak nouns).

Adjectives

Adjectives in Old English are declined using the same categories as nouns: five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and two numbers (singular, plural). In addition, they can be declined either strong or weak. The weak forms are used in the presence of a definite or possessive determiner, while the strong ones are used in other situations. The weak forms are identical to those for nouns, while the strong forms use a combination of noun and pronoun endings:

For the '-u/–' forms above, the distinction is the same as for strong nouns.

Note that the same variants described above for nouns also exist for adjectives. The following example shows both the æ/a variation and the -u forms in the feminine singular and neuter plural:

The following shows an example of an adjective ending with -h:

The following shows an example of an adjective ending with -w:

Determiners

Old English had two main determiners: se, which could function as both 'the' or 'that', and þes for 'this'.

Modern English 'that' descends from the neuter nominative/accusative form, and 'the' from the plural nominative/accusative form. The feminine nominative form was probably the source of Modern English 'she.'

Pronouns

Most pronouns are declined by number, case and gender; in the plural form most pronouns have only one form for all genders. Additionally, Old English pronouns reserve the dual form (which is specifically for talking about groups of two things, for example "we two" or "you two" or "they two"). These were uncommon even then, but remained in use throughout the period.

Personal pronouns

Many of the forms above bear strong resemblances to their contemporary English language equivalents: for instance in the genitive case éower became "your", úre became "our", mín became "mine".

Prepositions

Prepositions (like Modern English words by, for, and with) often follow the word which they govern, in which case they are called postpositions. They are not declined. A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ...

See also Old English language (list of prepositions) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

Example

This text is from the epic poem Beowulf. The first page of Beowulf This article describes Beowulf, the epic poem. ...

Hroðgar (Hrothgar, Hróar, Ro), legendary Danish king. ... Hygelac, Proto-Norse *Hugilaikaz [1], Latin Chlochilaicus, Old Norse Hugleikr (d. ... The first page of Beowulf This article describes Beowulf, the epic poem. ... Old Norse persons with the name Halfdan (half dane) (Old Norse sources) or Healfdene (Beowulf) or Haldan (Danish Latin sources) was probably kings. ... Old English Scylding (plural Scyldingas) and Old Norse Skjöldung (plural Skjöldungar), meaning in both languages Shielding, refers to members of a legendary royal family of Danes and sometimes to their people. ...

See also

• Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law
• Anglo-Saxon literature
• Beowulf
• Declension in English
• Exeter Book
• Go (verb)
• History of the English language
• History of the Scots language
• I-mutation
• List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents

Old English might also refer to Old English (Ireland), or Olde English. In historical linguistics, the Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law is a description of a philological development in some dialects of West Germanic, which is attested in Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon. ... Opening pages to a 11th century Anglo-Saxon manuscript. ... The first page of Beowulf This article describes Beowulf, the epic poem. ... The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to modern German or Icelandic. ... The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis, is a book (or, as some prefer, a codex) of Anglo-Saxon poetry from the 10th century. ... The verb go is highly irregular, and is the only suppletive verb in English apart from be. ... This article deals with the history of the English language. ... This article needs cleanup. ... I-mutation is what umlaut is called when it applies to English. ... This list contains Germanic elements of the English language which have a close corresponding Latinate form. ... The Old English were a wave of early medieval Norman, French, Welsh, English, Breton and Flemish settlers who went to Ireland to claim territory and lands in the wake of the Norman invasion. ... Olde English may refer to: A dry strong alcoholic cider originating from England. ...

External links

Old English language edition of Wikipedia

• The Electronic Introduction to Old English
• First steps in Old English - a course for absolute beginners
• Old English (Anglo-Saxon) alphabet
• Old English - Modern English dictionary
• The Origins of Old English
• Guide to using Old English computer characters (Unicode, HTML entities, etc.)
• Dictionary of Old English Project at the University of Toronto
• The Germanic Lexicon Project
• Text Collections - Texts and Translations
• Links relating to Old English, including learning resources

Image:Wikipedia-logo. ... The Wikipedia logo. ...

References

• Campbell, A. (1959) Old English Grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-811943-7
• Lass, Roger (1994) Old English: A historical linguistic companion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43087-9
• Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C. Robinson (2001) A Guide to Old English, 6th edition. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-63-122636-2