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Old English is a West Germanic language, and developed out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea Germanic) dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England.
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- History of English
English is a West Germanic language that originated from...
- Old English Literature
Old English literature refers to poetry (alliterative verse)...
- Mercian
Mercian was a dialect spoken in the Anglian kingdom of...
- Old English Phonology
Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative...
- Old English Version of Wikipedia
Please refer to the Grammar and Writing style guide and Old...
- Northumbrian
Northumbrian was a dialect of Old English spoken in the...
- Old English Grammar
Old English grammar - Wikipedia. Contents. hide. (Top)...
- Ingvaeonic
North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic (/ ˌ ɪ ŋ v iː ˈ...
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Old English ( Englisċ) or Anglo-Saxon, [1] was spoken in Anglo-Saxon England from 450 AD to 1100 AD. It was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, who came to Great Britain from what is now Germany and Denmark. Different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms spoke different dialects, but a western dialect became the main literary version.
The earliest varieties of an English language, collectively known as Old English or "Anglo-Saxon", evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Britain in the 5th century. Old English dialects were later influenced by Old Norse-speaking Viking invaders and settlers, starting in the 8th and 9th centuries.
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Mar 28, 2024 · Old English language, language spoken and written in England before 1100; it is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group of West Germanic languages. Learn more about the Old English language in this article.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Proto-English
- Old English
- Middle English
- Early Modern English
- Modern English
- Phonological Changes
- Grammatical Changes
- Examples
- See Also
- Further Reading
English has its roots in the languages of the Germanic peoples of northern Europe. During the Roman Empire, most of the Germanic-inhabited area (Germania) remained independent from Rome, although some southwestern parts were within the empire. Some Germanics served in the Roman military, and troops from Germanic tribes such as the Tungri, Batavi, M...
The Germanic settlers in the British Isles initially spoke a number of different dialects, which would develop into a language that came to be called Anglo-Saxon. It displaced the indigenous Brittonic Celtic (and the Latin of the former Roman rulers) in parts of the areas of Britain that later formed the Kingdom of England, while Celtic languages r...
Middle English is the form of English spoken roughly from the time of the Norman Conquestin 1066 until the end of the 15th century. For centuries after the Conquest, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles spoke Anglo-Norman, a variety of Old Norman, originating from a northern langue d'...
English underwent extensive sound changes during the 15th century, while its spelling conventions remained largely constant. Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. The language was further transformed by the spread of a standardized London-based dialect in government and administra...
The first authoritative and full-featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of the English Language, was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the dictionary standardized both English spelling and word usage. Meanwhile, grammar texts by Lowth, Murray, Priestly, and others attempted to prescribe standard usage even further. Early M...
Introduction
Over the last 1,200 years or so, English has undergone extensive changes in its vowel system, but many fewer changes to its consonants. In the Old English period, a number of umlaut processes affected vowels in complex ways, and unstressed vowels were gradually eroded, eventually leading to a loss of grammatical case and grammatical gender in the Early Middle English period. The most important umlaut process was *i-mutation (c. 500 CE), which led to pervasive alternations of all sorts, many o...
Vowel changes
The following table shows the principal developments in the stressed vowels, from Old English through Modern English (Cindicates any consonant): The following chart shows the primary developments of English vowels in the last 600 years, in more detail, since Late Middle English of Chaucer's time. The Great Vowel Shift can be seen in the dramatic developments from c.1400to 1600. Neither of the above tables covers the history of Middle English diphthongs, the changes before /r/, or various spec...
Examples
The vowel changes over time can be seen in the following example words, showing the changes in their form over the last 2,000 years:
The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin, Greek, modern German and Icelandic. Old English distinguished among the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases, and for strongly declined adjectives and some pronouns also a separate instrumental case (which otherwise and later completely coincided with the d...
Beowulf
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in alliterative verse. It is dated from the 8th to the early 11th centuries. These are the first 11 lines: Which, as translated by Francis Barton Gummere, reads:
Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan
This is the beginning of The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, a prose text in Old English dated to the late 9th century. The full text can be found at Wikisource.
Ayenbite of Inwyt
From Ayenbite of Inwyt("the prick of conscience"), a translation of a French confessional prose work into the Kentish dialect of Middle English, completed in 1340:
Bill Bryson (1990). The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way. William Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0380715435.David Crystal (2013). The Story of English in 100 Words. Picador. ISBN 978-1250024206.David Crystal (2015). Wordsmiths and Warriors: The English-Language Tourist's Guide to Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198729136.John McWhorter (2017). Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally). Picador. ISBN 978-1250143785.People also ask
What is Old English language?
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Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century.
Old English grammar - Wikipedia. Contents. hide. (Top) Nouns. Adjectives. Articles. Demonstratives. Pronouns. Verbs. Prepositions. Syntax. Phonology. See also. Notes. References. Sources. Further reading. Old English grammar. The grammar of Old English differs considerably from Modern English, predominantly being much more inflected.
