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Old Saxon language, earliest recorded form of Low German, spoken by the Saxon tribes between the Rhine and Elbe rivers and between the North Sea and the Harz Mountains from the 9th until the 12th century. A distinctive characteristic of Old Saxon, shared with Old Frisian and Old English, is its.
Old English began to appear in writing during the early 8th century. Most texts were written in West Saxon, one of the four main dialects. The other dialects were Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish. The Anglo-Saxons adopted the styles of script used by Irish missionaries, such as Insular half-uncial, which was used for books in Latin.
Old English itself has three dialects: West Saxon, Kentish, and Anglian. West Saxon was the language of Alfred the Great (871-901) and therefore achieved the greatest prominence; accordingly, the chief Old English texts have survived in this dialect.
Mar 28, 2024 · West Saxon. 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. (Read H.L. Mencken’s 1926 Britannica essay on American English.)
The surviving Old English documents are traditionally attributed to four different major dialects: Kentish (in the south-east), West Saxon (in the south-west), Mercian (in the midland territories of Mercia), and Northumbrian (in the north); because of various similarities they show, Mercian and Northumbrian are often grouped together as Anglian.
Study Old-English on the portal to the Anglo-Saxon Language. Find here Old English news, articles, study aids, texts and translations, an Old English dictionary and more | Old-Engli.sh.
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German. It is a West Germanic language, closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages. It is documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it gradually evolved into Middle Low German.
