Old English language

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 related to Old Norse and, by extension, to modern Icelandic.

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 the Danelaw in northern and eastern England.

Germanic origins

The most important force on shaping 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.

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, also to 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

Old norse, ca 900.PNG|right|250px|thumb| The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century:

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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 in English in the area of syntax.http://www.rotary-munich.de/2005-2006/theo-vennemann.pdf

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".

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.

Standardised orthography

'). 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: (spelling variations like land/lond "land" suggest it may have had a rounded allophone before in some cases)
ā:
æ:
:
b:
c (except in the digraphs sc and cg): either or . The 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 ; word-finally after i it is always . 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: (the surface pronunciation of geminate ); occasionally also for
d:
ð/þ: and its allophone . 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.
e:
ē:
ea: ; after ċ and ġ, sometimes or
ēa: ; after ċ and ġ, sometimes
eo: ; after ċ and ġ, sometimes
ēo:
f: and its allophone
g: and its allophone ; and its allophone (when after n). The and pronunciations are sometimes written ġ or by modern editors. Before a consonant letter the pronunciation is always (word-initially) or (after a vowel). Word-finally after i it is always . 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: and its allophones . In the combinations hl, hr, hn and hw, the second consonant was certainly voiceless.
i:
ī:
ie: ; after ċ and ġ, sometimes
īe: ; after ċ and ġ, sometimes
k: (rarely used)
l: ; probably velarised (as in Modern English) when in coda position.
m:
n: and its allophone
o:
ō:
oe: (in dialects with this sound)
ōe: (in dialects with this sound)
p:
q: – Used before u representing the consonant , but rarely used, being rather a feature of Middle English. Old English preferred or in modern print cw.
r: ; the exact nature of r is not known. It may have been an alveolar approximant , as in most Modern English accents, an alveolar flap , or an alveolar trill .
s: and its allophone
sc: or occasionally
t:
u:
ū:
(wynn): , replaced in modern print by w to prevent confusion with p.
x: (but according to some authors, )
y:
:
z: . Rarely used as ts was usually used instead, for example bezt vs betst "best", pronounced .

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

Syntax

As a West Germanic language, Old English syntax has a great deal in common 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.

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 tō (lit.) God quoth him thus to that is God quoth thus to him

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.

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

AD 1100–1500 Middle English – The language of Chaucer.

AD 1500–1800 Early Modern English (or Renaissance English) – The language of Shakespeare.

AD 1800–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! We Gardena in geardagum,	Lo! We of Spear-Danes in days of yore,
^*	þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon	of the fame of the kings, 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 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.

References

External links

Old English language | Medieval languages

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