Old English language - Germanic origins

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). Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of approximately 700 years – from the Anglo-Saxon migrations which created England in the fi ...

Including:

• Old English language - Germanic origins
• Old English language - Latin influence
• Old English language - Viking influence
• Old English language - Celtic influence
• Old English language - Dialects
• Old English language - Phonology
• Old English language - Standardised orthography
• Old English language - The alphabet
• Old English language - Syntax
• Old English language - Morphology
• Old English language - Sample text

Read more here: » Old English language: Encyclopedia - Old English language

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. Though many of these links with the other Germanic languages have since been obscured by later linguistic inf ...

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Old English language, Old English language - Germanic origins, Old English language - Latin influence, Old English language - Viking influence, Old English language - Celtic influence, Old English language - Dialects, Old English language - Phonology, Old English language - Standardised orthography, Old English language - The alphabet, Old English language - Syntax, Old English language - Morphology, Old English language - Sample text

Read more here: » Old English language: Encyclopedia II - Old English language - Germanic origins

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. ...

See also:

Old English language, Old English language - Germanic origins, Old English language - Latin influence, Old English language - Viking influence, Old English language - Celtic influence, Old English language - Dialects, Old English language - Phonology, Old English language - Standardised orthography, Old English language - The alphabet, Old English language - Syntax, Old English language - Morphology, Old English language - Sample text

Read more here: » Old English language: Encyclopedia II - Old English language - Standardised orthography

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 'i ...

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Old English language, Old English language - Germanic origins, Old English language - Latin influence, Old English language - Viking influence, Old English language - Celtic influence, Old English language - Dialects, Old English language - Phonology, Old English language - Standardised orthography, Old English language - The alphabet, Old English language - Syntax, Old English language - Morphology, Old English language - Sample text

Read more here: » Old English language: Encyclopedia II - Old English language - Syntax

The inventory of Old English surface phones, as usually reconstructed, is as follows. The sounds marked in parentheses are allophones: [dʒ] is an allophone of /j/ occurring after /n/ and when geminated [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ occurring before ...

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Old English language, Old English language - Germanic origins, Old English language - Latin influence, Old English language - Viking influence, Old English language - Celtic influence, Old English language - Dialects, Old English language - Phonology, Old English language - Standardised orthography, Old English language - The alphabet, Old English language - Syntax, Old English language - Morphology, Old English language - Sample text

Read more here: » Old English language: Encyclopedia II - Old English language - Phonology

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 t ...

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Old English language, Old English language - Germanic origins, Old English language - Latin influence, Old English language - Viking influence, Old English language - Celtic influence, Old English language - Dialects, Old English language - Phonology, Old English language - Standardised orthography, Old English language - The alphabet, Old English language - Syntax, Old English language - Morphology, Old English language - Sample text

Read more here: » Old English language: Encyclopedia II - Old English language - Latin influence

To further complicate matters, Old English was rich in dialect forms. The four main dialect forms of Old English were Mercian, Northumbrian (known collectively as Anglian), Kentish, 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 success ...

See also:

Old English language, Old English language - Germanic origins, Old English language - Latin influence, Old English language - Viking influence, Old English language - Celtic influence, Old English language - Dialects, Old English language - Phonology, Old English language - Standardised orthography, Old English language - The alphabet, Old English language - Syntax, Old English language - Morphology, Old English language - Sample text

Read more here: » Old English language: Encyclopedia II - Old English language - Dialects