NAGONGERA CAMPUS

FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE
COURSE NAME. HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGAUGE
COURSE CODE. 2204
LECTURERS NAME. MS.REBECCA ACEN ELYAK.
QUESTIONS.IN DETAILS DISCUSS THE OLD ENGLISH PERIODS AND CHANGES THAT
WERE INVOLVED IN IT.

NAMES REGISTRATION NUMBER

OPIO CHRISPIN BU/UP/2020/0847
LEAH BERNADETTE BU/UP/2020/2833
AWATI NORAH PATIENCE BU/UP/2020/0814
TABU FRANCIS BU/UP/2020/2838
NAMOE AMALIA BU/UP/2020/2837
KADONDI BRIDGET BU/UP/2020/2557
The old English period extends from AD 450 to AD 1150 and is further divided into early old English and
late English periods. Old English or Anglo Saxon periods covers the span of time from the earliest written
records and documents about the end of the 7th century to the beginning of 12th century.

Old English was almost pure, unmixed language with very little foreign element in it.

Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest recorded form of the English language. It is spoken in England
in early middle ages.

Old English was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5 th century. And the first old
English literary works date from the mid mid- 7th century. After Norman Conquest of 1066, English was
replaced for a time by Anglo-Norman (a relative of French) as the language of upper classes. This is also
regarded as the end of the old English era. Since during this period, the English language was heavily
influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known as middle in England and early scots in
Scotland. Old English is also known as the earliest form of the English language. It was spoken and
written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from 450 CE until c.1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades
after the Norman conquest of 1066).

According to Toronto university’s dictionary of old English corpus, the entire surviving body of old
English material from 600 to 1150 consists of only 3,037 texts (excluding manuscripts with minor
variants), amounting to a mere three million words. A single prolific modern author easily exceeds this
total. Charles Dicken’s fiction, for example, amount to over four million words. While three million
words is not a great deal of data for period in linguistic history extending over five centuries, it is enough
to allow us make a confident description of the linguistic character of old English and to plot its evolution
into middle English. The development is most evident in vocabulary and grammar.

Characteristics of old English according to

Pronunciations

The old most significant feature of old English is its pronunciation of words differing from the ones that
exist today. The long vowels in particular have gone a considerable modification for stance in old English
Stan means stone in modern English.

In old English there are seven vowels that is to say a,e,i,o,u,y and the digraph “ae” and all these seven
vowels represents either short or long sounds. The old English consonants have mostly the same sound as
modern English. The old English script does not have the letter v, f..
The old english mostly used macrons`( a horizontal bar over the top of a vowel) to indicate vowel length.

A short vowel is one without a macron and a long vowel is one with a macron foreaxmple the word
“short” the vowel “o” sound is in contact and similar to modern English and| I|

A long vowel includes,” a” forissntance in the word father another example is of long vowel is| e| e.g bet

Most English consonants are pronounced the same way as their modern English eqivalents forexample
letter “c” sound is represented in modern English by “k” as the sibilant for “ch”

Although some of the letters were written differently the alphabet is similar to the one of today except
that <ae>,a vowel pronounced as in cat and the consonants <p> and Ꝺ were used interchangeably for the
voiced and unvoiced sounds now written as <th> in words like “them” is voiced and theme is unvoiced.

The majpr difference in the old English is that old English had no silent letters forexample the word
“knight” would be pronounced with its k altogether.

The old English also had differences in spelling which baffle the modern readers.

GRAMMAR IN OLD ENGLISH.

The second characteristic feature of old English which is fundamental and distinguishes it from the
modern English, is its grammar. It’s an inflected language though not so highly as classical as the
Sanskrit, Latin and Greek.

Old English indicates the relation of words in a sentence largely by means of inflections.

Old English nouns have two numbers singular and plural and it also has three genders, masculine,
feminine and neuter. The system of gender is irrational because it’s not dependent upon the consideration
of sex for example Stan (stone is masculine.in modern English all male are said to be masculine, females
feminine and inanimate things neuter.

The old English is more synthetic language than present day English inthat the grammatical functions in a
sentence is signalled through word order as analytic language e.g in present day English the word king
contains only two main forms that is singular the king and plural kings.

Another feature of old English is that the adjectives like nouns have gender. The adjective takes the
gender of the noun with which its associated.in old English the noun gets inflected according to its
number and its case forexample feminine nouns such as cwen meant queen and neuter such as wif meant
woman

In contrast to modern English, old English had three genders,

Masculine e.g grandfather,father,son ,auncle etc

Feminine.e.g woman,mother,aunt.

Neuter.e.g trees,pens,mango,books.

The above genders were used in the nouns, pronouns and adjectives through inflection into a case.

Old English had a greater proportion of strong verbs sometimes called irregular verbs in the contemporary
grammars than the modern English. Many verbs that were strong in old English are weak or regular verbs
in modern English e.g old English helpnan was present infinitive of the verb help,healp,singular
hulphon,past plural holpen and in modern English it would simply change from help to helped.

The old English involved five cases such as the nominative,the genitive,the dative,accusative and the
instrumental.

Nominative

This in the old English nouns,pronouns and adjectives can all take the nominative case.if the man noun is
in the nominative,the pronouns and adjectives grammatically related to the noun.

Foreample Alfred is my name,Alfred is the subject of the sentence so Alfred is the nominative case.

The genitive case.

This is the case of the possessor.this has has left its marks in modern English as the possessive adjective
forms such as theirs,ours,their etc

Forexample that’s our book.

The dative

Here are few examples of old English

Knight in modern English now is night.

Stan now stone.

Reference

Https, //en.m.wikipedia.org>

https.//www.thoughco.com>