Characteristics of Old English (700-1150)

English in the earliest form is known as Old English. It was spoken by the early
Germanic settlers of Britain. These settlers were Jutes, Saxons and Angles and they
migrated to Britain in 5th and 6th century. The Old English period is also known as
the Anglo-Saxon period.
Old English was not a single uniform language. During the Old English period, the
variety of English used differed from one region to the other. There were dialectal
variations of Old English. The four principal dialects in Old English are- Kentish,
Northumbrian, Mercian and West Saxon. During the Old English period, West
Saxon was the most popular dialect and an extensive collection of texts is available
in this dialect. Mercian and Northumbrian, both spoken by the Angles, have certain
characteristics in common. The present day Modern Standard English is a direct
descendant of the Anglian dialect of the Midland.
The English language has undergone such change in the course of time that one
cannot read Old English without special study. The pronunciation of Old English
words commonly differ somewhat from that of their modern equivalents. The long
vowels have undergone considerable modification. Thus the OE word “stan” is the
same word as Modern English “stone”, but the vowel is different. A similarity is
apparent in “gan-go”, “ban-bone”, “rap-rope”, “bat-boat” etc. Other vowels have
likewise undergone changes as in “fot-foot”, “fyr-fire” etc. The identity of these
words with their modern descendants is readily apparent.
In pronunciation it has no ‘silent syllables’ and its spelling is a rough attempt at
being phonetic. Its letters represent its sounds fairly closely. Its word order is
relatively free.
Another fundamental feature that distinguishes OE from Middle English and
Modern Standard English is its grammar. In its grammar Old English resembles
modern German. Grammatically, OE is a synthetic or inflected language. In contrast,
both Middle and Modern English are analytic. In OE the relation of the words in a
sentence is formed by means of inflexions. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for
four cases in the singular and four cases in the plural. Modern Standard English
nouns have only one case ending- “s” or “es”. In addition, OE adjective has separate
forms for each of the three genders.
The OE nouns have three gender system –masculine, feminine and neuter. The
gender of the word is fixed arbitrarily and is not based in sex as in Modern English.
OE has two forms for its adjectives- the strong and the weak. The adjective is
inflected according to the Number, Case and Gender of the noun it qualifies in strong
and weak positions. The definite article is also inflected in OE. It has different forms
in the three genders and the choice of the definite article depends on the Case,
Number and Gender of the noun. Another peculiar feature of the OE, like the
Germanic languages, is the division of the verb into two groups- Strong verbs and
weak verbs, often known in Modern English, as regular and irregular verbs.. It has
only two tense forms- a present and a past.
OE vocabulary is almost purely Germanic and the foreign loan words are very few
as compared to the present day vocabulary. Old English is very resourceful in the
formation of words by means of prefixes and suffixes. It is possible to form more
than a hundred words from the same root. Some of the most commonly employed
suffixes were-‘-dom’, ‘-end’, ‘-ere’, ‘-wis’ , ‘-sum’ etc. This feature is most widely
used to form verbs. Another notable feature is the large number of self-explaining
compounds. Apart from pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and
the like, they express fundamental concepts like “mann-man”, “wif-wife”, “hus-
house” etc. But the fact remains that a considerable part of the OE vocabulary is
unfamiliar to the modern reader.
In conclusion, we can say, that the language of a past time is known by the quality
of its literature. The large and varied body of literature, in verse and prose gives
ample testimony to the universal competence, power and beauty of the OE language.