Old English

Old English is the language of the Germanic

inhabitants of England, dated from the time of their
settlement in the 5th century to the end of the 11th
century. It is also referred to as Anglo-Saxon, a name
given in contrast with the Old Saxon of the inhabitants
of northern Germany; these are two of the dialects of
West Germanic, along with Old Frisian, Old
Franconian, and Old High German. Sister families to
West Germanic are North Germanic, with Old Norse
(a.k.a. Old Icelandic) as its chief dialect, and East
Germanic, with Gothic as its chief (and only attested)
dialect. The Germanic parent language of these three
families, referred to as Proto-Germanic, is not attested
but may be reconstructed from evidence within the
families, such as provided by Old English texts.
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. In the course of time,
Old English underwent various changes such as the
loss of final syllables, which also led to simplification of
the morphology. Upon the conquest of England by the
Normans in 1066, numerous words came to be
adopted from French and, subsequently, also from
Latin.
 Alphabet and Pronunciation
The alphabet used to write our Old English texts was adopted from Latin,
which was introduced by Christian missionaries. Unfortunately, for the
beginning student, spelling was never fully standardized: instead the
alphabet, with continental values (sounds), was used by scribal monks to
spell words "phonetically" with the result that each dialect, with its different
sounds, was rendered differently -- and inconsistently, over time, due to
dialectal evolution and/or scribal differences. King Alfred did attempt to
regularize spelling in the 9th century, but by the 11th century continued
changes in pronunciation once again exerted their disruptive effects on
spelling. In modern transcriptions such as ours, editors often add diacritics
to signal vowel pronunciation, though seldom more than macrons (long
marks).

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Anglo-Saxon scribes added two consonants to the Latin alphabet to
render the th sounds: first the runic thorn (þ), and later eth (ð).
However, there was never a consistent distinction between them as
their modern IPA equivalents might suggest: different instances of the
same word might use þ in one place and ð in another. We follow the
practices of our sources in our textual transcriptions, but our dictionary
forms tend to standardize on either þ or ð -- mostly the latter, though it
depends on the word. To help reduce confusion, we sort these letters
indistinguishably, after T; the reader should not infer any particular
difference. Another added letter was the ligature ash (æ), used to
represent the broad vowel sound now rendered by 'a' in, e.g., the word
fast. A letter wynn was also added, to represent the English w sound,
but it looks so much like thorn that modern transcriptions replace it with
the more familiar 'w' to eliminate confusion.

The nature of non-standardized Anglo-Saxon spelling does offer

compensation: no letters were "silent" (i.e., all were pronounced), and
phonetic spelling helps identify and track dialectal differences through
time. While the latter is not always relevant to the beginning student, it
is nevertheless important to philologists and others interested in
dialects and the evolution of the early English language.
 Vocabulary
At first glance, Old English texts may look decidedly strange to a modern English speaker: many Old
English words are no longer used in modern English, and the inflectional structure was far more rich
than is true of its modern descendant. However, with small spelling differences and sometimes minor
meaning changes, many of the most common words in Old and modern English are the same. For
example, over 50 percent of the thousand most common words in Old English survive today -- and
more than 75 percent of the top hundred. Conversely, more than 80 percent of the thousand most
common words in modern English come from Old English. A few "teaser" examples appear below; our
Master Glossary or Base-Form Dictionary may be scanned for examples drawn from our texts, and any
modern English dictionary that includes etymologies will provide hundreds or thousands more.

Nouns: cynn 'kin', hand, god, man(n), word.

Pronouns: hē, ic 'I', mē, self, wē.
Verbs: beran 'bear', cuman 'come', dyde 'did', sittan 'sit', wæs 'was'.
Adjectives: fæst 'fast', gōd 'good', hālig 'holy', rīce 'rich', wīd 'wide'.
Adverbs: ær 'ere', alle 'all', nū 'now', tō 'too', ðǣr 'there'.
Prepositions: æfter 'after', for, in, on, under.
Articles: ðæt 'that', ðis 'this'.
Conjunctions: and, gif 'if'.

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 Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns

These categories of Old English words are declined according to case (nominative,
genitive, dative, accusative, or sometimes instrumental), number (singular, plural, or [for
pronouns] dual meaning 'two'), and gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter: inherent in
nouns, but inherited by adjectives and pronouns from the nouns they associate with). In
addition, some adjectives are inflected to distinguish comparative and superlative uses.

Adjectives and regular nouns are either "strong" or "weak" in declension. In addition,
irregular nouns belong to classes that reflect their earlier Germanic or even Indo-European
roots; these classes, or more to the point their progenitors, will not be stressed in our
lessons, but descriptions are found in the handbooks.

Pronouns are typically suppletive in their declension, meaning inflectional rules do not
account for many forms so each form must be memorized (as is true of modern English
I/me, you, he/she/it/his/her, etc.) Tables will be provided. Similarly, a few nouns and
adjectives are "indeclinable" and, again, some or all forms must be memorized

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 Sentence Structure

In theory, Old English was a "synthetic" language, meaning inflectional endings signaled
grammatical structure and word order was rather free, as for example in Latin; modern
English, by contrast, is an "analytic" language, meaning word order is much more
constrained (e.g., with clauses typically in Subject-Verb-Object order). But in practice,
actual word order in Old English prose is not too often very different from that of modern
English, with the chief differences being the positions of verbs (which might be moved,
e.g., to the end of a clause for emphasis) and occasionally prepositions (which might
become "postpositions"). In Old English verse, most bets are off: word order becomes
much more free, and word inflections & meaning become even more important for
deducing syntax. The same may be said, however, of modern English poetry, but in
these lessons we tend to translate Old English poetry as prose. Altogether, once a
modern English reader has mastered the common vocabulary and inflectional endings
of Old English, the barriers to text comprehension are substantially reduced.

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 Verbs
Old English verbs are conjugated according to person (1st, 2nd, or
3rd), number (singular or plural), tense (present or past/ preterite),
mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive or perhaps optative), etc.

Most verbs are either "strong" or "weak" in conjugation; there are

seven classes of strong verbs and three classes of weak verbs. A
few other verbs, including modals (e.g. for 'can', 'must'), belong to a
special category called "preterit-present," where different rules
apply, and yet others (e.g. for 'be', 'do', 'go') are "anomalous,"
meaning each form must be memorized (as is true of modern
English am/are/is, do/did, go/went, etc.)