Old English

Abstract

The West Germanic language brought to England from northwestern Germany and southern Denmark in the early 5th century ce is known as Old English (sometimes Anglo-Saxon). All dates for periods in English are somewhat arbitrary, since there was no abrupt shift from one language to another at any time. However, by 1100 or 1150, enough changes had accumulated in the language that it would have been essentially a foreign language to the first speakers of English. The first English writings in Old English do not appear until c. 700, after missionaries from the Irish and Roman churches taught the English to write. The decision of early English religious leaders and kings to translate Christian writings into the vernacular from Latin to spread Christian teaching and to use traditional Germanic heroic poetry to present saints as heroes led to the preservation of extensive English records at an earlier date than with most European languages. Literary remains from Old English include poetry, most famously the epic Beowulf, as well as extensive prose writings including translations from the Vulgate Bible, homilies, lives of saints, letters between ecclesiastics, wills, charters, translations of medical and scientific treatises from Latin, rules for members of religious orders, and the first grammar of Latin written in a European language. Old English was already differentiated from its close relatives on the Continent by the time of the earliest writings by phonological and morphological changes, and the four broad dialects that can be recognized in these early writings probably had their seeds in differences in the language of the first Germanic migrants. One question of extensive current debate is the extent to which the characteristics of Old English are due to contact with the speakers of other languages, particularly speakers of Celtic languages who had to learn the language of their conquerors, and the Old Norse speakers who began settling in parts of England from the second half of the 9th century. Extensive and obvious changes took place in the phonology and morphology of the language between the early and late Old English periods, and less noticeable changes, particularly in the frequency of constructions, also took place to the syntax. The study of these changes in frequency, which herald the loss of certain constructions during the Early Middle English period, have become much easier to carry out with the development of digital resources.