Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats: The Ultimate Pet Diet The Complete Book of Cat Breeding Keep Your Cat Healthy the Natural Way Cat Treats Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt : A Midnight Louie Mystery American Shorthair Cats: Everything About Purchase, Care, Nutrition, Health Care, Behavior, and Showing (Complete Pet Owner's Manual) Candida Albican Yeast-Free Cookbook, The : How Good Nutrition Can Help Fight the Epidemic of Yeast-Related Diseases Searching for Candlestick Park Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food

Old English language

(Redirected from Anglo-Saxon language)

Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language spoken in England some 1000 years ago. It is a West Germanic language and was very similar to Old Norse. Unlike modern English, Old English was a language rich with morphological diversity, and was still pronounced basically as spelled. It maintained several distinct cases, such as the dative, genitive and instrumental, which are only marginally marked today.

Old English was not a static form. Its usage covered a period of some 700 or so years from approximately 450 AD to some time after the Norman invasion in 1066 when the language underwent a major and dramatic transition, during a period which is (generally) now referred to as Middle English. During the 700 years in which it was in use it assimilated some aspects of the indigenous pre-Celtic languages, some of the Celtic languages which it came into contact with, some of the two variants of the invading Scandinavian languages occupying and controlling the Danelaw, and Norman French in the wake of 1066.

Further, the influence of Latin on Old English should not be ignored. A large percentage of the educated and literate population, monks, clerics, etc, were competent in what was then the prevalent lingua franca. There were at least three notable periods of Latin influence. The first occurred before the ancestral Saxons left Europe for England. The second began when they were converted to Christianity; but the largest single transfer of Latin-based words occurred following the French conquest of 1066, after which an enormous number of Old French words entered the language, which were of course themselves derived ultimately from classical Latin. It is sometimes possible to roughly date 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.

The language was further altered by the transition away from the runic alphabet (also known as "futhark") to the Latin alphabet, which was also a significant factor in the developmental pressures brought to bear on the language. Words were spelled as they were pronounced; the silent letters of Modern English therefore did not often exist in Old English. Another side-effect of spelling words as they sounded was that spelling was extremely variable -- the spelling of a word would reflect differences in time, by region, and from author to author. Thus, for example, the word "and" could be spelled either "and" or "ond". Old English spelling is even more muddled than modern English spelling. Most students these days learn using normalized versions, and are only introduced to variant spellings after they have mastered the basics of the language.

The second major source of loanwords to Old English were the Scandinavian words introduced during the Viking raids of the ninth and tenth centuries. These tend to be everyday words and those which are concerned with particular administrative aspects of the Danelaw (that is, the area of land under Viking control, which included extensive holdings all along the eastern seaboard of England and Scotland). The Vikings spoke Old Norse, a language which is related to English in that they both derive from the same ancestral Germanic language. One theory holds that the presence of very similar words in both Old Norse and Old English helped accelerate the decline of case endings in Old English -- that is, if your Nordic neighbor says "horsu" and you say "horsa", you split the difference and just say "horse", reducing the ending to no more than a silent vowel.

The number of Celtic loanwords is of a much lower order than either Latin or Scandinavian. As few as twelve loanwords have been identified as being entirely secure. Out of all the known and suspected Celtic loanwords, most are names of geographical features, and especially rivers.

Dialects

After the process of unification of the diverse Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in 878 by Alfred the Great, there is a marked decline in the importance of regional dialects. This is not because they stopped existing: regional dialects continued even after that time, as evidenced both by the existence of Middle English dialects later on, and by common sense (people don't spontaneously develop new accents when there is a change of political power).

However, the bulk of the surviving documents from the Anglo-Saxon period are written in the dialect of Wessex, Alfred's home kingdom. It seems likely that, with consolidation of power it became necessary to standardize the language of government to reduce the difficulty of administering the remoter areas of the kingdom. As a result, paperwork was written in West Saxon. The Church was likewise affected, especially since Alfred initiated an ambitious program to translate religious materials into the vernacular. In order to retain his patronage and ensure the widest circulation of the translated materials, the monks and priests engaged in the program worked in his dialect. Alfred himself seems to have translated books out of Latin and into English, notably Pope Gregory the Great's treatise on administration, "Pastoral Care."

Due at least partially to the centralization of power, and to the Viking invasions, there is little or no written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred's unification.

Phonology and Standardized Orthography

All sound descriptions are in the SAMPA version of asciiized IPA.

Consonants

• b: [b]
• c: unpredictably, [k] or [tS]; the affricate 'c' is generally written with a diacritic by modern speakers for the sake of pronunciation, like so: 'č' or 'ç'
• cg: [dZ]
• d: [d]
• ð/þ: initially, finally, or between a vowel and an unvoiced consonant: [T]; between two vowel or between a vowel and a voiced consonant: [D]; in the modern orthography, all unvoiced 'ð'/'þ's use the thorn ('þ'), while all voiced ones use the edh ('ð')
• þþ: [T:]
• f: initially, finally, or between a vowel and an unvoiced consonant: [f]; between two vowel or between a vowel and a voiced consonant: [v]
• ff: [f:]
• g: unpredictably, [j], [g], or, only after an 'n', [dZ]; [j] and [dZ] are generally represented with the number three ('3') by modern speakers, representing yogh (Ȝ/ȝ)
• h: when initial or following a consonant: [h\]; following a back vowel or a diphthong beginning with a back vowel: [C]; following a front vowel or a diphthong beginning with a front vowel: [x]
• k: [k] (rarely used)
• l: [l]
• m: [m]
• n: when preceding a 'g': [N]; otherwise: [n]
• p: [p]
• q: [k] (used before a consonantal 'u') (rarely used)
• r: perhaps [r\`]
• s: initially, finally, or between a vowel and an unvoiced consonant: [s]; between two vowel or between a vowel and a voiced consonant: [z]
• sc: unpredictably, [sk] or [S]; however, [S] is by far the more common, while [sk] is used only in a few words, the most common of which being 'ascian' ('to ask')
• ss: [s:]
• t: [t]
• w/(wynn): [w]
• x: [ks]
• z: [z]

Doubled consonants have doubly long durations; 'þþ', 'ff', and 'ss' are shown above only to demonstrate that they cannot be voiced as their single constituents can be.

Vowels

• a: [a]
• á: [A]
• æ: [{]
• æ:: [{:]
• e: [E]
• é: [e]
• i: [I]
• í: [i]
• o: [Q]
• ó: [o]
• u: [U]
• ú: [u]
• y: [9]
• ý: [2]

• ea: [{ > @]
• éa: [{: > @]
• eo: [E > @]
• éo: [e > @]
• ie: [I > @]
• íe: [i > @]

Old English Grammar

Syntax

To further complicate the matter, prepositions may appear after their object, though they are not postpositions, as they may occur in front of the noun too, and usually do, e.g.:

 God cwæð him þus to
 (lit) God said him thus to
 i.e. God said thus to him

Verbs

Strong Verbs

The classes had the following distinguishing features to their infinitive stems:

Class I - i: + 1 consonant
Class II - e:o or u: + 1 consonant
Class III - Originally e + 2 consonants(This was no longer the case by the time of written Old English)
Class IV - e + 1 consonant(usually l or r, plus the verb brecan'to break')
Class V - e + 1 consonant (usually a stop or a fricative)
Class VI - a + 1 consonant
Class VII - No specific rule - 1st and 2nd have identical stems(e: or e:o), and the infinitive and the past participle also have the same stem.

The first preterite stem is used in the preterite tense, for the first and third persons singular. The second preterite stem is used for second person singular, and all persons in the plural (as well as the preterite subjunctive).

The third class went through so many sound changes that it was barely recognisable as a single class. The first was a process called 'breaking'. Before <h>, and <r> + another consonant, <æ> turned into <ea>, and <e> to <eo>. Also, before <l> + another consonant, the same happened to <æ>, but <e> remained unchanged (except before combination <lh>).

The second sound-change to affect it was the influence of palatal sounds <g>, <c>, and <sc>. These turned anteceding <e> and <æ> to <ie> and <ea>, respectively.

The third sound change turned <e> to <i>, <æ> to <a>, and <o> to <u> before nasals.

Altogether, this split the third class into five sub-classes:

a)e + two consonants(apart from clusters beginning with l)
b)eo + r or h + another consonant
c)e + l + another consonant
d)g, c, or sc + ie + two consonants
e)i + nasal + another consonant

Regular strong verbs were all declined roughly the same, with the main differences being in the stem vowel.

Weak Verbs

Linguistic trends have greatly favored weak verbs over the last 1200 years. In Old English, especially early on, strong verbs were the dominant form of verb. Today, there are many more weak verbs than strong verbs. Some verbs that were originally strong have become weak; most foreign verbs are adopted as weak verbs; and when verbs are made from nouns (eg "to scroll" or "to water") the resulting verb is weak. Additionally, weak verbs are easier to conjugate, since there are fewer different classes of them. In combination, these factors have drastically reduced the number of strong verbs, so that in modern English weak verbs are the dominant form (although occasionally a weak verb may turn into a strong verb through the process of analogy).

Atypical Verbs

Nouns

Nouns are also categorized by grammatical gender -- masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine and neuter words generally share their endings. Feminine words have their own subset of endings.

Furthermore, Old English nouns are divided as either strong or weak. Weak nouns have their own endings. In general, weak nouns are easier than strong nouns, since they had begun to lose their declensional system. However, there is a great deal of overlap between the various classes of noun: they are not totally distinct from one another. There are only a couple dozen endings in practice, so it's a lot easier than it sounds at first.

Here are the weak declension and the strong declension:

For the '-u / -' forms above, the '-u' is used with a root ending in a short syllable while roots ending in long ones are not inflected. For the '-a, -e' forms, either suffix is acceptable.

In addition, nouns which end in '-or' are unchanged as per usual in the uninflected forms, but the '-or' is removed and '-r' suffixed to the root for all suffixed forms. Here is an example of such a declension:

Adjectives

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Many of the forms above bear strong resemblances to their contemporary English language equivalents: for instance in the genitive case éower became "your", úre became "our", mín became "mine".

Prepositions

Prepositions (like our words by, for, with, because) often follow the word which they govern, in which case they are called postpositions. They are not declined.

See also Old English language (list of prepositions)

Front Mutation

A particular class of nouns contain an "i" in the dative singular and plural nominative accusative forms. Consequent upon front mutation, irregular singular/plural oppositions therefore occur such as fot and fet (our foot and feet), and mus and mys (our mouse and mice).

Front mutation is particularly important to the development of English, since it explains many of the changes in pronunciation that have taken place over the last 1200 years.

Old English examples

A sample of Old English can be found in the Beowulf article.

See also: Old English poetry, History of the Scots language, Declension in English

External links

• The Electronic Introduction to Old English

Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats: The Ultimate Pet Diet		The Complete Book of Cat Breeding		Keep Your Cat Healthy the Natural Way		Cat Treats
Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt : A Midnight Louie Mystery		American Shorthair Cats: Everything About Purchase, Care, Nutrition, Health Care, Behavior, and Showing (Complete Pet Owner's Manual)		Candida Albican Yeast-Free Cookbook, The : How Good Nutrition Can Help Fight the Epidemic of Yeast-Related Diseases		Searching for Candlestick Park
Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food