Old English Period

The earliest records of the history of the British Isles were left by the
Romans at about 43 AD after they had invaded Britain. The records suggest that
the earliest settlers were Celts. The Romans held a part of the British Isles, up to
Hadrian’s Wall, up until about 449 AD. Their presence left a huge influence on
British culture. The British language was also drastically changed, and many
Latin words were incorporated into the English language (). Some towns still
bare Roman names (e.g. all towns beginning with –caster or –chester). Once the
Romans left the British Isles, around 450 AD, the settlements in Britain became
vulnerable to foreign invaders such as the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. This
signified the beginning of the post-Roman, Old English Period, which lasted
until the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066. The British Isles were, time and
time again, attacked and invaded by foreign forces. Each time the invaders
would settle on the Isles they would bring part of their culture and their
language.
The language of the native Celtic tribes, which has been spoken on the
Isles before the Roman conquest, has over time developed into other languages
such as Welsh, Gaelic (spoken in some parts of the Scottish Highlands) and Erse
(spoken in Ireland). The Celtic language has surprisingly little influence on
modern English language. There is only a small number of words from the
original Celtic British that is mostly found in regional dialects (e.g. dunn = grey;
carr = rock; bannock = loaf of bread), names of rivers (e.g. Thames, Avon =
river) and towns (e.g. Dover = water; Eccles = church). The reason for this is
probably because the Celtic tribes didn’t have a common language, but many
different dialects scattered throughout the divided settlements.
Latin, on the other hand, had much more influence on the English
language, not just in the Old English period, but throughout history. With the
Roman conquest, the Celts in modern day England have either migrated north,
into the Highlands, or west, to Wales, or they had been incorporated into the
Roman Empire (usually via slavery or marriage). Latin, due to its unified
grammar and lack of different dialects, has quickly suppressed many of the
native words. New words that were introduced were to do with plants, animals,
food and drink (e.g. plante = plant; win = wine; disc = dish; candel = candle).
Other introduced words were buildings and settlements (wall, city, castle,
village, street, mill), military and legal institutions (camp, legion, decree),
commerce (trade, pound, copper, gem, inch) and religion (Mass, minster, pope,
priest, school, shrine). After the Roman Empire left the British Isles, Latin did
not immediately take root. It was with the arrival of Christian missionaries when
Latin became used more often, at least in legal and Church documents.
During the 5th century AD, the Roman Empire was facing a terminal
decline. It was repeatedly attacked by barbarians and could not afford to send
any more soldiers to it’s northern outposts such as Brittania. The barbarian
Germanic tribes have also started attacking Britain that was left by the Romans
to fend for itself. The Germanic tribes that invaded Britain were the Angles,
Saxons and Jutes, who originally come from modern day Denmark and
Germany. According to the monk and historian, Bede, the Jutes settled in the
area of present day Kent, the Saxons occupied and named Essex, Sussex and an
ancient kingdom, Wessex, while the Angles settled in Suffolk and Norfolk.
Gradually seven kingdoms emerged Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex,
Sussex, Wessex and Kent. During this period various Germanic dialects were
dominant in the area that covers today’s England, while the Celts were pushed
further back west, to Wales, and north, across the abandoned Hadrian’s Wall.
The Germanic languages spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, although similar with
one another, were mutually intelligible. There were four main groups, however,
which could group together some of the dialects. They were Northumbrian,
Kentish, Mercian and West Saxon. Together these dialects are referred to as Old
English.
The Old English languages were not the main literary languages of this
period. Although the Roman Empire has fallen, Latin was still the medium with
which scholars and catholic priests communicated at the time. This process
began in Britain in Kent, in 597, by a group of monks, led by St Augustine. The
monks and missionaries were the first to constitute a literate order. Thanks to
them we now have manuscripts of Old English texts. The monks would
sometimes make dictionaries in which they would give a Latin term an Old
English equivalent. Most of these manuscripts originate from Wessex, during
the reign of Alfred the Great (871. – 899.), and because of that, they are mostly
written in the West Saxon dialect.
Despite the Anglo-Saxon dialects being so widespread, they did not
significantly take root as a literary language of the Old English period. This title
went to Latin. It was not, however, due to Roman conquests, which have left
only a few words of Vulgar Latin spoken by the commoners, but it was because
of the missionaries from Rome and Ireland. The Roman and Irish model of
Christianity had some rivalry at first, but the Roman model survived. However,
its British capital was not in London, but in Canterbury, the capital of Kent. At
first the vocabulary had a lot to do with the Church, but many other words were
introduced, most of which have survived up until today.
The next major influence on England, and therefore the English language,
was Norse. During the middle of the 9th century the Vikings, from Denmark and
Norway, conquered Northumbria and East Anglia, and founded their own
territory called Danelaw. Meanwhile in the land of Wessex, king Alfred had
begun a literary transit from Latin to English. This was impossible before
because due to the influence of the monasteries, where Latin was still dominant,
but due to the Viking attacks less foreign scholars were arriving there and, in
turn, less and less local scholars knew Latin. Taking this into account Alfred
established court schools which taught Old English reading and writing. It is at
this time that Anglo-Saxon literature had truly begun.
The effect of the Danes on English at the time is also very distinctive.
Because the Anglo-Saxon and Danish are both Germanic languages the word
exchange was much more fluent. Both of them had common or, at least, similar
words (mother, father, summer, winter, house, tree, egg, land, grass, come, ride,
see, think, will…). Others were simply assimilated into English, such as: law,
leg, skin, skull, sky (pretty much all words with the voice “sk”), knife, Thursday
(named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder). In Old English singular and plural
pronouns sounded the same (he, hiere, him) and the difference could only be
told out of context. It was thanks to the Danes that they differ in English today
(they, their, them). Some of the adjectives from Danish are weak, low, happy,
flat, ugly, wrong; among the verbs there are want, call, cut, die, lift, take. An
interesting aspect is that some words continued to coexist with one another, even
though the meaning of some might have changed over time (English – Danish:
shirt – skirt; no – nay; sit – seat; rear – raise; blossom – bloom). The word
window is also Scandinavian (vindauga) meaning wind-eye has replaced the Old
English eye-thril (eye-hole). One of the biggest influences is the replacement of
the Old English word sindon with to be. The form are is certainly of
Scandinavian origin. Many English towns bear Scandinavian names, such as
towns ending with –by (town, village), Grimsby, Nasbey, Whitby and many
others ending with –thorpe (farm), -thwaite (clearing), -toft (homestead).
Despite the many similarities between Old English and Modern English,
they are still vastly different from each other. The Old English alphabet, for
example, has no capital letters. Several letters were different shape and some of
the modern letters weren’t yet introduced (q, x and z were almost never used).

Other letters were omitted over time ( , and ) The spelling at the time
wasn’t fixed, so a scribe would simply write down a word the way he heard it,
thus creating variations. These were some of the most notable differences
between Old English and Modern English:
- the letter j was usually written as
- the letter v was written as f
- the letters q, x and z
- the letter w at the time still had no quality substitute so it was written
as the runic symbol ‘wynn’
- there used to be a vowel called ‘ash’ which was written as . It was a
vowel between the voices [a] and [e], much like the German umlaut

- the letters (thorn) and (that) were introduced into Old English
through the runic alphabet, and are probably Irish in origin. They
similar and, usually, interchangeable voices, variations of the modern
 th. The letter is pronounced like th in ‘thorn’, and is pronounced
like th in ‘that’ (hence the names)
- the numbers were written in Roman numerals

Having all that in mind the Old English alphabet should look like this:

No one is certain how exactly Old English sounded like, but there are a
few ways to determine some aspects of it. One of them is via alphabetical logic.
Many missionaries tried to adapt the Roman alphabet to Old English and doing
so in a logical way. They would try to use matching Roman letters whenever
possible and only invented new ones when they could not find an appropriate
substitute. Also, the scribes at the time wrote words the way they heard them, so
there probably aren’t any silent letters. Another way to determine the way Old
English was spoken is comparative reconstruction. This method relies on
similarities between Old English and other stages of the English language
historians know more about. Some sounds in Modern English should be similar
to those in Old English if they both have similar consonants. However, this none
of these methods are completely accurate. Some of the meanings and contexts in
which the words are used might have changed over time. For example the Old
English word deor was used to refer to any wild animal, not like the word it has
changed into over time, ‘deer’, which indicates a single species.
The grammar in Old English is in some places very similar to today’s
grammar. Sometimes even the word order is the same as today. The biggest
difference in grammar is the verb placement in a clause. While the position of
the verb in Modern English is pretty much fixed, in Old English the position of
the verb could be placed in different parts of the clause, giving it a new
meaning. The word a sentence ended with, in Old English, determined the
manner in which it was said. This is called inflection.
A great challenge for the scholars and scribes was to create a written form
for a language that has been spoken for over 400 years. The ones that glossed
the Latin words in Old English would use a kind of combination between the
Latin alphabet and the runic alphabet used by some Germanic tribes. Runes
were straight sided symbols easy to carve in rock, gold or wood. They were
usually used on artifacts or monuments. Evidence of this is that the word book
originates from the Old English word boc, which also means ‘beech’, and the
word write, coming from the word writan, can mean ‘scratch’ as well. One of
the most famous runic writings is on the Ruthwell Cross in Dumfresshire. By the
time of king Alfred the Latin alphabet with a few runic additions had been
adopted by most writers. After choosing the spelling system, that is much like
the pronunciation, Alfred, his scholars and their successors began translating
Latin texts as well as creating their own. They wrote down laws, history,
philosophy, medical works, sermons, religious and secular poetry. Although
most scribes were anonymous, like the author of the epic Beowulf, some were
known, such as King Alfred, Caedmon, Cynewulf and Aetric “the Grammarian”.
Thanks to these texts not only do we have an abundance of great historical
knowledge, but we also have insight into the development of the English
language throughout a period of six centuries.
There was one more invasion which would play a major part in the
forming of Modern English and also mark the end of the Old English period and
the beginning of the Middle English period. It was the Norman conquest of
1066. led by William the Conqueror. When the Normans had arrived on the
shores of Britain they found a combination of Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon and
Scandinavian languages, upon which they, over time, added their own and
helped form the English language we know today.
References:

- “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language” – David

Crystal
- “A Brief History of the Old English Language” – C. E. Eckersley and
J. M. Eckersly
- “Inventing English – a Portable History of the Language” – Seth Lerer