Old English
| Old English | |
|---|---|
| Anglo-Saxon | |
| Ænglisc, Englisc, Anglisc | |
 | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈæŋliʃ] |
| Region | England (except the extreme south-west and north-west), southern and eastern Scotland, and the eastern fringes of modern Wales. |
| Era | mostly developed into Middle English and Early Scots by the 13th century |
| Dialects | |
| Runic, later Latin (Old English alphabet). | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | ang |
| ISO 639-3 | ang |
| ISO 639-6 | ango |
| Glottolog | olde1238[1] |
The Old English language, often called Anglo-Saxon, was spoken in England from 450 AD to 1100 AD. It was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons who came to England from what is now Germany and Denmark. Different kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England spoke different dialects but a western dialect became the main literary version.
Old English is very different from Modern English; it has many more Germanic words. In early centuries it was rarely written down, and when written it was in runes. After the 9th century, the Latin alphabet was used more. Old English grammar is difficult, with complex inflections, and close to Old German. Latin was used by churchmen like the venerable Bede. Old English gradually turned into Middle English after the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Beowulf is written in Old English in an alphabetic script.
| language | wordlist | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | apple | path | eat | tide | make | child | give | day |
| Old English | æppel | pæþ | etan | tid | macian | cild | giefan | dæg |
| German | Apfel | Pfad | essen | Zeit | machen | Kind | geben | Tag |
Other websites[change | change source]
- Old English -Citizendium
This short article about the United Kingdom can be made longer. You can help Wikipedia by adding to it. |
Old English edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Old English". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
