CHARACTERISTICS OF OLD ENGLISH

Introduction:

Old English is an old form of the English language that was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons and
their descendants in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least
the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. An Examination of the words in an Old English
dictionary shows that about 85 percent of them are no longer in use.
The English Language has undergone so many changes that one cannot read Old English
without special study. Following are some important characteristics of Old English.

Spelling and Pronunciation:

Spellings and Pronunciation of Old English words commonly differs somewhat from that
of their modern equivalents. In Old English the vowels were different from that of Modern
English. Old English had six simple vowels, spelled a, , i, o, u and y, and probably a seventh,
spelled ie. It also had two diphthongs; ea and eo. Each of these sounds came in short and long
versions.
Long vowels are always marked with macrons (e.g. ) in modern editions and also in
some scholarly editions. However, vowels are never so marked in Old English manuscripts.
Long vowels in particular have undergone considerable modification. The Old English
word stn is the same word as Modern English stone. Some other examples are: rp
rope, bt boat.
Other vowels have also undergone some changes for example; changes
in ft (foot), cne (keen), metan (mete), but the identity of these words with their modern
descendants is still readily apparent.
There was a difference of spellings in Old English as compared to Modern English. Old
English made use of two characters to represent the sound of th: and , as in the words wi
(with) or (then). Old English represented the sounds of sh by sc, as in scap (sheep) or scotan
(shoot), and the sound of k by c, as in cynn (kin) or nacod (naked).

Vocabulary:
The vocabulary of Old English is almost purely Germanic. A large part of this vocabulary,
moreover has disappeared from the language. When the Norman Conquest brought French into
England as the language of the higher classes, much of the Old English vocabulary appropriate to
literature and learning died out and was displaced later by words borrowed from French and
Latin. Many of these words were inherited by English together with some other Indo-European
languages from the same common source.
Old English New English Latin Russian
modor mother mater
niht night nox
neowe new novus
beran bear ferre
Some words were inherited by English and other Germanic languages from the same
common Germanic source.

Old English New English German

eorQe earth Erde
land land Land

Grammar:
One of the important feature of the Old English that distinguishes it from Modern English
is of its grammar. Inflectional languages falls into two classes: synthetic and analytic. A
synthetic language is one which indicates the relation of words is a sentence largely my means of
inflections while the languages which make extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs and
depend upon word order to show other relationships are known as analytic languages. Modern
English is an analytic language and Old English is a synthetic language. Old English resembles
Modern German in its grammar. Old English inflections can be illustrated as below:

The Noun:

The inflection of the Old English noun indicates distinctions of number (singular
and plural) and case. There are four main grammatical cases in Old English, known by the Latin
terms; Nominative, Accusative, Genitive and Dative. The Nominative is used for the Subject, the
Accusative is used for the Direct Object, the Genitive is used to express possession and the
Dative is used for the Indirect Object.Old English nouns had grammatical gender, singular and
plural number, and were also classified as "strong" or "weak" according to the distinctness of
their inflectional endings.
Example:

Singular

Nominative stn gief-u hunt-a

Accusative stn gief-e hunt-an
Genitive stn-es gief-e hunt-an
Dative stn-e gief-e hunt-an
Plural
Nominative stn-as gief-a hunt-an
Accusative stn-as gief-a hunt-an
Genitive stn-a gief-a hunt-ena
Dative stn-um gief-um hunt-um
It can be seen from these examples that the inflection of the noun was much more elaborate in
Old English than it is today.

Grammatical Gender:

The gender of Old English is not dependent upon considerations of sex. Old
English nouns belong to one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. stn is
masculine, cwn queen is feminine and wf wife is a neuter.
 The Adjective:

One of the features that distinguish Germanic languages is the use of two sets of
declension for adjectives; one the strong declension used with nouns when not accompanied by a
definite article or similar word and the other the weak declension, used when the noun is
preceded by such a word. Same is the case with the Old English for example we have in Old
English gd mann (good man) and s gda mann (the good man). We can have another example;
the good kings, as opposed toGood kings, or the kings are good.

The Definite Article:

Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article just as in German Language
which is its sister language of today. Following is an example of the definite article in Old
English:
Masculine Feminine Neutral
Nominative s so t

The ordinary meaning of s, so, t is the, the word is really a demonstrative pronoun and
survives in the Modern English demonstrative that.

The Personal Pronoun:

In Old English Personal pronouns had first, second and third person forms; singular,
dual, and plural numbers and were declined according to the standard cases i.e. nominative,
accusative, genitive, and dative.

Singular Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

1st person ic m mn m
2nd person n
3rd person masculine. h hine his him
3rd person feminine. ho he hire hire
3rd person neutral. hit hit his him

In the nominative case, the Old English forms are; ic ("I"), ("you"
singular), h ("he"), ho ("she"), hit ("it"), we ("we"), g ("you" plural), hie ("they"). Old English
not only shows having tendency in distinctive forms for practically all genders, persons and
cases but also in preserving in addition to the ordinary two numbers, singular and plural and a set
of forms for two people or two things the dual number for example in the nominative case,
wit (we two).

The Verb:
 Old English verbs have only two tenses: present and past. The present tense was also
used for the future, while the past perfect was signalled by the past tense with the
adverb r formerly: Ic lufode I loved, Ic lufode r I had loved. However, Old English verbs
also have three moods: the Indicative, used for statements of fact (Ilove him), the Imperative,
used for commands (Love me!), and the Subjunctive, used for hypothetical statements (If
I loved you) and reported speech (He said he loved me).
A peculiar feature of the Germanic Languages was the division of the verb into two great
classes, the weak and the strong, often known in Modern English as regular and irregular
verbs, the weak verbs are those that require 'ed' at the end but the vowel remain same, and strong
verbs are those in which vowel is changed or modified. Example of weak verb is walk, walked,
walked and the example of strong verb is sing, sang, sung.

Self-explaining Compounds:

These are the compound words that are formed by combining two individual words
having individual meanings, to form one new word, such as, railroad, steamboat and drying room
etc. in Old English many words were formed on this pattern, Such as word lohtft meaning
lamp (loht=light + ft = vessel). Similarly medu-heall(mead-hall), dgred(dawn). As a result of
this pattern old English seemed to never have been at a loss for a word.

Prefixes and Suffixes:

A part of the flexibility of the Old English vocabulary comes from the generous
use made of prefixes and suffixes to form new words from old words or to modify or extend the
root idea. In this respect it also resembles modern German. Some examples of Suffixes are ig,
full, las, lice, nes and ung. Some adjective suffixes are: sum (wynsum) and wis (rihtwis).
Some prefixes that are frequently used in Old English are; _, be_, for_, fore_, ge_, mis_,
of_, ofer_, etc. Thus with the help of prefix, the verb 'settan'(to set) can become 'settan'(place),
besettan(appoint) etc.

Conclusion:
Old English Language has many differences as compared to the Modern English
Language. The main differences which we noticed between Old and Modern English concern
spelling and pronunciation, the vocabulary and the grammar.