Old English Language

September 2, 2009

Ebony JohnsonBrooke Harp

Origin• Old English is also known as

Anglo-Saxon• Spoken between the mid 5th

century and the mid 11th century• It is a West Germanic language

that is closely related to Old Frisian.

• Came From Germania

Who Were They ?

• “Anglo-Saxon” is the term applied to the English-speaking inhabitants of Britain

• Arrived in the island of Britain during the reign of Martain

• Created an extensive body of vernacular literature at a time when relatively little was being written in most of the other languages

Old English Dialects

• Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, and West Saxon

• Direct descendents in modern England

• Most Old English is in West Saxon• Contains spellings and vocabulary

from the Mercian and Northumbrian• West Saxon was the dominate

language

Different Groups of Old English

• North Germanic – Scandinavian languages, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese

• East Germanic – Gothic, which is now extinct but preserved in a fragmentary biblical translation from the 4th century

• West Germanic – includes High German, English, Dutch, Flemish and Frisian

The Alphabet

• Long vowels were marked with macrons

• Alternate forms of g and w were based on the letters used at the time of writing Old English

Runic Alphabet

The runic alphabet used to write Old English before the introduction of the Latin alphabet.

Stories In Old English

• Beowulf• The Dream of The Rood• The Wanderer• The Seafarer• The Battle of Maldon

They left us the translations associated with King Alfred's educational program, a large body of devotional works by such writers as Ælfric and Wulfstan

This was the first page of Beowulf in The Old English Print

The initial page of the Peterborough Chronicle, likely scribed around 1150, is one of the major sources of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Works Cited Page

• http://omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm]

• http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/

• http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/genintro.html