What is Old English?
Assuming that you're a native English speaker, it's probably fair to say that Old English is the foundation upon which your conception of reality is based, but what is Old English?
Languages are grouped into families and like families they have many branches with complicated relationships; Minna Sundberg’s illustrated language family tree is a fun way to visualise the relationships.
The majority of European languages belong to the Indo-European family and one of its main branches is the Germanic languages. Somewhat confusingly Germanic doesn't mean "German" and English is the most widely spoken Germanic language, and the most widely spoken language in the world (2 billion people by some estimates). The West Germanic branch includes, amongst several others, the English, German, and Dutch languages.
Old English is a part of the West Germanic branch and was the language used by the Anglo-Saxons, though of course they wouldn't have called it that. Old English grew out of dialects of the North Sea Germanic languages that settlers, invaders, and traders started to bring to Britain in the 5th century. Old English used to be referred to as "Anglo-Saxon" and older dictionaries etc. will use that term.
In the 11th century, after the Norman Conquest, Old English began its transformation into Middle English. In the 15th century it began to transform again into Early Modern English which by the 17th century had become Modern English, sometimes called New English.
So, people in England spoke Old English for some six hundred years. Nearly twice as long as they've been speaking what we now commonly refer to as English.
When learning to speak and read English as a child most of the words you learn are Old English in origin, meaning that many of the words you use today are Old English. Really? Yes! Here’s a small selection from the Swadesh list1 for Old English:
That extract shows that many words in Old English are immediately recognisable, especially when you’ve gained a basic grasp of Old English pronunciation, but many more are mysterious and inscrutable.
And it’s not just the vocabulary that is different, the grammar is more complex than English and this is where most people (unless they’re linguists!) run into trouble when attempting to learn Old English. I am most firmly in this group, but more on that in another post where I’ll explain how
and Ōsweald the talking bear are helping out…A good example of the very different vocabulary and grammar of Old English can be found in the the Wessex Gospels2, first produced around 990, in its version of the The Lord’s Prayer from chapter 6 verses 9 to 13 of Matthew’s gospel:
Faeder ūre, þu þe eart on heofenum, Si þin nama gehalgod. To-becume þin rīce. Geweorðe þin willa on eorþan, swa swa on heofenum. Urne dæghwamlican hlaf syle us to-dæg. And forgyf ūs ūre gyltas, swa swa we forgifað ūrum gyltendum. And ne gelǣde þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfle : Soðlice.
Over 600 years later, in 1611, the same passage in the King James Version reads:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Whilst it’s fairly easy to spot that heofenum is heaven, would you guess that rīce means kingdom or that costnunge means temptation?
The Norman Conquest in 1066 and the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s led to the loss of a great number Old English manuscripts, but still many hundreds survived and have been the subject of centuries of study by historians and linguists which means its vocabulary, grammar, and much else is very well understood.
We even have a pretty good idea of what Old English actually sounded like as explained below in brief by Simon Roper:
I’m not going to tell anyone they should learn Old English (I’m finding that hard enough myself) but I do think it’s a worthwhile exercise for many reasons.
Firstly, you’ll learn a lot about English and it will probably improve your written and spoken English. Secondly, being able to read even a fragment of a one thousand year old manuscript is quite thrilling, and being able to speak it however haltingly adds to the thrill. Thirdly, you’ll start to glimpse your history around you from understanding why as children we sing “four and twenty” blackbirds or why Wētwang is an apt place name for a village in Yorkshire 😀.
One of the things I will try to do with this publication is write about what I’ve found hard when learning Old English, partly to help me understand them and hopefully to help others trying to do the same.
Morris Swadesh was an American linguist who specialised in comparative and historical linguistics.
There are several surviving copies, one of of which is in the British Library.