The dialects of Old English

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1. The dialects of Old English

It is common to divide England into four dialect areas for the Old English period. First of all note that by England that part of mainland Britain is meant which does not include Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. These three areas were Celtic from the time of the arrival of the Celts some number of centuries BC and remained so well into the Middle English period.

The dialect areas of England can be traced back quite clearly to the Germanic tribes which came and settled in Britain from the middle of the 5th century onwards. There were basically three tribal groups among the earlier settlers in England: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. The Angles came from the area of Angeln (roughly the Schleswig-Holstein of today), the Saxons from the area of east and central Lower Saxony and the Jutes from the Jutland peninsula which forms west Denmark today. The correlation between original tribe and later English dialect is as follows:

Germanic tribes and regions in England where they mainly settled

Saxons -- South of the Thames (West Saxon area) Angles -- Middle and Northern England (Mercia and Northumbria), including lowland Scotland Jutes -- South-East of England (Kent)

Of these three groups the most important are the Saxons as they established themselves as the politically dominant force in the Old English period. A number of factors contributed to this not least the strong position of the West Saxon kings, chief among these being Alfred (late 9th century). The West Saxon dialect was also strongest in the scriptorias (i.e. those places where manuscripts were copied and/or written originally) so that for written communication West Saxon was the natural choice.

Old English Dialects.

In the 5th century AD, when first Germanic colonists made landfall in England, there was no Old English. All tribes arriving in the British Isles, spoke their own dialects, similar to each other but still variable. By the end of the century, however, when tribes turned into kingdoms, tribal speech became dialects. Three main ethnic groups which arrived in England spoke three dialects which got names of the kingdoms which were established by them. They were West Saxon (in Wessex, Essex), Northumbrian (in East Angeland), and Kentish (in Kent). West Saxon also includes the Mersian variety which had several slight differences in morphology and syntax, and more loanwords from Celtic, as Mersia was situated next to Wales with its Celtic population.

Dialects existed in kingdoms until they were independent. The richest literature was written in Wessex, but there are samples of documents also from Northumbria, Kent and Mersia, including poetry. After Aelfred unified all lands in 878, the dialects slowly integrated into one common tongue. But still even in Middle English period dialects were preserved, though their areas were changed somehow. And the Northumbrian dialect became a separate language - Scots, speaking nowadays in Lowland Scotland.

The most interesting of the dialects of Old English was Northern (or Nothumbrian). First of all it reflected the ancient speech of Angles, which is still poorly studied (unlike the Old Saxon language). Another interesting moment is that Northumbrian collected a rather wide vocabulary of borrowed words, mainly from Old Scandinavian, which really influenced Northern English greatly, and from Celtic. Several words from Northumbrian have some origin which is still unknown - they can be relics of the ancient population of the British Isles.

The Northumbrian grammar peculiarities are also interesting for an English speaker and especially for those who are learning the Scots language. Here are the main characteristic features of the Northumbrian dialect.

2. Beowulf

Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. This work of Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving manuscript dating to circa 1010. At 3183 lines, it is notable for its length. It has risen to national epic status in England.

In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, who is attacking the Danish mead hall called Heorot and its inhabitants; Grendel's mother; and, later in life after returning to Geatland and becoming a king, an unnamed dragon. He is mortally wounded in the final battle, and after his death he is buried in a barrow in Geatland by his retaine. The events described in the poem take place in the late 5th century and during the 6th century after the Anglo-Saxons had begun their migration and settlement in England, and before it had ended, a time when the Saxons were either newly arrived or in close contact with their fellow Germanic kinsmen in Scandinavia and Northern Germany. It has been suggested that Beowulf was first composed in the 7th century.

The poem deals with legends, i.e., it was composed for entertainment and does not separate between fictional elements and real historic events, such as the raid by King Hygelac into Frisia, ca. 516. Scholars generally agree that many of the personalities of Beowulf also appear in Scandinavian sources, but this does not only concern people (e.g., Healfdene, Hro?gar, Halga, Hro?ulf, Eadgils and Ohthere), but also clans (e.g., Scyldings, Scylfings and Wulfings) and some of the events (e.g., the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern). The majority view appears to be that people such as King Hro?gar and the Scyldings in Beowulf are based on real people in 6th century Scandinavia.

The Beowulf manuscript

Beowulf was written in England, but is set in Scandinavia. It is an epic poem told in historical perspective; a story of epic events and of great people of a heroic past. Although the author is unknown, its themes and subject matter are generally believed to be formed through oral tradition, the passing down of stories by scops (tale singers) and is considered partly historical. At the same time some scholars argue that, rather than transcription of the tale from the oral tradition by a literate monk, Beowulf reflects an original interpretation of the story by the poet. "The poet was reviving the heroic language, style, and pagan world of ancient Germanic oral poetry it is now widely believed that Beowulf is the work of a single poet who was a Christian and that his poem reflects well-established Christian tradition."

The spellings in the poem mix the West Saxon and Anglian dialects of Old English, though they are predominantly West Saxon, as are other Old English poems copied at the time.

Form and metre

An Old English poem such as Beowulf is very different from modern poetry. Anglo-Saxon poets typically used alliterative verse, a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. This is a technique in which the first half of the line (the a-verse) is linked to the second half (the b-verse) through similarity in initial sound. In addition, the two halves are divided by a caesura:

“Oft Scyld Scefing \\ scea?ena ?reatum”

The poet has a choice of epithets to use in order to fulfill the alliteration. When speaking or reading Old English poetry, it is important to remember for alliterative purposes that many of the letters are not pronounced the same way as they are in modern English.

Kennings are also a significant technique in Beowulf. They are evocative poetic descriptions of everyday things, often created to fill the alliterative requirements of the metre. For example, a poet might call the sea the "swan-road" or the "whale-road"; a king might be called a "ring-giver." There are many kennings in Beowulf, and the device is typical of much of classic poetry in Old English, which is heavily formulaic. The poem also makes extensive use of elided metaphors.

Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a historic hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts.

Themes

In historical terms, the poem's characters would have been Germanic pagans. Beowulf thus depicts a Germanic warrior society, in which the relationship between the lord of the region and those who served under him was of paramount importance. Although Hrothgar and Beowulf are portrayed as morally upright and enlightened pagans, they fully espouse and frequently affirm the values of Germanic heroic poetry. In the poetry depicting warrior society, the most important of human relationships was that which existed between the warrior and his lord, a relationship based less on subordination of one man's will to another's than on mutual trust and respect. When a warrior vowed loyalty to his lord, he became not so much his servant as his voluntary companion, one who would take pride in defending him and fighting in his wars. In return, the lord was expected to take care of his thanes and to reward them richly for their valor.

At the same time, Richard North argues that the Beowulf poet interpreted "Danish myths in Christian form". Allen Cabaniss argues that there are several similarities between Beowulf and the Bible. "Beowulf offers eloquent prayers to a higher power, addressing himself to the “Father Almighty” or the “Wielder of All.”

Names

Beowulf features many compound names. Below are the most famous.

Beowulf-- The name Beowulf has received numerous etymologies. The name has sometimes been proposed as meaning "Bee Wolf," a kenning for bear. Though popular, this etymology has been disputed and others have been proposed, such as "Wolf of Beow" or "Barley Wolf" pointing to a possible connection between this figure and ancient fertility/farming and beserker cults

Hrothgar-- Glory spear. Throughout Beowulf, the Danes are called the "Gar-Denas"-- spear-Danes. Also, it has been argued that the name Hrothgar means "killed son" in a form of Germanic.

Hereogar-- Army and spear

Hrothmund-- Glory and hand or protection

Hrethric-- Glory and kingdom

Ecgtheow-- Sword-servant

3. Old English morphology

The morphology of the Old English language is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more highly inflected. It more closely resembles modern German, which has over the centuries been more conservative than English.

Verbs

Verbs in Old English are divided into strong or weak verbs. Strong verbs indicate tense by a change in the quality of a vowel, while weak verbs indicate tense by the addition of an ending.

Strong verbs

Strong verbs use the Germanic form of conjugation known as ablaut. In this form of conjugation, the stem of the word changes to indicate the tense. Verbs like this persist in modern English, for example sing, sang, sung is a strong verb. The root portion of the word changes rather than its ending. In Old English, there were seven major classes of strong verb; each class has its own pattern of stem changes. The classes had the following distinguishing features to their infinitive stems:

i + 1 consonant.

eo or u + 1 consonant.

Originally e + 2 consonants (This was no longer the case by the time of written Old English).

e + 1 consonant (usually l or r, plus the verb brecan 'to break').

e + 1 consonant (usually a stop or a fricative).

a + 1 consonant.

No specific rule -- first and second have identical stems (e or eo), and the infinitive and the past participle also have the same stem.

Strong verbs exhibit i-mutation of the stem in the second and third persons singular in the present tense.

The third class went through so many sound changes that it was barely recognisable as a single class. The first was a process called 'breaking'. Before <h>, and <r> + another consonant, <?> turned into <ea>, and <e> to <eo>. Also, before <l> + another consonant, the same happened to <?>, but <e> remained unchanged (except before combination <lh>).

The second sound-change to affect it was the influence of palatal sounds <g>, <c>, and <sc>. These turned anteceding <e> and <?> to <ie> and <ea>, respectively.

The third sound change turned <e> to <i>, <?> to <a>, and <o> to <u> before nasals.

Altogether, this split the third class into five sub-classes:

e + two consonants (apart from clusters beginning with l).

eo + r or h + another consonant.

e + l + another consonant.

g, c, or sc + ie + two consonants.

i + nasal + another consonant.

Regular strong verbs were all conjugated roughly the same, with the main differences being in the stem vowel

Weak verbs

Weak verbs are formed by adding t or d endings to the stem for the past and past-participle tenses. Some examples are love, loved or look, looked.

Originally, the weak ending was used to form the preterite of informal, noun-derived verbs such as often emerge in conversation and which have no established system of stem-change. By nature, these verbs were almost always transitive, and even today, most weak verbs are transitive verbs formed in the same way. However, as English came into contact with non-Germanic languages, it invariably borrowed useful verbs which lacked established stem-change patterns. The linguistic trends of borrowing foreign verbs and verbalizing nouns have greatly increased the number of weak verbs. Some verbs that were originally strong (for example help, holp, holpen) have become weak by analogy; most foreign verbs are adopted as weak verbs; and when verbs are made from nouns (for example "to scroll" or "to water") the resulting verb is weak. There are three major classes of weak verbs in Old English. The first class displays i-mutation in the root, and the second class none. Class-one verbs with short roots exhibit gemination of the final stem consonant in certain forms. With verbs in <r> this appears as <ri> or <rg>, where <i> and <g> are pronounced [j]. Geminated <f> appears as <bb>, and that of <g> appears as <cg>. Where class-one verbs have gemination, class-two verbs have <i> or <ig>, which is a separate syllable pronounced [i]. All class-two verbs have an epenthetic vowel, which appears as <a> or <o>.

During the Old English period the third class was significantly reduced; only four verbs belonged to this group: habban 'have', libban 'live', secgan 'say', and hycgan 'think'. Each of these verbs is distinctly irregular, though they share some commonalities.

Preterite-present verbs

The preterite-present verbs are a class of verbs which have a present tense in the form of a strong preterite and a past tense like the past of a weak verb. These verbs derive from the subjunctive or optative use of preterite forms to refer to present or future time. For example, witan, "to know" comes from a verb which originally meant "to have seen". The present singular is formed from the original singular preterite stem and the present plural from the original plural preterite stem. As a result of this history, the first-person singular and third-person singular are the same in the present.

Few preterite present appear in the Old English corpus, and some are not attested in all forms.

Anomalous verbs

Additionally there is a further group of four verbs which are anomalous, the verbs "will", "do", "go" and "be". These four have their own conjugation schemes which differ significantly from all the other classes of verb.

Nouns

Old English nouns were declined - that is, the ending of the noun changed to reflect its function in the sentence. There were five major cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental.

The nominative case indicated the subject of the sentence, for example se cyning means 'the king'. It was also used for direct address. Adjectives in the predicate (qualifying a noun on the other side of 'to be') were also in the nominative.

The accusative indicated the direct object of the sentence. Already the accusative had begun to merge with the nominative; it was never distinguished in the plural, or in a neuter noun.

The genitive case indicated possession, for example the ??s cyninges scip is "the ship of the king" or "the king's ship". It also indicated partitive nouns.

The dative case indicated the indirect object of the sentence, for example hringas ??m cyninge means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king". There were also several verbs which took direct objects in the dative.

The instrumental case indicated an instrument used to achieve something, for example lifde sweorde, "he lived by the sword", where sweorde is the instrumental form of sweord. During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having largely merged with the dative. Only pronouns and strong adjectives retained separate forms for the instrumental.

There were different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (for example, hring 'one ring') or plural (for example, hringas 'many rings').

Nouns are also categorised by grammatical gender - masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine and neuter words generally share their endings. Feminine words have their own subset of endings. The plural does not distinguish between genders.

Furthermore, Old English nouns are divided as either strong or weak. Weak nouns have their own endings. The syncopation of the vowel in the second syllable of the word engel occurs with two-syllable strong nouns which have a long vowel in the first syllable and a second syllable consisting of a short vowel and single consonant (for example, engel, wuldor 'glory', and heafod 'head'). However, this syncopation is not always present, so forms such as engelas may be seen.

Irregular strong nouns

In addition, masculine and neuter nouns whose main vowel is short '?' and end with a single consonant change the vowel to 'a' in the plural:

D?g 'day' m.
Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	d?g	dagas
Accusative	d?g	dagas

Some masculine and neuter nouns end in -e in their base form. These drop the -e and add normal endings.

Example of the Strong Noun Declensions ending in -e
Case	Masculine ende 'end'	Neuter st?le 'steel'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ende	endas	st?le	st?lu
Accusative	ende	endas	st?le	st?lu

Nouns ending in -h lose this when an ending is added, and lengthen the vowel in compensation (this can result in compression of the ending as well):

Example of the Strong Noun Declensions ending in -h
Case	Masculine mearh 'horse'	Neuter feorh 'life'	Masculine scoh 'shoe'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	mearh	meares	feorh	feorh	scoh	scos
Accusative	mearh	meares	feorh	feorh	scoh	scos

Nouns whose stem ends in -w change this to -u or drop it in the nominative singular.

Example of the Strong Noun Declensions ending in -w
Case	Neuter smeoru 'grease'	Feminine sinu 'sinew'	Feminine l?s 'pasture'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	smeoru	smeoru	sinu	sinwa	l?s	l?swa
Accusative	smeoru	smeoru	sinwe	sinwa, -e	l?swe	l?swa, -e

A few nouns follow the -u declension, with an entirely different set of endings.

Example of the -u Declension
Case	Masculine sunu 'son'	Masculine feld 'field'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	sunu	suna	feld	felda
Accusative	sunu	suna	feld	felda

There are also some nouns of the consonant declension, which show i-umlaut in some forms. Neuter nouns with -r in plural:

Lamb 'lamb' n.
Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	lamb	lambru
Accusative	lamb	lambru

Other such nouns: cealf, cealfru 'calf'; ?g, ?ru 'egg' (the form 'egg' is a borrowing from Old Norse); cild 'child' has either the normal plural cild or cildru (cf. 'children', with -en from the weak nouns).

Adjectives in Old English are declined using the same categories as nouns: five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and two numbers (singular, plural). In addition, they can be declined either strong or weak. The weak forms are used in the presence of a definite or possessive determiner, while the strong ones are used in other situations. The weak forms are identical to those for nouns, while the strong forms use a combination of noun and pronoun endings:

Example of the Strong Adjective Declension: god 'good'
Case	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	god	gode	god	god	god	gode, -a
Accusative	godne	gode	god	god	gode	gode, -a
Genitive	godes	godra	godes	godra	godre	godra

Example of the Weak Adjective Declension: god 'good'
Case	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	goda	godan	gode	godan	gode	godan
Accusative	godan	godan	gode	godan	godan	godan

Determiners. Old English had two main determiners: se, which could function as both 'the' or 'that', and ?es for 'this'.

the/that
Case	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative	se	??t	seo	?a
Accusative	?one	??t	?a	?a

Modern English 'that' descends from the neuter nominative/accusative form, and 'the' from the masculine nominative form, with 's' replaced analogously by the 'th' of the other forms. The feminine nominative form was probably the source of Modern English 'she.'

this
Case	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine	Plural
Nominative	?es	?is	?eos	?as
Accusative	?isne	?is	?as	?as

Pronouns

Most pronouns are declined by number, case and gender; in the plural form most pronouns have only one form for all genders. Additionally, Old English pronouns reserve the dual form (which is specifically for talking about groups of two things, for example "we two" or "you two" or "they two"). These were uncommon even then, but remained in use throughout the period.

Personal pronouns

Many of the forms bear strong resemblances to their contemporary English language equivalents: for instance in the genitive case eower became "your", ure became "our", min became "mine".

Prepositions

Prepositions (like Modern English words by, for, and with) often follow the word which they govern, in which case they are called postpositions. Also, for that the object of a preposition was marked in the dative case, a preposition may concievably be located anywhere in the sentence, even appended to the verb. e.g. "Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum meodo setla of teoh" means "Scyld took mead settles of (from) enemy threats." The infinitive is not declined.

4. The history of Old English and its development

beowulf poem verb noun morphology

In 409 AD the last Roman legion left British shores, and in fifty years the Islands became a victim of invaders. Germanic tribes from Southern Scandinavia and Northern Germany, pushed from their densely populated homelands, looked for a new land to settle. At that time the British Isles were inhabited by the Celts and remaining Roman colonists, who failed to organize any resistance against Germanic intruders, and so had to let them settle here. This is how the Old English language was born.

Celtic tribes crossed the Channel and starting to settle in Britain already in the 7th century BC. The very word "Britain" seems to be the name given by the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the island, accepted by first Indo-Europeans. The Celts quickly spread over the island, and only in the north still existed non-Indo-European peoples which are sometimes called "Picts" (the name given by Romans). Picts lived in Scotland and on Shetland Islands and represented the most ancient population of the Isles, the origin of which is unknown. Picts do not seem to leave any features of their language to Indo-European population of Britain - the famous Irish and Welsh initial mutations of consonants can be the only sign of the substratum left by unknown nations of Britain. At the time the Celts reached Britain they spoke the common language, close to Gaulish in France. But later, when Celtic tribes occupied Ireland, Northern England, Wales, their tongues were divided according to tribal divisions. These languages will later become Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Cornish, but from that time no signs remained, because the Celts did not invent writing yet.

Not much is left from Celtic languages in English. Though many place names and names for rivers are surely Celtic (like Usk - from Celtic *usce "water", or Avon - from *awin "river"), the morphology and phonetics are untouched by the Celtic influence. Some linguists state that the word down comes from Celtic *dun "down and, certainly, the word whiskey which means the same as Irish uisge "water".

In the 1st century AD first Roman colonists begin to penetrate in Britain; Roman legions built roads, camps, founded towns and castres. But still they did not manage to assimilate the Celts, maybe because they lived apart from each other and did not mix. Tens of Latin words in Britain together with many towns, places and hills named by Romans make up the Roman heritage in the Old English. Such cities as Dorchester, Winchester, Lancaster, words like camp, castra, many terms of the Christian religion and several words denoting armaments were borrowed at that time by Britons, and automatically were transferred into the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon language already when there was no Romans in the country.

In 449 the legendary leaders of two Germanic tribes, Hengist and Horsa, achieved British shores on their ships. The Anglo-Saxon conquest, however, lasted for several centuries, and all this period Celtic aborigines moved farther and farther to the west of the island until they manage to fortify in mountainous Wales, in Cornwall, and preserved their kingdoms in Scotland. In the 5th century such cities as Durovern in Kent, Virocon, Trimontii, Camulodunum, were abandoned by the population.

Angles settled around the present-day Noridge, and in Northern England; Saxons, the most numerous of the tribes, occupied all Central England, the south of the island and settled in London (Londinii at that time). Jutes and Frises, who probably came to Britain a bit later, settled on the island of White and in what is now Kent - the word Kent derives from the name of the Celtic tribe Cantii. Soon all these tribes founded their separate kingdoms, which was united after centuries of struggle only in 878 by Alfred, king of Wessex. Before that each of the tribes spoke its language, they were similar to each other but had differences which later became the dialectal peculiarities of Old English.

Now a little bit about the foreign influence in Old English. From the 6th century Christianity start activities in Britain, the Bible is translated into Old English, and quite a lot of terms are borrowed from Latin at that time: many bishops, missionaries and Pope's officials come from Rome. The next group of foreign loanwords were taken from Scandinavian dialects, after the Vikings occupied much of the country in the 9th - 11th centuries. Scandinavian languages were close relatives with Old English, so the mutual influence was strong enough to develop also the Old English morphology, strengthening its analytic processes. Many words in the language were either changed to sound more Scandinavian, or borrowed. Below we will touch this problem in more details.

The Old English language, which has quite a lot of literature monuments, came to the end after the Norman conquest in 1066. The new period was called Middle English.

5. The Old English Verb

Old English system of strong and weak verbs: the ones which used the ancient Germanic type of conjugation (the Ablaut), and the ones which just added endings to their past and participle forms. Strong verbs make the clear majority. According to the traditional division, which is taken form Gothic and is accepted by modern linguistics, all strong verbs are distinguished between seven classes, each having its peculiarities in conjugation and in the stem structure. It is easy to define which verb is which class, so you will not swear trying to identify the type of conjugation of this or that verb (unlike the situation with the substantives).

Infinitive, Past singular, Past plural, Participle II (or Past Participle) Class I writan (to write), wrat, writon, writen snipan (to cut), sna?, snidon, sniden Class II beodan (to offer), bead, budon, boden ceosan (to choose), ceas, curon, coren Class III IIIa) a nasal consonant drincan (to drink), dranc, druncon, druncen steorfan (to die), stearf, sturfon, storfen Class IV stelan (to steal), st?'l, st?'lon, stolen beran (to bear), b?'r, b?'ron, boren Class V tredan (to tread), tr?'d, tr?'don, treden cwe?an (to say), cw?'?, cw?'don, cweden Class VI faran (to go), for, foron, faren Class VII hatan (to call), het, heton, haten feallan (to fall), feoll, feollon, feallen

One of the characteristic features was the formation of the weak verbs, which did not exist in the Proto-Indo-European language. Many linguists consider these weak verbs the derivatives from nouns or adjectives (like Gothic fulljan 'to fill' from full 'full'), which made such verbs secondary in relation to strong ones. There are still other versions, but morphologically the difference is quite clear. While the strong verbs form their past participle (as well as the infinitive) with the suffix *-no- added to the present tense stem, the weak type verbs have the suffix *-to- instead, which later became -d- or -ed or -de and spread to all the past forms. Both these suffices derive from the markers of Proto-Indo-European participles.

Weak verbs in Old English (today's English regular verbs) were conjugated in a simpler way than the strong ones, and did not use the ablaut interchanges of the vowel stems. Weak verbs are divided into three classes which had only slight differences though. They did have the three forms - the infinitive, the past tense, the participle II. Here is the table.

Class I Regular verbs Inf. Past PP deman (to judge), demde, demed hieran (to hear), hierde, hiered Irregular sellan (to give), sealde, seald tellan (to tell), tealde, teald cwellan (to kill), cwealde, cweald Class II macian (to make), macode, macod lufian (to love), lufode, lufod hopian (to hope), hopode, hopod

Class III habban (to have), h?fde, h?fd libban (to live), lifde, lifd secgan (to say), s?gde, s?gd

Old English verbs are conjugated having two tenses - the Present tense and the Past tense, and three moods - indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. Of these, only the subjunctive mood has disappeared in the English language, acquiring an analytic construction instead of inflections; and the imperative mood has coincided with the infinitive form (to write - write!). In the Old English period they all looked different.

In fact all verbal forms were generated in Old English from three verb stems, and each verb had its own three ones: the Infinitive stem, the Past Singular stem, the Past Plural stem. For the verb writan, for example, those three stems are: writ- (infinitive without the ending -an), wrat- (the Past singular), writ- (the Past plural without the ending -on). Additionally, the participles (Participle I and Participle II) are formed by the suffix -ende to the Infinitive stem (participle I), or the prefix ge- + the Past Plural stem + the ending -en (Participle II).

A special group is made by the so-called Present-Preterite verbs, which are conjugated combining two varieties of the usual verb conjugation: strong and weak. These verbs, at all not more than seven, are nowadays called modal verbs in English.

Present-Preterite verbs have their Present tense forms generated from the Strong Past, and the Past tense, instead, looks like the Present Tense of the Weak verbs. The verbs we present here are the following: witan (to know), cunnan (can), ?urfan (to need), dearan (to dare), munan (to remember), sculan (shall), magan (may).

The main difference of verbs of this type in modern English is their expressing modality, i.e. possibility, obligation, necessity. They do not require the particle to before the infinitive which follows them. In Old English in general no verb requires this particle before the infinitive. In fact, this to before the infinitive form meant the preposition of direction.

And now finally a few irregular verbs, which used several different stems for their tenses. These verbs are very important in Old English and are met very often in the texts: wesan (to be), beon (to be), gan (to go), don (to do), willan (will). Mind that there was no Future tense in the Old English language, and the future action was expressed by the Present forms, just sometimes using verbs of modality, willan (lit. "to wish to do") or sculan (lit. "to have to do").

So there were in fact two verbs meaning 'to be', and both were colloquial. In Middle English, however, the verb wesan replaced fully the forms of beon, and the words beo (I am), bist (thou art) fell out of use. The Past tense forms was and were are also derivatives from wesan.

A little bit more about Old English tenses. Syntactically, the language had only two main tenses - the Present and the Past. No progressive (or Continuous) tenses were used, they were invented only in the Early Middle English period. Such complex tenses as modern Future in the Past, Future Perfect Continuous did not exist either. However, some analytic construction were in use, and first of all the perfective constructions. The example Hie geweorc geworhten h?fdon 'they have build a fortress' shows the exact Perfect tense, but at that time it was not the tense really, just a participle construction showing that the action has been done. Seldom you can also find such Past constructions, which later became the Past Perfect Tense.

6. Nouns and Adjectives

Nouns

Old English nouns show their different cases by inflection: they add additional letters to the end of the basic form of the word. This basic form that does not change throughout its inflection is called the stem. There are, consequently, two parts of a Old English word that you must note: the stem and the case ending. The stem contains the meaning of the word and its gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). The case ending will tell you (1) how the noun is being used in its sentence, and (2) whether the noun is singular or plural. Let's watch the Old English noun stan (stone) as it inflects through its different cases:

SINGULAR APPROXIMATE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

NOMINATIVE stan stone

ACCUSATIVE stan stone

GENITIVE stanes of the stone

DATIVE stane to/for the stone

PLURAL

NOMINATIVE stanas stones

ACCUSATIVE stanas stones

GENITIVE stana of the stones

DATIVE stanum to/for the stones

The stem of the Old English word is clearly visible. It's stan to which different endings are being attached. The endings are:

SINGULAR PLURAL

NOMINATIVE - -as

ACCUSATIVE - -as

GENITIVE -es -a

DATIVE -e -um

There are many other nouns in Old English which follow this same pattern of case endings when they inflect, in fact some 35% of all Old English nouns follow this pattern. This pattern of endings is called the masculine a-declension (deh CLEN shion). There are four other common declensional patterns in Old English, but a noun will belong to only one of them. Hence we can say that stan is a masculine a-declension noun.

Gender

All Old English nouns possess what is called "gender". That is, a noun will be masculine, feminine, or neuter and this is a feature which cannot change in a noun. A noun may change its case or number, but a noun will never change its gender. The other declensions are called:

Weak Weak

SINGULAR Neuter a- Feminine o- Masculine -n Feminine -n

Approx % of 25 25 9 5

Nouns

NOMINATIVE scip "ship" giefu "gift" guma "man" tunge "tongue"

ACCUSATIVE scip giefe guman tungan

GENITIVE scipes giefe guman tungan

DATIVE scipe giefe guman tungan

PLURAL

NOMINATIVE scipu giefa guman tungan

ACCUSATIVE scipu giefa guman tungan

GENITIVE scipa giefa gumena tungena

DATIVE scipum giefum gumum tungum

As for the Masculine A-Declension, the endings are clearly visible, and are summarised in the table below:

Weak Weak

SINGULAR Neuter a- Feminine o- Masculine -n Feminine -n

NOMINATIVE - -u -a -e

ACCUSATIVE - -e -an -an

GENITIVE -es -e -an -an

DATIVE -e -e -an -an

PLURAL

NOMINATIVE -u -a -an -an

ACCUSATIVE -u -a -an -an

GENITIVE -a -a -ena -ena

DATIVE -um -um -um -um

A language whose nouns show their grammatical function in the sentence by changes in the noun itself, and not by position, is called an inflected language. The different grammatical functions a language recognizes are called cases. In Old English there are four cases. They are the nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases. In Latin, there are six: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative. An Old English noun has two parts: it has a stem, which contains the noun's basic meaning and its gender; and it also has a case ending which tells you the noun's case and its number. A pattern of endings which are added to the end of a noun to show its grammatical function is called a declension. Each noun in Old English belongs to one declension.

The declensions are called the masculine a-, neuter a-, feminine o-, weak masculine -n and weak feminine -n declensions.

Weak Nouns

Weak Weak Weak

SINGULAR Masculine -n Feminine -n Neuter -n

NOMINATIVE guma "man" tunge "tongue" eage

ACCUSATIVE guman tungan eage

GENITIVE guman tungan eagan

DATIVE guman tungan eagan

PLURAL

NOMINATIVE guman tungan eagan

ACCUSATIVE guman tungan eagan

GENITIVE gumena tungena eagena

DATIVE gumum tungum eagum

Looking at this table, it can be seen that the inflectional endings for all genders are very similar, generally they only differ in the Nominative Singular case. The Plural forms are the same for all genders. Thus we get the following endings:

Singular Plural

SINGULAR Masculine Feminine Neuter All Genders

NOMINATIVE -a -e -e -an

ACCUSATIVE -an -an -e -an

GENITIVE -an -an -an -ena

DATIVE -an -an -an -um

The easiest way to learn this is to memorise the masculine case, and the following rules:

Weak Feminine nouns differ only in the nominative singular form, and this ending is -e rather than -a

Weak Neuter nouns differ only in the nominative and accusative singular forms, these ending are -e

More Nouns

Now have a look at two neuter a- nouns, and see how their endings run:

SINGULAR

NOMINATIVE scip "ship" word "word"

ACCUSATIVE scip word

GENITIVE scipes wordes

DATIVE scipe worde

PLURAL

NOMINATIVE scipu word

ACCUSATIVE scipu word

GENITIVE scipa worda

DATIVE scipum wordum

Nouns in Old English

Nouns are those words which indicate a person, place, animal, or thing. In Old English they have 3 genders (masculine, neuter, feminine), 2 numbers (singular, plural), and 5 cases (nominative, genitive, dative, instrumental, accusative). In this language, nouns inflect to show their function within the sentence, how many, and how the adjectives and articles (the/that) inflect to agree with the noun.

Noun Declensions

Nouns are divided into two categories of declension in Old English, the so called Strong and Weak nouns. There are other minor declensions, as well, but most nouns fall into these two classifications.

Strong Nouns

The strong noun paradigm declines for case, gender and singular/plural.

In the Nominative Plural and Accusative Plural of the Strong Neuter declension a -u follows only after short syllables (1 short vowel and 1 consonant) while neuters with long syllables (short vowel and 2 consonants or long vowel and one consonant) have no ending. This is also the case of singular Feminine Nominative nouns.

Weak Declension

The weak paradigm is more simplified and has less variation between the genders and cases.

7. The Old English Adjective

As well as the noun, the adjective can be declined in case, gender and number. Moreover, the instrumental case which was discussed before was preserved in adjectives much stronger than in nouns. Adjectives must follow sequence with nouns which they define - thet is why the same adjective can be masculine, neuter and feminine and therefore be declined in two different types: one for masculine and neuter, the other for feminine nouns. The declension is more or less simple, it looks much like the nominal system of declension, though there are several important differences. Interesting to know that one-syllable adjectives ("monosyllabic") have different declension than two-syllable ones ("disyllabic").

So not many new endings: for accusative singular we have -ne, and for genitive plural -ra, which cannot be met in the declension of nouns. The difference between monosyllabic and disyllabic is the accusative plural feminine ending -a / -u. That's all.

Actually, some can just omit all those examples - the adjectival declension is the same as a whole for all stems, as concerns the strong type. As for weak adjectives, they also exist in the language. The thing is that one need not learn by heart which adjective is which type - strong or weak, as you should do with the nouns. If you have a weak noun as a subject, its attributive adjective will be weak as well. So - a strong adjective for a strong noun, a weak adjective for a weak noun, the rule is as simple as that.

Weak declension has a single plural for all genders, which is pleasant for those who don't want to remeber too many forms. In general, the weak declension is much easier.

The last thing to be said about the adjectives is the degrees of comparison. Again, the traditional Indo-European structure is preserved here: three degrees (absolutive, comparative, superlative) - though some languages also had the so-called "equalitative" grade; the special suffices for forming comparatives and absolutives; suppletive stems for several certain adjectives.

The suffices we are used to see in Modern English, those -er and -est in weak, weaker, the weakest, are the direct descendants of the Old English ones. At that time they sounded as -ra and -est. See the examples:

earm (poor) - earmra - earmost bl?c (black) - bl?cra - blacost

Many adjectives changed the root vowel - another example of the Germanic ablaut:

eald (old) - ieldra - ieldest strong - strengra - strengest long - lengra - lengest geong (young) - gingra - gingest

The most widespread and widely used adjectives always had their degrees formed from another stem, which is called "suppletive" in linguistics. Many of them are still seen in today's English:

god (good) - betera - betst (or selra - selest) yfel (bad) - wiersa - wierest micel (much) - mara - maest lytel (little) - l?'ssa - l?'st fear (far) - fierra - fierrest, fyrrest neah (near) - nearra - niehst, nyhst ?'r (early) - ?'rra - ?'rest fore (before) - fur?ra - fyrest (first)

8. Anglo-Saxon literature

Anglo-Saxon literature (or Old English literature) encompasses literature written in Anglo-Saxon (Old English) during the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of Britain, from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.

Some of the most important works from this period include the poem Beowulf, which has achieved national epic status in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of early English history. The poem C?dmon's Hymn from the 7th century is one of the oldest surviving written texts in English.

A large number of manuscripts remain from the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period, with most written during the last 300 years (9th-11th century), in both Latin and the vernacular.

In total there are about 400 surviving manuscripts containing Old English text, 189 of them considered major. Not all of the texts can be fairly called literature; some are merely lists of names or aborted pen trials. However those that can present a sizable body of work, listed here in descending order of quantity: sermons and saints' lives (the most numerous), biblical translations; translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers; Anglo-Saxon chronicles and narrative history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical works on grammar, medicine, geography; lastly, but not least important, poetry.

Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous, with some exceptions.

Old English poetry is of two types, the heroic Germanic pre-Christian and the Christian. It has survived for the most part in four manuscripts. The first manuscript is called the Junius manuscript (also known as the Caedmon manuscript), which is an illustrated poetic anthology. The second manuscript is called the Exeter Book, also an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was donated there in the 11th century. The third manuscript is called the Vercelli Book, a mix of poetry and prose; how it came to be in Vercelli, Italy, no one knows, and is a matter of debate. The fourth manuscript is called the Nowell Codex, also a mixture of poetry and prose.

The most popular and well-known understanding of Old English poetry continues to be Sievers' alliterative verse. The system is based upon accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation. It consists of five permutations on a base verse scheme; any one of the five types can be used in any verse. Two poetic figures commonly found in Old English poetry are the kenning, an often formulaic phrase that describes one thing in terms of another (e.g. in Beowulf, the sea is called the swan's road) and litotes, a dramatic understatement employed by the author for ironic effect.

Roughly, Old English verse lines are divided in half by a pause; this pause is termed a "caesura." Each half-line has two stressed syllables. The first stressed syllable of the second half-line should alliterate with one or both of the stressed syllables of the first half-line (meaning, of course, that the stressed syllables in the first half-line could alliterate with each other). The second stressed syllable of the second half-line should not alliterate with either of the stressed syllables of the first half.

fyrene fremman feond on helle.

("to perpetrate torment, fiend of hell.")

-- Beowulf, line 101

The poets

Most Old English poets are anonymous; twelve are known by name from Medieval sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works to us today with any certainty: Caedmon, Bede, Alfred, and Cynewulf. Of these, only Caedmon, Bede, and Alfred have known biographies.

Caedmon is the best-known and considered the father of Old English poetry. He lived at the abbey of Whitby in Northumbria in the 7th century. Only a single nine line poem remains, called Hymn, which is also the oldest surviving text in English:

Cynewulf has proven to be a difficult figure to identify, but recent research suggests he was from the early part of the 9th century to which a number of poems are attributed including The Fates of the Apostles and Elene (both found in the Vercelli Book), and Christ II and Juliana (both found in the Exeter Book).

Heroic poems

The Old English poetry which has received the most attention deals with the Germanic heroic past. The longest (3,182 lines), and most important, is Beowulf, which appears in the damaged Nowell Codex. The poem tells the story of the legendary Geatish hero Beowulf who is the title character. The story is set in Scandinavia, in Sweden and Denmark, and the tale likewise probably is of Scandinavian origin. The story is biographical and sets the tone for much of the rest of Old English poetry. It has achieved national epic status, on the same level as the Iliad, and is of interest to historians, anthropologists, literary critics, and students the world over.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains various heroic poems inserted throughout. The earliest from 937 is called The Battle of Brunanburh, which celebrates the victory of King Athelstan over the Scots and Norse. There are five shorter poems: capture of the Five Boroughs (942); coronation of King Edgar (973); death of King Edgar (975); death of Prince Alfred (1036); and death of King Edward the Confessor (1065).

The 325 line poem Battle of Maldon celebrates Earl Byrhtnoth and his men who fell in battle against the Vikings in 991. It is considered one of the finest, but both the beginning and end are missing.

Elegiac Poetry

Related to the heroic tales are a number of short poems from the Exeter Book which have come to be described as "elegies"or "wisdom poetry". They are lyrical and Boethian in their description of the up and down fortunes of life. Gloomy in mood is The Ruin, which tells of the decay of a once glorious city of Roman Britain, and The Wanderer, in which an older man talks about an attack that happened in his youth, where his close friends and kin were all killed; memories of the slaughter have remained with him all his life. The Seafarer is the story of a somber exile from home on the sea, from which the only hope of redemption is the joy of heaven. Other wisdom poems include Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife's Lament, and The Husband's Message. King Alfred the Great wrote a wisdom poem over the course of his reign based loosely on the neoplatonic philosophy of Boethius called the Lays of Boethius.

Classical and Latin poetry

Several Old English poems are adaptations of late classical philosophical texts. The longest is a 10th century translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy Another is The Phoenix in the Exeter Book.

Other short poems derive from the Latin bestiary tradition. Some examples include The Panther, The Whale and The Partridge.