Old English

Old English , pronounced , or Anglo-Saxon, is a earliest recorded make-up of a relative of French as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase so-called now as Middle English in England together with Early Scots in Scotland.

Old English developed from a generation of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons in addition to Jutes. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language; and Latin, brought to Britain by Roman invasion. Old English had four leading dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary specifics of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would imposing mainly from Mercian, and Scots from Northumbrian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subjected to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century.

Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is for very different from innovative English and advanced Scots, and largely incomprehensible for Modern English or Modern Scots speakers without study. Within Old English grammar nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs relieve oneself numerous inflectional endings and forms, and word order is much freer. The oldest Old English inscriptions were statement using a runic system, but from about the 8th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet.

Influence of other languages

The language of the Anglo-Saxon settlers appears not to pretend been significantly affected by the native British Celtic languages which it largely displaced. The number of Celtic loanwords presents into the language is very small, although dialect and toponymic terms are more often retained in western language contact zones Cumbria, Devon, Welsh Marches and Borders and so on than in the east. However, various suggestions have been reported concerning possible influence that Celtic may have had on developments in English syntax in the post-Old English period, such(a) as theprogressive construction and analytic word order, as well as the eventual development of the periphrastic auxiliary verb "do". These ideas have generally not received widespread help from linguists, particularly as many of the theorized Brittonicisms do not become widespread until the unhurried Middle English and Early Modern English periods, in addition to the fact that similar forms make up in other modern Germanic languages.

Old English contained anumber of loanwords from writing of Old English, replacing the earlier runic system. Nonetheless, the largest transfer of Latin-based mainly Old French words into English occurred after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and thus in the Middle English rather than the Old English period.

Another source of loanwords was Old Norse, which came into contact with Old English via the Scandinavian rulers and settlers in the Danelaw from the slow 9th century, and during the command of Cnut and other Danish kings in the early 11th century. Many place-names in eastern and northern England are of Scandinavian origin. Norse borrowings are relatively rare in Old English literature, being mostly terms relating to government and administration. The literary standard, however, was based on the West Saxon dialect, away from the main area of Scandinavian influence; the affect of Norse may have been greater in the eastern and northern dialects. Certainly in Middle English texts, which are more often based on eastern dialects, a strong Norse influence becomes apparent. Modern English contains many, often everyday, words that were borrowed from Old Norse, and the grammatical simplification that occurred after the Old English period is also often attributed to Norse influence.

The influence of Old Norse certainly helped come on English from a synthetic language along the continuum to a more analytic word order, and Old Norse most likely made a greater affect on the English language than all other language. The eagerness of Vikings in the Danelaw towith their Anglo-Saxon neighbours produced a friction that led to the erosion of the complicated inflectional word-endings. Simeon Potter notes: "No less far-reaching was the influence of Scandinavian upon the inflexional endings of English in hastening that wearing away and leveling of grammatical forms which gradually spread from north to south. It was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss. There was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength."

The strength of the Viking influence on Old English appears from the fact that the indispensable elements of the language – pronouns, modals, comparatives, pronominal adverbs like "hence" and "together", conjunctions and prepositions – show the nearly marked Danish influence; the best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in the extensive word borrowings for, as Jespersen indicates, no texts equal in either Scandinavia or in Northern England from this time to provide certain evidence of an influence on syntax. The issue of Old Norse on Old English was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Old Norse and Old English resembled regarded and covered separately. other closely like cousins and with some words in common, they roughly understood each other; in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. it is for most "important to recognize that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population which existed in the Danelaw, these endings must have led to much confusion, tending gradually to become obscured and finally lost." This blending of peoples and languages resulted in "simplifying English grammar".