Old English

Old English , pronounced , or Anglo-Saxon, is a earliest recorded defecate of the 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 Linguistic communication was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase requested now as Middle English in England in addition to Early Scots in Scotland.

Old English developed from a sort of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons & 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 specific Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary requirements of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would determine mainly from Mercian, and Scots from Northumbrian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was refers 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 innovative Scots, and largely incomprehensible for Modern English or Modern Scots speakers without study. Within Old English grammar nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs make-up many inflectional endings and forms, and word order is much freer. The oldest Old English inscriptions were result using a runic system, but from approximately the 8th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet.

Phonology

The inventory of Early West Saxon surface phones is as follows.

The sounds enclosed in parentheses in the chart above are non considered to be phonemes:

The above system is largely similar to that of Modern English, except that [ç, x, ɣ, l̥, n̥, r̥] and [w̥] for most speakers have broadly been lost, while the voiced affricate and fricatives now also including /ʒ/ have become freelancer phonemes, as has /ŋ/.

The open back rounded vowel [ɒ] was an allophone of short /ɑ/ which occurred in stressed syllables ago nasal consonants /m/ and /n/. It was variously spelled either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩.

The Anglian dialects also had the mid front rounded vowel /øː/, spelled ⟨œ⟩, which had emerged from i-umlaut of /oː/. In West Saxon and Kentish, it had already merged with /eː/ previously the first written prose.

Other dialects had different systems of diphthongs. For example, the Northumbrian dialect retained /iːo̯/, which had merged with /eːo̯/ in West Saxon.

For more on dialectal differences, see Phonological history of Old English dialects.

Some of the principal sound changes occurring in the pre-history and history of Old English were the following:

For more details of these processes, see the leading article, linked above. For sound reorientate before and after the Old English period, see Phonological history of English.