What is Old English?

Old English is the earliest form of the English language, dating back to the earliest days of the Middle Ages. Its heyday lasted from the fifth century through the eleventh century. The language originates from Germanic peoples known as the Anglo-Saxons who first settled in England during the fifth century. Before that, the dominant languages of Britain were Celtic in origin. Famous works composed in Old English include the epic poem Beowulf and the religious poem "The Dream of the Rood."

As with any language, Old English evolved over time, including more influences from Latin and French with the coming of the conquering Normans during the eleventh century. A majority of modern English speakers would find Old English unintelligible as most of its vocabulary is no longer in common use. Old English was eventually succeeded by Middle English (most commonly associated with Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales) which originated in the twelfth century.

What are the nature, function, and core characteristics of Old English?

Students are often surprised when they first attempt to read Old English; it looks significantly different from the English which is spoken in today's world, and most students are unable to read even a few words without deeply studying the construction. Though the syntax of Old English is quite similar to modern English, the morphology and orthography differs significantly.

Old English is categorized as an inflected language. This means that endings are attached to words to indicate grammatical function. Using the same root noun (think of a word like boy) one ending could designate the noun's function as a subject in the sentence, while a different ending was used to indicate that the noun was being used as a direct object. This meant that the order of words in a sentence was much more flexible (and understandable to speakers of Old English); those inflections, or endings, were of utmost importance for comprehension.

Looking at the characters used in Old English texts quickly reveals that the orthography of the language has changed greatly. Some letters, such as k, q, and z, weren't used at all in Old English. Other characters, such as æ and ð are unfamiliar to speakers of modern English. Instead of the conjunction and, a Tironian note (⁊) was used. Compared to today's modern English, the letter-sound correlation of Old English was more predictable, with very few silent letters.

Old English also implied genders to all nouns, which were not related to any sexual implications. Nouns were distinguishable as masculine, feminine, or neutral. Mouth was considered a masculine noun, while tongue was categorized as feminine. The word for eye was neutral. The articles and adjectives used in conjunction with nouns varied depending on gender.

Like other languages, the function of Old English was to allow people who lived in close proximity to communicate through a shared system of language. And like other languages, it not only changed over time, but it also had various dialects that reflected various regions of usage.