Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
OLD ENGLISH
is the name given to the earliest versions of English spoken by the mid-fifth-century invaders of Britain, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (hence Anglo-Saxon, another word for it). Our earliest written records of the language are somewhat later, but we have a fair range of materials written in it by the tenth century. The conventional dates for Old English are 449 to 1066. It was a highly inflected Germanic language, with a heavy stress on front or root syllables of its words. It had both weak and strong verbs, and it tended to compound its words to accommodate new meanings rather than to borrow from other languages. It also had some special letters, including the thorn () and the eth () for the sounds we now spell with th. Here are a few verses from an Old English version of Genesis:
On angynne gesceop God heofonan and eoran. Seo eore solice waes idel and aemtig, and eostra waeron over aere nywelnysse bradnysse; and Godes gast waes geferod ofer waeteru. God cwaea: Gewure leoht, and leoht wear geworht. God geseah a aet hit god waes, and he todaelde aet leoht from am eostrum. And het aet leoht daeg and a eostru niht: a waes geworden aefen and morgen an daeg.
The next chronological stage of the language was called Middle English. (Be careful in speech to make context distinguish Old English from an old English-Chaucer’s, for example, which is indeed old, but is called Middle English.)
) and the eth (
) for the sounds we now spell with th. Here are a few verses from an Old English version of Genesis:
