Download The Old English Alphabet

OLD ENGLISH
Lecture 2
2.1. Old English: General
Background
2.2. The Old English Alphabet
2.3. The Old English Phonetic
System
2.4. The Old English Grammar
2.5. The Old English Vocabulary
and Literature
OLD ENGLISH: GENERAL BACKGROUND
No written records of OE in the period of 5th - 6th c.
 The beginning of writing in OE is referred to the
end of the 7th – the beginning of the 8th century.
 The four dialects of OE: Kentish, Mercian,
Northumbrian, and West Saxon.
 The majority of the surviving documents from the
OE period were written in the West Saxon dialect
spoken in Wessex, (Alfred the Great).
 Much of the OE literature was written in or
translated into the West Saxon dialect.
 Thus, the source of most of the OE texts studied
today is West Saxon.

THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET
 OE
was first written with a version of the
Runic alphabet known as Anglo-Saxon runes.
This alphabet contained between 26 and 33
letters. Anglo-Saxon runes were used from the
5th to the 10th c.
 Runes started to be replaced by the Latin
alphabet from the 7th century, and after the
9th century the runes were used mainly in
manuscripts (the introduction of
Christianity).
 After the Norman Conquest (the 11th century),
the runes were no longer in use.
THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET
OE scribes used Latin letters to represent the sounds
of their language wherever they seemed to fit.
 They include: a, b, c, d, e, f, Ʒ=g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s,
t, u, x, y.


The letters k and z were only occasionally used;

The letter q was not used;

ModE j and v were variants of OE i and u;
ME letter w developed from OE uu;
 Some written symbols to indicate OE sounds that
cannot be found in present-day English: æ – ash
(æsc), þ – thorn, ð – eth (capital ð was written Ð).

THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET
 OE
writings were based on a phonetic
principle: each letter indicated a separate
sound; not always observed.
 Some letters could indicate three or more
sounds. The same letters stood for both
short and long sounds: long vowels were
often indicated by a macron (a line over
the top).
THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET
In reading, the following rules should be
observed:
 The letter Ʒ=g stands for [g] before any
consonant or back vowels, after n e.g. g gōd
(good), grēn (green); for [j] when preceding
or following any front vowel, e.g. giefan (to
give), dæg (day); for [γ] while standing
after back vowels or after r, l, e.g. dagas
(days), folgian (to follow).
 f, s, þ (ð) are voiced when between vowels
and voiced consonants, e.g. risan (to rise),
hlafas (halves), wīfes (wives)
THE OLD ENGLISH PHONETIC SYSTEM
The Word Stress
 The word stress in OE was fixed no matter what
grammatical form a word had.
 OE stress fell on the first syllable of a simple
word. Words with a prefix had their stress either
on the prefix or on the root syllable. The prefix
ge- was unaccented; prepositional prefixes, e.g.
for-, ofer-, could be either accented (in nouns or
adjectives) or unaccented (in verbs).
 Compound words where both words retained
their full meaning had a secondary stress on the
1st syllable of the 2nd element.
THE OLD ENGLISH PHONETIC SYSTEM
The OE sound system underwent global changes,
particularly these changes occurred within the
vowels.
Vowel Changes
 Breaking – short vowels becoming diphthongs
before certain consonant clusters (r, l, h + a
consonant or h final), e.g. Goth. kalds > OE ceald
(cold)
 Shortening of unstressed long vowels. As a result
of this, all the long vowels became short, and all the
diphthongs were monophthongized in an
unstressed position:
e.g. Goth. namō > OE nama (name)

THE OLD ENGLISH PHONETIC SYSTEM
Consonant Changes
 Voicing of fricatives, if a fricative was surrounded
by vowels or voiced consonants, it became voiced, e.g.
OE wīf (wife) > OE wīfes (wives) [f] > [v]
 Palatalization made the pronunciation closer to
present-day English. Velar consonants were
palatalized before / after a front vowel (e, i) and
remained velar before back vowels a, o, u.,
e.g. OE cild [k’] > [tʃ]
 Loss of consonants: n was often lost before h, f, s,
þ, as a result, the preceding vowel became
lengthened. h was often lost between vowels etc.
e.g. *finf > OE fif (five)
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: NOUN
The OE noun had
 TWO numbers: singular, plural
 THREE genders – masculine (M), feminine (F), and
neuter (N). M and N nouns in general shared their
endings, whilst F nouns had their own set of endings.
The plural did not distinguish between genders.
 DECLENSION, i.e. different endings were attached to
the stem of a word, and indicated what case a word
belonged to and, thus, what grammatical function the
word performed in a sentence.
 There were FOUR cases: the nominative, the accusative,
the genitive, and the dative. The nominative case → the
subject of the sentence, the accusative → the direct
object. The genitive case → possession. The dative → the
indirect object of the sentence.
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: ADJECTIVE
The OE adjective had the same categories as nouns:
four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and
accusative), three genders (masculine, feminine,
and neuter), and two numbers (singular and
plural).
 Adjectives had strong or weak forms. The weak
forms were used in the presence of a determiner,
while the strong ones were used in other situations.
 Most of the endings of the strong adjective
declension were identical to those of the strong
declension of nouns, while most of the endings of the
weak adjective declension were the same as those of
the weak nouns.

THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR
The Degrees of Comparison
 The
comparative and the superlative were
normally formed from the positive with
the help of the suffixes -ra and –ost, e.g.,
wīs (wise) – wīsra – wīsost
 Several adjectives had suppletive forms
of the comparative and superlative:
gōd (good) – betera – betst
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: PRONOUN
There existed the following types of: personal,
demonstrative, interrogative, and indefinite. The
grammatical categories of the pronouns were either
similar to those of nouns, or corresponded to those of
adjectives.
 Personal Pronouns had the categories of number,
gender, and case.
The 1st and 2nd person had three forms of number:
singular, plural and dual (in Early OE) but no gender
distinctions.
The 3rd person singular had three genders:
masculine, feminine and neuter.
The 2nd person had distinct singular and plural
forms (Þū - gē).

THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: PRONOUN
 The
possessive pronouns were derived from
the genitive case of the personal pronouns.
 Demonstrative Pronouns could also act as a
noun determiner (the definite article)
indicating its gender, number, and case: Þes
(this) and sē (that).
 Interrogative Pronouns hwā (who) and
hwæt (what) had a four-case paradigm.
 Indefinite pronouns were numerous, e.g.,
sum (some), ǣnig (any), gehwilċ (everything,
anything), nǣning (nothing) etc.
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB
 The
OE verb had two tenses (present and past)
and three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and
imperative).
 The verb agreed with the subject in number and
person, however, the distinction was not always
obvious because there were homonymous forms
in some of the persons.
 The forms of the Present Tense were used to
indicate present and future actions, while the
Past tense was used to indicate all past actions
and events.
 All the forms of the verb were synthetic, while
the analytic forms started to appear.
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB
OE verbs fell into two main groups: strong and
weak verbs.
 Strong Verbs formed their stems by means of
ablaut and by adding special suffixes. There were
about 300 strong verbs in OE, all of them were of
Proto-Germanic origin and had parallels in other
Old-Germanic languages. The strong verbs were
divided into 7 classes. All of them had the same
endings but differed in the root vowels which
distinguished the four stems (Infinitive, Past
Singular, Past Plural, and Participle II).
 Class 1:
bītan (to bite) – bāt – biton – biten
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB
 The
Present and Past Indicative were
formed by means of endings.
Weak Verbs were more numerous than strong
verbs. All the new verbs which appeared in the
OE period were weak.
The distinctive feature of the weak verbs was
that they formed their Past tense and Participle
II by means of the dental suffix containing -d- or
-t- .
cēpan (to keep) – cēpte – cēpt, cēped
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB
 The
OE Imperative Mood (2nd person, singular
and plural) was formed from the Infinitive:
For example, the imperative forms of the strong
verb singan (to sing) (Class 3):
Sing! (2nd person Sg);
Singaþ! (2nd person Pl).
 The forms of the OE Subjunctive Mood were
synthetic. The Present Subjunctive expressed
unlikeness, the Past Subjunctive – unreality and
impossibility.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE
The OE vocabulary is believed to have 24,000 lexical
items in the Old English corpus.
 The OE language is mainly Germanic, while loan words
are an insignificant part of it.
 Native words of the OE language are subdivided into
the following etymological layers:
- common Indo-European words, for example:
fæder (father), sittan (sit), reād (red), etc.,
- common Germanic words, for example: grēne
(green), hēāfod (head), tīma (time), sumor (summer),
- a few specifically English words, which are not
found in any other language, for example, clipian (call),
wimman (wife), brid (bird) etc.

THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE
Word-Formation
 The main word-building patterns were affixation
and composition.
 Productive word-building prefixes: ā-, be-, for-, fore-,
ge-, ofer-, un-.
 Productive word-building suffixes -end, -ere, -Þ, -uÞ,
-oÞ, -ung / -ing, -ig, -lic.
 prefixes → forming verbs (less productive with other
parts of speech); suffixes → forming nouns and
adjectives.
 Composition → an abundance of compound words,
especially, nouns, e.g. ǣfentīd (evening time),
mōnandæg (Monday), hāligdæg (holiday),
sunnandæg (Sunday) etc.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE
Borrowing in Old English
 Borrowings constituted only a small part
of the OE vocabulary (~ 6 hundred
words).
 Two sources of borrowing in OE were
Latin and Celtic, though, by the end of
the OE period, new words appeared from
the language of the Danes.
 Borrowing from Celtic can be mainly
found in place names: Kent, York,
possibly, London, Thames, Avon, Dover,
Usk, Esk etc.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE



Some words came into the language through Germanic
contacts with the Romans before the invasion and
settlement of Britain (the 1st – the 5th century AD). They
refer to home, agriculture, and building, e.g. mil (Lat.
millia passum), wīn (Lat. vinum), etc.
Some Latin loan-words adopted in Britain are
represented by the place names used by the Celts, e.g.,
castra in the shape caster, ceaster found in Dorchester,
Winchester, Manchester, Lancaster, and wic (Lat. vicus
‘village’), in Norwich, Woolwich etc.
Christianising of Britain (late 6th century AD) and until
the end of Old English. Two major thematic groups:
religious and educational terms, e.g., biscop (bishop),
clerec (clerk), mynster (minster), munuc (monk), scōl
(school), scōlere (scholar).
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE
 The
last source of borrowing is Scandinavian,
which is directly related to political events that
occurred at the end of Old English.
 The words of Scandinavian origin are place
names, e.g., Eastoft, Langtoft, Whitby, Derby,
etc., words associated with sea voyages, e.g.,
bātswegen (boatman), barda (beaked ship),
dreng (warrior), a number of words relating to
law or to administrative system, and some
everyday terms which make part of the
present-day English word-stock.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE
Old English Literature
The most important works of the Old English
literature:
 Beowulf, an epic poem describing adventures
of legendary heroes;
 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of early
English history;
 Caedmon’s Hymn, a religious poem.
There are also a number of surviving prose
works, biblical translations, legal documents, and
works on grammar, medicine, and geography.
Thank you for your
attention!!!