Old, Middle, Eary And Modern English

Old English And The Modern EnglishWe all know english..

We talk in english, we write in english, but have u wondered how was the language 'engilsh' in the olden days?

That the language of that time is now generally referred to as Old English..

Have u wondered how different was the language then from the language now?

The language then, as most of us know, was difficult as there was less word stock to express our feelings.. But in my opinion, the language, the old english was much more fun and interesting..

The beauty of the language lies in the way u use it to express yourself..

The language the was actually.... "Beautiful" :) ♥
Differences Between The Old, Middle And Early Modern And Modern...

"Anglo-Saxon language", Old English (disambiguation) or Anglo-Saxon (disambiguation) are synonymous. This state of the language mainly refers to the Region of England (except the extreme south-west and north-west), southern and eastern Scotland, and the eastern fringes of modern Wales. It mostly developed into Middle English by the 13th century.

The Language family are-

▪Indo-European

▪Germanic

▪West Germanic

▪Ingvaeonic

▪Anglo-Frisian

▪Anglic

▪Old English (its the one we are talking about here)

The Dialects are-

▪Kentish

▪Mercian

▪Northumbrian

▪West Saxon

Writing system are-

Runic, later Latin (Old English alphabet).

Now what is Old English?

Old English (Ænglisc, Anglisc, Englisc) or Anglo-Saxon[2] is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon.

It is a West Germanic language closely related to Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Old English had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin. In most respects, including its grammar, it was much closer to modern German and Icelandic than to modern English. It was fully inflected with five grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three grammatical numbers (singular, plural, and dual) and three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). The dual forms occurred in the first and second persons only and referred to groups of two.

Adjectives, pronouns and (sometimes) participles agreed with their antecedent nouns in case, number and gender. Finite verbs agreed with their subject in person and number.

Nouns came in numerous declensions (with deep parallels in Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit). Verbs came in nine main conjugations (seven strong and two weak), each with numerous subtypes, as well as a few additional smaller conjugations and a handful of irregular verbs. The main difference from other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, is that verbs can be conjugated in only two tenses (vs. the six "tenses" – really tense/aspect combinations – of Latin), and have no synthetic passive voice (although it did still exist in Gothic).

Gender in nouns was grammatical, as opposed to the natural gender that prevails in modern English. That is, the grammatical gender of a given noun did not necessarily correspond to its natural gender, even for nouns referring to people. For example, sēo sunne (the Sun) was feminine, se mōna (the Moon) was masculine, and þat wīf "the woman/wife" was neuter. (Compare German cognates die Sonne, der Mond, das Weib.) Pronominal usage could reflect either natural or grammatical gender, when it conflicted.

From the 9th century, Old English experienced heavy influence from Old Norse, a member of the related North Germanic group of languages.

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