Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum
þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon
hú ðá æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Can you read the preceding sentence? Why not? It’s written in English. Yes, you read me right; English! Old English to be exact. It is the first sentance from the epic poem Beowulf, which is recognized to be the earliest surviving work of literature written in Old English. You want me to translate it into Modern English for you? Alright, here is a translation:

Listen! We --of the Spear-Danes in the days of yore,
of those clan-kings--heard of their glory.
how the worthy princes performed courageous deeds.

Pretty amazing how far English has come in 1000 years, isn’t it? Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon, was spoken and written between 500-1100 BCE. While these dates are pretty loose, the latter is generally agreed upon by scholars due to the Norman invasion in 1066, and its huge influence on the language.

Old English originally came to the island now known as England with 5th Century Germanic warring tribes; mainly the Angles, Saxons & Jutes. It was not a unified language as we think of English today. Rather, it developed into four distinct dialects that were usually understandable to each other; Northumbrian in the North, West Saxon in the South, Kentish in the Southeast, & Mercian in central England. Due to centuries of Viking raids and colonization, the Northumbrian speakers had more Old Norse words in their day to day speech and language.

When all these Germanic tribes came to England, they pushed aside the native Celtic people with their Celtic languages to Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland. The Germanic invaders looked down upon the native tribes and their culture, which might explain why there is very little influence by them on Old English. Of course, very little of Old English is borrowed from any culture; less than 3% of it are loan-words.

When Old English was originally written in its earliest history, the alphabet was a runic one like the Vikings’ runes. The transition to writing English with a Latin alphabet came about with the influx of Christianity and Christian missionaries. The introduction of Christianity to the island also added the first few Greek and Roman loan-words to the language.

Old English in Latin lettering was written and copied in the English monasteries. Writing preserves language, and allows future generations to be able to study it. While the Old English is not a static language, it is has much more diversity in its syntax, grammar and semantics than Modern English. Also, Old English is pretty much spelled as it sounds.

If you think this ancient language sounds pretty cool but extinct, don’t despair! Since it was very close to Old Saxon, you can experience a very close relative to it by traveling to the island of Terschelling in the Frisian region of the Netherlands. It is also very similar to modern Icelandic, since they are both related to & descended from Old Norse.

Beowulf excerpt from: Beowulf on Steorarume; (Beowulf in Cyberspace)

Other sources:

• Bragg, Melvyn. The Adventure of English; The Biography of a Language. New York; Arcade Publishing, 2004.
• A (Very) Brief History of the English Language
• Old English language and History of the English language from Wikipedia.