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Old English

Old English
Ænglisc, Anglisc, Englisc
Beowulf.Kenning.jpg
A detail of the first page of the Beowulf manuscript, showing the words "ofer hron rade", translated as "over the whale's road (sea)". It is an example of an Old English stylistic device, the kenning.
Pronunciation [ˈæŋliʃ]
Region England (except the extreme south-west and north-west), southern and eastern Scotland, and the eastern fringes of modern Wales.
Era mostly developed into Middle English and Early Scots by the 13th century
Dialects
Runic, later Latin (Old English alphabet).
Language codes
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-6 ango
Glottolog olde1238
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Old English (Ænglisc, Anglisc, Englisc) or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French, and Old English developed into the next historical form of English, known as Middle English.

Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, and Latin, brought to Britain by Roman invasion. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century.


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