The Historical Grammar of the Old English Language

8/3/2019 The Historical Grammar of the Old English Language

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The Historical Grammar of the Old English Language

1. The history of Old English and its development.

2. The Old English Phonetics.

3. The Old English Substantive.

4. The Old English Adjective.

5. The Old English Pronoun.

6. The Old English Numeral.

7. The Old English Adverb.

8. The Old English Verb.

9. The Old English Auxiliary Words.

10. Old English dialects.Appendix I: Texts.


In 409 AD the last Roman legion left British shores, and in fifty years the Islandsbecame a victim of invaders. Germanic tribes from Southern Scandinavia and

Northern Germany, pushed from their densely populated homelands, looked for a new

land to settle. At that time the British Isles were inhabited by the Celts and remainingRoman colonists, who failed to organize any resistance against Germanic intruders,

and so had to let them settle here. This is how the Old English language was born.

Celtic tribes crossed the Channel and starting to settle in Britain already in the 7th

century BC. The very word "Britain" seems to be the name given by the pre-Celticinhabitants of the island, accepted by first Indo-Europeans. The Celts quickly spread

over the island, and only in the north still existed non-Indo-European peoples which

are sometimes called "Picts" (the name given by Romans). Picts lived in Scotland andon Shetland Islands and represented the most ancient population of the Isles, the

origin of which is unknown. Picts do not seem to leave any features of their language

to Indo-European population of Britain - the famous Irish and Welsh initial mutationsof consonants can be the only sign of the substratum left by unknown nations of

Britain.

See "Picts and Pictish language" article

See "Initial Mutations in Indo-European languages" article

At the time the Celts reached Britain they spoke the common language, close to

Gaulish in France. But later, when Celtic tribes occupied Ireland, Northern England,

Wales, their tongues were divided according to tribal divisions. These languages will

later become Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Cornish, but from that time no signs remained,

because the Celts did not invent writing yet.


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Not much is left from Celtic languages in English.

Though many place names and names for rivers aresurely Celtic (like Usk- from Celtic *usce "water",

orAvon - from *awin "river"), the morphology and

phonetics are untouched by the Celtic influence. Some

linguists state that the word down comes from Celtic*dn "down"; other examples of Celtic influence in

place names are tne following:cothair(a fortress) - Carnarvon

uisge (water) - Exe, Usk, Esk

dun, dum (a hill) - Dumbarton, Dumfries, Dunedin

llan (church) - Llandaff, Llandovery, Llandudnocoil(forest) - Kilbrook, Killiemore

kil(church) - Kilbride, Kilmacolm

ceann (cape) - Kebadre, Kingussieinis (island) - Innisfail

inver(mountain) - Inverness, Inverurie

bail(house) - Ballantrae, Ballyshannon,and, certainly, the word whiskey which means the same as Irish uisge "water". But

this borrowing took place much later.

In the 1st century AD first Roman colonists begin to penetrate in Britain; Roman

legions built roads, camps, founded towns and castres. But still they did not manage to

assimilate the Celts, maybe because they lived apart from each other and did not mix.

Tens of Latin words in Britain together with many towns, places and hills named byRomans make up the Roman heritage in the Old English. Such cities asDorchester,Winchester, Lancaster, words like camp, castra, many terms of the Christian religion

and several words denoting armaments were borrowed at that time by Britons, and

automatically were transferred into the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon language already

when there was no Romans in the country.

In 449 the legendary leaders of two Germanic tribes, Hengist and Horsa, achieved

British shores on their ships. The Anglo-Saxon conquest, however, lasted for several

centuries, and all this period Celtic aborigines moved farther and farther to the west of

the island until they manage to fortify in mountainous Wales, in Corwall, andpreserved their kingdoms in Scotland. Germanic tribes killed Celtic population,

destroyed Celtic and former Roman towns and roads. In the 5th century such cities as

Durovern in Kent, Virocon, Trimontii, Camulodunum, were abandoned by the

population.

Angles settled around the present-day Noridge, and in Northern England; Saxons, the

most numerous of the tribes, occupied all Central England, the south of the island and


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settled in London (Londinii at that time). Jutes and Frises, who probably came to

Britain a bit later, settled on the island of White and in what is now Kent - theword Kentderives from the name of the Celtic tribe Cantii. Soon all these tribes

founded their separate kingdoms, which was united after centuries of struggle only in

878 by Alfred, king of Wessex. Before that each of the tribes spoke its language, they

were similar to each other but had differences which later became the dialectal

peculiarities of Old English.

Now a little bit about the foreign influence in Old English. From the 6th century

Christianity start activities in Britain, the Bible is translated into Old English, andquite a lot of terms are borrowed from Latin at that time: many bishops, missionaries

and Pope's officials come from Rome. The next group of foreign loanwords were

taken from Scandinavian dialects, after the Vikings occupied much of the country in

the 9th - 11th centuries. Scandinavian languages were close relatives with Old English,so the mutual influence was strong enough to develop also the Old English

morphology, strengthening its analytic processes. Many words in the language were

either changed to sound more Scandinavian, or borrowed. Below we will touch this

problem in more details.

The Old English language, which has quite a lot of literature monuments, came to the

end after the Norman conquest in 1066. The new period was called Middle English.


The phonetic system of Old English preserved in general the Common

Germanic structure of sounds. Main phonetic features of Germanic languages -

Grimm's Law and Verner's Law - are clearly seen in Old English, as well as many

processes which took part among vowels and diphthongs. However, Old English is

sometimes moving further in developing the phonetics, and that is why some of itsmodels are a bit hard to trace back to the Common Germanic period. That is why we

decided to follow the way suggested by many linguists in description the Old English

phonetics: to offer the explanations comparing to the Gothic language, the most

ancient of witnessed Germanic tongues and the most archaic of them.

Though Gothic is referred to the East Germanic subgroup of languages, its similar

sounds, morphological forms and vocabulary with Old English, Old High German,

Old Scandinavian and other ancient Germanic languages are quite frequent. In the

early Medieval Age, when both Gothic and Old English were spoken, single

languages of the group did not go too far from each other and remained very much

alike.


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As a whole, Old English phonetics included the majority of sounds typical for all

Germanic speech; and only some of its phonemes are unique and require a special

acquaintance.

First we will talk about the vowels, which could be either short or long in Old English,

just like in Modern English or German. The difference between them is also familiarto Modern English speakers: the distinction between open and close syllables. Thisdistinction is quite Germanic, and obviously did not existed in Proto-Indo-European

where vowels could be short and long in every position. In Germanic a long sound in

a closed syllable can be seldom met. The table below explains all Old English (OE)vocals compared to those of Gothic and followed by examples (sounds for them will

follow later):

OE Gothic Description; Position; Pronunciation Examples

a aShort back vowel; Mainly in open syllables,

when the following one contains a back vowel;English cup

macian (to

make), habban(to have)

aiLong back vowel; In any kind of syllables;

Englishstarstn(a stone), htan (to

call)

aShort back vowel; Met mainly in closed

syllables, or in open ones, if the next syllable

contains a front vowel; English bad

dg(a day), wter(water)

' ,

Long back vowel; as Gothic found only in

some verbal forms, as Gothic is the result ofthe so-called i-mutation; Germanza"hlen

st'lon(stolen), h'lan (to

cure)

ei, ai,

a

Short front vowel; as Gothic i, ainoticed onlyin some infinitives, otherwise is result of the

mutation ofi; English bed

sengean (to sing)

Long front vowel; resulted from the i-mutation

of; German Meerdman (to judge)

i i, ie

Short front vowel; can be either stable or

unstable, the unstable sound can interchangewith ie andy; Englishstill

bindan(to bind), niht-

nyht(a night)

ieLong front vowel; also stable and unstable

(mutating to); Englishstealwrtan (to write), h -

h(they)

o u, au Short back vowel; English cost coren (chosen)

o Long back vowel; Englishstore scc (divided)

u u, auShort back vowel; used only when the next

syllable contains another back vowel;

English book

curon (they chose)

Long back vowel; Englishstool lcan (to look)

y uShort front vowel; i-mutation ofu;

Germanfu"nfgylden (golden)

Long front vowel; i-mutation of, ms (mice)


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Germanglu"hen

a. oA special short sound met only before nasals in

closed syllablesmonn (a man)

Here they are. Some linguists doubt about the last vowel if it ever existed at all - Old

English texts never reflect it in writing. But there is a vowel interchange in some kindof words - in closed syllables before nasals - where some texts have a (mann), but

some prefero (monn). Sometimes even the same document shows the two variants.

This makes us think there was a vocal sound in this position which was developed

already in the Old English time, and did not exist in Gothic or in Common Germanic.

The Gothic language used to have much more diphthongs than Old English. Usuallythis is the general trend in Indo-European languages - diphthongs turn into simple

vowels, and the more developed the language, the less diphthongs it has. The Old

English tongue had two original diphthongs, both of which were composed of long

vowel components:

- equal to Gothic au, found both in nominal and verbal parts of speech: bm,

cs (he chose)

- equal to Gothic iu:csan (to choose); in some dialects and varieties of the

language it was written like , but we are sure this was the same sound in fact.

One of the main phonological and morphological instruments in Common

Germanic and practically in all Germanic languages was the Ablaut, the vowel

interchange in the root of nouns and verbs. This specific feature, though known in all

Indo-European groups as a phonetic means, was of great importance particularly inGermanic, where it was sometimes used instead of verb endings and noun inflections.

Interesting, that the same way of "infixation" of different vowels into the root isknown in Semitic and other Afroasiatic languages: compare the Arabic language

which has kataba (he wrote), kutiba (written), katib (writing), kitab (a

writing), 'aktaba (he made smb write) as different forms of the root k-t-b, and the

English language which usessing, sang, sung, songas different forms of the roots-ng. This is the Germanic Ablaut.

The Ablaut in its classical Germanic forms is present in Gothic, Old High German and

many other ancient Germanic languages. But English, though keeping this interchange,slightly changed the rules of the Ablaut. For instance, if the Germanic classical verb

conjugation represent the Ablaut in i - a - zero forms, in Old English it lookslike rsan - rs - rison - risen (to rise) in the I class of Strong verbs, and like bodan -

bad - budon - boden in the II class. But still the Ablaut played an important role in

the morphology of the verb and noun (for nouns it could be also the means of word

composition:faran (to go, to travel) produced the nounfr(a trip)).


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Speaking about vowel mutations which took place in Old English words through its

period of existence, we do not wish to describe thoroughly all of them, just to point

the most important processes:

1. Breaking

> ea before combinations of "r+consonant", "l+cons.", "h+cons.", and alsobefore h final:

rm > earm, ld > eald, hta > eahta, sh > seah

e > eo before "r+cons.", "lc, lh, h +cons.", and before h final:

herte > heorte, melcan > meolcan, selh > seolh, feh > feoh

2. PalatalizationThis is the process which went under the influence ofg, c, scbefore vowels in the

beginning of the word:

e > ie (gefan > giefan)

> ea (cster > ceaster)' > a (g'fon > gafon)

a > ea (scacan > sceacan)

o > eo (scort > sceort)Interesting to know that this palatalization (or softening) is thought by some linguists

to influence not vowels but consonants themselves. This means that in some particular

position soundsg, c, sc became respectively [g'], [k'], [sk'], and this was marked by a

soft vowel after them. So opinions vary on this problem.

3. i-mutation

This interesting feature changed many of Old English words on a very early stage of

the language's history. It is caused by i(otj) in the next syllable, it affects all vowels,

except iand e. Vowels move from their back position to the new front one:

a > e (framian > fremman)

> e (tlian > tellan) > ' (lrian>l'ran)

o > e (ofstian > efstan)

> (dmian > dman)u > y (fullian > fyllan)

> (cian > can)

ea > ie (earmiu > iermu)

a > e (gelafian > gelefan)eo > ie (afeorrian > afierran, afyrran)

o > e (getrowi > getrewe, getrve)

4. Back Mutation

Appears before liquids and labial consonants (i.e. r, l; p, b, f, m):


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i > io (hira > heora)

e > eo (herot > heorot)

a > ea (saru > searu)

5. Contraction of vowels due to a dropped h

After the consonant had dropped, two vowels met, and they collided into one longvowel:

ah + vowel > eah + vowel > a, (slahan > sleahan > slan)

eh,ih + vowel > o (sehan > seohan > son)

oh + vowel > - (fhan > fn, hhan > hn)Once I saw this feature was called the "secondary laryngeal drop" in one book. Really,

this reminds the common situation of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeal sound [h]

which was dropped in all Indo-European languages except Anatolian

(Hittite hartagga, Greekarktos, Welsh art- a bear). The drop of this sound usuallycaused the lengthening of neighbouring sounds. We see that this trend was preserved

in Old English as well - h was not stable enough to remain between vowels. The

English language was moving towards the analytism.

The consonants in the Old English language are simple to learn for a nowadaysEnglish-speaker - and we are all, aren't we? They look the following way:

Labials , b, f, v

Dentals d, t, s, (English thin), (English this)Velars c [k], g, hLiquids r, l

Nasals n, m

Of them the special attention is always attracted to the letterg. In fact though it was

written the same way in every position, it was pronounced in three different ways:

1. as English [g] in giftwhile standing before any consonant ora, o, u (all backvowels). The example isgd(a god).

2. as Greek [K] or Irishgh while standing after back vowels (these very a, o, u or

afterr, l. For example dagas,folgian.

3. as English [j] in yellow while preceding or following any front vowel (e, i, y). Inthis case it is no longer velar, but palatal:giefan (to give), dg(a day). As we see,

thisgin dglater turned into the Modern Englishy.

Consonants could also be subject to several kinds of mutations which we place here:


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1. Voicing of fricative sounds (h, f, s, ) appears, if a fricative is surrounded by

vowels:wf(a wife; unvoiced) - wfes (voiced); wear (a becoming; unvoiced) -

weoran (to become; voiced).

2. Palatalization appears only in Late Old English, but significantly changes the

pronunciation making it closer to today's English:cild[kild] > [child];scip [skip] > [ship]; everywhere [g], [cg] sounds turn into

[dj]: bricg[bricg] > [bridj]

3. Other changes

any velar cons.+ t> -ht-: scte > shte

any labial cons.+ t> -ft-: sceapt > sceaft

any dental cons.+ t> -ss-: witte > wisse

n was lost before h, f, s, p:bronhte > brhte, sonfte > sfte

Certainly there were other changes as well, but they are not so important to be placed

in our short grammar.

In general, Old English phonetics suffered great changes during the whole periodfrom the 5th to the 11th century. Anglo-Saxons did not live in isolation from the

world - they contacted with Germanic tribes in France, with Vikings from

Scandinavia, with Celtic tribes in Britain, and all these contacts could not butinfluence the language's pronunciation somehow. Besides, the internal development of

the English language after languages of Angles, Saxons and Jutes were unified, was

rather fast, and sometimes it took only half a century to change some form of thelanguage or replace it with another one. That is why we cannot regard the Old

English language as the state: it was the constant movement.


The substantive in Indo-European has always three main categories which change its

forms: the number, the case, the gender. It ias known that the general trend of theIndo-European family is to decrease the number of numbers, cases and genders from

the Proto-Indo-European stage to modern languages. Some groups are moreconservative and therefore keep many forms, preserving archaic language traits; some

are more progressive and lose forms or transform them very quickly. The Old English

language, as well as practically all Germanic tongues, is not conservative at all: it

generated quite a lot of analytic forms instead of older inflections, and lost many other

of them.


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Of eight Proto-Indo-European cases, Old English keeps just four which were inherited

from the Common Germanic language. In fact, several of original Indo-Europeannoun cases were weak enough to be lost practically in all branches of the family,

coinciding with other, stronger cases. The ablative case often was assimilated by the

genitive (in Greek, Slavic, Baltic, and Germanic), locative usually merged with dative

(Italic, Celtic, Greek), and so did the instrumental case. That is how four casesappeared in Germanic and later in Old English - nominative, genitive, accusative and

dative. These four were the most ancient and therefore stable in the system of the

Indo-European morphology.

The problem of the Old English instrumental case is rather strange - this case arises

quite all of a sudden among Germanic tongues and in some forms is used quite

regularly (like in demonstrative pronouns). In Gothic the traces of instrumental and

locative though can be found, but are considered as not more than relics. But the OldEnglish must have "recalled" this archaic instrumental, which existed, however, not

for too long and disappeared already in the 10th century, even before the Norman

conquest and transformation of the English language into its Middle stage.

As for other cases, here is a little pattern of their usage in the Old English syntax.

1. Genitive - expresses the possessive menaing: whose? of what?Also after the expression meaning fullof, free of, worthyof, guiltyof, etc.

2. Dative - expresses the object towards which the action is directed.

After the after the verbs like "say to smb", "send smb", "give to smb"; "known to

smb", "necessary for smth / smb", "close to smb", "peculiar for smth".

Also in the expressions like from the enemy, against the wind, on the shore.

3. Accusative - expresses the object immediately affected by the action (what?), the

direct object.

Three genders were strong enough, and only northern dialects could sometimes lose

their distinction. But in fact the lose of genders in Middle English happened due to the

drop of the case inflections, when words could no longer be distinguished by itsendings. As for the numbers, the Old English noun completely lost the dual, which

was preserved only in personal pronouns (see later).

All Old English nouns were divided into strong and weak ones, the same as verbs inGermanic. While the first had a branched declension, special endings for differentnumbers and cases, the weak declension was represented by nouns which were

already starting to lose their declension system. The majority of noun stems in Old

English should be referred to the strong type. Here are the tables for each stems with

some comments - the best way of explaining the grammar.


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A hrycg here ende cynn rce

Plural N hrycgeas herigeas endas cynn rciu

G hrycgea herigea enda cynna rcea

D hrycgium herigum endum cynnum rcium

A hrycgeas herigeas endas cynn rciu

Again the descendant of Indo-Europeanjo-stem type, known only in masculine and

neuter. In fact it is a subbranch ofo-stems, complicated by the ibefore the ending:

like Latin lupus andfilius. Examples of this type: masculine - wecg(a

wedge), bcere (a scholar),fiscere (a fisher); neuter - net, bed, wte (a punishment).

wa-stems

Singular PluralMasc. Neut. Masc. Neut.

N bearu (wood) bealu (evil) bearwas bealu (-o)

G bearwes bealwes bearwa bealwa

D bearwe bealwe bearwum bealwum

A bearu (-o) bealu (-o) bearwas bealu (-o)

Just to mention. This is one more peculiarity of good old a-stems with the touch

ofw in declension. Interesting that the majority of this kind of stems make abstract

nouns. Examples: masculine -snw (snow),aw (a custom); neuter -

searu (armour), trow (a tree), cnw (a knee)

-stemsSg.

N swau (trace) fr (journey) tigol (brick)

G swae fre tigole

D swae fre tigole

A swae fre tigole

Pl. N swaa fra tigola

G swaa fra tigolaD swaum frum tigolum

A swaa fra tigola


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Another major group of Old English nouns consists only of feminine nouns. Funny

but in Indo-European they are called a-stems. But Germanic turned vowels sometimesupside down, and this long a became long o. However, practically no word of this

type ends in -o, which was lost or transformed. The special variants of-stems arejo-

and wo-stems which have practically the same declension but with the corresponding

sounds between the root and the ending.

Examples of-

stems: caru (care),sceamu (shame), onswaru (worry), lufu (love), lr(an

instruction),sorg(sorrow),rg(a season), ides (a woman).Examples ofj-stems:sibb (peace), ecg(a blade),secg(a sword), hild(a

fight), x(an axe).

Examples ofw-stems: beadu (a battle), nearu (need), ls (a beam).

i-stemsMasc. Neut.

Sg.

N sige (victory) hyll (hill) sife (sieve)G siges hylles sifes

D sige hylle sife

A sige hyll sifePl.

N sigeas hyllas sifu

G sigea hylla sifaD sigum hyllum sifum

A sigeas hyllas sifu

The tribes and nations were usually of this very type, and were used always in

plural:Engle (the Angles),Seaxe (the Saxons),Mierce (the

Mercians),Norymbre(the Northumbrians),Dene (the Danish)N Dene

G Dena (Miercna, Seaxna)

D Denum

A Dene

Fem.

Sg. Pl.

N hyd (hide) hde, hdaG hde hda


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D hde hdum

A hd hde, hda

This kind of stems included all three genders and derived from the same type of Indo-

European stems, frequent also in other branches and languages of the family.

Examples: masculine - mere (a sea), mete (food), dl(a part),giest(a guest), drync (a

drink); neuter -spere (a spear); feminine - cwn (a woman), wiht(a thing).

u-stems

Masc. Fem.

Sg.N sunu (son)feld (field) duru (door) hand (hand)

G suna felda dura handaD suna felda dura handaA sunu feld duru hand

Pl.

N suna felda dura handaG suna felda dura handa

D sunum feldum durum handum

A suna felda dura handa

They can be either masculine or feminine. Here it is seen clearly how Old English lost

its final -s in endings: Gothic hadsunus and handus, while Old English hasalreadysunu and handrespectively. Interesting that dropping final consonants is also

a general trend of almost all Indo-European languages. Ancient tongues still keep

them everywhere - Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Prussian, Sanskrit, Old Irish; but later,no matter where a language is situated and what processes it undergoes, final

consonants (namely -s, -t, often -m, -n) disappear, remaining nowadays only in the

two Baltic languages and in New Greek.

Examples: masculine - wudu (wood), medu (honey), weald(forest),sumor(a

summer); fem. - nosu (a nose),flr(a floor).

The other type of nouns according to their declension was the group of Weak nouns,derived from n-nouns is Common Germanic. Their declension is simple and stable,

having special endings:


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Masc. Fem. Neut.

Sg.N nama (name) cwene (woman) age (eye)

G naman cwenan agan

D naman cwenan agan

A naman cwenan agePl.

N naman cwenan agan

G namena cwenena agena

D namum cwenum agum

A naman cwenan agan

Examples: masc. -guma (a man), wita (a wizard),steorra (a star), mna (the

Moon), dma (a judge); fem. - eore (Earth), heorte (a heart),sunne (Sun); neut. -

are (an ear).

And now the last (but least?) one which is interesting due to its special Germanicstructure. I am speaking about the root-stems which according to Germanic laws ofAblaut, change the root vowel during the declension. In Modern English such words

still exist, and we all know them:goose - geese, tooth - teeth,foot - feet, mouse -

mice etc. At school they were a nightmare for me, now they are an Old English

grammar. Besides, in Old English time they were far more numerous in the language.

Masc. Fem.Sg.

N mann ft (foot) t (tooth) | hnutu (nut) bc (book) gs (goose) ms (mouse)

burg (burg)G mannes ftes tes |

hnute bce gse mse burge

D menn ft t |hnyte bc gs ms byrig

A mann ft t |

hnutu bk gs ms burg

Pl. N menn ft t |

hnyte bc gs ms byrigG manna fta ta |

hnuta bca gsa msa burga

D mannum ftum tum |hnutum bcum gsum msum burgum


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A menn ft t |

hnyte bc gs ms byrig

See the rule? The general rule is the so-called i-mutation, which changes the vowel.The conversion table looks as follows and never fails - it is universally right both for

verbs and nouns. The table ofi-mutation changes remains above.

Examples: fem. - wfman (a woman), c (an oak),gt(a

goat), brc (breeches), wlh (seam), dung(a dungeon),furh (a furrow),sulh (a

plough),grut(gruel),ls (a louse),rul(a basket), a (water), niht(a

night), m'g (a girl),scrd(clothes).

There are still some other types of declension, but not too important fro understanding

the general image. For example, r-stems denoted the family relatives (dohtor'adaughter', mdor'a mother' and several others), es-stems usually meant children and

cubs (cild'a child', cealf'a calf').

The most intriguing question that arises from the picture of the Old English

declension is "How to define which words is which kind of stems?". I am sure you are

always thinking of this question, the same as I thought myself when first studying Old

English. The answer is "I don't know"; because of the loss of many endings all

genders, all stems and therefore all nouns mixed in the language, and one has just to

learn how to decline this or that word. This mixture was the decisive step of the

following transfer of English to the analytic language - when endings are not used,people forget genders and cases.

In any solid dictionary you will be given a noun with its gender and kind of stem. But

in general, the declension is similar for all stems. One of the most stable differences of

masculine and feminine is the -es (masc.) or-e in genitive singular of the Strong

declension.

For you to have at least a general idea after reading so much tables I am giving

another table, the general declension system of Old English nouns. Here '-' means a

zero ending.

Strong declension (a, ja, wa, , j, w, i-stems).Masc. Neut. Fem.

Sg. Pl. Sg. Pl. Sg. Pl.

N - -as - -u (-) - -a


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G -es -a -es -a -e -aD -e -um -e -um -e -um

A - -as - -u (-) -e -a

Weak declension u-stems

Sg. Pl. Sg. Pl. N - -an - -a

G -an -ena -a -aD -an -um -a -um

A -an -an - -a

Now that you know the declension, here is an exercise for you to check your Old

English. Please try to define the declension of the nouns below:

d(masc.) - pileeofor(masc.) - a boar

fcen (neut.) - crime, evil

feging(fem.) - conjunctiongewrit(neut.) - a letter

prd(fem.) - pride

pund(neut., weak) - a pound

If you are ready with this, take the adjectives. Answers for the exercise are here.




4. The Old English Adjective.

5. The Old English Pronoun.

6. The Old English Numeral.8. The Old English Verb.

9. The Old English Auxiliary Words.

10. Old English dialects.Appendix I: Texts.

Documents

The Historical Grammar of the Old English Language