Old English (450 A.C.E - 1150 A.C.E)
Old English is the oldest form of English and was used around 450-1100 AD and was a mix of the three Germanic tribes, Jutes, Anglos and Saxons. The language originated form West-Germany and has a close relationship to Old Frisian. English took little parts of language from each of these three tribes to create which is now known today as Old English. The language was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland between the mid-Fifth Century and the mid-Twelfth Century.
Old English was highly gender based, with nouns falling under the categories or Masculine, Feminine and Neuter. The important thing to remember when learning or studying Old English is that these classes do not correspond to the biological sex or sexlessness. For example, the noun woman was masculine and the noun girl was neuter.
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Influences from other languages:
Norse, Celtic and Latin were the three languages which heavily influenced and shaped Old English. Latin's influence on Old English was that the language adopted Latin alphabet. Although this was a step forward from using the Runic alphabet, the Latin alphabet often fell short of being able to properly represent Anglo-Saxon phonetics. The Celtic language didn't impact Old English immensely, although the language did loan words from the Celtic origins. The second major source of loanwords to Old English were the Scandinavian words introduced during the Viking invasions of the 9th and 10th Centuries. |