Old English

1. Introduction to Old English

Old English (Englisc), also called Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language: a West Germanic language spoken in England from roughly the 5th to the mid-12th century. It is the language of the epic Beowulf and of King Alfred's translations.¹

A speaker of Modern English cannot simply read it: Old English was a heavily inflected language with grammatical gender, four (sometimes five) noun cases, and strong and weak verbs — far closer in structure to modern German or Icelandic than to today's English.

2. Historical context

Old English grew from the dialects of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who settled Britain after Roman rule. Contact with Norse settlers added everyday vocabulary (they, sky, egg), and the Norman Conquest of 1066 poured in French, beginning the shift toward Middle English. The prestige literary standard was Late West Saxon.

3. Writing system

Old English was written in the Latin alphabet with several extra letters: þ (thorn) and ð (eth) for “th,” æ (ash) for a front “a,” and ƿ (wynn) for “w.” Modern editions usually replace wynn with “w.” Pronunciation is well reconstructed but, as with any dead language, conventional in detail.

4. Sounds and spelling

Old English spelling is largely phonetic once you know a few letters, and vowel length (marked here with a macron, e.g. ā) was meaningful — aċras 'acres' vs āc 'oak'. These letters differ most from Modern English:²

Stress falls on the first syllable of the root, as in native Modern English words. There were no silent letters: pronounce every consonant, including the initial ones in hnūtu 'nut', hring 'ring' and cnēo 'knee'.²

5. Core vocabulary

Old English core vocabulary is remarkably recognisable once the spelling is decoded — a large share of the everyday words below are the direct ancestors of Modern English ones. Long vowels are macron-marked; nouns are given in the nominative singular, verbs in the infinitive.²³

Pronouns

Numbers 1–10

People and family

The natural world

The body

Common verbs

Everyday words

6. Grammar in brief

Old English is a fully inflected Germanic language. Nouns have three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and up to five cases — nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and a residual instrumental — across strong and weak declensions. The word for 'the'/'that', sē (m.) / sēo (f.) / þæt (n.), itself inflects for case and number.³

Verbs fall into two great classes: strong verbs mark tense by a vowel change (ablaut) — singan, sang, sungon, gesungen 'sing, sang, sung' — and weak verbs add a dental suffix — lufian, lufode, gelufod 'love, loved, loved'. There are only two tenses, present and past; the future and finer aspects are read from context. Word order is freer than today's, typically verb-second in main clauses and verb-final in subordinate ones.³

7. Learning resources

A recommended starting stack:

• Peter S. Baker, Introduction to Old EnglishBeginner — companion site “Old English Aerobics,” free exercises
• Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary — the standard dictionary, free online
• Old English — overview — history, dialects and grammar

8. Practice

Work through the drills below to lock in the vocabulary and the sound rules from the sections above.

9. Honest limitations

• Old English is a reading language: the goal is to read Beowulf and the Chronicle, not to converse.
• Pronunciation is reconstructed; details are conventional.
• This guide now covers sounds, a broad core vocabulary and grammar in brief; deeper reading (full paradigms and texts) is left to the linked references.