Some Characteristics of Old English
The pronunciation of Old English words differs somewhat from that of
Modern English words. Especially the long vowels have changed a great deal.
Take the Old English word stān for example. The word stān is the same word as
the Modern English word stone, but the vowel is different, The a sound has
shifted to the sound of o in Modern English.
Other vowels have also undergone changes, e.g.
fōt (Old English ) —— foot (Modern English)
cēne (Old English ) —— keen (Modern English)
hū (Old English ) —— how (Modern English)
Old English represented the sound of th by p and ð as in the word wiρ (O.
E.) —— with (Mod. E.), and the word ðā (O. E.) —— then (Mod. E.), the
sound of sh by sc as in scēap (O. E.) —— sheep (Mod. E.) or scēotan (O. E.)
—— shoot (Mod. E.), and the sound of k by c as in cynn (O. E.) —— kin
(Mod. E.) or nacod (O. E.) —— naked (Mod. E.).
The vocabulary of Old English consisted mainly of Anglo-Saxon words.
But when the Norman Conquest in 1066 brought French to England much of the
English vocabulary was replaced by words borrowed from French and Latin. If
we open any Old English dictionary, we find that about 85 percent of the Old
English vocabulary was no longer in use during this period. Of course, the basic
elements of the vocabulary have remained. They express fundamental concepts
of human life, such as: mann (man); wīf (wife), cild (child), hūs (house), bern
(bench), mete (meat , food) , gærs (grass), lēaf (leaf) , fugol (fowl, bird), gōd
(good), hēah (high), strang (strong), etan (eat), drincan ( drink ), slæpan
(sleep ), libban (live ) . feohtan (fight), etc.
Old English was a highly inflected language. It had a complete system of
declensions with four cases and conjugations. So Old English grammar differs
from Modern English grammar in declensions and conjugations.
There are two classes of languages in the world: synthetic and analytic. A
synthetic language is one which shows the relation of words in a sentence
largely by means of inflections. An analytic language is one which indicates the
relation of words in a sentence by means of word order, prepositions or
auxiliary verbs, rather than by inflections.
Old English is a synthetic language. Old English nouns and adjectives have
four cases: the nominative case, the genitive case, the dative case and the
accusative case. Apart from these four cases, Latin nouns have the ablative and
the locative cases. That is to say, Latin nouns have six cases just like Modern
Russian nouns.
Take a Latin sentence for example.
The sentence “Nero interfecit Agrippinam.” (Nero killed Agrippina.) has
the same meaning as the sentence “Agrippinam interfecit Nero.” This is because
the word Nero is in the nominative case, and the word Agrippinain is in the
accusative case. Therefore no matter where these words stand, they express the
same meaning.
In Modern English, a noun used as a subject and object does not have
different forms. There remain today only two case forms: those of the
nominative case and the possessive case: man, man’s. Modern English depends
upon word order to show the relation of words in a sentence. Different word
order may result in different meaning. The sentence “Nero killed Agrippina.” is
completely opposite to the sentence “Agrippina killed Nero.” in meaning.
(Lin Chenzhang. 1997. An introduction to English lexicology Wuhan
University Press.)