A Brief History of English
Paul Roberts
(19 to 26)
The Lord's Prayer is an excellent example of Old English. It teaches
us about the differences between Old and Modern English. The
orthography is first on the list. Orthography is the representation of a
language's sounds through written or printed symbols. For example, the
sign ae was used by Old English writers to represent a vowel similar to
that found in modern hat or and.
The grammar is the second differentiation. Old English was
significantly more inflected than Modern English. That is, there were
more case endings for nouns, more person and number endings for verbs,
a more complex pronoun system, different adjective endings, and so on.
Some of this grammar can be found in the Lord's Prayer, such as the use
of the dative plural and the third person plural form of the verb.
The third distinction was in vocabulary. The majority of Old English
words are what we call native English; that is, they were not borrowed
from other languages and have been a part of English since English was a
part of Indo-European. Borrowed words from Norse vocabulary, Latin,
and Anglos-Saxons were undoubtedly present in Old English. The vast
majority of Old English words, however, were Native English. In
contrast, the majority of Modern English words are derived primarily
from Latin and French.
The fourth and final differentiation was structural changes between
Old and Modern English, resulting in Middle English. The Norman
Conquest was the political event that facilitated these changes. The
Normans crossed the Channel and took control of England. Following
that, French did not become the national language, completely replacing
English. Only after the Normans arrived as rulers and landlords did
French become the language of court, nobility, polite society, and
literature. However, it did not replace English as the language of the
people.