The English spoken from the Germanic invasions of the 5 th Century up to about the end of 11 th century is now usually called Old English. (OE) though a learned coinage, Anglo Saxon is also in use. The term OE has the advantage, when used together with Middle English (ME) and Modern English (ModE) of pointing up the continuous historical development of the English language.

1. Fullness of inflection in adjectives and demonstrative pronouns.
2. Inflection of verbs more complex than in Modern English.
3. Many strong verbs Germanic verbs were of two types strong and weak. (as in Germanic languages)
4. Nouns had 3 gender Masculine, feminine and neuter.
5. Formed new words from other words and word stem by using prefixes and suffixes.

There was no official English spelling standard until the 18th century. Samuel Johnson's dictionary is one of the first major efforts toward that end. Before that time, it was common to see words spelled any number of ways. (Of course, you still see spelling differences; for example, the British and the Americans do not spell all things the same way.) To someone learning English, the spelling of words such as light or through may (reasonably) make little sense, as many letters are not pronounced. This is because the pronunciation changed, but the spelling did not. In Old English, liht (light) was pronounced [lee:xt], with the h sounding like the ch in Bach. In Middle English, the pronunciation didn't change a whole lot, although the spelling was somewhat altered. The gh in light used to denote the same ch sound as it did in Old English. There are lots of examples of this, as you can imagine.

Pronunciation


Obviously, we don't know exactly what Old English 
sounded like. There are no Anglo-Saxons 
around to tell us. Nonetheless, we still have 
a pretty good idea what it sounded like. 

Here are a few general guidelines: 


æ = as in 'at'; can also be a long vowel. 

ð = as in 'th'; 'father' or 'moth' 

þ = as in 'th''; 'father' or 'moth'.
      Essentially interchangeable with ð. 

c = as in 'ch' or 'k'; 'child' (OE cild) or king (OE cyning) 

i = as in 'ee'; 'cheese' 

sc = as in 'sh'; 'ship' (OE scip) 

g = as in 'y' or 'j'; 'yellow' or 'jack'.

The g at the beginning of a word like geworden was typically a 'y' sound.
h = as in German 'ch' (sort of an 'x' sound); 'Bach', Scottish 'loch'
r = commonly trilled, rather like the Scottish 'r'
The vowels are a bit more complicated ... there are lots of diphthongs. One interesting tidbit : All the Scandinavian languages and English were at one time mutually intelligible. Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians can still understand one another, but Scandinavians could also understand Old English .

LANGUAGES THAT INFLUENCED OLD ENGLISH : 1.Celtic Languages spoke by the native British population and the Germanic tribesmen. (mark of influence chiefly in place names) 2. Latin : (mark of influence by clothes, foods & herbs education and learning). Vesigium,(foot print ) (vestige- trace), inionious enimity (deep hatred) 3.Scandinavian turns of phrases and peculiarities of word order in Moden English canbe trace back to Scandinavian influence. 4. Mark of influence in place names and common nouns.