THE MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SPECIAL SECONDARY EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
UZBEK STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

A.	Kuldashev

The theme: The history of old English and its development

Lectures

Toshkent-2012

The history of old English and its development

In 409 AD the last Roman legion left British shores, and in fifty years the Islands became a victim of invaders. Germanic tribes from Southern Scandinavia and Northern Germany, pushed from their densely populated homelands, looked for a new land to settle. At that time the British Isles were inhabited by the Celts and remaining Roman colonists, who failed to organke any resistance against Germanic intruders, and so had to let them settle here. This is how the Old English language was born. Celtic tribes crossed the Channel and starting to settle in Britain already in the 7th century BC. The very word "Britain" seems to be the name given by the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the island, accepted by first Indo-Europeans. The Celts quickly spread over the island, and only in the north still existed non-Indo-European peoples which are sometimes called "Picts" (the name given by Romans). Picts lived in Scotland and on Shetland Islands and represented the most ancient population of the Isles, the origin of which is unknown. Picts do not seem to leave any features of their language to Indo-European population of Britain - the famous Irish and Welsh initial mutations of consonants can be the only sign of the substratum left by unknown nations of Britain. In the 1st century AD first Roman colonists begin to penetrate in Britain; Roman legions built roads, camps, founded towns and castres. But still they did not manage to assimilate the Celts, maybe because they lived apart from each other and did not mix. Tens of Latin words in Britain together with many towns, places and hills named by Romans make up the Roman heritage in the old English. Such cities as Dorchester, Winchester, Lancaster, words like camp, castra, many terms of the Christian religion and several words denoting armaments were borrowed at that time by Britons, and automatically were transferred into the old English, or Anglo-Saxon language already when there was no Romans in the country.
In 449 the legendary leaders of two Germanic tribes, Hengist and Horsa, achieved British shores on their ships. The Anglo-Saxon conquest, however, lasted for several centuries, and all this period Celtic aborigines moved farther and farther to the west of the island until they manage to fortify in mountainous Wales, in Corwall, and preserved their kingdoms in Scotland. Germanic tribes killed Celtic population, destroyed Celtic and former Roman towns and roads. In the 5th century such cities as Durovern in Kent, Virocon, Trimontii, Camulodunum, were abandoned by the population. Angles settled around the present-day Noridge, and in Northern England; Saxons, the most numerous of the tribes, occupied all Central England, the south of the island and settled in London (Londinii at that time). Jutes and Frises, who probably came to Britain a bit later, settled on the island of White and in what is now Kent - the word Kent derives from the name of the Celtic tribe Cantii. Soon all these tribes founded their separate kingdoms, which was united after centuries of struggle only in 878 by Alfred, king of Wessex. Before that each of the tribes spoke its language, they were similar to each other but had differences which later became the dialectal peculiarities of old English. Now a little bit about the foreign influence in Old English.
From the 6th century Christianity start activities in Britain, the Bible is translated into Old English, and quite a lot of terms are borrowed from Latin at that time: many bishops, missionaries and Pope's officials come from Rome. The next group of foreign loanwords were taken from Scandinavian dialects, after the Vikings occupied much of the country in the 9th - 11th centuries. Scandinavian languages were close relatives with Old English, so the mutual influence was strong enough to develop also the Old English morphology, strengthening its analytic processes. Many words in the language were either changed to sound more Scandinavian, or borrowed. Below we will touch this problem in more details.
The old English language, which has quite a lot of literature monuments, came to the end after the Norman Conquest in 1066. The new period was called Middle English.

The old English Phonetics

The phonetic system of Old English preserved in general the Common Germanic structure of sounds. Main phonetic features of Germanic languages - Grimm's Law and Verner's Law – are clearly seen in old English, as well as many processes which took part among vowels and diphthongs. However, Old English is sometimes moving further in developing the phonetics, and that is why some of its models are a bit hard to trace back to the Common Germanic period. That is why we decided to follow the way suggested by many linguists in description the Old English phonetics: to offer the explanations comparing to the Gothic language, the most ancient of witnessed Germanic tongues and the most archaic of them. Though Gothic is referred to the East Germanic subgroup of languages, its similar sounds, morphological forms and vocabulary with Old English, Old High German, Old Scandinavian and other ancient Germanic languages are quite frequent. In the early Medieval Age, when both Gothic and Old English were spoken, single languages of the group did not go too far from each other and remained very much alike. As a whole, Old English phonetics included the majority of sounds typical for all Germanic speech; and only some of its phonemes are unique and require a special acquaintance.
	Here they are. Some linguists doubt about the last vowel if it ever existed at all - Old English texts never reflect it in writing. But there is a vowel interchange in some kind of words - in closed syllables before nasals - where some texts have a (mann), but some prefer o (monn). Sometimes even the same document shows the two variants. This makes us think there was a vocal sound in this position which was developed already in the old English time, and did not exist in Gothic or in Common Germanic.
The Gothic language used to have much more diphthongs than Old English. Usually this is the general trend in Indo-European languages - diphthongs turn into simple vowels, and the more developed the language, the less diphthongs it has. The Old English tongue had two original diphthongs, both of which were composed of long vowel components:
	éá - equal to Gothic au, found both in nominal and verbal parts of speech: béám, céás (he chose) 
éó - equal to Gothic iu: céósan (to choose); in some dialects and varieties of the language it was written like íó, but we are sure this was the same sound in fact.
Speaking about vowel mutations which took place in old English words through its period of existence, we do not wish to describe thoroughly all of them, just to point the most important processes:

1. Breaking
œ > ea before combinations of "r + consonant", "l + cons.", "h + cons.", and also before h final:
	œrm > earm, œld > eald, œhta > eahta, sœh > seah
e > eo before "r + cons.", "lc, lh, h + cons.", and before h final:
	herte > heorte, melcan > meolcan, selh > seolh, feh > feoh

2. Palatalkation
This is the process which went under the influence of g, c, sc before vowels in the beginning of the word:

e > ie (gefan > giefan)
œ> ea (cœster > ceaster)
œ’> ea (gœ’lon > geafon)
a > ea (scacan > sceacan)
o > eo (scort > sceort)

Interesting to know that this palatalkation (or softening) is thought by some linguists to influence not vowels but consonants themselves. This means that in some particular position sounds g, c, sc became respectively [g'], [k'], [sk'], and this was marked by a soft vowel after them. So opinions vary on this problem.

3. i – mutation
This interesting feature changed many of Old English words on a very early stage of the language's history. It is caused by i (or j) in the next syllable, it affects all vowels, except i and e. Vowels move from their back position to the new front one:

a > e (framian > fremman)
œ > e (tœlian > tellan)
á > œ' (lárian >lœ'ran)
o > e (ofstian > efstan)
ó > é (dómian > déman)
u > y (fullian > fyllan)
ú > ý (cúpian > cýpan)
ea > ie (earmipu > iermpu)
éa > íe (geléafian > gelíefan)
eo > ie (afeorrian > afierran, afyrran)
éo > íe (getréowi > getríewe, getríve)

4. Back Mutation
Appears before liquids and labial consonants (i.e. r, l; p, b, f, m):

 i > io (hira > heora)
e > eo (herot > heorot)
a > ea (saru > searu)

5. Contraction of vowels due to a dropped h
After the consonant had dropped, two vowels met, and they collided into one long vowel:

ah + vowel > eah + vowel > éa, (slahan > sleahan > sléan)
eh, ih + vowel > éo (sehan > seohan > séon)
oh + vowel> ó - (fóhan > fón, hóhan > hón)

The consonants in the old English language are simple to learn for a nowadays English-speaker and we are all, aren't we? They look the following way:

Labials	p, b, f, v	
Dentals	d, t, s, p (English thin), ð (English this)	
Velars	c [k], g, h	
Liquids	r, l,	
Nasals	n, m	

First we will talk about the vowels, which could be either short or long in Old English, just like in Modern English or German. The difference between them is also familiar to Modern English speakers: the distinction between open and close syllables. This distinction is quite Germanic, and obviously did not existed in Proto-Indo-European where vowels could be short and long in every position. In Germanic a long sound in a closed syllable can be seldom met. The table below explains all Old English (OE) vocals compared to those of Gothic and followed by examples (sounds for them will follow later):

OE	Gothic	Description; Position; Pronunciation	Examples	
a	a	Short back vowels; Mainly in open syllables, when the following one contains a back vowel; English cup	macian (to make)
habban (to have)
	
á	ai	Long back vowel; In any kind of syllables; English star	stán (a stone)
hátan (to call)	
œ	a	Short back vowels; Met mainly in closed syllables, or in open ones, if the next syllable contains a front vowel; English bad 	dœg (a day)
wœter (water)	
œ’	é,á	Long back vowel; as Gothic é found only in some verbal forms, as Gothic á is the result of the so-called i mutation; German zählen	stœ’lon (stolen)
hœ’lan (to cure)	
e	i, ai, a	Short front vowel; as Gothic i, ai noticed only in some infinitives, otherwise is result of the mutation of i; English bed	sengean (to sing)	
é	ó	Long front vowel; resulted from the i – mutation of ó; German Meer 	déman (to judge)	
i	i, ie	Short front vowel; can be either stable or unstable, the unstable sound can interchange with ie and  y; English still	bindan (to bind)
niht – nyht (a night)	
í	ie	Long front vowel; also stable and unstable mutating to ý); English steal	wrítan (to write)
hí-hý (they)	
o	u, au	Short back vowel; English cost	coren (chosen)	
ó	o	Long back vowel; English store	scóc (divided)	
u	u, au	Short back vowel; used only when the next syllable contains another back vowel; English book	curon (they chose)	
ú	ú	Long back vowel; English  stool	lúcan (to look)	
y	u	Short front vowel; i – mutation of u; German fünf	gylden (golden)	
ý	ú	Long front vowel; i – mutation of ú; German glühen 	mýs (mice)	
a	o	A special short sound met only before nasals in closed syllables	monn (a man)	

The Old English Substantive

The substantive in Indo-European has always three main categories which change its forms: the number, the case, the gender. It is known that the general trend of the Indo-European family is to decrease the number of numbers, cases and genders from the Proto-Indo-European stage to modern languages. Some groups are more conservative and therefore keep many forms, preserving archaic language traits; some are more progressive and lose forms or transform them very quickly. The Old English language, as well as practically all Germanic tongues, is not conservative at all: it generated quite a lot of analytic forms instead of older inflections, and lost many other of them.
Of eight Proto-Indo-European cases, Old English keeps just four which were inherited from the Common Germanic language. In fact, several of original Indo-European noun cases were weak enough to be lost practically in all branches of the family, coinciding with other, stronger cases. The ablative case often was assimilated by the genitive (in Greek Slavic, Baltic, and Germanic), locative usually merged with dative (Italic, Celtic, Greek), and so did the instrumental case. That is how four cases appeared in Germanic and later in Old English - nominative, genitive, accusative and dative. These four were the most ancient and therefore stable in the system of the Indo-European morphology.
	The problem of the Old English instrumental case is rather strange - this case arises quite all of a sudden among Germanic tongues and in some forms is used quite regularly (like in demonstrative pronouns). In Gothic the traces of instrumental and locative though can be found, but are considered as not more than relics. But the old English must have "recalled" this archaic instrumental, which existed, however, not for too long and disappeared already in the 10th century, even before the Norman Conquest and transformation of the English language into its Middle stage.
	As for other cases, here is a little pattern of their usage in the Old English syntax.

1. Genitive - expresses the possessive meaning: whose? of what?
	Also after the expression meaning full of, free of, worthy of, guilty of, etc.

2. Dative - expresses the object towards which the action is directed.
	After the verbs like “say to smb”, “send smb”, “give to smb”; “known to smb”, “necessary for smth/smb”, “close to smb”, “peculiar for smth”. Also in the expressions like from the enemy, against the wind, on the shore.

3. Accusative - expresses the object immediately affected by the action (what?), the direct object.
	
Three genders were strong enough, and only northern dialects could sometimes lose their distinction. But in fact the lose of genders in Middle English happened due to the drop of the case inflections, when words could no longer be distinguished by its endings. As for the numbers, the Old English noun completely lost the dual, which was preserved only in personal pronouns (see later).
All old English nouns were divided into strong and weak ones, the same as verbs in Germanic. While the first had a branched declension, special endings for different numbers and cases, the weak declension was represented by nouns which were already starting to lose their declension system. The majority of noun stems in Old English should be referred to the strong type.

The old English Adjective

In all historical Indo-European languages adjectives possess practically the same morphological features as the nouns, the sequence of these two parts of speech is an ordinary thing in Indo-European. However, the Nostratic theory (the one which unites Altaic, Uralic, Semitic, Dravidian and Indo-European language families into one Nostratic super-family, once speaking a common Proto-Nostratic language) represented by Illych-Svitych and many other famous linguists, states that adjectives in this Proto-Nostratic tongue were morphologically closer to the verbs than to the nouns.
This theory is quite interesting, because even in Proto-Indo-European, a language which was spoken much later than Proto-Nostratic, there are some proofs of the former predicative function of the adjectives. In other families of the super-family this function is even clearer. Altaic languages, and also in Korean and Japanese, which are originally Altaic, the adjective plays the part of the predicate, and in Korean, for example, the majority of adjectives are predicative. It means that though they always denote the quality of the noun, they act the same way as verbs which denote action. Adjective "red" is actually translated from Japanese as "to be red", and the sentence Bara-wa utsukusii will mean “the rose is beautiful”, while bara is a “rose”, -wa is the nominative marker, and utsukusii is “to be beautiful”. So no verb here, and the adjective is a predicate. This structure is typical for many Altaic languages, and probably was normal for Proto-Nostratic as well.
	The Proto-Indo-European language gives us some sterns which are hard to denote whether they used to mean an adjective or a verb. Some later branches reflect such sterns as verbs, but other made them adjectives. So it was the Proto-Indo-European epoch where adjectives as the part of speech began to transform from a verbal one to a nominal one. And all Indo-European branches already show the close similarity of the structure of adjectives and nouns in the language. So does the old English language, where adjective is one of the nominal parts of speech.
As well as the noun, the adjective can be declined in case, gender and number. Moreover, the instrumental case which was discussed before was preserved in adjectives much stronger than in nouns. Adjectives must follow sequence with nouns which they define - that is why the same adjective can be masculine, neuter and feminine and therefore be declined in two different types: one for masculine and neuter, the other for feminine nouns. The declension is more or less simple; it looks much like the nominal system of declension, though there are several important differences. Interesting to know that one-syllable adjectives ("monosyllabic") have different declension than two-syllable ones ("disyllabic"). See for yourselves:

Strong Declension
a, ó - stems

Monosyllabic

	Singular	Plural	
	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	
N	blæc (black)	blæc	blacu	blace	blacu	blaca	
G	blaces	blaces	blæcre	blacra	blacra	blacra	
D	blacum	blacum	blæcre	blacum	blacum	blacum	
A	blæcne	blæc	blace	blace	blacu	blaca	
I	blace	blace	-	-	-	-	

Here "I" means that very instrumental case, answering the question (by what? with whom? with the help of what?).
Disyllabic

	Singular	Plural	
	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	
N	éadig (happy)	éadig	éadigu	éadige	éadigu	éadiga	
G	éadiges	éadiges	éadigre	éadigra	éadigra	éadigra	
D	éadigum	éadigum	éadigre	éadigum	éadigum	éadigum	
A	éadigne	éadig	éadige	éadige	éadigu	éadigu	
I	éadige	éadige	-	-	-	-	

So not many new endings: for accusative singular we have -ne, and for genitive plural-ra, which cannot be met in the declension of nouns. The difference between monosyllabic and disyllabic is the accusative plural feminine ending -a / -u. That's all.
Actually, some can just omit all those examples - the adjectival declension is the same as a whole for all stems, as concerns the strong type. In general, the endings look the following way, with very few varieties (note that "-" means the null ending):

	Masc.	Fem.	Neut.	
	Sg.	Pl.	Sg.	Pl.	Sg.	Pl.	
N	-	-e	-u	-a	-	-u	
G	-es	-ra	-re	-ra	-es	-ra	
D	-um	-um	-re	-um	-um	-um	
A	-ne	-e	-e	-a	-	-u	
I	-e	-	-	-	-e	-	

As for weak adjectives, they also exist in the language. The thing is that one need not learn by heart which adjective is which type - strong or weak as you should do with the nouns. If you have a weak noun as a subject, its attributive adjective will be weak as well. So - a strong adjective for a strong noun, a weak adjective for a weak noun, the rule is as simple as that.
Thus if you say "a black tree" that will be blœc  tréow (strong), and "a black eye" will sound blace éage. Here is the weak declension example (blaca - black):

	Singular	Plural	
	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.		
N	blaca	blace	blace	blacan	
G	blacan	blacan	blacan	blæcra	
D	blacan	blacan	blacan	blacum	
A	blacan	blace	blacan	blacan	

Weak declension has a single plural for all genders, which is pleasant for those who don't want to remember too many forms. In general, the weak declension is much easier.
The last thing to be said about the adjectives is the degrees of comparison. Again, the traditional Indo-European structure is preserved here: three degrees (absolutive, comparative, superlative) though some languages also had the so-called "equalitative" grade; the special suffices for forming comparatives and absolutives; suppletive stems for several certain adjectives.
The suffices we are used to see in Modern English, those -er and -est in weak, weaker, the weakest, are the direct descendants of the Old English ones. At that time they sounded as -ra and -est. See the examples:
earm (poor) - earmra – earmost
 blœc (black) - blœcra - blacost
Many adjectives changed the root vowel - another example of the Germanic ablaut: 
eald (old) - ieldra - ieldest 
strong - strengra - strengest 
long - lengra - lengest
geong (young) - gingra – gingest

The most widespread and widely used adjectives always had their degrees formed from another stem, which is called "suppletive" in linguistics. Many of them are still seen in today's English:

gód (good) - betera - betst (or sélra - sélest)
 yfel (bad) - wiersa - wierest
micel (much) - mára - máést
lýtel (little) - lœ'ssa - lœ'st
fear (far) - fierra - fierrest, fyrrest
néah (near) - néarra - níehst, nýhst
œ'r (early) - œ'rra - œ'rest
fore (before) - furpra - fyrest (first)

Now you see what the word "first" means - just the superlative degree from the adjective "before, forward". The same is with níehst from néah (near) which is now "next".
For those who are fond of word composition we can offer some essential materials about the old English affixation for adjectives:

1. -ede (group "adjective stem + substantive stem") - micelhéafdede (large-headed)
2. -ihte (from substantives with mutation) - pirnihte (thorny)
3. -ig (from substantives with mutation) - hálig (holy), mistig (misty)
4. -en, -in (with mutation) - gylden (golden), wyllen (wollen)
5. -isc (nationality) - Englisc, Welisc, mennisc (human)
6. -sum (from stems of verbs, adjectives, substantives) - sibbsum (peaceful), híersum (obedient) 
7. -feald (from stems of numerals, adjectives) - príejeald (threefold)
8. -full (from abstract substantive stems) - sorgfull (sorrowful)
9. -léás (from verbal and nominal stems) - slœpléás (sleepless)
10. -líc (from substantive and adjective stems) - eorplíc (earthly)
11. -weard (from adjective, substantive, adverb stems) - inneweard (internal), hámweard (homeward)

The old English Pronoun

Pronouns were the only part of speech in old English which preserved the dual number in declension, but only this makes them more archaic than the rest parts of speech. Most of pronouns are declined in number; case and gender, in plural the majority have only one form for all genders.
We will touch each group of old English pronouns and comment on them.

1.	Personal pronouns

1st person	
	Singular	Plural	Dual	
N	ic, íc	wé	wit	
G	mín	úre	uncer	
D	mé	ús	unc	
A	mec, mé	úsic, ús	uncit, unc	
2nd person	
N	pú	gé	git	
G	pín	éower	incer	
D	pé	éow	inc	
A	péc, pé	éowic, éow	incit, inc	
3rd person	
N	hé (masc.), héo (fem.), hit (neut.)	híe (masc., neut.),
héo (fem.)		
G	his, hire, his	hiera, heora		
D	him, hire, him,	him		
A	hine, híe, hit	híe, héo		

Don't they look much like Modern English ones? Through the last 1500 years mín became mine, gé turned into you (ye as a colloquial variant). But changes are still significant: the 2nd person singular pronouns disappeared from the language, remaining only in poetic speech and in some dialects in the north of England. This is really a strange feature - I can hardly recall any other Indo-European language which lacks the special pronoun for the 2nd person singular (French tu, German du, Russian ty etc.). The polite form replaced the colloquial one, maybe due to the English traditional "ladies and gentlemen" customs. Another extreme exists in Irish Gaelic, which has no polite form of personal pronoun, and you turn to your close friend the same way as you spoke with a prime minister - the familiar word, translated into French as tu. It can sound normal for English, but really funny for Slavic, Baltic, German people who make a thorough distinction between speaking to a friend and to a stranger.

2.	Demonstrative pronouns (“I” means the instrumental case)

Sé (that)	
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural	
N	sé	séo	pæt	pá	
G	pæs	pæ’re	pæs	pára	
D	pæ’m	pæ’re	pæ’m	pám	
A	pone	pá	pæt	pá	
I	pý, pon	-	pý, pon	-	
Pes (this)	
N	pes	péos, píos	pis	pás	
G	pisses	pisse	pisses	pissa	
D	pissum, peossum	pisse	pissum	pissum	
A	pisne, pysne	pás	pis	pás	
I	pis, pys	-	pýs, pis	-	

Both demonstrative pronouns come from the same two Proto-Indo-European stems: *so- / *sa- and *to-. Originally, in Indo-European languages there was a three-grade system of demonstrative pronouns, namely “this, next to me”, “this, next to you”, and “that, far from both of us”. But, as well as many branches of the family, Germanic languages left only two of them, simplifying the structure to just “this” and “that”.
All indirect case forms of the pronouns above begin with p- [th]. It traces back to the Indo-European *t- which became p in Germanic.

3. Interrogative pronouns

N	hwá	hwæt	
G	hwæs	hwæs	
D	hwæ’m	hwæ’m	
A	hwone	hwæt	
I	-	hwý, hwí	

Translation is simple. For those who have not guessed yet, hwá means 'who?', hwœt is 'what?'. These pronouns, which actually mean the masculine and the neuter varieties of the same pronoun, derive from Proto-Indo-European *kwis, with *kw becoming hw in Germanic languages. In Gothic the combination hw was considered as one sound which is another proof that the Indo-European the labiovelar sound kw was a single sound with some specific articulation.
Later Germanic languages changed the sound in a different way: in Norwegian it remained as hv, in German turned into w (as in wer 'who', was 'what'), in English finally changed into wh pronounced in most cases [w], but somewhere also like [h] or [hw].

3.	Other kinds of pronouns

They include definite, indefinite, negative and relative, all typical for Indo-European languages. All of them still exist in Modem English, and all of them are given here:

a) Definite
gehwá (every) - declined the same way as hwá, 
gehwilc (each),
œgper (either),
œ'lc (each),
swilc (such) - all declined like strong adjectives,
sé ylca (the same) - declined like a weak adjective
b) Indefinite
sum (some),
œ'nig (any) - both behave the same way as strong adjectives

c) Negative
	nán, nœ'nig (no, none) - declined like strong adjectives

d) Relative
pe (which, that)
sépe (which, that) - they are not declined

In Proto-Indo-European and in many ancient Indo-European languages there was a special kind of declension called pronominal, using only by pronouns and opposed to the one used by nouns, adjectives and numerals. Old English lost it, and its pronouns use all the same endings as the nouns and adjectives. Maybe the only inflection which remembers the Proto-language times is the neuter nominative -t in hwœd and pœd, the ancient ending for inanimate (inactive) nouns and pronouns. And now finally some words about the article. In Proto-Indo-European no traces of definite or indefinite articles can be found, and the majority of ancient Indo-European languages lack it either. But still the article is considered a typical "late Indo-European" feature - it started appearing already when languages of the family existed separately. In Homer's Greek language there was no article, not in Mycenaean Greek, but all classical Greek dialects already have the definite article in wide use. Later the definite article appears in Romance languages (though Latin did not have it at all), Celtic languages (again - Gaulish had no, but all Insular Celtic tongues generated it)/ in late Germanic (but not in Gothic nor in Old English), and even in several Slavic languages, those which belong to the so-called “Balkan language alliance” (Macedonian, Bulgarian). Old English did not use the article. It appeared later, coming, as it always happen, for the demonstrative pronoun. But even in this period the texts show us the frequent use of the demonstrative pronoun before nouns in the sentence: ...he heold pœd rice (he held the kingdom). I do not know why it happens and in general why the article appears in the language, I think it could do well without any.

The old English Numeral

It is obvious that all Indo-European languages have the general trend of transformation from the synthetic (or inflectional) stage to the analytic one. At least for the latest 1,000 years this trend could be observed in all branches of the family. The level of this analitkation process in each single language can be estimated by several features, their presence or absence in the language. One of them is for sure the declension of the numerals. In Proto-Indo-European all numerals, both cardinal and ordinal, were declined, as they derived on a very ancient stage from nouns or adjectives, originally being a declined part of speech. There are still language groups within the family with decline their numerals: among them, Slavic and Baltic are the most typical samples. They practically did not suffer any influence of the analytic processes. But all other groups seem to have been influenced somehow. Ancient Italic and Hellenic languages left the declension only for the first four cardinal pronouns (from 1 to 4), the same with ancient Celtic. The Old English language preserves this system of declension only for three numerals. It is therefore much easier to learn, though not for English speakers I guess - Modern English lacks declension at all.
Here is the list of the cardinal numerals:

1 án
2 twá
3 príe
4 féower 
5 fíf
6 six, syx, siex 
7 seofon, syofn 
8 eahta
9 nigon
10 tien, týn
11 endlefan 
12 twelf
13 príotíene 
14 féowertíene 
15 fíftíene...
20 twentig
21 twentig ond án
30 prítig
40 féowertig
50 fíftig
60 siextig
70 siofontig
80 eahtatig
90 nigontig
100 hundtéontig, hund, hundred 110 hundœlleftig
120 hundtwelftig
200 tú hund
1000 púsend
2000 tú púsendu

And here is the declension of some of them:
1 án is declined just like a strong adjective, can be only singular, but has masculine, neuter and feminine genders. It is the source of the future indefinite article 'a, an' in Modern English. So 'a house' in fact means "one house", here -n disappeared before a consonant. when at school, many of us thought that 'an' derived from 'a' and it appears vice versa.

2 twá:
		Masc.		Neut.			Fem.
	N	twegen	tú, twá		twá
	G	-		twégea, twégra	-
	D	-		twæ’m, twæm	-
	A	twegen	tú, twá		twá

So the genders have differences only in nominative and accusative cases, and indirect cases (genitive and dative) have common forms for all three genders. No number can be changed for it, and originally this numeral was dual, which seems natural.

3 príe:
		Masc.			Neut.			Fem.
	N	príe, prí, prý		prío, préo		prío, préo
	G	-			príora, préora	-
	D	-			prim			-
	A	príe, prí, prý		prío, préo		prío, préo

A typical i - stem noun. Strange is the following: while in the case of "two" the Modern English lost masculine and neuter forms and picked up the feminine one for use ('two' < twá), here we have another case, when the feminine and neuter were forgotten, and today's three comes directly from the masculine príe.
	And the last is the numeral begen, bú, bá  (both) which is declined the same way as twá  and is also dual.
Ordinal numerals use the suffix -ta or -pa, etymologically a common Indo-European one (*-to-).

1 forma, fyresta 
2 óper, œfterra 
3 pridda, pirda 
4 féorpa
5 fífta
6 siexta, syxta 
7 siofopa
8 eahtopa
9 nigopa
10 téopa
11 endlefta
12 twelfta
13 preotéopa 
14 féowertéopa
15 fíftéopa 
16 sixtéopa 
17 siofontéopa
18 eahtatéopa 
19 nigontéopa 
20 twentigopa 
30 prittigopa
40 féowertigopa
50 fíftigopa
100 hundtéontiogopa

The two variants for the word "first" actually mean different attributes: forma is translated as "forward", and fyresta is "the farthest", "the first". Again double variants for the second nominal mean respectively "the other" and "the following". Mainly according to Old English texts ordinal numerals were used with the demonstrative pronoun pá before them. This is where the definite article in 'the first', 'the third' comes from. To say "the 22nd", for example, you should combine the following: either twá and twenigopa (two and twentieth), or óper éac twentigum (second with twenty). So the order is different from the modern English, but instead closer to Modern German where "the 22nd" sounds like zwei und zwanzig (two and twenty). At all, it is easy to notice that the words in English became much shorter, and therefore simpler in pronunciation and learning. It is much easier to pronounce "hundredth" than hundtéontiogopa, "fourth" than féowertéopa. Modetrn English acquired words mainly having one or two syllables, but this was not the rule in the Old English period.

The old English Adverb

They can be either primary (original adverbs) or derive from the adjectives. In fact, adverbs appeared in the language rather late, and early Proto-Indo-European did not use them, but later some auxiliary nouns and pronouns losing their declension started to play the role of adverbial modifiers. That's how thew primary adverbs emerged.
In Old English the basic primary adverbs were the following ones: 

pa (then)
ponne (then)
pœ'r (there)
pider (thither)
nú (now)
hér (here)
hider (hither)
heonan (hence)
sóna (soon)
oft (often)
eft (again)
swá (so)
hwílum (sometimes).

Secondary adverbs originated from the instrumental singular of the neuter adjectives of strong declension. They all add the suffix -e: wide (widely), déope (deeply), fœste (fast), hearde (hard). Another major subgroup of them used the suffixes -líc, -líce from more complexed adjectives: bealdlíce (boldly), freondlíce (in a friendly way).
Adverbs, as well as adjectives, had their degrees of comparison:
wíde - wídor - wídost (widely - more widely - most widely) 
long - leng (long - longer)
feorr (far) - fierr
sófte (softly) - séft
éape (easily) - íep
wel (well) - betre - best
yfele (badly) - wiers, wyrs - wierst
micele (much) - máre - mœ'st

The old English Verb

The grammar is good enough, but there were also verbs in old English. I consulted a few libraries and it appeared that old English really had verbs! So I could not ignore them.
When I was just planning to write the Old English grammar, I knew that old English was much like modern German, not more. This question is really interesting. In fact, there is much more in common between old English and German, than between Modern English and German. That happens because different languages have different speed of development. English through history was very progressive and active - the whole revolution happened with it in the 15th and the 16th centuries, not only taking into consideration the Great Vowel Shift, but also the major grammar changes. The result was the Modern, or New, English, which has practically no declension, lost genders, shortened words and forms, simplified the syntax.
	German was slower in its analytic development, and at the moment it still has strong and weak verbs, four main noun cases, three genders and a declinable definite article. That is why German still stays closer to ancient Germanic languages, including Gothic, Old Scandinavian and Old English, and this also concerns verbs. So those who know basic things about German, will easily understand Old English.
	Modern English makes a distinction between regular and irregular verbs. This distinction goes back to the old English system of strong and weak verbs: the ones which used the ancient Germanic type of conjugation (the Ablaut), and the ones which just added endings to their past and participle forms. Strong verbs make the clear majority. According to the traditional division, which is taken form Gothic and is accepted by modern linguistics, all strong verbs are distinguished between seven classes, each having its peculiarities in conjugation and in the stern structure. It is easy to define which verb is which class, so you will not swear trying to identify the type of conjugation of this or that verb (unlike the situation with the substantives).
	Here is the table which is composed for you to see the root vowels of all strong verb classes. Except the VII class, they all have exact stern vowels for all four main forms:

Class	I	II	III a	III b	III c	IV	V	VI	VII	
Infinitive	í	éo	i	eo	e	e	e	a	different	
Past singular	á	éa	a	ea	ea	æ	æ	ó	é, eo, éo	
Past plural	i	u	u	u	u	æ’	æ’	ó	é, eo, éo	
Participle II	i	o	u	o	o	o	e	a	a, á, ea	

Below it all is explained in detail. And by now you can easily see that while Modern English has three basic verb forms (a nightmare for school pupils all over the world), Old English was terrible enough to have even four of them, because past singular and plural forms were quite different from each other sometimes.
Old English verbs can be daunting, for a typical verb appears in more forms than a typical pronoun, noun or adjective. While no noun has more than six distinct forms, most verbs have fourteen. (Modern English verbs, by contrast, normally have four or five forms.) Further, while some nouns, like mann 'man', have two different vowels in the root syllable, some verbs have as many as five. (The Modern English maximum, leaving aside the verb to be, is three.)
This multiplicity of forms may cause you difficulty when looking up verbs in the dictionary or figuring out their grammatical characteristics. But you can see from the "Magic Sheet" that, despite its inevitable complications, the old English verb system is really quite orderly. If you keep that orderliness in view as you work through the "Quick Start" section and the rest of this chapter, you will find the verbs to be much easier than they look.

Strong and weak verbs

Table 1 shows all the forms of two common verbs

Basic verb paradigms

					Weak				Strong 
Infinitives				fremman ‘do’		helpan ‘help’
					tō fremmanne		tō helpanne
					iċ fremme			iċ helpe

Present indicative		pū fremest			pū hilpst
					hēo fremeþ			hē hilpþ
					wē fremmaþ 		wē helpaþ
					iċ fremmede			iċ healp

Past indicative			pū fremedest		pū hulpe
					hēo fremede			hē healp
					ġē fremedon			ġē hulpon
			
Present subjunctive		hē fremme			hē helpe
					hīe fremmen		hīe helpen

Past subjunctive 			iċ fremmede			pū hulpe
					wē fremeden		wē hulpen

Imperative				freme				help
					fremmaþ			helpaþ

Participles				fremmende			helpende
					fremed			holpen

By convention, glossaries and dictionaries use the infinitive as the headword for verb entries, and when citing verbs we cite the infinitive.] 'do' belongs to the so-called "weak" class of old English verbs, those that make the past tense by adding a dental consonant (-d- or -t-) as a suffix. The old English weak verbs correspond roughly to the Modern English "regular" verbs. Helpan 'help' is a "strong" verb, one that does not add a dental suffix to make its past tense, but rather changes the vowel of its root syllable. The old English strong verbs correspond to Modern English "irregular" verbs such as sing (past sang, past participle sung).
Take note of these points about the paradigms for fremman and helpan (further details will come later in the chapter):
1. There are just two tenses, past and present Old English has various strategies for referring to future time: it uses auxiliary verbs (including willan), explicit references to time (e.g. tōmorgen 'tomorrow'), and the simple present, relying on context to express futurity.
2. Similarly, Old English has no settled way of expressing what Modern English expresses with the perfect and pluperfect--that is, that an action is now complete or was complete at some time in the past. It can use forms of the verb habban 'to have' with the past participle, as Modern English does (hwfiJ onfunden 'has discovered', hwfde onfunden 'had discovered'), it can use the adverb Or 'before' with the simple past (Or onfand 'had discovered'), or it can use the past tense alone, in which case you must infer the correct translation from the context.
3. While the Modern English verb has only one personal ending (-s for the third-person singular), most old English verb forms have such endings. These are mostly the same for both weak fremman and strong helpan, but notice that in the singular past indicative the endings are different. The personal endings are shown separately in table 7.2.
4. Person is distinguished only in the indicative singular, never in the plural or subjunctive. For example, table 7.1 gives the present first-person plural indicative form we fremmap, but the second person is ge fremmap and the third person hIe fremmap, with the same verb forms. Further, only the second person is distinguished in the singular past indicative: the first- and third-person forms are the same.
5. The root vowels of strong verbs undergo i-mutation in the present second- and third-person singular indicative: thus the second-person singular of he/pan is hi/pst, that offaran 'travel' isfwrst, and that of ceosan 'choose' is Clest. The same does not occur in the weak paradigms or in those of strong verbs whose vowels are not subject to i-mutation (e.g. wrltan 'write', second-person singular wrltst).
6. While a Modern English verb descended horn the strong verbs never has more than one vowel in the past tense, most old English strong verbs have two past forms with different vowels, distributed as in table 7.1. The form used for the first- and third-person singular past indicative (e.g. hea/p) is called the "first past," and the form used everywhere else in the past tense (e.g. hu/pon) is called the "second past."
7. The present participle ending in -ende is used where Modern English uses the present participle in -ing: in constructions that express continuing action (for example, "was living") and as adjectives ("the living God").

Preterite-present verbs

Most of the old English auxiliaries (also called "helping verbs") belong to a class of verbs called "preterite-presents," whose present tenses look like strong past tenses ("preterites") and whose past tenses look like weak pasts. Modern English still has several of these verbs, whose forms we here classify as "present" and "past" according to their origins, even though we no longer think of the past forms as past:
present past can could
present shall
past
should
ought [The present form of ought is owe, which has, however, become a regular verb with its own past tense. ]
may
might
must [The original present tense of must has been lost.]
The Modern English "present" forms betray their affiliation with the strong past by a peculiarity of their inflection: like a past tense, they lack the ending -s in the third-person singular.
	The class of preterite-present verbs is larger in old English than in Modern English and includes several verbs that are not auxiliaries. Table 7.3 shows the inflection of a few common ones." [Most of the verb paradigms in the remainder of this chapter are abbreviated. You can easily complete them by supplying the correct personal endings.] The present forms of these verbs match the past forms of strong verbs almost precisely: the main differences are that the second-person singular forms have the first past rather than the second past vowel and the ending -st or -t, and the present subjunctive forms sometimes have i-mutation.
	The class of preterite-present verbs is larger in Old English than in Modern English and includes several verbs that are not auxiliaries. Table 7.3 shows the inflection of a few common ones. [Most of the verb paradigms in the remainder of this chapter are abbreviated. You can easily complete them by supplying the correct personal endings.] The present fOrills of these verbs match the past fOrills of strong verbs almost precisely: the main differences are that the second-person singular forms have the first past rather than the second past vowel and the ending -st or -t, and the present subjunctive fOrills sometimes have i-mutation.

Beon 'to be'
The verb bean 'to be' in old English is a mess, but so is 'to be' in Modern English. To the extent that the old and Modern English verbs look alike, bean will be easy to learn for students who are native speakers of English.

infinitives
beon, wesan
it eom
it beo
	present	pii eart	pii bist
indicative he is	heo bi<5
	hie sind, sindon we beo<5
	present	he sIe	pii beo
subjunctive we sIen	ge beon
	beo, wes
	beo<5, wesa<5
	beonde, wesende
	gebeon
imperative
participles
The forms in table 7.4 are an amalgam of three different verbs: one that accounts for the present fOrills in the first column, one that accounts for all the b- fOrills, and one that accounts for all the w- fOrills. Paradigms derived from these three verbs overlap, so that there are two complete sets of present fOrills, [Present forms of the verb wesan (wese6, wesa6) are also attested, but they are rare.] two sets of imperatives, two infinitives and two present participles.
The b- fonus are often used with reference to future time, as in this sentence on the Day of Judgment:
On pam dcege us bii'J ceH~owed se opena heofon and engla pryrn.
[On that day will be revealed to us the open heaven and the host of angels.]
But the b- forms sometimes are simple presents, as here:

Beos wyrt pe man betonican nemned, heo bip cenned on modum and on clOnum dunlandum. [This herb that one calls betony is produced in meadows and in open hilly lands.]
You'll have to look to the context to tell you whether to translate a b- form of beon as a future.

More about endings

Assimilation
When the personal ending -st or -p or the -d- of the weak past immediately follows a consonant, the result may be a sequence of consonants that is difficult to pronounce. In such cases, one or both consonants are altered so that they are more similar to each other, an effect called assimilation:
	1. The ending -d- becomes -t- when it immediately follows an unvoiced consonant. The singular past of slOpan 'sleep' is slOpte, and that of metan 'meet' is mette. The same change occurs in Modern English, though it is not always reflected in the spelling (say reached aloud: what is the final consonant?).
2. The ending -i'J becomes -t when it immediately follows d, s or t. For example, the third person singular of rodan 'read' is rOtt (see also item 3), of rOsan 'rush' rOst, and of gretan greet grett.
3. When a d or gig at the end of a root syllable comes in contact with the ending -st or -i'J, it is changed to tor h: for example, the second-person singular offedan 'feed' isfetst, and the third-person singular of bfegan 'bend' is bfehi'J.
4. Whenever one of these rules has produced a double consonant at the end of a word, or when the ending -i'J follows a root ending in i'J, the double consonant may be simplified. For example, the third-person singular of czdan 'chide' can be cltt or czt, and that of cOi'Jan 'make known' may be cOi'Ji'J or cOi'J. A double consonant will always be simplified when preceded by another consonant: so the past singular of sendan 'send' is sende, not *sendde.

Plurals ending in -e

Before the pronouns we 'we' and ge 'you', any plural ending may appear as -e. For example:
Nu biJJe we pe, Ie of, pcet du gebidde for ho, and ho eft awende to darn pe heo Or wces. [Now we ask you, sir, that you pray for her, and turn her back into what she was before.]
Here the verb in the main clause would be biJdap if it did not immediately precede the pronoun we.
Subjunctive plural endings

In old English of the tenth century you will frequently see subjunctive plural-on (sometimes -an) as well as -en, and in Old English of the eleventh century subjunctives in -en are quite rare. Thus an early text will normally have present subjunctive plural bidden 'ask', but a later one will have biddon. In the past tense, where the indicative plural personal ending is already -on, the distinction between indicative and subjunctive plural is lost: for biddan 'ask', both forms are bOdon in late Old English.

More about weak verbs

Germanic weak verbs fall into three classes: the first two of these are well represented in Old English and the third has almost disappeared (the few remaining class 3 verbs are discussed below). Of the four weak verbs in table 7.5, sce/4mn, herian and hoJan belong to class I, and Jufian belongs to class 2.
Class 1 is marked by i-mutation in the root syllable. If the root is short, gemination (the doubling of the consonant at the end of the root syllable) occurs in certain forms, including the infinitive; but if the consonant is r, you will find -ri- or -rg- instead of -rr-. The -i- or -g- represents a consonant [j], so herian is a two-syllable word: [her-jOn].
The geminated form off is bb (swebban 'put to sleep', third-person singular swefep); that of g is cg (bycgan 'buy', third-person singular bygetJ).
Class 2 lacks i-mutation. Wherever you find gemination in class 1 verbs with short root syllables, you will find an element spelled -i- or -ig- after the root syllable of the class 2 verb. [This element did not cause i-mutation because it did not begin with i at the time that i-mutation took place. Rather, it was a long syllable [oOj], which later became the syllable spelled -i-.] This -i- is a syllable all by itself--weighty enough, in fact, to be capable of bearing metrical stress, as we see in this line:
Him pi secg hrabe gewat si6ian
[The man the.n quickly departed jourmying]
Where stress falls on both the first and second syllables of sftJian.
	The present third-person singular of the class 2 weak verb looks like the present plural of the other major verb classes (for example, he lufatJ 'he loves', we sceppatJ 'we injure'). To avoid being confused by this resemblance, you should learn to recognke a class 2 weak verb when you see one. If your glossary doesn't tell you the class of the verb, then look at the headword. If the root syllable ends with any consonant but r and is followed by -i-, chances are it is a class 2 weak verb, and the present third-person singular will end with -atJ.

In some verbs, a vowel is inserted before the endings that do not begin with vowels (-st, -tJ, -d-). In verbs like sceppan and herian this vowel is -e-, in verbs like h olan the vowel is absent, and in all class 2 weak verbs it is -a- or -0-. Often the vowel is omitted in class 1 verbs with short root syllables, so you can expect to see (for example) fremst and fremp as well as fremest and fremep. This is the rule rather than the exception when the root syllable ends with d or t: so the past tense of ahreddan 'rescue' is ahredde and that of hwettan 'urge' is hwette.

Weak verbs that change their vowels

Verbs like Modern English buy/bought, which both change their vowels in the past tense and add the dental consonant characteristic of the weak past, should not be confused with verbs like swim/swam, which are descended from the Old English strong verbs. Buy/bought belongs to a group of class 1 weak verbs in which the vowels of the present tense are subject to i-mutation while the vowels of the past tense are not. Table 7.6 illustrates with cwellan 'kill', seCan 'seek' and pencan '
cwellan	secan	pencan
ic cwelle	ic sece	ic pence
pu cwelest pu secst	pu pencst
heo cwelep he secp	hit pencp
we cwellap ge secap	hIe pencap
present indicative
A c, cg or g at the end of the root syllable of one of these weak verbs is always changed to h before the past-tense ending -t-. old English also has a rule that when n precedes h, it is dropped and the preceding vowel is lengthened. Thus the past tense of pen Can is pohte and that of brengan 'bring'is brohte.

Contracted verbs

The rule that h is always dropped between vowels (already mentioned in connection with nouns) introduces some complications in the verb paradigm. Table 7 illustrates with the class 2 weak verb smeagan 'ponder'.
	The underlying (and unattested) verb is *smeahian or *smeahigan, but the h has been lost in all forms, since it always comes between vowels. Notice the -g- that comes before the ending in certain forms: it is a remnant of the syllable spelled -i- or -ig- in normal class 2 weak verbs. Like smeagan are preagan 'chastise', tweogan 'doubt' andjreogan 'set free'.

Class 3 weak verbs

Obeying the rule that the most common words are the last to leave a dying class, class 3 contains only habban 'have', libban 'live', secgan 'say' and hycgan 'think' (table 7.8), together with a few odd remnants. Each of these verbs has partly gone over to other classes, and the resulting confusion maKes it impractical to describe the characteristics of the class. The best course is to study the paradigms and be prepared to encounter these anomalous verbs in your reading.

More about strong verbs

Most strong verbs are inflected in pretty much the same way as he/pan (table 7.1). You will be able to predict the present paradigm of almost any strong verb if you know how i-mutation affects the vowels of root syllables and how the endings -sf and -lJ interact with consonants at the ends of root syllables. Once you have learned the gradation patterns for the strong verbs, you will easily master the past paradigms as well.

The strong verb classes

The Germanic languages have seven classes of strong verbs, each characterked by its own gradation pattern. Gradation is an Indo-European grammatical feature whereby the root vowels of words are altered to signal changes in grammatical function. For example, if the present tense of a Modern English verb contains "short" i followed by n or m, the past-tense form will usually have a and the past participle u: drink, drank, drunk; ring, rang, rung; swim, swam, swum.
Old English has some variations within the Germanic classes, as table 9 shows.

		Table 9 Classes of strong verbs		
infinitive	3rd pers.	first past	second past	past participle	
1 wrltan	wrltt	wrat	writon	writen	
2a Ceosan	CIesd	Ceas	curon	coren	
2b 111can	IOcd	leac	lucon	locen	
3a singan	singd	sang	sung on	sung en	
3b helpan	hilpd	healp	hulpon	holpen	
3c hweodan	hwierfd	hwearf	hwudon	hworfen	
4 stelan	stild	steel	st 0 Ion	stolen	
4b niman	nimd	nam	nOmon	numen	
5 sprecan	spricd	spreec	sprO can	sprecen	
6 bacan	beecd	boc	bocon	bacen	
7 a hatan	hOtt	het	heton	haten	
7b flowan	flewd	fleow	fleowon	flowen	

This table includes the present third-person singular indicative so that you can see how i-mutation affects each class. You should understand, however, that the vowel of this form is not part of the gradation pattern inherited from Indo-European, but rather a relatively recent phenomenon. Eventually the English language would discard the i-mutation of the second- and third-person singular, but the ancient gradation patterns of the strong verbs are still with us.
Students often ask if they should memorize the strong verb classes. The answer is a qualified "yes." The qualification is that you should take note of patterns within these classes and use them as mnemonic devices. Most of the vowels of classes 1-5, especially, are derived from a single gradation pattern, and though these vowels have been altered by the influence of surrounding sounds, they still resemble each other:
1. The vowels of the present tense are mid or high vowels--that is, pronounced with the tongue at or near the roof of the mouth ([e,i])--or diphthongs that begin with these vowels;
	2. The vowels of the first past are low vowels--that is, pronounced with the tongue and jaw lowered ([O,ee])--or diphthongs that begin with these vowels;
	3. The vowels of the second past, though their original resemblance to each other has been obscured, are mostly short; in classes 4-5 they are long and low;
	4. The vowels of the past participle are mostly variations on the short vowels of the second past, but in class 5 the vowel is the same as the present.
The gradation patterns of classes 6-7 differ from those of 1-5 and must be memorized separately:
•	Class 2 verbs like lucan 'lock' do not conform to the standard gradation pattern; the U of the present tense has never been satisfactorily explained.
•	A few class 3 verbs have u in the present tense. of these, the one you will meet most frequently is murnan 'mourn' (first past mearn, second past murnon).
•	The 8 of class 4b appears before nasal consonants. Cuman 'corne' belongs to this subclass, but its present tense is anomalous.
•	The present tense of class 6 sometimes has ro or ea.
•	Class 7 has a variety of vowels in the present tense, not just a and 8. The past-tense vowels e and eo are what distinguish this class.
•	You may observe the same gradation patterns you have seen here in families of words derived from the same root. For example, leaf 'beloved' has the same vowel as a class 2 present, geleafa 'belief' has the same vowel as the first past, gekefan 'believe' has the first past vowel with i-mutation, and lufian 'love' and lof 'praise' have the vowels of the second past and past participle.
Verbs affected by grammatical alternation

Grammatical alternation [A translation of the German phrase "der grammatische Wechsel." In grammars written in English you will usually see it referred to as ''Verner's Law" after the Danish linguist Karl Verner, who described its origin. Here we prefer the German term as more descriptive of its function in the recorded language.] is an alternation between one consonant and another to mark the grammar of a word. 
Grammatical alternation affects the paradigms of most strong verbs whose roots end with the consonants p, hand s: three such verbs are shown in table 10.
At the end of the root syllable h is often dropped in verbs like teon 'accuse' (see next section), but enough forms with h remain to show the alternation clearly.
•	Although the Modern English strong verbs no longer show the effects of grammatical alternation, it remains in some fossilked past participles such as forlorn (from forleosan, past participle forloren) and sodden (from the past participle of seotJan).
•	You will notice this alternation not only in verb paradigms, but also in families of words derived from the same root, for example, hliehhan 'laugh' and Magol 'inclined to laugh', neah

Contracted verbs

As you have just seen, some strong verbs are subject to contraction as a result of the loss of h between voiced sounds--the same rule that produces contracted weak verbs. Table 7.11 illustrates with three very common verbs, seon 'see', slean 'slay' andfon 'take'.
	The contraction affects only some present-tense forms, the infinitives and the present participle; past-tense forms that might have been affected have 9 (by grammatical alternation) instead of h. Verbs of classes I, 2 and 5 have eo in contracted forms; those of class 6 have ea; those of class 7 have o.
The alternation h/w in seon is the result of a rare anomaly in the rule of grammatical alternation, the result of which is that g varies with w in the second past and past participle. For example, the usual past participle is sewen, but you may sometimes see segen instead.
The -n- that appears in some forms of fon (and also hon 'hang') was at one time distributed throughout the paradigm. But the rule that n cannot appear before /1 caused it to be dropped in all forms but those with g. FOn is also unusual in that the form with 9 has been extended to the first past (whose vowel is also the same as that of the second past).

Tips on strong verbs

This would be a good time to go over all the verb paradigms you have seen so far, noting basic similarities. Notice particularly that in the present tense the second- and third-person singular forms are usually different from all the others. These are the forms in which the personal ending does not begin with a vowel.
Present-tense strong verbs cause few difficulties, since the endings make them easy to identify; past plurals are easy as well, for the same reason. But past singulars, which either lack an ending or end only in -e, are easy to confuse with nouns and adjectives. As you gain experience with the language, this kind of confusion will become less likely. But in the meantime, here are some tips to help you get it right.
Look up words carefully. Learn what kind of spelling variations you can expect in old English (see 2.1.3 and Appendix A); when two words look alike but their spelling differences are not what you'd expect, you may conclude that they are different words. Wear6 'became' looks like weor6 'value, price', but ea normally does not vary with eo; nam 'took' looks like nama 'name', but endings are rarely lost in Old English. If the glossary you're using has a great many references to the texts you're reading, check to see if the glossary entry you're looking at has a reference to the word you're trying to figure out. If it doesn't, look for an entry that does.
Examine the grammatical context of the sentence or clause you're reading. Have you located a subject? a verb? an object? If the word you're looking at is beag and you need a verb, try it as the first past of bilgan 'bow'; if you need a noun, try it as 'ring'.
Examine the word-order (see Chapter 12). Is the word in a place where you'd normally expect to find a subject, an object, or a verb?
Once you've got a tentative translation, apply a sanity test: does it make sense? If it seems ungrammatical, or grammatical but absurd, try something else.
If you're using the on-line texts in Old English Aerobics, you won't have any difficulty distinguishing nouns and verbs because every word is clearly marked with its part of speech and a good bit of other grammatical information. Don't let this feature make you complacent! Pay attention to the form of the words you're looking up and ask yourself how the editor knew this word was a verb or that word plural. Remember that very few Old English texts are marked up the way the ones in Old English Aerobics are. The transition from on-line to printed texts will be very difficult if you have abused the convenience of old English Aerobics.

Verbs with weak presents and strong pasts

A few verbs have the characteristics of the first weak class in the present tense and of strong class 5 or 6 in the past tense. For example, hebban 'lift' has a present tense like that of fremman 'do' or sceppan 'harm' (tables 1, 2): ie hebbe, he heJe6, etc. But the past third-person singular indicative of this verb is haf, the plural is hafon, and the past participle is hafen (the vowel is the same as that of the present, but without i-mutation).
Some common verbs behave in this way, for example, biddan 'ask', licgan 'lie', scieppan 'make, create', sittan 'sit'. The dual nature of these verbs (which most glossaries, including the one in this book, classify as strong) is a curiosity, but it will cause you little difficulty.

More about preterite-present verbs

Here we list each preterite-present verb with its principal present and past forms. Infinitives preceded by asterisks are not attested.
1. The past tense is usually built on the second past root, with -d- or -t- added. In fact, it often looks like the past tense of the weak verbs that change their vowels, though sometimes the forms have been subject to phonological changes that can produce surprising results.
2. When the root syllable ends in g (iigan, dugan, magan), past -d- becomes -t-; g becomes h before that ending and before second-person singular present indicative-t

Dōn, gān, willan

The verbs do, go and will (table 12) are still anomalous in Modern English, and in much the same way as in old English: don 'do' has a past form that is paralleled in no other verb; gan 'go' lacks a past form of its own and has apparently borrowed the past of another verb, now disappeared; and willan 'desire' has distinctive inflections in the present tense.
	The present forms of don and gan 1001< like those of normal strone' verbs. But the past tense of don is built on a syllable that looks somewhat like a weak past (though its origin is a mystery), and gan has a past tense that also looks weak and in any case does not belong to the same root that gives us the present forms. Willan looks a bit like a preterite-present verb, but it is not; and its first- and third-person singular present and plural present are quite different from the preterite-present forms.

Negation

Most verbs are negated very simply by placing the adverb ne 'not' directly in front of them. In independent clauses, the word-order that follows will normally be Verb--Subiect:
Se ~e me ne lufat5, ne hylt he mIne sprOce.
[He who does not love me does not keep my sayings.]
Ne is contracted with certain verbs, for example, nis 'is not', nws 'was not' (from beon), nwft5 'does not have', nwfde 'did not have' (habban), nyllat5 'will not', noldon 'would not' (willan), nah 'does not have', nahte 'did not have' (Zigan), nat 'does not know' (witan). Notice that all of the verbs so contracted begin with a vowel, h or w. Not all verbs beginning with those sounds are contracted, but only the more common ones; and those common verbs need not be contracted. You will also see ne wws, ne hwft5 and so on.

The Modern English rule that two negatives make a positive does not apply in Old English; rather, the addition of more negative adverbs to a sentence adds emphasis to its negativity:
Ne beo ge nateshwon deade, deah de ge of darn treowe eton. [You will certainly not be dead, though you eat from the tree.]
Here the additional negative adverb nateshwon maKes the sentence more emphatic than it would be with ne alone; since we cannot use double negatives the same way in Modern English, we must resort to a different strategy to represent this emphasis in our translations. Common negative adverbs are na, nales, nateshwon and nat8pwshwon.

The verbals

Old English forms periphrastic verbs much as Modern English does, with auxiliary verbs and verbals (infinitives or participles):
auxiliary + infinitive auxiliary + past participle to be + present participle (is finding)
This section lists a few ways in which the infinitives and particples of old English differ from those of Modern English.

Infinitives

The inflected infinitive is often used with beon to express obligation, necessity or propriety. It can usually be translated with should or must and an infinitive:
hyt ys gOt geornlIce to asmeageanne
Verbs of knowing, seeing, hearing and commanding may be followed by an accusative object and an infinitive expressing what that object is doing or should do. The construction remains in sentences like "I saw him dance," but in old English it is more frequent and it comes where we no longer use it. Examples:
GewIt fram me, for]JOn pe ic geseo be on forh<efdnesse burhwunian. [Depart from me, for I see you are persevering in abstinence.] Holend ferde por forp and pa geh Orde bone blindan cleopian. [The Savior went forth there and then heard the blind man callout.] Drihten, gyf pu hyt eart, hat me cuman to pe ofer pas w<eteru. [Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you over these waters.]
The object is often unexpressed, especially after verbs of commanding:
And se cyng pa het niman SIferdes lafe and gebringan hI binnan Mealdelmesbyrig.
[And then the king commanded [someone] to take Siferth's widow and bring her into Malmesbury.]
It is sometimes appropriate to translate such sentences with a passive construction ("commanded her to be brought") even though the Old English construction is not passive.

Participles

The Old English present participle is often used as a noun denoting the performer of an action, e.g. rodora Rodend 'Ruler of the heavens' (Rodend being the present participle of rodan 'rule'). You will often find such forms listed separately as nouns in glossaries and dictionaries.
The Modern English participle in -ing can also be used as a noun denoting the action of a verb (e.g. "living well is the best revenge"), but for this purpose Old English uses the infinitive.
A construction consisting of a noun or pronoun and participle, both in the dative case, is occasionally used where one would expect an adverb clause or another construction expressing time or cause. This noun phrase may sometimes be introduced by a preposition.
And Offa gefeng Myrcena rIce, geflomdum Beornrede.
[And Offa seked the ldngdom of the Mercians after Beornred had been driven out.] LEfter Agustini fyligde in biscophade Laurentius, pone he ford on bi him lifigendum gehalgode, pO IDs him fortJferendum se steall onige hwIle buton heorde taltrigan ongunne. [After Augustine, Lawrence followed in the bishopric, whom he consecrated while he was still alive for this reason: lest by his passing away the position should for any time, being without a guide, begin to be unstable.]
Those who know Latin will recognke the similarity between this construction and the ablative absolute, of which it is generally thought to be an imitation.

The subjunctive

Because speakers of Modern English seldom use the subjunctive mood, the Old English subjunctive is difficult for us to get used to. We do still use it when stating conditions contrary to fact, as in “If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway?”
Here the subjunctive were (the indicative would be was) suggests that the speaker is not in fact a carpenter. We also use the subjunctive in noun clauses following verbs of desiring and commanding. For example:

The	king	desired	that	the	knight	go	on	a	quest.	
The	king	commanded	that	the	knight	go	on	a	quest.	
I	suggest	that	you		be	a		little		quieter.	
I	move	that	the	bypass	be	routed		east	of	town.	
I wish that I were wiser.										

Here the subjunctives tell us that the condition described in the noun clause is not a present reality or a future certainty, but a possibility mediated by someone's desire. Some of these usages are disappearing: the first two examples above sound a little archaic, and it would now be more idiomatic to say "The king wanted the knight to go on a quest" and "The king commanded the knight to go on a quest," using infinitive constructions rather than subjunctives.
Aside from these common uses, the subjunctive now appears mainly in fixed or formulaic
	The subjunctive is far more common in Old English than in Modern English, and you must get used to seeing it in environments where you do not expect it. As in Modern English, the subjunctive is used for conditions contrary to fact. A made-up example:
CJif ie wOre treowwyrhta . . . [If I were a carpenter. . .]
It is also used in noun clauses following verbs of desiring and commanding:
Ie wOsce ~i£t ie wIsra wOre. [I wish that I were wiser.]
But the subjunctive is also used in noun clauses where we would not now use it: HIe cwO don ~i£t he wOre wIs.
Here the subjunctive in the noun clause following HIe cw Odon 'They said' does not signal a condition contrary to fact, and cwodon 'said' is hardly a verb of desiring or commanding. In fact, the fairest translation of this sentence would be
They said that he was wise.
Making no attempt at all to reproduce the subjunctive. What then does the subjunctive express?
Think of it as implying a point of view towards the action of the verb. In clauses following verbs of desire, the point of view is obvious. In HIe cwOdon !:)()2t he wOre WIS, it is merely that the speaker is reporting an opinion. He is not necessarily taking a position on the rightness or wrongness of that opinion. It may indeed be obvious that he is in complete agreement:
[Then the people who saw this sign said that Christ was a true prophet.]
The following sentence is similar, but it uses the indicative:
Be him awr~it se wItega Isaias pret he is stefn clipiendes on westene.
[Concerning him (John the Baptist) the prophet Isaiah wrote that he is the voice of one crying in the wilderness.]
The choice between subjunctive and indicative may often be a matter of individual preference or rhetorical emphasis.
Another common environment in which the subjunctive does not necessarily indicate doubt or unreality is the concessive clause introduced by peah or peah pe 'though', which generally ta1-~es the subjunctive whether or not the statement it contains is known to be true. For example:
Ne sceal nan man swa peah,jJeah he synful sle, geortrliwian. [Nevertheless, no man must despair, though he be sinfuL]
Here peah has a sense something like 'even if', implying that the man mayor may not be sinful; the subjunctive is appropriate (if a little archaic) even in Modern English. But compare:
God is mildheort, peah ae lire yfelnes him oft abelge. [God is merciful, though our wickedness often angers him.]
Here the writer can have no doubt that we do often anger God, but the verb abelge is still in the subjunctive mood.
In general, you can expect relative clauses, clauses of place, and "when" and "while" clauses to take the indicative. Concessive clauses and "before" and "until" clauses more often take the subjunctive. But the mood in many ldnds of clause varies as it does in noun clauses, and linguists argue ceaselessly about the meaning of the subjunctive and the indicative in several common constructions.
Beginners (and scholars too!) sometimes feel that they must always translate the Old English subjunctive with a Modern English subjunctive or with a subjunctive-like construction such as the conditional ("would anger"). But it is often best, as the discussion above shows, to translate the subjunctive with a plain indicative. You must determine as nearly as you can what the subjunctive is doing in each instance and decide what Modern English construction best renders that sense.
The Old English subjunctive is often used to make a first- or third-person imperative, and then the best translation usually converts the subject of the verb into an object of "let." In plural constructions, the -n of the ending is generally dropped.
Sle he amansumod. [Let him be excommunicated.] Ete hIe hrredlIce. [Let them eat quickly.] Lulie we lire nextan. [Let us love our neighbors.]
This usage survives in some formulaic phrases such as "God be thanked."

The old English Auxiliary Words

These traditionally include prepositions, conjunctions, different particles and interjections. All Indo-European languages have this system of auxiliary parts of speech, though there are languages which lack some of them. Japanese, for example, has no prepositions, and the service function in the sentence belongs to postpositive words which have cases, the same as nouns. Korean does not use any conjunctions, replacing them by about 50 different kinds of verbal adverbs. As for Chinese, it simply does not make any distinction in the sentence between basic and auxiliary words.
Most of Old English prepositions are easily recognkable: Primary: of (of, out of), rot (to), /ram (from), to (to), wip (against), in, of, mid (with), on (on, at), be (by, near, to, because of, about), purh (through), under, ofer (over)/ alter (after), bufan (above), ut (out).
Secondary: beforan (before), butan (without), benorpan (north of), etc. Mind that rot means 'to' and wip means 'against'. In Germanic all prepositions divided into those who used nouns in dative, accusative or genitive. But in the Old English period this distinction begins to disappear, and only some of the prepositions use dative (mid, butan, sometimes on, in) or genitive </ram, ut, rofter).
Conjunctions included the following:
Primary: and / ond (and) , ac (but), gif (if), or.
Secondary: rogper ge... ge (both... and..., either ... or...), hwonne (when), pa (when), ponne (when), peah (though), protte (that), ror (before), swa... swa... (so... as...).

And a few interjections: ia (yes), wa (woe!, wow!), hwrot (there! what!).

Old English Dialects
Phonetics in the 5th century AD, when first Germanic colonists made landfall in England, there was no old English. All tribes arriving in the British Isles, spoke their own dialects, similar to each other but still variable. By the end of the century, however, when tribes turned into kingdoms, tribal speech became dialects. Three main ethnic groups which arrived in England spoke three dialects which got names of the kingdoms which were established by them. They were West Saxon (in Wessex, Essex), Northumbrian (in East Angeland), and Kentish (in Kent). West Saxon also includes the Mersian variety which had several slight differences in morphology and syntax, and more loanwords from Celtic, as Mersia was situated next to Wales with its Celtic population.
The Northumbrian grammar peculiarities are also interesting for an English speaker and especially for those who are learning the Scots language. Here are the main characteristic features of the N orthumbrian dialect.
1. Practically no long [ee'] sound, and Saxon wro're equals Northern weron, etc.
2. u in open syllables is often pronounced like [y] (like in Germanfu"h/en), so Saxon cuman is N orthumbrian cyman

Morphology

a) -n in case endings of the W eak declension nouns is dropped, and the forms end in -u, -0, -a, e. So in fact weak nouns lose the declension in the singular, and for example steorra (a star) will sound steorra in all four cases, while in Saxon it is steorran in genitive, dative and accusative. The same with sunne (the sun).
b) Feminine 6-stem nouns take in the singular genitive the ending -es. In Saxon it is usually -e. c) The infinitive often ends in -a (drinca - 'to drink'). This is the direct Old Norse influence, and even today's Norwegian has this infinitive ending.
		d) the 1st person singular Present indicative ends in -u, -0 (ic drincu - 'I drink') instead of West Germanic and Saxon -e.
		e) the 2nd person singular Present indicative and the 2nd singular Past indicative of Weak verbs ends in -s (pu drinces - 'thou drinkest'), while in Saxon it is -est.
		f) the 3rd person singular Present indicative ends in -s (he drinces - 'he 
drinks'). This form was taken up by Middle English and therefore moved to the Modem English language.
		g) the plural indicative present ends in -as (hia drincas - 'they drink').
		h) the plural indicative past ends in -un (hia segun - 'they saw')
		i) the plural indicative present of the verb beon is beopan (we, you, they are).
		j) the plural of the personal pronouns is Nominative hfa (they), Dative heom (them).
		k) the 1st participle sometimes ends in -ande again due to the Scandinavian influence.
Some strong verbs became weak in Northumbrian: class I - stfgan (ascend), grfpan (catch); class II reocan (smell) - past reohte, supan (taste); class III - bindan (bind) - past binde, worpan (throw), fregnan (ask); class VI - hebban (lift) past he/de; class VII - sceadan (divide) - past sceadade.

Texts

I decided to give examples of the several kinds of texts in old English. This is made for our readers to realke how the language was used in the literature of the old English period. That is why below you can find samples of the Saxon prose, short abstracts from the old English Gospel (Saxon and Northurnbrian variants), and two small texts in Kentish and Mersian dialects. Translations and glossaries follow the texts.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Saxon).
895. On py ylcan gere worhte se foresprecena here geweorc be Lygan .xx. mila bufan Lundenbyrig. Pa pws on sumera foron micel dwl para burgwara, ond eac swa opres folces, pwt hie gedydon wt para Deniscana geweorce, ond pwr wurdon gefliemde, ond sume feower cyninges pegnas ofslwgene. Pa pws on hwrfeste pa wicode se cyng on neaweste pwre byrig, pa hwile pe hie hira corn gerypon, pwt pa Deniscan him ne mehton pws ripes forwiernan. Pa sume dwge rad se cyng up bi pwre ew, ond gehawade hwwr mon mehte pa ea forwyrcan, pwt hie ne mehton pa scipu ut brengan. ond hie pa swa dydon. worhton iJa tu geweorc. on twa healfe pwre eas. Pa hie pa pwt geweorc furpum ongunnen
hwfdon, ond pwrto gewicod hwfdon. pa onget se here pwt hie ne mehton pa scipu ut brengan; Pa
forleton hie hie, ond eodon ofer land pwt hie gedydon wt Cwatbrycge be Swfern, ond pwr geweorc worhton. Pa rad seo fird west wfter pwm herige, ond pa men of Lundenbyrig gefetedon pa scipu, ond pa ealle pe hie alwdan ne mehton tobrwcon, ond pa pe pwr stwlwyrpe wwron binnan Lundenbyrig gebrohton.
ylcan gere - the same year
worhte, worhton - it built, they built (from wyrcan 'to work, to build')
se - that (masc. nom. sg.)
foresprecena - above mentioned, aforesaid
here, herige - an army (masc. ja-stem)
geweorc - a fortress, a fort (neut. a-stem)
be, bi - by
bufan - above
byrig - a town, a city (fern. j6-stem)
sumer - a summer (masc. a-stem)
foron - they went (fromfaran 'to go')
micel - much, many
dml - a part (masc. i-stem)
burgware - citkens
swa - so, so as, as
opres folces - other folk (plural)
hie - they
gedydon, dydon - they did (from d6n 'to do')
wurdon - were turned, were brought (from weorpan 'to become, to turn') gef/iemde - fleeing
sume - some
pegnas - thanes, servants (from pegn 'a thane', masc. a-stem) ofslmgene - were killed
hmrfest - autumn, harvest (masc. a-stem)
wicode, gewicod - settled (from wician 'to dwell')
neaweste - nearness, neighborhood (fern. o-stem)
gerypon - they gathered harvest (from rfpan)
ne mehton - they could not
ripes - harvest (genitive singular)
dmge - a day (masc. a-stem)
ea, em - water, a river (fern. consonant stem)
hwmr - where
mon - a man, one
ut brengan - to bring out
scipu - ships (neut. a-stem)
tu - two (neut.)
on twa hea/fe - on the two sides, halfs
furpum - further
ongunnen - begun (from onginnan - to begin, to attempt)
onget - he / it understood (from ongietan - to understand)
forleton - they left, omit (fromforlm'tan - to leave)
eodon ofer land - they went over land (past from gan 'to go')
fird - a military expedition
ealle - all
stmlwyrpe - serviceable
wmron binnan Lundenbyrig gebrohton - they were brought to London

Year 895. This very year built this above mentioned army [of Danes] a fortress by the Lygan [river] 20 miles above London. This summer a great part of citkens went, and other people with them, towards the Danish fortress, and there were put to flight, and some four [Danish] king's thanes were killed. Then this autumn the king settled near the town, and at that time they gathered the harvest, which the Danes could not grow. Some day the king went to the river, and observed where people could work, [because] they could not bring the ships out. And they did so, they built two forts there, on both sides of the river. Then they had began [constructing] another fortress further, and there had settled. Then that army understood that they could not bring out the ships, so they left them, and went over lands and reached Cwatbridge on the river Safern, and there built a fortress. Then went the expedition after this army, and the men from London fought the ships, and could not sink all of them, but brought serviceable ones from there to London.

Grant of land by king Offa to Worcester (Mersian)
Mersian is distinguished by the extensive use of [a] instead of [ie], like bam for the Saxon bro'm. Another peculiarity is the presence of [h] in many cases instead of a long vowel, or [g] - stiMe for the Saxon stigele. A considerable number of Celtic words is observed in the place names which this text is full of.
ba ba wro'ron agane frf hundred wintra and nigan and hund eahtatig wintra /ram Cristes gebyrtfde Offa kyning on bam an and brittigan geare his kynedomes geube ane hfde landes rot Bradewassan into bam mynstre on Wigrecestre bam brobran to bryce a on ece swa full and swa forb swa he seo/f hrofde.
Ic Offa burh Cristes gye Myrcena kining bas mfne geoue mid rode tacne ge/rostnige. Ic Eadberht bas ylce bing ge/rostnige. Ic Berttum bis ylce gefrostnige.
bis syndon ba landgemrora into Bradewassan: of Temede streame in wynna broce, of wynna broce in wudumor, of wudumore in wro'tan sihtran, of bam wro'tan sice in ba bakas and of bam bacan in ba ealdan dfc, of bro're ealdan dfc in seges mere and of seges mere in bros pulles heafod, and of bam heafde to born brycge, of bornbrycge in bone pull and rolter bam sfce in foxbroce, of foxbrocro in bone wu/fseab, of bam seabe in ba ealdan stiMe, of bro're stiMe in dodhroma pull, of bam pulle eft in Temede stream.
geoue - a gift
wudumor - the big forest (from wudu 'wood', and Celtic mor 'big') wynna broce - the white brook (from Welsh gwin 'white')
seges - sedge
in wrotan sihtran - marshy ground
That was after 500 winters and 189 winters since Christ was born, Offa the king in the thirty first year of his reign vgrants one hide of land to the monastery of Worchester for the brethren to own it as fully and forever, as I myself had.
I, Offa, through Christ the bng of Mersia, with the Cross Symbol this my gift confirm. I, Edbert, the same thing confirm. I Bert the same confirm.
These are the boundaries from Bradewassan: from T emede stream to the white bridge, from the white bridge to Wudumor, from Wudumor to the marsh, from this marshy watercourse to the brook and from that brook to the old ditch, from the old ditch to the sedge lake and from the sedge lake to the pool's head, and from the head to Thornbridge, from Thornbridge to the pool and after the watercourse to Foxbridge, from Foxbridge to the wolfpit, from the pit to the old stile, from the stile to the Dodham pool, from the pool again to the Temede stream.

CONCLUSION

The above description of word functions is radically simplified, but it should be enough to explain the concepts in the grammar and get you translating old English as soon as possible. The important point to remember is that we will need to use certain orders of words or put certain endings on words in order to indicate what roles they are playing in a sentence.