1.2.2. Old English written records

Old English written records which are rather numerous are generally classified either in accordance with the alphabet used or in accordance with the dialect of the scribe who wrote the record.

If we speak about the first criterion — the alphabet (runic or insular) — the first group is rather scarcely represented (Frank's casket, Ruthwell cross), the other group having many written records. But generally the records are classified in accordance with their dialect: Northumbrian (Franks' gasket, Ruthwell cross, Caedmon's. hymns), Mercian (translation of the Psalter (солтэ-псалтырь)), Kentish (psalms-са:м-псалом), West Saxon (The Anglo-Saxon chronicle, the translation of a philosophical treatise -трактат Cura Pastoralis. King Alfred's Orosius — a book on history).

There were also many translations from other dialects, an example of which is Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD). Bede, a learned monk at Jarrow, is said to have assimilated all the learning of his time. He wrote on language, science and chronology and composed numerous commentaries on the Old and New Testament.

With the rise of Wessex to the dominant position among the Old English kingdoms in the 9th and 10th centuries, and thanks to the powerful influence of their learned King Alfred, the West Saxon dialect became the chief vehicle of literature. All the works of literary importance that have survived, both prose and poetry, are written in West Saxon, with only occasional traces of other dialects, and in this sense it may be regarded as typical of the Old English period.

2. Inner history During the period the language was developing very slowly.

2.1. Phonetics

The phonetics of the Old English period was characterised by a system of dynamic stress. The fixed stress fell on the first root syllable:

The vowels had the following characteristic features:

a) The quantity and the quality of the vowel depended upon its position in the word. Under stress any vowel could be found, but in unstressed position there were no diphthongs or long monophthongs, but only short vowels [a], [e], [i], [o], [u].

b) The length of the stressed vowels (monophthongs and diphthongs) was phonemic, which means that there could be two words differing only in the length of the vowel:

c) there was an exact parallelism of long and short vowels:

2.2. Spelling

2.3. Grammar

Old English was a synthetic language (the lexical and grammatical notions of the word were contained in one unit). It was highly inflected, with many various affixes. The principal grammatical means were suffixation, vowel interchange and supplition.

beon (to be) — Ic eom (I am)

bu eart (you are) ■ he is (he is)

There was no fixed word-order in Old English, the order of the words in the sentence being relatively free.

2.4. Vocabulary

Almost all of it was composed of native words, there were very few borrowings.

Borrowings were mainly from Latin:

a) The forefathers of English, when on the Continent, had contacts with the Roman empire and borrowed words connected mainly with trade:

b) They borrowed Latin words from the Romanized Celts:

straet (street), weall (wall), myln (mill)

c) Some borrowings were due to the introduction of Christianity:

biscop (bishop), deofol (devil), munic (monk) New words appeared as a result of two processes: