In what we know as the Sothern part of England, over 1000 years ago, Anglo-Saxon was the dominant language spoken. The Anglo Saxons preferred to use their own tongue rather than Celtic language. When Christian missionaries arrived in 597 they brought a wide Latin vocabulary with them. This meant they produced manuscripts such as the bible. The missionaries modified the Latin alphabet to suit old English and added extra symbols. There was no standard spelling system so they spelt words the way they sounded in different parts of the country, this is how old English dialects formed.
The Anglo-Saxon alphabet includes letters that are the same as ours, however there are a few missed out and 3 extra letters added on. This is a copy of their alphabet- a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t u w x y þ ð æ. When Anglo-Saxon was written down, there was no difference between upper and lower case letters and although it was not indicated in the spelling, they had two types of vowels- long and short. Also, although the Monks that wrote Anglo-Saxon manuscripts used the Irish alphabet, many of the letters featured would be recognisable today. Similar to today, there was no set way in which Anglo-Saxon words should be pronounced therefore the pronunciation varied across the country. Anglo-Saxon language had 7 vowels compared to our 5, the vowels were pronounced similar to that of most European countries however it varies from our English. Diphthongs were used which are vowels that have another sound that’s been modified to sound like another vowel, it sounds complicated however it was done smoothly so that the words only had 1 syllable. Consonants were mainly pronounced the same way in which they are today. There are many religious words we use that were made during this period such as angel, bishop, chalice, deacon, font, martyr, Mass and candle, along with some everyday words like cucumber, cheese, cup, elephant, fever, giant, history, kettle, kitchen, laurel, lentil, noon, oyster, paper, plant, purple, street and wine. Similarly, there are some Anglo-Saxon words that may be recognisable and similar to our language such as hwær- where, cese- cheese, wifman- woman, gast- day, and grene- green.
It is there easy to conclude that the Anglo-Saxon period set a clear base for our language to develop, with many of the patterns and words seeming familiar to us now. :):)
A detailed explanation here - well done. We will come across diphthongs again later when we look at phonetic transcripion. Check Anglo Saxon for 'day' - I think you've slipped in a 'ghost' word instead. Anything in particular that you found interesting about this old version of our language?
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