The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic peoples who migrated to Britain starting in the mid-5th century, becoming the dominant cultural force in the territory that would eventually become England. Their arrival laid the foundation for the English monarchy and its earliest literary traditions. The linguistic legacy of this culture is a direct ancestor of the language spoken today, though it existed in a form nearly unrecognizable to the modern ear.
The Language of the Anglo-Saxons
The language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons is called Old English, a West Germanic language that flourished in England from approximately 450 AD until about 1150 AD. It developed from the dialects brought by the migrating groups—primarily the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who originated from what is now northern Germany and the Netherlands. These dialects merged into a common language with four primary regional variations: Kentish, Mercian, Northumbrian, and West Saxon. West Saxon became the most widely written form, particularly under King Alfred the Great, and is the basis for most surviving literature. Old English belonged to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, placing it closer in structure and vocabulary to modern German or Icelandic than to contemporary English.
Grammar and Sound
Old English operated under a complex grammatical system that allowed for a flexible arrangement of words within a sentence. It was a highly inflected language, meaning the function of a noun, pronoun, or adjective was indicated by changes to its ending rather than by its position.
The language employed a system of four primary grammatical cases: nominative for the subject, accusative for the direct object, genitive for possession, and dative for the indirect object. Because the endings of words clearly marked their role, speakers could rearrange sentence components for emphasis or poetic rhythm without losing clarity. Nouns were also assigned one of three grammatical genders—masculine, feminine, or neuter—which did not necessarily correspond to the object’s natural gender.
The sound of Old English was significantly different from contemporary pronunciation, sounding much more guttural and resembling the spoken German of today. Before the general adoption of the Latin alphabet by the 9th century, the Anglo-Saxons used a runic alphabet known as the Futhorc, primarily for short inscriptions. Even when the Latin script was adopted, scribes added unique letters to represent specific Old English sounds. Examples include the thorn (þ) and the eth (ð), both used for the “th” sound, and the ash (æ), which represented a vowel sound similar to the “a” in “cat.”
The Transformation of the Language
Old English began its transformation into a simpler, less inflected language due to two major external influences. The first influence was the Viking incursions, which began in the late 8th century and led to prolonged contact between Anglo-Saxons and Norse speakers in the area known as the Danelaw. Since Old English and Old Norse were both Germanic languages, they were similar enough for speakers to communicate, leading to linguistic simplification.
This intense contact resulted in the borrowing of hundreds of common words from Old Norse into Old English, including terms like “sky,” “take,” and the third-person plural pronouns “they,” “them,” and “their.” The need for efficient communication between speakers of the two similar languages accelerated the decay of the complex Old English inflections.
The second, and more profound, shift occurred after the Norman Conquest in 1066, when William the Conqueror established a new ruling class. Anglo-Norman French became the language of the court, government, law, and high culture, while Old English remained the language of the common people. This linguistic divide caused the English language to lose much of its status, and without the stabilizing influence of official use, its inflections continued to erode rapidly. The heavy introduction of French vocabulary, often related to governance and abstract concepts, permanently altered the lexicon, accelerating the transition into what is now classified as Middle English.