Old English written records

Our knowledge of the OE language comes mainly from manu­scripts written in Latin characters. The first English words to be written down with the help of Latin characters were personal names and place names inserted in Latin texts; then came glosses and longer textual insertions. Among the earliest insertions in Latin texts are pieces of OE poetry. Bede’s HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM (written in Latin in the 8^th c.) contains an English fragment of five lines known as “Bede’s Death Song” and a religious poem of nine lines, “Caedmon’s Hymn”.

The greatest poem of the time was BEOWULF, an epic of the 7th or 8th с. It was originally composed in the Mercian or Northumbrian dialect. It is valued both as a source of linguistic material and as a work of art; it is the oldest poem in Germanic literature. BEOWULF is built up of several songs arranged in three chapters (over 3,000 lines in all). It is based on old legends about the tribal life of the ancient Teutons. The author (unknown) depicts vividly the adventures and fights of legendary heroes some of which can be traced to historical events.

Old English Alphabet

OE scribes used two kinds of letters: the runes and the letters of the Latin alphabet. The bulk of the OE material – OE manuscripts – is written in the Latin script. The use of Latin letters in English differed in some points from their use in Latin, for the scribes made certain modifications and additions in order to indicate OE sounds. Like any alphabetic writing, OE writing was based on a phonetic principle; every letter indicated a separate sound. This principle, however, was not always observed, even at the earliest stages of phonetic spelling. Some OE letters indicated two or more sounds, even distinct phonemes, e.g. з stood for four different phonemes; some letters indicating distinct sounds stood for positional variants of phonemes – a and ae. A careful study of the OE sound system has revealed that a set of letters, s, f, р (also shown as ) stood for two sound each: a voiced and voiceless consonant. And yet, on the whole, OE spelling was far more phonetic and consistent than Mod E spelling.

The letters could indicate short and long sounds. The length of vow­els is shown by a macron: bat [ba:t], NE boat or by a line above the letter reading OE texts one should observe the following rules for letters indicating more than one sound.

The letters f, s and p, б stand for voiced fricatives between vowels [d also between a vowel and a voiced consonant; otherwise they indicate corresponding voiceless fricatives:

The letter з stands for [g] initially before back vowels, for [j] before and after front vowels, for [y] between back vowels and for [g'] mostly when preceded by c:

OE заn [g], зear [j], dae3 [j], da3as [у], secзаn [gg] (NE go, year, day, days, say).

The letter h stands for [x] between a back vowel and a consonant and also initially before consonants and for [x’] next to front vowels; the distribution of [h] is uncertain:

OE hlaene [x], tahte [x], niht [x'], he [x] or [h] (NE lean, taught, night, he).

The letter n stands for [n] in all positions except when followed by [k] or [g]; in this case it indicates []: OE sinзan (NE sing).