6. As mentioned earlier, unlike modern English, sounds of Old English words are represented by how they are spelled. This is perhaps due to what linguists described as the non-usage of ‘silent letters’. Take for instance the letter h. In modern English, the h sound is present when it is used by itself but when combined with another letter, like th, ph and wh, the sound becomes different. In the case of Old English as observed in the Caedmon extract, the letter occurs in different combinations, like in hwæ t (what) and hrofe (roof).
SPELLING
7. On the other hand, there is quite a vast difference in the way some Old English words are spelled. They would not give one the slightest idea of what the word means unless there is a literal translation accompanying it. Listed below are some examples:
8. The Old English words listed in the table above are completely unintelligible. Even with the translated modern-day words provided they do not even give a trace of their connection. One can deduced that these words may have their roots in the local indigenous dialects of that era.
9. But this dissimilarity does not discount the fact that there is some form of relation between the two different forms of English. This connection is portrayed by the use of other words that make sense to the reader which will be further elaborated under grammar and vocabulary. According to Leith (1996), we can hypothesize what Old English might have sounded like from the spelling patterns if we take them together with another kind of evidence, that of modern dialect pronunciation, e.g., “Hwæ t sceal ic singan?” (What shall I sing?) (ln. 11)
GRAMMAR
10. In this section, I shall analyse the grammar as used in the Caedmon extract in comparison to modern English, as follow:
a. Word Order. In looking at the extract, it is observed that the words sequence is structured differently from that of present-day English. Take for instance the in line 4, “…the appointed tide his limbs in rest laid down …” Noticed the verb phrase in rest laid down is positioned differently from today. In present-day English, the sentence would have been written this way, “…the appointed time he laid down to rest his limbs …” Another example is found in line 10, “Hwæðre þu meaht me singan?’ (‘However you can for me sing?’) In this instance, the verb, singan is placed after the direct object, i.e. me. In contrast to modern English, the verb is usually placed immediately after the subject and before any direct object. Hence, modern English is referred to as a subject-verb-order (SVO) language (p.115). As in the example used above, the order is subject-object-verb (SOV). If the quoted line is written in today’s context it would have been Hwæðre meaht þu singan me? or However, can you sing for me?
b. From this analysis, it is discovered that there was greater freedom in word order in Old English in comparison to modern English which has a more fixed word-order pattern. (Leith, pp. 115, 118)
c. Morphology. The scope of grammar is very wide. In this analysis, I shall make an attempt to look at the aspect of morphology (the study of word structure). To be able to spot the bound or free morphemes from the Caedmon extract, I would have to look at the modern English translation. Some of these examples are as follow:
d. Morphemes are used to construct entirely new words though with similar meanings but the verbs become continuous, past tense or plural form. The above examples are also termed as inflectional morphology.
e. Articles and Preposition. It is observed that articles and preposition are not commonly used in Old English. Some of these words are as follow:
VOCABULARY
11. Though Old English was known to have its origins in the Germanic language, it is noted that the vocabulary used in the Caedmon extract is not entirely Germanic, as some words were absorbed from Latin and the indigenous Celtic, and was later supplemented by words from the Scandinavian language spoken by the Viking invaders (Leith, p. 100). Many of the words in the extract have become obsolete while some are still in used today but may differ in meaning as when they were used in the story.
12. For most the pronouns used in the story like he, his, him and me still retain the same meaning as when they were used then. Other examples used then and today with the same meaning are ‘song’ and ‘word’ and the prepositions ‘in’ and ‘from’. The word ‘tide’ in line 1 meant ‘occasion’ which in today’s context is related to the sea while in Old English it meant ‘time’.
FONTS
13. The shape of some of the letters in Old English is written differently from today’s letters. If these letters are rewritten in today Roman alphabet form the words become recognizable. Some examples of these letters are a for æ and th for þ and ð. If the present-day letters are substituted in the Old English words, these words would become more intelligible. Examples are as follow:
In addition if two more rules are added like in hw = wh and ht = ght and we get the following:
14. Before I go to the conclusion, I shall take a few lines from a modern English passage entitled ‘Exploring’ (p. 70) and make some comparison with the Old English Caedmon extract and comment on some distinguishing differences. The story is about Robinson Crusoe.
15. In terms of language flow, the reader will find it very smooth in reading the ‘Exploring’ passage as compared to the Caedmon text where it can be quite tiring in trying to understand the nuances of Old English. Presentation wise, the writing for the Robinson Crusoe story is written in italics and it appears very neat and organized. Whereas in the case of the Caedmon text, the shape of the letters in many of the words may take the reader quite some time to make up what the meanings are.
16. Looking at the word structure, ‘Exploring’ passage is an example of a typical subject-verb-order (SVO) composition as seen in this line of the first paragraph, “On the banks I found many pleasant meadows, covered with grass.” where ‘I’ is the subject, ‘found’ is the verb and meadows, covered with grass is the object. Though there was greater freedom in the word order for the Caedmon text, e.g. (line 10), ‘Hwæðre þu meaht me singan?’ (‘However you can for me sing?’), the reader might take a little longer time to comprehend what it is trying to say. This is a SOV (subject-object-verb) example.
CONCLUSION
17. From this analysis of the Caedmon extract, it is justifiable to say that there is a close relation between Old English and present-day English. Though dissimilarities would stand out at the first reading even with the literal translation, a closer examination of the various aspects of the language would reveal that there is more than meets the eye. The continuity between Old English and modern English can also be sometimes obscured by the changes to the spelling. But from the spelling patterns we can infer what Old English would have sounded like if we take them together with that of modern English pronunciation. (Leith, p. 114) The Anglo-Saxon vocabulary has been greatly enlarged over that 700 years having adopted the other languages during this period.
18. The above analysis reinforces the argument of nineteenth century philologist Walter Skeat that language of the Anglo-Saxon was the ‘same language’ as modern English, and that there was a continuous development from Old English to modern English. (Leith, p.110). Though it has been proven that there is a close union between Old English and modern English it is by no means a quantum leap from one distant era to the present. In between, the language went through different periods of English history from the Norman French conquest when French became the lingua franca of the nobles and English became a secondary language. It was during this period that French had an influence on the English language and it developed into what became known as Middle English which lasted about 300 years. Next came the early modern English period from about mid-fifteen century till about mid-eighteen century. Industrialisation, commerce, education and religion became more concentrated in the east-Midlands region (now London) and it is said that the standard English language emerged from here, and eventually became the international language of communication in Europe and Britain’s colonies in the Far East.
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(1864 words)
REFERENCES
Graddol, David, Leith, Dick and Swann, Joan (1996), English: history,
diversity and change, The Internal History: An Example of Old
English, 3.4: 110 – 117. Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
Graddol, David, Cheshire, Jenny and Swann, Joan (1994), Describing
English. Descriptive grammars, pp. 69-73, Open University Press.
Spoken by the inhabitants of the countries (for instance during the ).
