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This article is part of a series on: Old English

Dialects Kentish Mercian Northumbrian West Saxon Use Orthography (Runic alphabet · Latin alphabet) Grammar Phonology Literature Old English literature (Beowulf · Anglo-Saxon Chronicle · Cædmon's Hymn) History History of English Development of Old English (Influences: Germanic · Latin · Norse · Brittonic) Legacy Middle English Early Modern English Modern English See also: Changes to Old English vocabulary

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Old English (Ænglisc, Anglisc, Englisc) or Anglo-Saxon^[1] is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland, more specifically in the England Old Period, between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon.

It is a West Germanic language closely related to Old Frisian. Old English had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin, and was much closer to modern German and Icelandic than modern English in most respects, including its grammar. It was fully inflected with five grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), two grammatical numbers (singular and plural) and three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). First and second person personal pronouns also had dual forms for referring to groups of two people, in addition to the usual singular and plural forms. The instrumental case was somewhat rare and occurred only in the masculine and neuter singular; it could typically be replaced by the dative. Adjectives, pronouns and (sometimes) participles agreed with their antecedent nouns in case, number and gender. Finite verbs agreed with their subject in person and number.

Nouns came in numerous declensions (with deep parallels in Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit). Verbs came in nine main conjugations (seven strong and two weak), each with numerous subtypes, as well as a few additional smaller conjugations and a handful of irregular verbs. The main difference from other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, is that verbs can be conjugated in only two tenses (vs. the six "tenses" – really tense/aspect combinations – of Latin), and have no synthetic passive voice (although it did still exist in Gothic).

Gender in nouns was grammatical, as opposed to the natural gender that prevails in modern English. That is, the grammatical gender of a given noun did not necessarily correspond to its natural gender, even for nouns referring to people. For example, sēo sunne (the Sun) was feminine, se mōna (the Moon) was masculine, and þat wīf "the woman/wife" was neuter. (Compare German cognates die Sonne, der Mond, das Weib.) Pronominal usage could reflect either natural or grammatical gender, when it conflicted.

From the 9th century, Old English experienced heavy influence from Old Norse, a member of the related North Germanic group of languages.

History[link]

The distribution of the primary Germanic dialect groups in Europe in around AD 1:

  North Germanic

  North Sea Germanic, or Ingvaeonic

  Weser-Rhine Germanic, or Istvaeonic

  Elbe Germanic, or Irminonic

  East Germanic

Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion.

Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea Germanic) dialects from the 5th century. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century. The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmon's Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a limited corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries, but the oldest coherent runic texts (notably Franks Casket) date to the 8th century.

The history of Old English can be subdivided in:

• Prehistoric Old English (c. 450 to 650); for this period, Old English is mostly a reconstructed language as no literary witnesses survive (with the exception of limited epigraphic evidence).
• Early Old English (ca. 650 to 900), the period of the oldest manuscript traditions, with authors such as Cædmon, Bede, Cynewulf and Aldhelm.
• Late Old English (c. 900 to 1066), the final stage of the language leading up to the Norman conquest of England and the subsequent transition to Early Middle English.

The Old English period is followed by Middle English (12th to 15th century), Early Modern English (ca. 1480 to 1650) and finally Modern English (after 1650).

Influence of other languages[link]

In the course of the Early Middle Ages, Old English assimilated some aspects of a few languages with which it came in contact, such as the two dialects of Old Norse from the contact with the Norsemen or "Danes" who by the late 9th century controlled large tracts of land in northern and eastern England which came to be known as the Danelaw.

Latin influence[link]

A large percentage of the educated and literate population of the time were competent in Latin, which was the scholarly and diplomatic lingua franca of Europe. It is sometimes possible to give approximate dates for the entry of individual Latin words into Old English based on which patterns of linguistic change they have undergone. There were at least three notable periods of Latin influence. The first occurred before the ancestral Angles and Saxons left continental Europe for Britain. The second began when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity and Latin-speaking priests became widespread. See Latin influence in English: Dark Ages for details.

The third and largest single transfer of Latin-based words happened after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when an enormous number of Norman (Old French) words began to influence the language. Most of these Oïl language words were themselves derived from Old French and ultimately from classical Latin, although a notable stock of Norse words were introduced or re-introduced in Norman form. The Norman Conquest approximately marks the end of Old English and the advent of Middle English.

One of the ways the influence of Latin can be seen is that many Latin words for activities came to also be used to refer to the people engaged in those activities, an idiom carried over from Anglo-Saxon but using Latin words.^{[citation needed]} This can be seen in words like militia, assembly, movement, and service.

The language was further altered by the transition away from the runic alphabet (also known as futhorc or fuþorc) to the Latin alphabet, which was also a significant factor in the developmental pressures brought to bear on the language. Old English words were spelled, more or less, as they were pronounced. Often, the Latin alphabet fell short of being able to adequately represent Anglo-Saxon phonetics. Spellings, therefore, can be thought of as best-attempt approximations of how the language actually sounded. The "silent" letters in many Modern English words were pronounced in Old English: for example, the c and h in cniht, the Old English ancestor of the modern knight, were pronounced. Another side-effect of spelling Old English words phonetically using the Latin alphabet was that spelling was extremely variable. A word's spelling could also reflect differences in the phonetics of the writer's regional dialect. Words also endured idiosyncratic spelling choices of individual authors, some of whom varied spellings between works. Thus, for example, the word and could be spelt either and or ond.

Norse influence[link]

The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century:

  Old West Norse dialect

  Old East Norse dialect

  Old Gutnish

  Old English

  Crimean Gothic

   Other Germanic languages with which Old Norse still retained some mutual intelligibility

The second major source of loanwords to Old English were the Scandinavian words introduced during the Viking invasions of the 9th and 10th centuries. In addition to a great many place names, these consist mainly of items of basic vocabulary, and words concerned with particular administrative aspects of the Danelaw (that is, the area of land under Viking control, which included extensive holdings all along the eastern coast of England and Scotland).

The Vikings spoke Old Norse, a language related to Old English in that both derived from the same ancestral Proto-Germanic language. It is very common for the intermixing of speakers of different dialects, such as those that occur during times of political unrest, to result in a mixed language, and one theory holds that exactly such a mixture of Old Norse and Old English helped accelerate the decline of case endings in Old English.^[2]

Apparent confirmation of this is the fact that simplification of the case endings occurred earliest in the north and latest in the southwest, the area farthest away from Viking influence. Regardless of the truth of this theory, the influence of Old Norse on the lexicon of the English language has been profound: responsible for such basic vocabulary items as sky, leg, the pronoun they, the verb form are, and hundreds of other words.^[3]

Celtic influence[link]

Traditionally, and following the Anglo-Saxon preference prevalent in the nineteenth century, many maintain that the influence of Brythonic Celtic on English has been small, citing the small number of Celtic loanwords taken into the language. The number of Celtic loanwords is of a lower order than either Latin or Scandinavian. However, a more recent and still minority view is that distinctive Celtic traits can be discerned in syntax from the post-Old English period, such as the regular progressive construction and analytic word order in opposition to the Germanic languages.^[4] Why these traits appear to be restricted to syntax and do not include vocabulary is not clear. However many common English words with early attestation in Britain, such as 'dog', 'bird', 'pig', have no apparent cognate in the West Germanic languages, leading some to speculate that their origin lies in the extinct Brythonic dialects of the 'contact' period. Due to the remoteness of the period, etymological attribution in modern dictionaries is generally given simply as 'Old English'.

Dialects[link]

Old English should not be regarded as a single monolithic entity just as Modern English is also not monolithic. It emerged over time out of the many dialects and languages of the colonising tribes, and it was not until the later Anglo-Saxon period that they fused together into Old English.^[5] Even then it continued to exhibit local language variation, the remnants of which continue to be found in dialects of Modern English.^[6] Thus it is misleading, for example, to consider Old English as having a single sound system. Rather, there were multiple Old English sound systems. Old English has variation along regional lines as well as variation across different times. For example, the language attested in Wessex during the time of Æthelwold of Winchester, which is named Late West Saxon (or Æthelwoldian Saxon), is considerably different from the language attested in Wessex during the time of Alfred the Great's court, which is named Early West Saxon (or Classical West Saxon or Alfredian Saxon). Furthermore, the difference between Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon is of such a nature that Late West Saxon is not directly descended from Early West Saxon (despite what the similarity in name implies).

The four main dialectal forms of Old English were Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish, and West Saxon.^[7] Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of Northumbria and most of Mercia were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. The portion of Mercia that was successfully defended and all of Kent were then integrated into Wessex.

After the process of unification of the diverse Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in 878 by Alfred the Great, there is a marked decline in the importance of regional dialects. This is not because they stopped existing; regional dialects continued even after that time to this day, as evidenced both by the existence of Middle and later Modern English dialects.

The first page of the Beowulf manuscript

However, the bulk of the surviving documents from the Anglo-Saxon period are written in the dialect of Wessex, Alfred's kingdom. It seems likely that with consolidation of power, it became necessary to standardise the language of government to reduce the difficulty of administering the more remote areas of the kingdom. As a result, documents were written in the West Saxon dialect. Not only this, but Alfred was passionate about the spread of the vernacular, and brought many scribes to his region from Mercia to record previously unwritten texts.^[8]

The Church was affected likewise, especially since Alfred initiated an ambitious programme to translate religious materials into English. To retain his patronage and ensure the widest circulation of the translated materials, the monks and priests engaged in the programme worked in his dialect. Alfred himself seems to have translated books out of Latin and into English, notably Pope Gregory I's treatise on administration, Pastoral Care.

Because of the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is little or no written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred's unification.

Thomas Spencer Baynes claimed in 1856 that, owing to its position at the heart of the Kingdom of Wessex, the relics of Anglo-Saxon accent, idiom and vocabulary were best preserved in the Somerset dialect.^[9]

Even after the maximum Anglo-Saxon expansion, Old English was never spoken all over the Kingdom of England; not only was Medieval Cornish spoken all over Cornwall, it was also spoken in adjacent parts of Devon into the age of the Plantagenets, long after the Norman Conquest. Cumbric may have survived into the 12th century in parts of Cumbria and Welsh may have been spoken on the English side of the Border. In addition to the Celtic languages, Norse was spoken in some areas under Dane-Law.

Phonology[link]

The inventory of classical Old English (i.e. Late West Saxon) surface phones, as usually reconstructed, is as follows.

The sounds marked in parentheses in the chart above are allophones:

• [dʒ] is an allophone of /j/ occurring after /n/ and when geminated
• [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ occurring before /k/ and /ɡ/
• [v, ð, z] are allophones of /f, θ, s/ respectively, occurring between vowels or voiced consonants
• [ç, x] are allophones of /h/ occurring in coda position after front and back vowels respectively
• [ɣ] is an allophone of /ɡ/ occurring after a vowel, and, at an earlier stage of the language, in the syllable onset.

The front mid rounded vowels /ø(ː)/ occur in some dialects of Old English, but not in the best attested Late West Saxon dialect.

Grammar[link]

Morphology[link]

Unlike modern English, Old English is a language rich with morphological diversity. It maintains several distinct cases: the nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and (vestigially) instrumental. The only remnants of this system in modern English are in a few pronouns; the meanings of I (nominative) my (genitive) and me (accusative/dative) in the first person provide an example.

Syntax[link]

Old English syntax was similar in many ways to that of modern English. However, there were some important differences. Some were simply consequences of the greater level of nominal and verbal inflection – e.g., word order was generally freer. In addition:

• The default word order was verb-second and more like modern German than modern English.
• There was no do-support in questions and negatives.
• Multiple negatives could stack up in a sentence, and intensified each other (negative concord).
• Sentences with subordinate clauses of the type "when X, Y" (e.g. "When I got home, I ate dinner") did not use a wh-type conjunction, but rather used a th-type correlative conjunction (e.g. þā X, þā Y in place of "when X, Y"). The wh-type conjunctions were used only as interrogative pronouns and indefinite pronouns.
• Similarly, wh- forms were not used as relative pronouns (as in "the man who saw me" or "the car which I bought"). Instead, an indeclinable word þe was used, often in conjunction with the definite article (which was declined for case, number and gender).

Orthography[link]

The runic alphabet used to write Old English before the introduction of the Latin alphabet.

Old English was first written in runes (futhorc) but shifted to a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish Christian missionaries^[11] from around the 9th century. This was replaced by insular script, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental Carolingian minuscule (also known as Caroline) replaced the insular.

The letter ðæt ⟨ð⟩ (called eth or edh in modern English) was an alteration of Latin ⟨d⟩, and the runic letters thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ are borrowings from futhorc. Also used was a symbol for the conjunction and, a character similar to the number seven (⟨⁊⟩, called a Tironian note), and a symbol for the relative pronoun þæt, a thorn with a crossbar through the ascender (⟨ꝥ⟩). Macrons ⟨¯⟩ over vowels were rarely used to indicate long vowels. Also used occasionally were abbreviations for a following m or n. All of the sound descriptions below are given using IPA symbols.

Conventions of modern editions[link]

A number of changes are traditionally made in published modern editions of the original Old English manuscripts. Some of these conventions include the introduction of punctuation and the substitutions of symbols. The symbols ⟨e⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨g⟩, ⟨r⟩, ⟨s⟩ are used in modern editions, although their shapes in the insular script are considerably different. The long s ⟨ſ⟩ is substituted by its modern counterpart ⟨s⟩. Insular ⟨ᵹ⟩ is usually substituted with its modern counterpart ⟨g⟩ (which is ultimately a Carolingian symbol).

Additionally, modern editions often distinguish between a velar and palatal ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ with diacritic dots above the putative palatals: ⟨ċ⟩, ⟨ġ⟩. The wynn symbol ⟨ƿ⟩ is usually substituted with ⟨w⟩. Macrons are usually found in modern editions to indicate putative long vowels, while they are usually lacking in the originals. In older printed editions of Old English works, an acute accent mark was used to maintain cohesion between Old English and Old Norse printing.

The alphabetical symbols found in Old English writings and their substitute symbols found in modern editions are listed below:

Doubled consonants are geminated; the geminate fricatives ⟨ðð⟩/⟨þþ⟩, ⟨ff⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ cannot be voiced.

Literature[link]

Old English literature, though more abundant than literature of the continent before AD 1000, is nonetheless scant. In his supplementary article to the 1935 posthumous edition of Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader, Dr. James Hulbert writes:

Some of the most important surviving works of Old English literature are Beowulf, an epic poem; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of early English history; the Franks Casket, an early whalebone artefact; and Caedmon's Hymn, a Christian religious poem. There are also a number of extant prose works, such as sermons and saints' lives, biblical translations, and translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers, legal documents, such as laws and wills, and practical works on grammar, medicine, and geography. Still, poetry is considered the heart of Old English literature. Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous, with a few exceptions, such as Bede and Caedmon.

Text samples[link]

[edit] Beowulf

The first example is taken from the opening lines of the epic poem Beowulf. This passage describes how Hrothgar's legendary ancestor Scyld was found as a baby, washed ashore, and adopted by a noble family. The translation is literal and represents the original poetic word order. As such, it is not typical of Old English prose. The modern cognates of original words have been used whenever practical to give a close approximation of the feel of the original poem. The words in brackets are implied in the Old English by noun case and the bold words in parentheses are explanations of words that have slightly different meanings in a modern context. Notice how what is used by the poet where a word like lo or behold would be expected. This usage is similar to what-ho!, both an expression of surprise and a call to attention.

A semi-fluent translation in Modern English would be:

Lo! We have heard of majesty of the Spear-Danes, of those nation-kings in the days of yore, and how those noblemen promoted zeal. Scyld Scefing took away mead-benches from bands of enemies, from many tribes; he terrified earls. Since he was first found destitute (he gained consolation for that) he grew under the heavens, prospered in honours, until each of those who lived around him over the sea had to obey him, give him tribute. That was a good king!

The Lord's Prayer[link]

This text of the Lord's Prayer is presented in the standardised West Saxon literary dialect.

Charter of Cnut[link]

This is a proclamation from King Cnut the Great to his earl Thorkell the Tall and the English people written in AD 1020. Unlike the previous two examples, this text is prose rather than poetry. For ease of reading, the passage has been divided into sentences while the pilcrows represent the original division.

See also[link]

• Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law
• Anglo-Saxon literature
• Beowulf
• Dictionary of Old English
• Exeter Book
• Go (verb)
• History of the English language
• History of the Scots language
• I-mutation
• List of generic forms in British place names
• List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents
• Old English grammar

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

Sources[link]

• Whitelock, Dorothy (ed.) (1955) English Historical Documents; vol. I: c. 500–1042. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode

General[link]

• Baker, Peter S. (2003). Introduction to Old English. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-23454-3. 
• Baugh, Albert C; & Cable, Thomas. (1993). A History of the English Language (4th ed.). London: Routledge.
• Earle, John (2005). A Book for the Beginner in Anglo-Saxon. Bristol, PA: Evolution Publishing. ISBN 1-889758-69-8.  (Reissue of one of 4 eds. 1877–1902)
• Hogg, Richard M. (ed.). (1992). The Cambridge History of the English Language: (Vol 1): the Beginnings to 1066. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hogg, Richard; & Denison, David (eds.) (2006) A History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Jespersen, Otto (1909–1949) A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. 7 vols. Heidelberg: C. Winter & Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard
• Lass, Roger (1987) The Shape of English: structure and history. London: J. M. Dent & Sons
• Lass, Roger (1994). Old English: A historical linguistic companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43087-9. 
• Millward, Celia (1996). A Biography of the English Language. Harcourt Brace. ISBN 0-15-501645-8. 
• Mitchell, Bruce, and Robinson, Fred C. (2001). A Guide to Old English (6th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-22636-2. 
• Quirk, Randolph; & Wrenn, C. L. (1957). An Old English Grammar (2nd ed.) London: Methuen.
• Strang, Barbara M. H. (1970) A History of English. London: Methuen.

External history[link]

• Robinson, Orrin W. (1992). Old English and Its Closest Relatives. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2221-8. 
• Bremmer Jr, Rolf H. (2009). An Introduction to Old Frisian. History, Grammar, Reader, Glossary. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Stenton, F. M. (1971). Anglo-Saxon England (3rd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Orthography/Palaeography[link]

• Bourcier, Georges. (1978). L'orthographie de l'anglais: Histoire et situation actuelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
• Campbell, A. (1959). Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Elliott, Ralph W. V. (1959). Runes: An introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Keller, Wolfgang. (1906). Angelsächsische Paleographie, I: Einleitung. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
• Ker, N. R. (1957). A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Ker, N. R. (1957: 1990). A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon; with supplement prepared by Neil Ker originally published in Anglo-Saxon England; 5, 1957. Oxford: Clarendon Press ISBN 0-19-811251-3
• Page, R. I. (1973). An Introduction to English Runes. London: Methuen.
• Scragg, Donald G. (1974). A History of English Spelling. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Phonology[link]

• Anderson, John M; & Jones, Charles. (1977). Phonological structure and the history of English. North-Holland linguistics series (No. 33). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
• Brunner, Karl. (1965). Altenglische Grammatik (nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers neubearbeitet) (3rd ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
• Campbell, A. (1959). Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Cercignani, Fausto (1983). "The Development of */k/ and */sk/ in Old English". Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 82 (3): 313–323.
• Girvan, Ritchie. (1931). Angelsaksisch Handboek; E. L. Deuschle (transl.). (Oudgermaansche Handboeken; No. 4). Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink.
• Halle, Morris; & Keyser, Samuel J. (1971). English Stress: its form, its growth, and its role in verse. New York: Harper & Row.
• Hockett, Charles F. (1959). "The stressed syllabics of Old English". Language 35 (4): 575–597. DOI:10.2307/410597. JSTOR 410597. 
• Hogg, Richard M. (1992). A Grammar of Old English, I: Phonology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Kuhn, Sherman M. (1961). "On the Syllabic Phonemes of Old English". Language 37 (4): 522–538. DOI:10.2307/411354. JSTOR 411354. 
• Kuhn, Sherman M. (1970). "On the consonantal phonemes of Old English". In: J. L. Rosier (ed.) Philological Essays: studies in Old and Middle English language and literature in honour of Herbert Dean Merritt (pp. 16–49). The Hague: Mouton.
• Lass, Roger; & Anderson, John M. (1975). Old English Phonology. (Cambridge studies in linguistics; No. 14). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Luick, Karl. (1914–1940). Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Stuttgart: Bernhard Tauchnitz.
• Maling, J. (1971). "Sentence stress in Old English". Linguistic Inquiry 2 (3): 379–400. JSTOR 4177642. 
• McCully, C. B.; Hogg, Richard M. (1990). "An account of Old English stress". Journal of Linguistics 26 (2): 315–339. DOI:10.1017/S0022226700014699. 
• Moulton, W. G. (1972). "The Proto-Germanic non-syllabics (consonants)". In: F. van Coetsem & H. L. Kufner (Eds.), Toward a Grammar of Proto-Germanic (pp. 141–173). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
• Sievers, Eduard (1893). Altgermanische Metrik. Halle: Max Niemeyer.
• Wagner, Karl Heinz (1969). Generative Grammatical Studies in the Old English language. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.

Morphology[link]

• Brunner, Karl. (1965). Altenglische Grammatik (nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers neubearbeitet) (3rd ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
• Campbell, A. (1959). Old English grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Wagner, Karl Heinz. (1969). Generative grammatical studies in the Old English language. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.

Syntax[link]

• Brunner, Karl. (1962). Die englische Sprache: ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung (Vol. II). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
• Kemenade, Ans van. (1982). Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Dordrecht: Foris.
• MacLaughlin, John C. (1983). Old English Syntax: a handbook. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
• Mitchell, Bruce. (1985). Old English Syntax (Vols. 1–2). Oxford: Clarendon Press (no more published)
  • Vol.1: Concord, the parts of speech and the sentence
  • Vol.2: Subordination, independent elements, and element order
• Mitchell, Bruce. (1990) A Critical Bibliography of Old English Syntax to the end of 1984, including addenda and corrigenda to "Old English Syntax" . Oxford: Blackwell
• Timofeeva, Olga. (2010) Non-finite Constructions in Old English, with Special Reference to Syntactic Borrowing from Latin, PhD dissertation, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, vol. LXXX, Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
• Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. (1972). A History of English Syntax: a transformational approach to the history of English sentence structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
• Visser, F. Th. (1963–1973). An Historical Syntax of the English Language (Vols. 1–3). Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Lexicons[link]

Bosworth-Toller

• Bosworth, J; & Toller, T. Northcote. (1898). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Based on Bosworth's 1838 dictionary, his papers & additions by Toller)
• Toller, T. Northcote. (1921). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Campbell, A. (1972). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Enlarged addenda and corrigenda. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Clark Hall-Merritt

• Clark Hall, J. R; & Merritt, H. D. (1969). A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Toronto

• Cameron, Angus, et al. (ed.) (1983) Dictionary of Old English. Toronto: Published for the Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1983/1994. (Issued on microfiche and subsequently as a CD-ROM and on the World Wide Web.)

External links[link]

Old English edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For a list of words relating to Old English, see the Old English language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader/An Outline of Anglo-Saxon Grammar

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Old English

• Old English/Modern English Translator
• The Electronic Introduction to Old English
• Learn Old English with Leofwin
• Old English (Anglo-Saxon) alphabet
• Bosworth and Toller, An Anglo-Saxon dictionary
• Downloadable Bosworth and Toller, An Anglo-Saxon dictionary Application
• Old English Made Easy
• Old English – Modern English dictionary
• Old English Glossary
• Old English Letters
• Shakespeare's English vs Old English
• Downloadable Old English keyboard for Windows and Mac
• Another downloadable keyboard for Windows computers
• Guide to using Old English computer characters (Unicode, HTML entities, etc.)
• The Germanic Lexicon Project
• An overview of the grammar of Old English
• The Lord's Prayer in Old English from the 11th century (video link)

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Occupation	Actor, comedian, musician, singer, writer, director
Years active	1981–present
Spouse	Jo Green (m. 1989) «start: (1989)»"Marriage: Jo Green to Hugh Laurie" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Hugh_Laurie)
Children	2 sons, 1 daughter
Website
hughlaurieblues.com

James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE (born 11 June 1959), known as Hugh Laurie (/ˈhjuː ˈlɒri/), is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director. He first became known as one half of the Fry and Laurie double act, along with his friend and comedy partner Stephen Fry, whom he joined in the cast of Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster from 1987 to 1999.

From 2004 to 2012, he played Dr Gregory House, the protagonist of House, for which he received two Golden Globe awards, two Screen Actors Guild awards, and six Emmy nominations. As of August 2010, Laurie is the highest paid actor in a drama series on US television.^[1] He has been listed in the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor ever in a TV Drama—earning US$ 700,000^[2] per episode in House—and for being the most watched leading man on television.^[3][4]

Early life and education[link]

Laurie was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.^[5] The youngest of four children, Laurie has an older brother named Charles and two older sisters named Susan and Janet.^[6] He had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother, Patricia (née Laidlaw).^[5][7] His father, Ran Laurie, was a medical doctor who also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games.^[5][8]

Although Laurie was brought up in the Presbyterian church as a child,^[5][9] he has declared: "I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he'd take it away."^[10] He was brought up in Oxford and attended the Dragon School. He later went on to Eton and then to Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he studied for a degree in Archaeology and Social Anthropology. While at Cambridge he was a member of Footlights, the university dramatic club that has produced many well-known actors and comedians, and he was club president in 1981. He was also a member of the Hermes Club and the Hawks' Club.^[5]

Like his father, Laurie was an oarsman at school and university;^[5] in 1977, he was a member of the junior coxed pair that won the British national title before representing Britain's Youth Team at the 1977 Junior World Rowing Championships. In 1980, Laurie and his rowing partner, J. S. Palmer, were runners-up in the Silver Goblets^[11] coxless pairs for Eton Vikings rowing club. Later, he also achieved a Blue while taking part in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.^[12] Cambridge lost that year by 5 feet.^[13] During this time Laurie was training for up to 8 hours a day and was on course to become an Olympic standard rower.^[14] Laurie is a member of Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world.

Forced to abandon rowing during a bout of glandular fever (mononucleosis), he joined the Cambridge Footlights, which has been the starting point for many successful British comedians. There he met Emma Thompson, with whom he had a romantic relationship; the two remain good friends.^[5] She introduced him to his future comedy partner, Stephen Fry. Laurie, Fry and Thompson later parodied themselves as the University Challenge representatives of "Footlights College, Oxbridge" in "Bambi", an episode of The Young Ones, with the series' co-writer Ben Elton completing their team. In 1980–81, his final year at university, besides rowing, Laurie was also president of the Footlights, with Thompson as vice-president. They took their annual revue, The Cellar Tapes, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and won the first Perrier Comedy Award. The revue was written principally by Laurie and Fry, and the cast also included Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer and Penny Dwyer.

Acting career[link]

The Perrier Award led to a West End transfer for The Cellar Tapes and a television version of the revue, broadcast in May 1982. It resulted in Laurie, Fry and Thompson being selected, along with Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane and Siobhan Redmond to write and appear in a new sketch comedy show for Granada Television, Alfresco, which ran for two series.

Fry and Laurie went on to work together on various projects throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among them were the Blackadder series, written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, starring Rowan Atkinson, with Laurie in various roles, but most notably Prince George and Lieutenant George.^[5] Other projects followed, of which one was their BBC sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie; another project was Jeeves and Wooster,^[5] an adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse’s stories, in which Laurie played Jeeves’s employer, the amiable twit Bertie Wooster. He and Fry worked together at various charity stage events, such as Hysteria! 1, 2 & 3 and Amnesty International’s The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball, Comic Relief TV shows and the variety show Fry and Laurie Host a Christmas Night with the Stars. They collaborated again on the film Peter's Friends and came together for a retrospective show in 2010 titled Fry and Laurie Reunited.

Laurie starred in the Thames Television film "Letters from a Bomber Pilot" (1985) directed by David Hodgson. This was a serious acting role, the film being dramatised from the letters home of Pilot Officer J.R.A. "Bob" Hodgson, a pilot in RAF Bomber Command, who was killed in action in 1943.^[15]

Laurie appeared in the music videos for the 1986 single "Experiment IV" by Kate Bush, and the 1992 single "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox, in full Georgian-period costume, a toned-down version of his Prince George character from Blackadder the Third, opposite John Malkovich, similarly reprising his role of the Vicomte Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons.^[16]

Laurie’s later film appearances include Sense and Sensibility (1995), adapted by and starring Emma Thompson; the Disney live-action film 101 Dalmatians (1996), where he played Jasper, one of the bumbling criminals hired to kidnap the puppies; Elton’s adaptation of his novel Inconceivable, Maybe Baby (2000); Girl From Rio; the 2004 remake of The Flight of the Phoenix; and the three Stuart Little films.

In 1996, Laurie’s first novel, The Gun Seller, an intricate thriller laced with Wodehouseian humour, was published and became a best-seller.^[5] He has since been working on the screenplay for a movie version and on a second novel, The Paper Soldier. In 1998, Laurie had a brief guest-starring role on Friends in "The One with Ross's Wedding, Part Two".

Since 2002, Laurie has appeared in a range of British television dramas, guest-starring that year in two episodes of the first season of the spy thriller series Spooks on BBC One. In 2003, he starred in and also directed ITV's comedy-drama series fortysomething (in one episode of which Stephen Fry appears). In 2001, he voiced the character of a bar patron in the Family Guy episode "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea". Laurie voiced the character of Mr. Wolf in the cartoon Preston Pig. He was a panellist on the first episode of QI, alongside Fry as host. In 2004, Laurie guest-starred as a professor in charge of a space probe called Beagle, on The Lenny Henry Show.

Laurie's fame expanded to the American public in 2004, when he first starred as the acerbic physician specialising in diagnostic medicine, Dr Gregory House in the popular Fox medical drama House. For his portrayal, Laurie assumes an American accent.^[5] Laurie was in Namibia filming Flight of the Phoenix and recorded the audition tape for the show in the bathroom of the hotel, the only place he could get enough light.^[17] While working on Flight of the Phoenix, Jacob Vargas operated the camera to shoot Laurie's audition tape for House. Laurie's US accent was so convincing that executive producer Bryan Singer, who was unaware at the time that Laurie is English, pointed to him as an example of just the kind of compelling American actor he had been looking for.^[17] Laurie also adopts the accent between takes on the set of House,^[18] as well as during script read-throughs, although he used his native accent when directing the House episode "Lockdown".^[18]

Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award^[19] for his role in House in 2005. Although he did not win, he did receive a Golden Globe in both 2006 and 2007 for his work on the series and the Screen Actors Guild award in 2007 and 2009. Laurie was also awarded a large increase in salary, from what was rumoured to be a mid-range five-figure sum to $350,000 per episode.^[20] Laurie was not nominated for the 2006 Emmys, apparently to the outrage of Fox executives,^[21] but he still appeared in a scripted, pre-taped intro, where he parodied his House character by rapidly diagnosing host Conan O'Brien and then proceeded to grope him as the latter asked him for help to get to the Emmys on time. He would later go on to speak in French while presenting an Emmy with Dame Helen Mirren, and has since been nominated in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Laurie's success on the show extends to the financial, earning over $700,000 per episode.^[2]

Laurie was initially cast as Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, in Singer's film Superman Returns but had to bow out of the project because of his involvement in House. In July 2006, Laurie appeared on Bravo!'s Inside the Actors Studio, where he also performed one of his own comic songs, "Mystery", accompanying himself on the piano.^[5] He hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live, in which he appeared in drag in a sketch about a man (Kenan Thompson) with a broken leg who accuses his doctor of being dishonest. Laurie played the man’s wife.

In August 2007, Laurie appeared on BBC Four's documentary Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out, filmed in celebration of Fry’s 50th birthday. In 2008, Laurie appeared as Captain James Biggs in Street Kings, opposite Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker, and then in 2009 as the eccentric Dr. Cockroach, PhD in DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens. He also hosted Saturday Night Live for the second time on the Christmas show in which he sang a medley of three-second Christmas songs to close his monologue.

In 2009, Laurie returned to guest star in another Family Guy episode, "Business Guy", parodying Gregory House and himself assuming an American accent. In 2010, Laurie filmed an independent feature called The Oranges. In 2010, Laurie guest starred in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror XXI" as Roger, a castaway who is planning a murder scheme on a ship during Homer and Marge's second honeymoon.^{[citation needed]} On 8 February 2012, Fox announced that season 8 of House will be the last.

Music career[link]

From the age of six, Laurie took piano lessons with a Mrs. Hare.^[22] He plays the piano, guitar, drums, harmonica and saxophone. He has displayed his musical talents in episodes of several television series, most notably A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, House and when he hosted Saturday Night Live in October 2006. He is a vocalist and keyboard player for the Los Angeles charity rock group Band From TV. Additionally, following Meat Loaf's appearance in the House episode "Simple Explanation", Laurie played piano as a special guest on the song "If I Can't Have You" from Meat Loaf's 2010 album Hang Cool Teddy Bear.

On episodes of House he has played several classic rock 'n roll instruments including Gibson Flying V and Les Paul guitars. His character has a Hammond B-3 organ in his home and on one episode performed the introduction to Procol Harum's classic "Whiter Shade of Pale".^[23] Laurie appears as a scientist/doctor in the pop video to accompany Kate Bush's song Experiment IV. On 1 May 2011, Laurie and a jazz quintet closed the 2011 Cheltenham Jazz Festival to great acclaim.^[24]

On 15 May 2011 Laurie was the subject of the ITV series Perspectives, explaining his love for the music of New Orleans and playing music, from his album Let Them Talk, at studios and live venues in the city itself.^[22] He was the subject of PBS Great Performances Let them Talk, also about New Orleans jazz, first broadcast on 30 September 2011.^[25]

Personal life[link]

Laurie's mother, Patricia (née Laidlaw), died from motor neurone disease in Oxfordshire at the age of 73 in 1989, when Laurie was 30. According to Laurie, it took her two years to die, and she suffered "painful, plodding paralysis" while being cared for by Laurie's father, whom he called "the sweetest man in the whole world".^[6]

Laurie married theatre administrator Jo Green in June 1989 in Camden, London. They live in Belsize Park, London with sons Charlie and Bill and daughter Rebecca.^[26] They had planned to move the whole family to Los Angeles in 2008 due to the strain of being mostly separated for 9 months each year,^[26] but ultimately decided against it.^[27] Charlie had a cameo in A Bit of Fry & Laurie in the last sketch of the episode entitled Special Squad, as baby William (whom Stephen and Hugh begin to "interrogate" about "what he's done with the stuff", calling him a scumbag and telling him that he's been a very naughty boy) during his infancy, while Rebecca had a role in the film Wit as five-year-old Vivian Bearing.

Laurie's best friend is long time comedy partner Stephen Fry, who was best man at his wedding and is godfather to his children.^[28] Laurie is good friends with his House co-star Robert Sean Leonard and continues his friendship with actress Emma Thompson.^[29]

On 23 May 2007 Laurie was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2007 New Year Honours List, for his services to drama, by Queen Elizabeth II.^[30][31][32]

Laurie has struggled with severe clinical depression, and continues to receive regular treatment from a psychotherapist. He stated in an interview that he first concluded he had a problem while driving in a charity demolition derby in 1996, during which he realised that driving around explosive crashes caused him to be neither excited nor frightened, but instead bored.^[5][7] "Boredom," he commented in an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, "is not an appropriate response to exploding cars.".^[5]

Laurie admires the writings of P.G. Wodehouse, explaining in a 27 May 1999 article in The Daily Telegraph how reading Wodehouse novels had saved his life.^[33]

In a further interview in The Daily Telegraph Laurie confirms his atheism.^[34]

Laurie is an avid motorcycle enthusiast. He has two motorcycles, one at his London home and one at his Los Angeles home. His bike in the United States is a Triumph Bonneville, his "feeble attempt to fly the British flag".^[35]

In March 2012 Laurie was made an honorary fellow of his alma mater Selwyn College.^[36][37]

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

On 26 July 2010, it was announced that Laurie would be releasing a blues album after signing a contract with Warner Bros. The album, called Let Them Talk, was released in France on 18 April 2011 and in Germany on 29 April. The album features collaborations from well-known artists such as Tom Jones, Irma Thomas, and Dr. John.

Singles[link]

Other charting songs[link]

Appearances[link]

Filmography[link]