Anglo Saxon Language
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.....æ þæ wordum Weder-Geata leod
efste mid elne, nalas andsware
bidan wolde; brim-wylm onfeng
hilde-rince. Da wæ hwil dæges,
æ he þone grund-wong ongytan mehte.
......Sona þæ onfunde, se ð floda begong
heoro-gifre beheold hund missera,
grim ond grædig, pær gumena sum
æl-wihta eard ufan cunnode.
Grap þa togeanes; guð-rinc gefeng
atolan clommum; no þy ær in gescod
halan lice; hring utan ymb-bearh,
pæt heo þone fyrd-hom ðourhfon ne mihte,
iocene leoðo-syrcan laþ fingrum.
Did you know that most of the words we use in modern English come from Anglo-Saxon?
Only the words 'use' and 'modern' in the sentence above are not from Anglo-Saxon. All the others are. 'Use' and 'modern' come from Latin and French.
Our language shows signs of Anglo-Saxon in other ways too.
For example, when we write
Edward's bed,
why do we use an apostrophe (one of these ' ) ? In Anglo-Saxon this would have been
Edwardes bedd.
Over the years the e has been lost but we still put ' to show something is missing.
When the Vikings and later the Normans settled in England, the Anglo-Saxon language lost some of its more complicated rules so that people of different languages could understand one another more easily.
