Old English

About Old English

Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest form of English. It was spoken in England from about the 5th century until the 12th century, when it gradually turned into Middle English after the Norman Conquest. It is the language of Beowulf and it is no longer spoken as anyone's first language.

An English speaker today cannot read Old English without study. It had grammatical cases and three genders, and it used letters that modern English has lost: þ (thorn) and ð (eth) for the th sound, æ (ash) for the a in "cat" and ƿ (wynn) for w. Many basic words survive in a changed form, such as mōdor (mother) and hūs (house). Old English was written in many regional varieties, so the forms in these guides can differ from one textbook to another.

FamilyIndo-European, Germanic (West Germanic)
SpokenEngland, about 450 to 1150
Statushistorical language, no native speakers
ScriptLatin alphabet with extra letters, earlier runes
Codeang (ISO 639-3)

Classification: Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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