What are some of the differences between old English and modern English?

Answer 1

Old English ( formerly known as Anglo-Saxon ), is a highly inflected Germanic language. Its descendant, Modern English, is a relatively uninflected Germanic language enjoying a great deal of additional vocabulary and grammar borrowed from Norman French.

Answer 2

Old English is much different from modern English. Old English is English from before 1100 AD that nobody uses anymore except the language freaks. They still have a ton of books that you can read that have old English but nowadays, people do not use Old English because it is to hard for Modern English speakers to understand. Modern English is the English that you and I are talking or typing in. Modern English is used everywhere and has been for 400 years.

Some of the differences:

• Old English made regular use of three letters we do not have in Modern English which makes it look quite strange.
• Old English nouns are declined in the same way Modern German nouns are.
• Many Old English verbs use vowel changes in their conjugations (some Modern English verbs still do, like sing, sang and sung).
• Old English had a different number for pronouns apart from singular and plural. It was called the dual and was used when there were two of something.
• Old English had no words in its vocabulary from French or Greek or other languages and very few from Latin. The vocabulary was almost all Germanic.

It looks something like this:

Tha ongan seo abbudisse clyppan ond lufigean that Godes gife in thaem men, ond heo hine tha monade ond laerde that he woruldhad anforlete ond munuchad onfenge, on he that wel thafode.

Answer 3

Old English (up to about 1200) has an exclusively Germanic vocabulary, complex declension systems, a completely separate set of pronouns for two people as opposed to one or three, and odd syntax. Readers of Modern English cannot read it without training and a good glossary. We would have a hard time understanding it if it were spoken to us, too. Middle English (1200-1400) is easier to read--most Modern English speakers could make out what Chaucer wrote without too much trouble. However we might have a very difficult time understanding it if it were spoken to us. The change to modern English involved a shift in vowel sounds (unimaginatively called the Great Vowel Shift) which made English sound like it does today, although it is still spelled like Middle English. Of course there are and always have been accents and regional dialects but the core of the language is the same as it was when Henry VIII spoke it.

Answer 4

Olde English is known for sounding very similar to modern English. This is because modern English was derived from Olde English and the British. Shakespeare is written in Olde English.