Let's look at Old English!

Hi! It's Mary again. :)
So I am taking Classical Japanese class this semester (古典), and currently I am starting a project translating passages from Tosa Nikki into English. It's really interesting to see the differences between the Japanese of the early 10th century and modern Japanese, but I find the similarities more interesting. Of course many things have changed since that time, but once you learn the grammatical rules, it is not too difficult to understand. For comparison, I thought today we could look at the English language that was being spoken around the same time.

Anglo-Saxons

Old English was spoken in what we now call England from the mid 5th century to the mid 11th century, and is considered a completely different language from what we speak today. The reason it's considered to start in the 5th century is because that was when the Roman Empire fell and the Roman Latin speakers left England, and Germanic tribes (the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes) moved in and established their seven kingdoms. The language they brought isn't any different than what those peoples were speaking back in Germany, however historically speaking, the moment they moved to England, the language became considered to be English. But as this implies, English is related not to Latin, but actually to German, Dutch, Norwegian, and other Germanic languages. In fact, Old English's closest living relative is Icelandic :). Like other Germanic languages, Old English inflected case (主格、対格、与格、属格、と具格を活用する), and all nouns had one of three grammatical genders. For example, seo sunne (the sun) is feminine, se mona (the moon) is masculine, and þat wif (the wife) is neutral. If this is all confusing, guess what- there is a wikipedia page for it in Japanese here :D 
Old English consisted of many sounds that don't exist in English today, as well as a different grammatical structure. It's clear to see how different it is when looking at something like the Lord's Prayer (from Wikipedia)

With the introduction of Christianity to England, Latin words began leaking into the lexicon. Old English is considered to end exactly in the year 1066. Do you know why? This is the year that William the Conqueror, the French Duke of Normandy, conquered England, making French the official language of the land. Of course most common people still spoke English, but over 10,000 French words entered the English language, which is why English and French still have much vocabulary in common today. The language spoken at this time is considered to be Middle English, which ended in the 15th century. Early Modern English came after the 100 years war ended with the victory of the English people, and 1650 is considered to be the start of Modern English. This is probably really boring to most of you, but I love historical linguistics, so I could talk about this stuff all day! XD Anyway, I think I'll end with this video. You can't really appreciate the difference between Old English and Modern English until you actually hear it. And it's really short, so please watch it. I hope you enjoy it! And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me ;)

The Battle of Maldon