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Old English was not a static form. Its usage covered a period of some 700 or so years— from the Anglo-Saxon migrations into England in approximately 450Events August 25 Marcian proclaimed Eastern Roman Emperor by Aspar and Pulcheria. Saxons, Angles and Jutes invade Britain (traditional date). Births Thrasamund, king of the Vandals Deaths 28 July Theodosius II, East Roman Emperor (after falling from his h AD, to some time after the Norman invasionBayeux Tapestry depicting events leading to the Battle of Hastings The Norman Conquest was the conquest of England by William the Conqueror ( Duke of Normandy), in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman control of England. It is an impor in 1066Events January 6 Harold II is crowned King of England the day after Edward the Confessor dies. Tostig Godwinson and Harald Hardraada of Norway invade England. September 25 Harold II defeats Tostig and Harold Hardraada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, kil, when the language underwent a major and dramatic transition. During this period of time, it assimilated some aspects of the indigenous pre-Celtic languages, some of the Celtic languagesCeltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages. They were spoken across western Europe in ancient times, but are now limited to a few enclaves in the British Isles and on the peninsula of Brittany in France. There are four main groups of Cel which it came into contact with, and some of the two variants of the invading Scandinavian languages occupying and controlling the DanelawThe Danelaw (from the Old English Dena lagu was an area of England under the administrative control of the Vikings (or Danes, or Norsemen) from the late 9th century. The term is also used to describe the set of legal terms and definitions established betw.
The influence of LatinAlternative meanings: See Latin (disambiguation Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and ma on Old English should not be ignored. A large percentage of the educated and literate population ( monks, clerics, etc.) were competent in Latin, which was then Europe's prevalent lingua franca. It is sometimes possible to roughly date the entry of individual Latin words into Old English based on which patterns of linguistic change they have undergone, though this is not always reliable. There were at least three notable periods of Latin influence. The first occurred before the ancestral Saxons left continental Europe for England. The second began when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity, and Latin-speaking priests became widespread. However, the largest single transfer of Latin-based words occurred following the Norman conquest of 1066, after which an enormous number of Norman words entered the language. Most of these oïl language words were themselves derived 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.
The language was further altered by the transition away from the runic alphabet (also known as futhorc) to the Latin alphabet, which was also a significant factor in the developmental pressures brought to bear on the language. Words were spelled as they were pronounced; the silent letters of Modern English, therefore, did not often exist in Old English. The K in "knight", for example, was pronounced. Another side-effect of spelling words phonetically was that spelling was extremely variable -- the spelling of a word would reflect differences in the phonetics of the writer's regional dialect, and also idiosyncratic spelling choices which varied from author to author. Thus, for example, the word "and" could be spelled either "and" or "ond". Old English spelling is even more muddled than modern English spelling. Most students these days learn using normalized versions, and are only introduced to variant spellings after they have mastered the basics of the language.