Before the Days of Old

Before the days of Old English, you had the Anglo-Frisian language; a sub-branch of West Germanic encompassing English and Frisian. An alternative historical proposition has North Sea Germanic or Ingvaeonic, which includes the Olds of English, Scots and Frisian.

As writers, readers and speakers of English, we need to understand the words and sounds construct reality. The ancient English is the basis of what we say, feel and convey. How is it that most English speakers do not understand the origins of the sounds and words they utter?

Old Frisian and Old English are similar in that both lose the German nasal sound and soften the German k when followed by certain vowels. “English grammar and core vocabulary are inherited from Proto-Germanic but a significant portion of the English vocabulary comes from Latin sources….The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa….conquer[ing] most of this [region] during the Republic and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian’s assumption of effective sole rule in 27 BC. The western empire collapsed in 476 AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 453.” The nearly five hundred years of Roman Latin exposure altered the Anglo-Frisian English to the Old English which would later be transformed again by the Gauls and French in the three-hundred years following the Battle of Hastings; the post-Norman. Middle English asserted itself and replaced the Old in the 14th century.