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99-624: The last of the Wuffingas kings was Ælfwald , who died in 749; he was succeeded by kings whose lineage is unknown. The Kingdom of East Anglia was invaded by peoples from northern Europe during the 5th and 6th centuries. Historical sources relating to the genealogy of the East Anglian kings include the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the 8th century English monk Bede 's Ecclesiastical History , both compiled many years after

198-613: A definite article ("the"), a demonstrative adjective ("that"), and demonstrative pronoun . Other demonstratives are þēs ("this"), and ġeon ("that over there"). These words inflect for case, gender, and number. Adjectives have both strong and weak sets of endings, weak ones being used when a definite or possessive determiner is also present. Verbs conjugate for three persons : first, second, and third; two numbers: singular, plural; two tenses : present, and past; three moods : indicative , subjunctive , and imperative ; and are strong (exhibiting ablaut) or weak (exhibiting

297-694: A version of the Latin alphabet . Englisċ , from which the word English is derived, means 'pertaining to the Angles '. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in many parts of Britain in the 5th century. By the 9th century, all speakers of Old English, including those who claimed Saxon or Jutish ancestry, could be referred to as Englisċ . This name probably either derives from Proto-Germanic *anguz , which referred to narrowness, constriction or anxiety, perhaps referring to shallow waters near

396-398: A back vowel ( /ɑ/ , /o/ , /u/ ) at the time of palatalization, as illustrated by the contrast between fisċ /fiʃ/ ('fish') and its plural fiscas /ˈfis.kɑs/ . But due to changes over time, a knowledge of the history of the word in question is needed to predict the pronunciation with certainty (for details, see palatalization ). In word-final position, the pronunciation of sċ

495-406: A dental suffix). Verbs have two infinitive forms: bare and bound; and two participles : present and past. The subjunctive has past and present forms. Finite verbs agree with subjects in person and number. The future tense , passive voice , and other aspects are formed with compounds. Adpositions are mostly before but are often after their object. If the object of an adposition is marked in

594-485: A dialect was tentative, acknowledging that "the linguistic boundaries of the original dialects could not have enjoyed prolonged stability." As no East Anglian manuscripts, Old English inscriptions or literary records such as charters have survived, there is little evidence to support the existence of such a dialect. According to a study by Von Feilitzen in the 1930s, the recording of many place-names in Domesday Book

693-517: A following ⟨m⟩ or ⟨n⟩ . Modern editions of Old English manuscripts generally introduce some additional conventions. The modern forms of Latin letters are used, including ⟨g⟩ instead of insular G , ⟨s⟩ instead of insular S and long S , and others which may differ considerably from the insular script, notably ⟨e⟩ , ⟨f⟩ and ⟨r⟩ . Macrons are used to indicate long vowels, where usually no distinction

792-467: A friction that led to the erosion of the complicated inflectional word endings. Simeon Potter notes: No less far-reaching was the influence of Scandinavian upon the inflexional endings of English in hastening that wearing away and leveling of grammatical forms which gradually spread from north to south. It was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss. There was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength. The strength of

891-559: A new earldom of East Anglia in 1017, when Thorkell the Tall was made earl by Cnut the Great . The restored ecclesiastical structure saw two former East Anglian bishoprics (Elmham and Dunwich ) replaced by a single one at North Elmham . The East Angles spoke Old English . Their language is historically important, as they were among the first Germanic settlers to arrive in Britain during

990-530: A period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion . While indicating that the establishment of dates is an arbitrary process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections, a synthetic language . Perhaps around 85% of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are

1089-552: Is also sparse early Northumbrian evidence of a sixth case: the locative . The evidence comes from Northumbrian Runic texts (e.g., ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ on rodi "on the Cross"). Adjectives agree with nouns in case, gender, and number, and can be either strong or weak. Pronouns and sometimes participles agree in case, gender, and number. First-person and second- person personal pronouns occasionally distinguish dual-number forms. The definite article sē and its inflections serve as

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1188-422: Is as follows. The sounds enclosed in parentheses in the chart above are not considered to be phonemes : The above system is largely similar to that of Modern English , except that [ç, x, ɣ, l̥, n̥, r̥] (and [ʍ] for most speakers ) have generally been lost, while the voiced affricate and fricatives (now also including /ʒ/ ) have become independent phonemes, as has /ŋ/ . The open back rounded vowel [ɒ]

1287-621: Is evidenced by the continued variation between their successors in Middle and Modern English. In fact, what would become the standard forms of Middle English and of Modern English are descended from Mercian rather than West Saxon, while Scots developed from the Northumbrian dialect. It was once claimed that, owing to its position at the heart of the Kingdom of Wessex, the relics of Anglo-Saxon accent, idiom and vocabulary were best preserved in

1386-668: Is followed by Middle English (1150 to 1500), Early Modern English (1500 to 1650) and finally Modern English (after 1650), and in Scotland Early Scots (before 1450), Middle Scots ( c.  1450 to 1700) and Modern Scots (after 1700). Just as Modern English is not monolithic, Old English varied according to place. Despite the diversity of language of the Germanic-speaking migrants who established Old English in England and southeastern Scotland, it

1485-540: Is not known. Sutton Hoo , the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries, lies along a bank of the tidal estuary of the River Deben . It stands 7 miles (11 km) from the North Sea and below the lowest convenient fording place. It formed a path of entry into East Anglia during the period that followed the end of Roman imperial rule in the 5th century. The territory between

1584-864: Is possible to reconstruct proto-Old English as a fairly unitary language. For the most part, the differences between the attested regional dialects of Old English developed within England and southeastern Scotland, rather than on the Mainland of Europe. Although from the tenth century Old English writing from all regions tended to conform to a written standard based on Late West Saxon, in speech Old English continued to exhibit much local and regional variation, which remained in Middle English and to some extent Modern English dialects . The four main dialectal forms of Old English were Mercian , Northumbrian , Kentish , and West Saxon . Mercian and Northumbrian are together referred to as Anglian . In terms of geography

1683-434: Is replaced by ⟨þ⟩ ). In contrast with Modern English orthography , Old English spelling was reasonably regular , with a mostly predictable correspondence between letters and phonemes . There were not usually any silent letters —in the word cniht , for example, both the ⟨c⟩ and ⟨h⟩ were pronounced ( /knixt ~ kniçt/ ) unlike the ⟨k⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ in

1782-479: Is the concentration of ship-burials at Snape and Sutton Hoo in eastern Suffolk. The "North Folk" and "South Folk" may have existed before the arrival of the first East Anglian kings. The most powerful of the Wuffingas kings was Rædwald, "son of Tytil, whose father was Wuffa", according to the Ecclesiastical History . For a brief period in the early 7th century, whilst Rædwald ruled, East Anglia

1881-472: Is very different from Modern English and Modern Scots, and largely incomprehensible for Modern English or Modern Scots speakers without study. Within Old English grammar nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, and word order is much freer. The oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system , but from about the 8th century this was replaced by

1980-526: The Angles , Saxons and Jutes . As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain : Common Brittonic , a Celtic language ; and Latin , brought to Britain by the Roman conquest . Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms : Kentish , Mercian , Northumbrian , and West Saxon . It was West Saxon that formed

2079-456: The Heptarchy , a scheme used by Henry of Huntingdon in the 12th century. Some modern historians have questioned whether the seven ever existed contemporaneously and claim the political situation was far more complicated. The East Angles were initially ruled by the pagan Wuffingas dynasty , apparently named after an early king Wuffa, although his name may be a back-creation from the name of

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2178-652: The Latin alphabet was introduced and adapted for the writing of Old English , replacing the earlier runic system. Nonetheless, the largest transfer of Latin-based (mainly Old French ) words into English occurred after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and thus in the Middle English rather than the Old English period. Another source of loanwords was Old Norse , which came into contact with Old English via

2277-889: The Vikings defeated the East Anglians in battle and their king, Edmund the Martyr , was killed. After 879, the Vikings settled permanently in East Anglia. In 903 the exiled Æthelwold ætheling induced the East Anglian Danes to wage a disastrous war on his cousin Edward the Elder . By 918, after a succession of Danish defeats, East Anglia submitted to Edward and was incorporated into the Kingdom of England. East Anglia

2376-553: The Wulfings clan named in Beowulf and the Old English poem " Widsith ". The following family tree includes the Wuffingas kings from Wehha to Ælfwald . They are numbered in order of ruling. Ecgric was also a member of the Wuffingas house, but his exact descent is not decided. He may have been Sigeberht's brother, or his step-brother. After 749, East Anglia was ruled either by the rulers of Mercia , or by kings whose genealogy

2475-603: The dialect of Somerset . For details of the sound differences between the dialects, see Phonological history of Old English § Dialects . The language of the Anglo-Saxon settlers appears not to have been significantly affected by the native British Celtic languages which it largely displaced . The number of Celtic loanwords introduced into the language is very small, although dialect and toponymic terms are more often retained in western language contact zones (Cumbria, Devon, Welsh Marches and Borders and so on) than in

2574-609: The kingdom of Northumbria . Other parts of the island continued to use Celtic languages ( Gaelic – and perhaps some Pictish – in most of Scotland, Medieval Cornish all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon , Cumbric perhaps to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria , and Welsh in Wales and possibly also on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border ); except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements, where Old Norse

2673-471: The kings of East Anglia were Wuffingas, named after the semi-historical Wuffa. During the early 7th century under Rædwald , East Anglia was a powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Rædwald, the first East Anglian king to be baptised a Christian, is seen by many scholars to be the person buried within (or commemorated by) the ship burial at Sutton Hoo , near Woodbridge . During the decades that followed his death in about 624, East Anglia became increasingly dominated by

2772-405: The 13th century English chronicler Roger of Wendover . The Historia Brittonum lists Wehha , father of Wuffa as the first of the Wuffingas, which perhaps sets the date for the origins of the dynasty to the middle of the 6th century. Wuffa is thought to mean "little wolf", suggesting that the dynastic name Wuffingas translates as "kin of the wolf", making it etymologically the same as

2871-648: The 4th century. Ken Dark writes that "in this area at least, and possibly more widely in eastern Britain, large tracts of land appear to have been deserted in the late 4th century, possibly including whole 'small towns' and villages. This does not seem to be a localised change in settlement location, size or character but genuine desertion." According to Bede, the East Angles (and the Middle Angles, Mercians and Northumbrians ) were descended from natives of Angeln (now in modern Germany). The first reference to

2970-496: The 5th century: according to Kortmann and Schneider, East Anglia "can seriously claim to be the first place in the world where English was spoken." The evidence for dialects in Old English comes from the study of texts, place-names, personal names and coins. A. H. Smith was the first to recognise the existence of a separate Old East Anglian dialect, in addition to the recognised dialects of Northumbrian , Mercian , West Saxon and Kentish . He acknowledged that his proposal for such

3069-469: The 7th and 8th centuries, but the territory was taken by Offa of Mercia in 794. Mercia control lapsed briefly following the death of Offa but was reestablished. The Danish Great Heathen Army landed in East Anglia in 865; after taking York it returned to East Anglia, killing King Edmund ("the Martyr") and making it Danish land in 869. After Alfred the Great forced a treaty with the Danes , East Anglia

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3168-412: The 7th century. Anglo-Saxon sources that include information about the East Angles or events relating to the kingdom: Post-Norman sources (of variable historical validity): 52°30′N 01°00′E  /  52.500°N 1.000°E  / 52.500; 1.000 Old English language Old English ( Englisċ or Ænglisc , pronounced [ˈeŋɡliʃ] ), or Anglo-Saxon ,

3267-422: The 8th century, the runic system came to be supplanted by a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish Christian missionaries. This was replaced by Insular script , a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental Carolingian minuscule (also known as Caroline ) replaced the insular. The Latin alphabet of

3366-528: The East Angles bordered the North Sea to the north and the east, with the River Stour historically dividing it from the East Saxons to the south. The North Sea provided a "thriving maritime link to Scandinavia and the northern reaches of Germany", according to the historian Richard Hoggett. The port of Ipswich ( Gipeswic ) was established in 7th century. The kingdom's western boundary varied from

3465-459: The East Angles is from about 704–713, in the Whitby Life of St Gregory . While the archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that a large-scale migration and settlement of the region by continental Germanic speakers occurred, it has been questioned whether all of the migrants self-identified as Angles. The East Angles formed one of seven kingdoms known to post-medieval historians as

3564-515: The East Anglian king Æthelberht executed and then took control of the kingdom for himself. A brief revival of East Anglian independence under Eadwald, after Offa's death in 796, was suppressed by the new Mercian king, Coenwulf . East Anglian independence was restored by a rebellion against Mercia led by Æthelstan in 825. Beornwulf of Mercia 's attempt to restore Mercian control resulted in his defeat and death, and his successor Ludeca met

3663-406: The English language; some of them, such as Pope Gregory I 's treatise Pastoral Care , appear to have been translated by Alfred himself. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, but Alfred chiefly inspired the growth of prose. A later literary standard, dating from the late 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester , and

3762-556: The Great . From that time on, the West Saxon dialect (then in the form now known as Early West Saxon) became standardised as the language of government, and as the basis for the many works of literature and religious materials produced or translated from Latin in that period. The later literary standard known as Late West Saxon (see History , above), although centred in the same region of the country, appears not to have been directly descended from Alfred's Early West Saxon. For example,

3861-590: The Kingdom of the East Angles have survived because of a complete destruction of the kingdom's monasteries and disappearance of the two East Anglian sees as a result of Viking raids and settlement. The main documentary source for the early period is Bede's 8th-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People . East Anglia is first mentioned as a distinct political unit in the Tribal Hidage , thought to have been compiled somewhere in England during

3960-568: The Mercians. In 655 Æthelhere of East Anglia joined Penda in a campaign against Oswiu that ended in a massive Mercian defeat at the Battle of the Winwaed , where Penda and his ally Æthelhere were killed. The last Wuffingas king was Ælfwald , who died in 749. During the late 7th and 8th centuries East Anglia continued to be overshadowed by Mercian hegemony until, in 794, Offa of Mercia had

4059-410: The Northumbrian dialect retained /i(ː)o̯/ , which had merged with /e(ː)o̯/ in West Saxon. For more on dialectal differences, see Phonological history of Old English (dialects) . Some of the principal sound changes occurring in the pre-history and history of Old English were the following: For more details of these processes, see the main article, linked above. For sound changes before and after

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4158-880: The Northumbrian region lay north of the Humber River; the Mercian lay north of the Thames and south of the Humber River; West Saxon lay south and southwest of the Thames; and the smallest, Kentish region lay southeast of the Thames, a small corner of England. The Kentish region, settled by the Jutes from Jutland, has the scantest literary remains. The term West Saxon actually is represented by two different dialects: Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon. Hogg has suggested that these two dialects would be more appropriately named Alfredian Saxon and Æthelwoldian Saxon, respectively, so that

4257-467: The Old English period is also often attributed to Norse influence. The influence of Old Norse certainly helped move English from a synthetic language along the continuum to a more analytic word order , and Old Norse most likely made a greater impact on the English language than any other language. The eagerness of Vikings in the Danelaw to communicate with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours produced

4356-478: The Old English period, see Phonological history of English . Nouns decline for five cases : nominative , accusative , genitive , dative , instrumental ; three genders : masculine, feminine, neuter; and two numbers : singular, and plural; and are strong or weak. The instrumental is vestigial and only used with the masculine and neuter singular and often replaced by the dative . Only pronouns and strong adjectives retain separate instrumental forms. There

4455-557: The Orwell and the watersheds of the Alde and Deben rivers may have been an early centre of royal power for the Wuffingas kings, originally centred upon Rendlesham or Sutton Hoo, and a primary component in the formation of the East Anglian kingdom. In the early 7th century, Gipeswic (modern Ipswich ) began its growth as a centre for foreign trade, Botolph 's monastery at Iken was founded by royal grant in 654, and Bede identified Rendlesham as

4554-526: The Scandinavian rulers and settlers in the Danelaw from the late 9th   century, and during the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the early 11th   century. Many place names in eastern and northern England are of Scandinavian origin. Norse borrowings are relatively rare in Old English literature, being mostly terms relating to government and administration. The literary standard, however,

4653-606: The Viking influence on Old English appears from the fact that the indispensable elements of the language – pronouns , modals , comparatives , pronominal adverbs (like hence and together ), conjunctions and prepositions – show the most marked Danish influence; the best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in the extensive word borrowings because, as Jespersen indicates, no texts exist in either Scandinavia or Northern England from this time to give certain evidence of an influence on syntax. The effect of Old Norse on Old English

4752-542: The Wuffingas were of Swedish origin. Anglo-Saxon Christianity became established in the 7th century. The extent to which paganism was displaced is exemplified by a lack of any East Anglian settlement named after the old gods . In 604, Rædwald became the first East Anglian king to be baptised. He maintained a Christian altar, but at the same time continued to worship pagan gods. From 616, when pagan monarchs briefly returned in Kent and Essex, East Anglia until Rædwald's death

4851-506: The basic elements of Modern English vocabulary. Old English is a West Germanic language , and developed out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea Germanic) dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England . This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland , which for several centuries belonged to

4950-577: The basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian, and Scots from Northumbrian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century. Old English is one of the West Germanic languages , and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon . Like other old Germanic languages, it

5049-559: The beginnings of the compound tenses of Modern English . Old English verbs include strong verbs , which form the past tense by altering the root vowel, and weak verbs , which use a suffix such as -de . As in Modern English, and peculiar to the Germanic languages, the verbs formed two great classes: weak (regular), and strong (irregular). Like today, Old English had fewer strong verbs, and many of these have over time decayed into weak forms. Then, as now, dental suffixes indicated

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5148-494: The borrowing of individual Latin words based on which patterns of sound change they have undergone. Some Latin words had already been borrowed into the Germanic languages before the ancestral Angles and Saxons left continental Europe for Britain. More entered the language when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity and Latin-speaking priests became influential. It was also through Irish Christian missionaries that

5247-499: The cluster ending in the palatal affricate is sometimes written ⟨nċġ⟩ (or ⟨nġċ⟩ ) by modern editors. Between vowels in the middle of a word, the pronunciation can be either a palatalized geminate /ʃː/ , as in fisċere /ˈfiʃ.ʃe.re/ ('fisherman') and wȳsċan , /ˈwyːʃ.ʃɑn 'to wish'), or an unpalatalized consonant sequence /sk/ , as in āscian /ˈɑːs.ki.ɑn/ ('to ask'). The pronunciation /sk/ occurs when ⟨sc⟩ had been followed by

5346-461: The coast, or else it may derive from a related word *angô which could refer to curve or hook shapes including fishing hooks. Concerning the second option, it has been hypothesised that the Angles acquired their name either because they lived on a curved promontory of land shaped like a fishhook , or else because they were fishermen (anglers). Old English was not static, and its usage covered

5445-421: The dative case, an adposition may conceivably be located anywhere in the sentence. Remnants of the Old English case system in Modern English are in the forms of a few pronouns (such as I/me/mine , she/her , who/whom/whose ) and in the possessive ending -'s , which derives from the masculine and neuter genitive ending -es . The modern English plural ending -(e)s derives from the Old English -as , but

5544-664: The death of Æthelwold and of Eohric of East Anglia in battle in December 902. From 911 to 917, Edward expanded his control over the rest of England south of the Humber, establishing in Essex and Mercia burhs , often designed to control the use of a river by the Danes. In 917, the Danish position in the area suddenly collapsed. A rapid succession of defeats culminated in the loss of the territories of Northampton and Huntingdon, along with

5643-403: The dynasty, which means "descendants of the wolf". An indispensable source on the early history of the kingdom and its rulers is Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People , but he provided little on the chronology of the East Anglian kings or the length of their reigns. Nothing is known of the earliest kings, or how the kingdom was organised, although a possible centre of royal power

5742-560: The early 10th century, the East Anglian Danes came under increasing pressure from Edward, King of Wessex. In 901, Edward's cousin Æthelwold ætheling , having been driven into exile after an unsuccessful bid for the throne, arrived in Essex after a stay in Northumbria. He was apparently accepted as king by some or all Danes in England and induced the East Anglian Danes to wage war on Edward in Mercia and Wessex. This ended in disaster with

5841-431: The east. However, various suggestions have been made concerning possible influence that Celtic may have had on developments in English syntax in the post–Old English period, such as the regular progressive construction and analytic word order , as well as the eventual development of the periphrastic auxiliary verb do . These ideas have generally not received widespread support from linguists, particularly as many of

5940-439: The establishment of the first East Anglian see for Felix of Burgundy at Dommoc, probably Dunwich . He later abdicated in favour of his brother Ecgric and retired to a monastery. The three daughters of Anna of East Anglia , Æthelthryth , Wendreda , Seaxburh of Ely , are associated with the founding of abbeys. The eminence of East Anglia under Rædwald fell victim to the rising power of Penda of Mercia and successors. From

6039-500: The forces of Edmund of East Anglia , who was defeated and killed at Hægelisdun and then buried at Beodericsworth. Following his death Edmund became known as 'the Martyr' and venerated as patron saint and the town of Bury St Edmunds was established there. From then on East Anglia effectively ceased to be an independent kingdom. Having defeated the East Angles, the Danes installed puppet-kings to govern on their behalf, while they resumed their campaigns against Mercia and Wessex. In 878

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6138-645: The former diphthong /iy/ tended to become monophthongised to /i/ in EWS, but to /y/ in LWS. Due to the centralisation of power and the destruction wrought by Viking invasions, there is relatively little written record of the non-West Saxon dialects after Alfred's unification. Some Mercian texts continued to be written, however, and the influence of Mercian is apparent in some of the translations produced under Alfred's programme, many of which were produced by Mercian scholars. Other dialects certainly continued to be spoken, as

6237-531: The futhorc. A few letter pairs were used as digraphs , representing a single sound. Also used was the Tironian note ⟨⁊⟩ (a character similar to the digit 7) for the conjunction and . A common scribal abbreviation was a thorn with a stroke ⟨ꝥ⟩ , which was used for the pronoun þæt ( that ). Macrons over vowels were originally used not to mark long vowels (as in modern editions), but to indicate stress, or as abbreviations for

6336-603: The inscriptions on the Franks Casket ) date to the early 8th century. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 8th century. With the unification of several of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (outside the Danelaw ) by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect (Early West Saxon). Alfred advocated education in English alongside Latin, and had many works translated into

6435-415: The kingdom of Mercia . Several of Rædwald's successors were killed in battle, such as Sigeberht , under whose rule and with the guidance of his bishop, Felix of Burgundy , Christianity was firmly established. From the death of Æthelberht II by the Mercians in 794 until 825, East Anglia ceased to be an independent kingdom, apart from a brief reassertion under Eadwald in 796. It survived until 869, when

6534-666: The kingdom was formed, as well as a pedigree of Ælfwald contained in the Anglian collection that dates from the 9th century. In the pedigree, Ælfwald is claimed to descend from the god Wōden . The earliest kings of East Anglia were known as the Wuffingas , named after the semi-historical founder of the dynasty, Wuffa . Rædwald (died c.  625 ) is the first of the country's kings known to have ruled. Bede identified Rædwald's father as Tytil and his grandfather as Wuffa; their respective accession dates of 571 and 578 were given by

6633-483: The language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as

6732-656: The last active portion of the Great Heathen Army was defeated by Alfred the Great and withdrew from Wessex after making peace and agreeing that the Danes would treat the Christians equally . The treaty between Alfred and Guthrum acknowledged the latter's landholdings in East Anglia. In 880 the Vikings returned to East Anglia under Guthrum , who according to the medieval historian Pauline Stafford , "swiftly adapted to territorial kingship and its trappings, including

6831-449: The latter applied only to "strong" masculine nouns in the nominative and accusative cases; different plural endings were used in other instances. Old English nouns had grammatical gender , while modern English has only natural gender. Pronoun usage could reflect either natural or grammatical gender when those conflicted, as in the case of ƿīf , a neuter noun referring to a female person. In Old English's verbal compound constructions are

6930-519: The latter, the sea flooded the low-lying Fens. As sea levels fell alluvium was deposited near major river estuaries and the "Great Estuary" (which the Saxon Shore forts at Burgh Castle and Caister had guarded) became closed off by a large spit of land. No East Anglian charters (and few other documents) have survived, while the medieval chronicles that refer to the East Angles are treated with great caution by scholars. So few records from

7029-547: The mid-7th to early 9th centuries Mercian power grew, until a vast region from the Thames to the Humber, including East Anglia and the south-east, came under Mercian hegemony. In the early 640s, Penda defeated and killed both Ecgric and Sigeberht, who, having retired to religious life was later venerated as a saint. Ecgric's successor Anna and Anna's son Jurmin were killed in 654 at the Battle of Bulcamp, near Blythburgh . Freed from Anna's challenge, Penda subjected East Anglia to

7128-453: The minting of coins." Along with the traditional territory of East Anglia, Cambridgeshire and parts of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire , Guthrum's kingdom probably included Essex, the one portion of Wessex to come under Danish control. A peace treaty was made between Alfred and Guthrum sometime in the 880s. Under Scandinavian control, there are settlements in East Anglia which have names with Old Norse elements , e.g. '-thorp', '-by' In

7227-456: The modern knight ( /naɪt/ ). The following table lists the Old English letters and digraphs together with the phonemes they represent, using the same notation as in the Phonology section above. After /n/ , /j/ was realized as [dʒ] and /ɣ/ was realized as [ɡ] . The spellings ⟨ncg⟩ , ⟨ngc⟩ and even ⟨ncgg⟩ were occasionally used instead of

7326-450: The naive reader would not assume that they are chronologically related. Each of these four dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the islands. Of these, Northumbria south of the Tyne , and most of Mercia , were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. The portion of Mercia that was successfully defended, and all of Kent , were then integrated into Wessex under Alfred

7425-512: The past tense of the weak verbs, as in work and worked . Old English syntax is similar to that of modern English . Some differences are consequences of the greater level of nominal and verbal inflection, allowing freer word order . Old English was first written in runes , using the futhorc —a rune set derived from the Germanic 24-character elder futhark , extended by five more runes used to represent Anglo-Saxon vowel sounds and sometimes by several more additional characters. From around

7524-403: The religious foundations at Ely and Dereham founded by daughters of Anna , the minster at Blythburgh and the monastery founded by Sigeberht prior to his abdication and subsequent death in battle. Kingdom of East Anglia The Kingdom of the East Angles ( Old English : Ēastengla Rīċe ; Latin : Regnum Orientalium Anglorum ), informally known as the Kingdom of East Anglia ,

7623-406: The rest of Essex: a Danish king, probably from East Anglia, was killed at Tempsford . Despite reinforcement from overseas, the Danish counter-attacks were crushed, and after the defection of many of their English subjects as Edward's army advanced, the Danes of East Anglia and of Cambridge capitulated. East Anglia was absorbed into the Kingdom of Englandin in 918. Norfolk and Suffolk became part of

7722-453: The rivers Ouse , Lark and Kennett to further westwards, as far as the Cam in what is now Cambridgeshire. At its greatest extent, the kingdom comprised the modern-day counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of eastern Cambridgeshire. Erosion on the eastern border and deposition on the north coast altered the East Anglian coastline in Roman and Anglo-Saxon times (and continues to do so). In

7821-611: The same end in 827. The East Angles appealed to Egbert of Wessex for protection against the Mercians and Æthelstan then acknowledged Egbert as his overlord. Whilst Wessex took control of the south-eastern kingdoms absorbed by Mercia in the 8th century, East Anglia could retain its independence. In 865, East Anglia was invaded by the Danish Great Heathen Army , which occupied winter quarters and secured horses before departing for Northumbria . The Danes returned in 869 to winter at Thetford , before being attacked by

7920-422: The site of Æthelwold's royal dwelling. The author Sam Newton has claimed that the Old English epic poem Beowulf may have been composed during the reign of Ælfwald. Before the end of his rule, East Anglia contained a group of ecclesiastical centres, all of which had strong associations with the Wuffingas dynasty. These included the sees at Dommoc and Helmham , Botwulf of Thorney 's monastery at Icanho,

8019-478: The sumptuous ship burial at Sutton Hoo. It has been suggested by Blair, on the strength of parallels between some objects found under Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo and those discovered at Vendel in Sweden , that the Wuffingas may have been descendants of an eastern Swedish royal family. However, the items previously thought to have come from Sweden are now believed to have been made in England, and it seems less likely that

8118-409: The theorized Brittonicisms do not become widespread until the late Middle English and Early Modern English periods, in addition to the fact that similar forms exist in other modern Germanic languages. Old English contained a certain number of loanwords from Latin , which was the scholarly and diplomatic lingua franca of Western Europe. It is sometimes possible to give approximate dates for

8217-564: The time still lacked the letters ⟨j⟩ and ⟨w⟩ , and there was no ⟨v⟩ as distinct from ⟨u⟩ ; moreover native Old English spellings did not use ⟨k⟩ , ⟨q⟩ or ⟨z⟩ . The remaining 20 Latin letters were supplemented by four more: ⟨ æ ⟩ ( æsc , modern ash ) and ⟨ð⟩ ( ðæt , now called eth or edh), which were modified Latin letters, and thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ , which are borrowings from

8316-404: The usual ⟨ng⟩ . The addition of ⟨c⟩ to ⟨g⟩ in spellings such as ⟨cynincg⟩ and ⟨cyningc⟩ for ⟨cyning⟩ may have been a means of showing that the word was pronounced with a stop rather than a fricative; spellings with just ⟨nc⟩ such as ⟨cyninc⟩ are also found. To disambiguate,

8415-423: The word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population which existed in the Danelaw, these endings must have led to much confusion, tending gradually to become obscured and finally lost. This blending of peoples and languages resulted in "simplifying English grammar". The inventory of Early West Saxon surface phones

8514-433: Was "ultimately based on the evidence of local juries" and so the spoken form of Anglo-Saxon places and people was partly preserved in this way. Evidence from Domesday Book and later sources suggests that a dialect boundary once existed, corresponding with a line that separates from their neighbours the English counties of Cambridgeshire (including the once sparsely-inhabited Fens), Norfolk and Suffolk . The kingdom of

8613-474: Was a small independent kingdom of the Angles during the Anglo-Saxon period comprising what are now the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and perhaps the eastern part of the Fens , the area still known as East Anglia . The kingdom formed in the 6th century in the wake of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and was one of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy . It was ruled by the Wuffingas dynasty in

8712-660: Was among the most powerful kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon England: he was described by Bede as the overlord of the kingdoms south of the Humber . and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle identifies him as Bretwalda . In 616, he had been strong enough to defeat and kill the Northumbrian king Æthelfrith at the Battle of the River Idle and enthrone Edwin of Northumbria . He was probably the individual honoured by

8811-443: Was an allophone of short /ɑ/ which occurred in stressed syllables before nasal consonants (/m/ and /n/). It was variously spelled either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩. The Anglian dialects also had the mid front rounded vowel /ø(ː)/ , spelled ⟨œ⟩, which had emerged from i-umlaut of /o(ː)/ . In West Saxon and Kentish, it had already merged with /e(ː)/ before the first written prose. Other dialects had different systems of diphthongs. For example,

8910-439: Was based on the West Saxon dialect , away from the main area of Scandinavian influence; the impact of Norse may have been greater in the eastern and northern dialects. Certainly in Middle English texts, which are more often based on eastern dialects, a strong Norse influence becomes apparent. Modern English contains many, often everyday, words that were borrowed from Old Norse, and the grammatical simplification that occurred after

9009-481: Was either /ʃ/ or possibly /ʃː/ when the preceding vowel was short. Doubled consonants are geminated ; the geminate fricatives ⟨ff⟩ , ⟨ss⟩ and ⟨ðð⟩ / ⟨þþ⟩ / ⟨ðþ⟩ / ⟨þð⟩ are always voiceless [ff] , [ss] , [θθ] . The corpus of Old English literature is small but still significant, with some 400 surviving manuscripts. The pagan and Christian streams mingle in Old English, one of

9108-616: Was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham ("the Grammarian"). This form of the language is known as the " Winchester standard", or more commonly as Late West Saxon. It is considered to represent the "classical" form of Old English. It retained its position of prestige until the time of the Norman Conquest, after which English ceased for a time to be of importance as a literary language. The history of Old English can be subdivided into: The Old English period

9207-433: Was left as part of the Danelaw . It was taken back from Danish control by Edward the Elder and incorporated into the Kingdom of England in 918. The Kingdom of East Anglia was organised in the first or second quarter of the 6th century, with Wehha listed as the first king of the East Angles, followed by Wuffa . The Anglo-Saxon genealogy for East Angles gives Wehha as descended from Woden via Caesar . Until 749

9306-562: Was made between long and short vowels in the originals. (In some older editions an acute accent mark was used for consistency with Old Norse conventions.) Additionally, modern editions often distinguish between velar and palatal ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ by placing dots above the palatals: ⟨ċ⟩ , ⟨ġ⟩ . The letter wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ is usually replaced with ⟨w⟩ , but ⟨æ⟩ , ⟨ð⟩ and ⟨þ⟩ are normally retained (except when ⟨ð⟩

9405-473: Was settled by the Anglo-Saxons earlier than many other regions, possibly at the start of the 5th century. It emerged from the political consolidation of the Angles in the approximate area of the former territory of the Iceni and the Roman civitas , with its centre at Venta Icenorum , close to Caistor St Edmund . The region that was to become East Anglia seems to have been depopulated to some extent around

9504-411: Was spoken and Danish law applied. Old English literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century. The oldest surviving work of Old English literature is Cædmon's Hymn , which was composed between 658 and 680 but not written down until the early 8th century. There is a limited corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries, but the oldest coherent runic texts (notably

9603-425: Was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Old Norse and Old English resembled each other closely like cousins, and with some words in common, speakers roughly understood each other; in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. It is most important to recognize that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of

9702-556: Was the earliest recorded form of the English language , spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages . It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman (a type of French ) as

9801-584: Was the only Anglo-Saxon kingdom with a reigning baptised king. On his death in around 624, he was succeeded by his son Eorpwald , who was soon afterwards converted from paganism under the influence of Edwin, but his new religion was evidently opposed in East Anglia and Eorpwald met his death at the hands of a pagan, Ricberht . After three years of apostasy , Christianity prevailed with the accession of Eorpwald's brother (or step-brother) Sigeberht, who had been baptised during his exile in Francia . Sigeberht oversaw

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