Comparison between Old English and Modern English
Comparison between Old English and Modern English written as an essay of two pages . and I have a table contain all the different that will help you to organized and follow it and you have to explain it in a simple way also use simple words and structure coz I’m not a native speaker but it should be grammatically correct and free of plagiarism if you use any website cite it.
Comparison between Old English and Modern English
Old
Modern
1
Pronunciation
A
More alphabetical letters
Less alphabetical letters
B
More consonants
Less consonants
C
Less vowels (4)
More vowels
D
No Diphthongs
A number of Diphthongs
E
Different length of the long vowel
Different length of the long vowel
2
Vocabulary
A
99% Germanic
85% words from French, Latin and Indo European languages.
B
Very few words from the Celtic and Latin languages
Also borrowed words from Arabic, Afrikan, middle eastern, Asian, Greco-Roman and Indo European Languages
3
Grammatical Structure
a
Synthetic
Analytical
I.
Noun
· Fully inflected
· You know the case and number of the noun through its inflections
· Inflections are of two types i.e.
1. strong/ masculine (when the stem ends with a consonant sound)
2. weak/feminine (when the stem ends with a vowel sound)
Example :
Nominative form: stãn
Genitive form : stãn-es
· No inflections
· You know the case and number of the noun through the position of the noun in the sentence and its relationship with other word forms or type of words in the sentence.
II.
Grammatical gender
· Not at all well-defined/developed
· Three gender types:
1. Masculine (wyfman)
2. Feminine
3. Neuter (maiden, wyf, male child)
· Well developed
· Three gender types:
1. Masculine
2. Feminine
3. Neuter
III.
Adjective
· Fully inflected
· Inflections are of two types i.e.
1. strong/ masculine (when there is no article or other such word in front of the noun eg. Gõd mann
2. weak/feminine (when the noun has an article before it eg. Se gõda mann )
· No inflections
IV
The Definite Article
· Fully inflected definite article
· Not inflected at all
· Old English article, especially its demonstrative case, is preserved in its original form till date
V
The Personal Pronoun
· Old English personal pronoun is fully inflected.
· It has many distinctive cases for all genders, cases and persons.
· Unlike other languages it has three cases of number e.g.
1. Singular
2. Two (i.e. both)
3. Plural (many)
· Due to the frequency of its use and necessity for specific references, Old English personal pronoun is preserved in its original form till date.
· Same as point 2
· Same as point 3
VI
The Verb
· Two types of tenses e.g.
1. Past tense
2. Present tense
· Two types of Verbs
1. Strong: (their middle vowel changed: e.g. run , ran , run)
2. Weak: (they changed with the addition of d/ed , which in some cases added a syllable to the root as well:
e.g. grunt, grunted, grunted.)
· 9 types of tenses
1. Past tense
(simple, perfect continuous)
2. Present tense
(simple, perfect continuous)
3. Future tense
(simple, perfect continuous)
· Two types of Verbs
1. Irregular: (their middle vowel changed: e.g. run , ran , run)
2. Regular: (they changed with the addition of d/ed , which in some cases added a syllable to the root as well: e.g. grunt , grunted, grunted.)
4
Sentence Structure
· Paratactic (easy and childlike, full of simple sentences and no subordinate clauses)
Hypotactic (Difficult, literary, complex with lots of transitions, conjunctions and subordinate clauses etc.)
