Old English (nglisc, Anglisc, Englisc) or Anglo-Saxon[2] is the earliest historic

al form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scot
land in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon se
ttlers probably 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 r
eplaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a rel
ative of French, and Old English developed into the next historical form of Engl
ish, known as Middle English.
Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects
originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language repla
ced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, and Lat
in, brought to Britain by Roman invasion. Old English had four main dialects, as
sociated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish an
d West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard
of the later Old English period,[3] although the dominant forms of Middle and Mo
dern English would develop mainly from Mercian. The speech of eastern and northe
rn parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavia
n 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 is very differ
ent from Modern English and difficult for Modern English speakers to understand
without study. Old English grammar is quite similar to that of modern German: no
uns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, a
nd word order is much freer.[3] The oldest Old English inscriptions were written
using a runic system, but from about the 9th century this was replaced by a ver
sion of the Latin alphabet.