NOUNS 

:
In Old English they have 3 genders (masculine, neuter, feminine), 2 numbers (singular,
plural), and 5 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental). Note that the so-
called "genders" were purely grammatical genders - they very often did not correspond
to biological sex. For example the word ƿīf - "woman" is actually of the neuter (grammatical)
gender, not referencing female sex.
Nominative: indicates the subject of a finite verb (We went to the shop.

Genitive: indicates the possessor of another noun (John’s hat was on the floor.)

Dative: indicates the indirect object of a verb (He gave me a gift)
Accusative: indicates the direct object of a verb (John remembered us.)

Nouns are divided into two main categories of declension in Old English: the so called
"Strong" and "Weak" nouns. Whether or not a noun is weak or strong does not affect whether
or not the modifiers (adjectives) used with it are declined weak or strong.

The strong noun paradigm declines for case, gender and singular/plural.

Case Masculine Neuter Feminine

Singul Plur Singul Plur Singul Plur

ar al ar al ar al

Nominat -- -as -- -u / -u / -- -a, -

ive -- e

Accusati -- -as -- -u / -e -a, -

ve -- e

Genitive -es -a -es -a -e -a

Dative -e - -e - -e -
um/- um/- um/-
an an an

The weak paradigm is more simplified and has less variation between the genders and cases

CASE MASCULINE NEUTER FEMININE PLURAL

NOMINATIVE -a -e -e -an

ACCUSATIVE -an -e -an -an

 GENITIVE -an -an -an -ena

DATIVE -an -an -an -um

Appositives

In Old English, as in Modern English, nouns could sometimes be used similarly to an

adjective to modify another noun. These are called appositives. One example of
appositives in Modern English is in titles: "Queen Elizabeth", "Brother John",
"General Schwartzkopf", where "Queen", "Brother", and "General" are all nouns
used to modify other nouns.

Verbs :
Verbs have to agree with the subject of the sentence in number (singular when the
subject of the verb is just one, and plural when the subject of the verb is more than one),
and person (I, you,he/she/it). This is sometimes the case even in Modern English, but
more so for Old English. An example of how verbs change to agree for number and
person in Modern English is when we add "-s"to third person singular verb,
as in "He sings well"; but we don't add "-s" for anything
else, includingthird person plural, for example "They sing well".

Modern English (go) Old English (gān)

I go we go iċ gā ƿē gāþ

thou goest (archaic)/you alone go ye/you all go þu gǣst ġē gāþ

he/she/it goes/goeth (archaic) they go hē/hēo/hit hīe gāþ

gǣþ

The infinitives :Old English has two infinitives for each verb: in the case of "to
sing" they would be singan and tō singenne. The choice of which to use essentially
follows the same rules as inModern English. The plain infinitive is used after modal
verbs such as "can" or The"tō" infinitive is used:after
verbs,adjectives,purposes.