Old English is divided into four dialects: Anglo dialect (Mercia and northumberland) and Saxon dialect, Contos and West Saxon. After the educational reform of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of Wessex Kingdom, West Saxon dialect became the standard written language. In the epic Beowulf, it is the West Saxon.
The earliest English poem Song of Cadmond was written in Northumberland. Modern English mainly comes from Mercia, but Scottish comes from northumberland. Some short inscriptions in the early days of Old English were written in runes. In the 6th century, Latin letters were adopted and written in the form of semi-informal letters. It includes the rune letter Wynn? And thorns? And the revised Latin letter ETH? d？ , and ash? .
Old English is very different from modern English, which is difficult for English users in the 2nd/kloc-0th century to understand. Its grammar is similar to modern German, and its close relative is ancient Frisian. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs have more inflected endings and forms, and the word order is much freer than modern English. Pronouns (he, he, his) in modern English have case forms, and some verbs are deformed (say, say, say, say, say). ), but old English also has noun suffixes, and verbs are often called suffix and numeral suffix.