What is Old English?

Ringe, Don

doi:10.1075/nowele.66.2.01rin

Article published In: Unity and Diversity in West Germanic, II
Edited by Hans Frede Nielsen † and Patrick V. Stiles
[NOWELE 66:2] 2013
► pp. 127–140

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What is Old English?

Don Ringe

Published online: 28 June 2013

https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.66.2.01rin

Though Old English (OE) was never completely uniform, it was demonstrably the language of a single speech community (in a broad sense) until about the 8th century CE. It therefore makes sense to treat OE as a single language for philological purposes.

Keywords: dialects, West Germanic, subgrouping, Old English

Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Allen, Cynthia L.

2025. Old English. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes, ► pp. 1 ff.

Harbert, Wayne

2025. English in Its Germanic Surrounding. In The New Cambridge History of the English Language, ► pp. 52 ff.

Ross, Malcolm

2020. Narrative Historical Linguistics. In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ► pp. 468 ff.

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