A history of the English Language

47.
The Language Illustrated.
We have spoken of the inflections of Old English in some detail primarily with the object 
of making more concrete what is meant when we call the language in this stage synthetic. 
Old english 55

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In the later chapters of this book we shall have occasion to trace the process by which 
English lost a great part of this inflectional system and became an analytic language, so 
that the paradigms which we have given here will also prove useful as a point of 
departure for that discussion. The use of these inflections as well as the other 
characteristics of the language so far pointed out may be seen in the following specimens. 
The first is the Lord’s Prayer, the clauses of which can easily be followed through the 
modern form, which is familiar to us from the King James version of the Bible. 
Fæder 
ū
re,
þ
ū
þe eart on heofonum,
s
ī
þ
ī
n nama geh
ā
lgod.
T
ō
becume þ
ī
n r
ī
ce.
Gewurþe ð
ī
n willa on eorðan sw
ā
sw
ā
on heofonum.
Ū
rne gedæghw
ā
ml
ī
can hl
ā
f syle 
ū
s t
ō
dæg.
And forgyf 
ū
s 
ū
re gyltas, sw
ā
sw
ā
w
ē
forgyfað 
ū
rum gyltendum. 
And ne 
þ
ū
ū
s on costnunge,
ac, 
ū
s of yfele. S
ō
þl
ī
ce. 
The second specimen is from the Old English translation of Bede’s 
Ecclesiastical History
and tells the story of the coming of the missionaries to England under St. Augustine in 
597:
A history of the english language 56

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Old english 57

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