The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years

Conclusion

 From one point of view, the earliest stage of the single continuously developing ENGLISH language; from another, the language from which two other more or less distinct languages successively evolved, first MIDDLE ENGLISH (ME), then Modern English (ModE); from a third point of view, the common ancestor of English and SCOTS, the two national GERMANIC LANGUAGES of Britain. OE was spoken and written in various forms for some eight centuries (5–12c). Although its texts are as unintelligible to present-day English speakers as LATIN to speakers of FRENCH, after even modest exposure they can begin to make progress, as with the following (from the OE version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People):