Old English: The Three Phases Of English Language

ABSTRACT
British Philologists determined the three phases of English Language as Old, Middle, and Modern. In that ‘Old English’ was invented as a patriotic and philological convenience. Old English is to denote, the unmixed, inflectional state of the English Language, commonly known by the barbarous and unmeaning title of ‘Anglo-Saxon’. Therefore many of the poems are presumed to date from a much earlier period, but their presence in tenth-century anthologies indicates not just the survival, acceptability, and consistency of an older tradition, it also amply suggests how wide-ranging, complex, and sophisticated the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon period was. Syllables, their noise drowns the characteristics of vowels, consonants of which the persistence

Before dealing with the Anglo-Saxon poetica texts which seem most ancient, it is necessary to recall the Christian Latinists, about whom alone we have precise data. To them and to those like them we owe the preservation of the traces of primitive poetry.They spoke the native language and often themselves wrote verses in the vernacular, and in their Latin writings customs are indicated and scenes are sketched which reveal the life of their times more clearly than does Anglo-Saxon poetry. Sometimes, moreover, through their Latin, the imaginative background of their race makes itself felt with singular force, so that the characteristics of the national literature can thus be better

Not only are syllables introduced by a consonant or group of consonants (h,sc,sp,st,str,hr,thr,etc.), but these consonants form the vital part of syllables.They are explosive, not quiescent, and their noise drowns the neighboring vowels, a characteristic of which the persistence is proved whenever any French word passes through an English throat, as when done becomes done or plain. The value given to the initial consonant, together with the tonic accent which throws the root syllable into relief, and with the emphasis on the essential word of a sentence, make up the law of Anglo-Saxon versification. The comparative insignificance of vowels is how in the rule that vowel sounds, which may be substituted for alliterations or repetitions of initial consonants, need not be identical. For here it is not the sound of the vowel but the absence of the consonant which is important. The effect is produced by the momentary softening of the line.
Ten Brink is seen to be guilty of flattery when he says that ‘the originality of the Anglo-Saxon poet of Genesis is revealed only in detail and execution. The simple, verse expression of the Scriptural narrative is exchanged for a broad, often impassioned, epic style’. Very often, the Anglo- Saxon has overlaid beauties not apparent to him with the weight of his