ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -What language did the Anglo-Saxons speak? The Anglo-Saxons spoke the language we now know as Old English, an ancestor of modern-day English. Its closest cousins were other Germanic languages such as Old Friesian, Old Norse and Old High German.

Detailed explanation-2: -Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, the majority of the population of Britain spoke Celtic languages. In Roman Britain, Latin had been in extensive use as the language of government and the military and probably also in other functions, especially in urban areas and among the upper echelons of society.

Detailed explanation-3: -Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

Detailed explanation-4: -Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066).

Detailed explanation-5: -The term Anglo-Saxon seems to have been first used by Continental writers in the late 8th century to distinguish the Saxons of Britain from those of the European continent, whom St. Bede the Venerable had called Antiqui Saxones (“Old Saxons”).