Niw Englisch/Modernizing Old English

The Niw Englisch language is essentially a modernized and simplified version of Old English. If you look at Old High German and compare it to New High German (Modern German), you can see how conservative the German language has been over the last 1200 years. In comparison, English has lost nearly all inflection and relies nearly entirely on word order to carry meaning. Niw Englisch takes Old English and modernizes and simplifies it to the degree that modern German has changed from Old High German.

Orthography
Nouns are capitalized like they were in the 18th century and in modern German, and adjectives acting like nouns are capitalized.

Example:
 * Stream - "stream"
 * Burg - "city"
 * þe Braade - "the broad one"

To modernize from Old English to Niw Englisch, it is sometimes necessary to look at Proto-Germanic to develop a regular scheme of modernization. In Proto-Germanic, the 'a' broke into 'ea' in some Old English words, and sometimes the 'au' turned into 'ea'. The broken 'ea' is returned to 'a' like some accents of Old English, and the 'au' remains 'ea', pronounced as 'æ'.

Example:
 * stréam from straum; it becomes Stream.

The Proto-Germanic 'eu' became éo, like léoht, céosan. This becomes 'ie,' Lieȝht and ciesen.

Old English æ in simple stems remains in Niw Englisch if followed by ȝ, so nægl becomes Næȝl, and pæþ becomes Paþ. In some of these, leveling of the æ of the singular into the plural led to the crossing of a lot of simple nouns into the umlauting class, so that Paþ becomes Pæðe in the plural, Swaþ->Swæðe.

Digraphs and Trigraphs
The letter combination sce-/sci- represented the 'sh' sound in English before back vowels, while sca-/sco-/-scu- represented 'sk' generally. In Niw Englisch, the combination sch- always represents the 'sh' sound, while 'sk' always represents the 'sk' sound.

Examples:
 * scur->Schur - 'shower'
 * sceacan->schaken - 'to shake'

Consonants
The consonants from Old English to Niw Englisch are generally the same, though distinctions are made between the palatal and non-palatal consonants. The G is always a hard G sound like 'gold,' while the 'ȝ' is always a 'y' sound like 'young.'

Example:
 * geong->ȝong -> young
 * gold->Gold -> gold

In the digraph ȝh, after front vowels (æ, e, i, œ, y) it is pronounced like the ich-laut in German. After back vowels (a, o, u) it is pronounced like the ach-laut in German.

The C is always the 'ch' sound, while 'k' represents the hard 'k' sound from Old English.

Example:
 * calan->kalan - to cool
 * sceadan->schaden - to divide, separate

The two letters þ and ð represent the soft and hard version of the 'th' sound from English, as in 'think' and 'that'. They alternate to tell you how to pronounce a word.

Examples:
 * þencan->þenken -> to think; 'th' like 'think'
 * wiþer->wiðer -> against; 'th' like 'that'

HL, HR, HW - the HL and HR like hlud and hring are dropped to luud and Ring. The HW remained in actual English, so it remains, spelled with the Gothic letter hwair (Ƕƕ), like hwisprian->ƕispern.

Verbs
To modernize the Old English verb, change the -an/-ian to -en on the infinitive. All contracted verbs become uncontracted. For example, fón becomes fangen on analogy to the past participle. The verbs téon and téon become teiȝen and tieȝen, so you can now tell which is a type 1 or type 2 strong verb. A verb like 'ascian' becomes 'asken,' since it was pronounced 'as-ki-an' with a k, rather than 'ch' sound, and the -ian becomes -en.

Type 1 strong verbs change the í to ei, pronounced like modern English and German verbs write or schreiben. So, a verb like líðan to travel becomes leiðen.

Type 2 strong verbs change the éo to ie like in German, and regularize the past and past participle vowel to 'o'. Old English dréosan becomes driesen; the past goes from dreas/druron to dros/drosen, and the participle from gedroren to gedrosen, regularizing the 's'.

Type 3 strong verbs regularize the vowel of the singular, 'a' as the past tense vowel, and the vowel of the past participle into the past subjunctive. For example, helpan becomes helpen; hilpþ stays hilpþ; halp, hulpon becomes halp, halpen; the participle geholpen remains geholpen. The past subjunctive in Old English, hulpe, developed into holpe, so the past subjunctive would be hœlpe, with an umlaut like German.

Masculine
Masculine nouns by and large were strong and weak: Old English generalized the masculine nominative plural into the accusative, while most other Germanic languages generalized the accusative plural. That's an easy way to explain why the -s plural survived in English and not other Germanic languages. Couple that with the Norman Conquest, with French generalizing the -s plural of the Latin accusative plural, and the tendency towards and -s plural is strengthened. Without that, it's possible that the -s plural might not have gone on. Most other Germanic languages with at least 2 plural forms have a distinct dative plural case if any of the cases are distinct. Icelandic has 4 plural forms If the weak noun had continued on as a distinct class, it would have weakened the endings to a schwa/e sound.

As in German, Old English nouns that ended in -el are weak in the plural:
 * laden (to load) -> Lædel (ladle), plural Lædeln.

Feminine Nouns
Many feminine nouns ended in -u in the nominative; this would have weakened to -e as would the other endings of the singular, and the plural, similarly weakened, would have caused many feminine nouns to become weak in the plural so there would remain a distinction between the two.

A large number of feminine nouns would fall into this category, though a few have dropped the -e in the singular, as Brod, Broden (brood) did. Feminine nouns ending in -el/-er just add -n:
 * Muskel -> Muskeln = mussel
 * Feðer -> Feðern = feather

Feminine nouns ending in -en add -ne in the plural.

Feminine weak nouns all became strong in the singular, and retained their weak endings in the plural.

Verb Inflection
Like Old English, verbs have four inflections in the present: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular, and a common plural.

Present Indicative
Just like in Old English and German, the 2nd and 3rd person singular have an umlaut of the stem vowel for strong verbs.

In Niw Englisch, the plural has weakened to 'eþ', and the 2nd and 3rd person singular, like modern German, regularly lose the 'e' unless the verb stem has a consonant cluster that would result in not being able to pronounce the ending without it. If you look at modern Saxon (Low German), you'll see the same pattern of 3 singular forms, and a common plural form.

Present Subjunctive
In Old English, the present subjunctive was either singular or plural:

For Niw Englisch, the present subjunctive looks like the German present subjunctive:

Had Old English similar influences as German, it would have been relatively reasonable that the '-est' ending of the 2nd person would be used in the subjunctive mood as well. This goes for the strong verb subjunctives also.

Example:
 * findan->finde or finden; finden-> finde, findest, or finden (strong verb)
 * ascian->ascie or ascien; asken-> aske, askest, or asken (weak verb)

Past Indicative
In Old English, the past tense of 'weak' verbs had a dental (d/t) suffix and the personal endings afterwards. With voiceless consonants like s or þ, it became a 't' instead. For class 2 weak verbs ending in -ian, the ending became -ode, -odest, -odon

For Niw Englisch, all weak verbs have the following endings, the vowels all weakend to the 'e' (schwa) sound. There are no longer any distinctions between class 1a, 1b, and class 2 weak nouns. All weak nouns take these endings, but may insert 'e' between the verb stem and the ending to make it clearly pronounced. Similar to Old English, any sibilant (s, sch, z, c) will take a 't' instead of 'd' for the past tense marker, as will k/g/cg.

Example:
 * cyssan-cysste -> kyssen-kysste
 * hangian-hangode -> hangen-hangte (hankte)
 * acealdian-acealdode -> akalden-akaldede; the 'e' was added to make sure the ending was pronounced.

Past Subjunctive
In Old English, the pat subjunctive was either singular or plural:

For Niw Englisch, the past subjunctive looks like the German present subjunctive:

For strong verbs, the subjunctive operates like in modern German - endings in the present, umlaut plus endings in the past In Old English, the past subjunctive was either singular or plural for strong verbs with the past plural stem:

For Niw Englisch, the past subjunctive looks like the German past subjunctive: