What is Old English?
Make sure you distinguish between Old English and old English. The latter has no technical meaning and can be used to refer to anything from the earliest forms of the language to eighties ‘Val Talk’. But the capitalised version refers to the language at a particular period in time, about 450-1100 AD. Many people think of Shakespeare’s language as ‘Old English’, but Shakespeare lived between 1564 and 1616 — almost five hundred years after the end of the Old English period!
