ABSTRACT
The terms Old English and Middle English refer to the vernacular language recorded in England in the period from c. ad 600 to c. ad 1500. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the group of dialects imported by the immigrants from the continent in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, who drove back the native Romano-Celtic population to Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. The transition to Middle English is usually somewhat artificially marked by the date of the Norman Conquest of England as 1066.
