Claim: English language is influenced by migration.

Old English -LRB- Ænglisc , Anglisc , Englisc -RRB- or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language , spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages . It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century , and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century . After the Norman Conquest of 1066 , English was replaced , for a time , as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman , a relative of French , and Old English developed into the next historical form of English , known as Middle English .   Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles , Saxons , and Jutes . As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England , their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain : Common Brittonic , a Celtic language , and Latin , brought to Britain by Roman invasion . Old English had four main dialects , associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms : Mercian , Northumbrian , Kentish and West Saxon . It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period , although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian . The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century .   Old English is one of the West Germanic languages , and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon . Like other old Germanic languages , it is very different from Modern English and difficult for Modern English speakers to understand without study . Old English grammar is quite similar to that of modern German : nouns , adjectives , pronouns , and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms , and word order is much freer . The oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system , but from about the 9th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet .