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Part of
The Evolution of Englishes: The Dynamic Model and beyond
Edited by Sarah Buschfeld, Thomas Hoffmann, Magnus Huber and Alexander Kautzsch
[Varieties of English Around the World G49] 2014
► pp. 486–504

A New Old English? The chances of an Anglo-Saxon revival on the Internet

By facilitating the contact between smaller groups of people living in widely separated places, the new media stimulate the use of minority languages, including constructed and historical languages. This article looks at the international community of users of Old English as a living language on the Internet. It analyses the linguistic competence behind the modest Anglo-Saxon revival and the strategies applied to deal with the modern world. As a sample of online texts, especially from Wikipedia, shows, not only does neo-Old English suffer from haphazard grammar and pervasive interference from Modern English, but it also depends too essentially on lexical innovation to have much of a future.
Keywords: Internet, Old English, revival of dead languages, Wikipedia
Published online: 12 September 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g49.28neu
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