After the Romans left England and the country was in danger of being overthrown by small native tribes, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came from the European continent to restore peace and to gain land for themselves (Jansen) Crossing the sea to the British Isles, they brought with them their culture and language, which they imposed by force on the British Isles. native inhabitants of England (Freeborn 12). is today One of the Germanic features seen in Old English is the relatively vaguely determined word order, compared to Modern English (Crystal 20). , which clearly indicated whether a word was to be understood as a nominative, genitive, dative, or accusative, and whether it was singular or plural (Freeborn 23). In modern English, the nominative is usually the first noun in a sentence, whereas this was not necessary in an Old English text. After all, the inflection of the word would show that that was the subject. Even though the word order in modern German is not as free as this system, the German language still uses inflections to clarify subjects, genitives, direct objects, and indirect objects. In Dutch this was the case, although inflections still appear in phrases such as "des maandags" ('s maandags) or "ter plekke". A second Germanic feature seen in Old English is the use of prefixes to indicate that a verb was a present or past perfect tense (Crystal 22). The word “geleornode” is an example. In modern English...... middle of paper ......es with them to create a whole new language. Even though much of their work has disappeared, as inflections have disappeared, verb prefixes have disappeared, and compound words no longer resemble one, the power of Germanic words remains strong. These people came from the European continent to change everything in the British Isles, but their homeland in Europe later benefited from their influences on the Old English language. Works Cited Crystal, David. “Old English.” Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 2nd ed. United Kingdom: Cambridge UP, 2003. 20-22. Print.Freeborn, Dennis. From Old English to Standard English: A Coursebook on Linguistic Variation Over Time. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992. 2-23. Web.Jansen, Hans. “Old English.” University of Groningen. Academy building, Groningen. February 4, 2014. Conference.