| The common tongue was by then very different from Old English or Anglo-Saxon. |
| Old English has a slightly different alphabet to modern English, including three letters which we don't have. |
| Just read the first page or two and noted that it's much easier to read Old English once you know a bit of Dutch. |
| The Old English poem contains only about eighty instances of anacrusis, for example. |
| Old English looks much like German and looks strange to us modern English speakers. |
| Indeed, the use of alliteration in Old English poetry and in Piers Ploughman might also have influenced his poetic style. |
