Case

As in several other old Germanic languages, Old English declensions include five cases:
nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and instrumental.

 Nominative: the subject of a sentence, which carries out the action. Hē lufode hīe ("he
loved her"), þæt mæġden rann ("the girl ran"). Words on the other side of "to be" also
take this case: in the phrase, wyrd is eall ("destiny is all"), both "destiny" and "all" are
nominative.
 Accusative: the direct object, that which is acted upon. Hē lufode hīe ("he loved her"), sē
ridda ācwealde þone dracan ("the knight slew the dragon").
 Genitive: the possessor of something. Ġesāwe þū þæs hundes bān? ("Have you seen the
dog's bone?"). The genitive in Old English corresponds to 's in present-day English and to
"of" in present-day English. Hence, "The fall of Rome" was Rōme hryre, literally
"Rome's fall", and "the god of thunder" was þunres god, literally "thunder's god". Old
English has the preposition "of" but the genitive was the main way of indicating
possession.[9] The genitive case could be used partitively, to signify that something was
composed of something else: "a group of people" was manna hēap (literally "people's
group"), "three of us" was ūre þrī ("our three"), and "a cup of water" was wætres cuppe
("water's cup").
 Dative: the indirect object. Iċ sealde hire þone beall ("I gave her the ball").
 Instrumental: something that is being used. Hwæl mē meahte mid āne sleġe besenċan
oþþe ofslēan ("A whale could sink or kill me with one blow"). This case can be used
without prepositions when the meaning is clear, as in ōðre naman, which means "[by]
another name": Ūhtred sē Godlēasa æt Bebban byrġ, ōðre naman sē Deneslaga ("Uhtred
the Godless of Bebbanburg, also known as the Daneslayer"). During the Old English
period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having mostly merged with the dative. It
 was distinguished from the dative only in the masculine and neuter singular of strong
adjectives and demonstratives, and even then the dative was often used instead.

Present Day English has lost most of its case system, although some case distinctions can still be
seen in personal pronouns and the genitive case, e.g. I (subject = nominative) love him (direct
object = accusative) and the genitive forms John’s hat or the hat of John.

Gender

Old English nouns also had three visible genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The genders
in Old English were grammatical, rather than the natural forms found in Present Day English.
This means that the grammatical gender of a noun did not necessarily correspond to its natural
gender. So for instance, seo sunne (‘the Sun’) was feminine, whilst se mona (‘the Moon’) was
masculine and þay wif (‘the woman/wife’) was neuter. (Compare the Modern German cognates
die Sonne (feminine), der Mond (masculine) and das Weib (neuter)).

Each noun belongs to one of the three genders, while adjectives and determiners take different
forms depending on the gender of the noun they describe. The word for "the" or "that" is sē with
a masculine noun, sēo with a feminine noun, and þæt (which sounds like “that”) with a neuter
noun. Adjectives change endings: for instance, since hring ("ring") is masculine and cuppe
("cup") is feminine, a golden ring is gylden hring, while a golden cup is gyldenu cuppe.

In Old English, the words "he" (hē) and "she" (hēo) also mean "it". Hē refers back to masculine
nouns, hēo to feminine nouns, reserving the neuter pronoun hit for grammatically neuter nouns.
That means even inanimate objects are frequently called "he" or "she". See the following
sentence, with the masculine noun snāw:

Old English Mē līcaþ sē snāw for þon þe hē dēþ þā burg stille.

Literal gloss Me pleases the snow for he does the borough still.

Translation I like the snow because it makes the city quiet.

Compare this parallel sentence, where the neuter noun fȳr (OE equivalent of NE fire) is referred
to with hit (OE equivalent of neuter singular nominative NE it):

Old English Mē līcaþ þæt fȳr for þon þe hit dēþ þā burg hlūde.

Translation I like the fire because it makes the city loud.

Only a few nouns referring to people have a grammatical gender that does not match their natural
gender, as in the neuter word mæġden ("girl"). In such cases, adjectives and determiners follow
grammatical gender, but pronouns follow natural gender: Þæt mæġden sēo þǣr stent, canst þū
hīe? ("The girl who [feminine] is standing there, do you know her?").

When two nouns have different genders, adjectives and determiners that refer to them together
are inflected neuter: Hlīsa and spēd bēoþ twieċġu ("Fame [masculine] and success [feminine] are
double-edged [neuter plural]").
Verbs

Old English verbs were also divided into strong (irregular) and weak (regular) ones. As with
some verbs in Present Day English, strong verbs changed their root vowel when forming the past
tense. For example, the present form of the strong verb break turns into the past form broke, see
turns into saw and ride changes into rode. In contrast, regular (or weak) forms only add an <-ed>
to the root, for instance play-played, ask-asked and earn-earned.

Finite verbs had to agree with their subject in person and number. In Present Day English, you
only have to add an <-s> when you use the third person singular in the present tense, e.g. he
walks, she plays, it breaks. In Old English, however, there were different inflections to indicate
person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, plural). For instance: the weak verb þrowade(‘I
suffered’) has an <-e> inflection to indicate that the verb agrees with the subject in the first
person singular.

Declension system for the weak verb deman (‘to judge) in its indicative form (present and past):

Weak Verbs Present Past

1st person deme demde
singular
2nd person demest demdest
singular
3rd person demeþ demde
singular
Plural demaþ demdon

Syntax

The word order in Old English was rather flexible, because the subject and the object were
indicated by inflections. In Present Day English, there is a relatively strict subject-verb-object
word order, for example: The dog bit the king. The dog is the subject (nominative case) and the
king is the object (accusative case). In Old English, however, you could have said:

a) se hund bit þone cyning (‘The dog bit the king.’)

b) þone cyning bit se hund (‘The king bit the dog’.)

This was possible because the relation of the words (and the cases they belonged to) was
indicated by inflections rather than by their position in the sentence.

Old English syntax was similar in many ways to that of Modern English. However, there were
some important differences. Some were simply consequences of the greater level of nominal and
verbal inflection, and word order was generally freer. There are also differences in the default
word order and in the construction of negation, questions, relative clauses and subordinate
clauses.