The relation of Anglo-Saxon to modern English is that of direct parentage, it might almost be said of absolute identity.  The language of Beowulf and of AElfred is not, as many people still imagine, a different language from our own; it is simply English in its earliest and most unmixed form.  What we commonly call Anglo-Saxon, indeed, is more English than what we commonly call English at the present day.  The first is truly English, not only in its structure and grammar, but also in the whole of its vocabulary:  the second, though also truly English in its structure and grammar, contains a large number of Latin, Greek, and Romance elements in its vocabulary.  Nevertheless, no break separates us from the original Low Dutch tongue spoken in the marsh lands of Sleswick.  The English of Beowulf grows slowly into the English of AElfred, into the English of Chaucer, into the English of Shakespeare and Milton, and into the English of Macaulay and Tennyson.

Old words drop out from time to time, old grammatical forms die away or become obliterated, new names and verbs are borrowed, first from the Norman-French at the Conquest, then from the classical Greek and Latin at the Renaissance; but the continuity of the language remains unbroken, and its substance is still essentially the same as at the beginning.  The Cornish, the Irish, and to some extent the Welsh, have left off speaking their native tongues, and adopted the language of the dominant Teuton; but there never was a time when Englishmen left off speaking Anglo-Saxon and took to English, Norman-French, or any other form of speech whatsoever.

An illustration may serve to render clearer this fundamental and important distinction.  If at the present day a body of Englishmen were to settle in China, they might learn and use the Chinese names for many native plants, animals, and manufactured articles; but however many of such words they adopted into their vocabulary, their language would still remain essentially English.  A visitor from England would have to learn a number of unfamiliar words, but he would not have to learn a new language.  If, on the other hand, a body of Frenchmen were to settle in a neighbouring Chinese province, and to adopt exactly the same Chinese words, their language would still remain essentially French.  The dialects of the two settlements would contain many words in common, but neither of them would be a Chinese dialect on that account.  Just so, English since the Norman Conquest has grafted many foreign words upon the native stock; but it still remains at bottom the same language as in the days of Eadgar.