Verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities.

foeder – Vater; bropor – Bruder; modor – Mutter; dohtor – Tochter; sunu – Sohn;

mona – Mond; niht – Nacht; woeter – Wasser; fyr – Feuer;

2) common Germanic words; The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life.

screap – sheep; macian – make; hus – house; drincan – drink; land – land; safe – sea; wisdom – wisdom;

3) specifically OE words. Specifically OE, that is words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few: OE clipian - call, OE brid – bird, wifman – woman and several others.

OE borrowings come from two sources: Celtic and Latin. There are very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary. Borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources. Various Celtic designations of river and water were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Esk, Exe, Avon; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, makes a compound place-name, e.g.: Celtic plus Latin: Man-chester, Win-chester, Lan-caster; Celtic plus Germanic: York-shire, Corn-wall, Devon-shire, Canter-bury.