bıt·oe

this little leaf aims to teach very basic old english. it is not a comprehensive reference, but will hopefully get you started in understanding old english texts and even using some old english yourself.

• introduction

  old english (often abbreviated to ‹oe›) describes several germanic dialects spoken in england from the middle to the end of the first millenium AD. as such, it is not considered mutually intelligible with modern english, early modern english (i.e. the language of shakespeare), or even middle english (e.g. chaucer's english), but was instead much closer to other old germanic languages such as old frisian, old saxon, old high german, and old norse.

  the most standardized of the old english dialects was the west saxon dialect. west saxon is not actually the direct ancestor of the modern english we speak today, but it is the dialect in which most surviving old english texts were written.

  old english, or ‹englisc› /ɛŋɡlɪʃ/, has many features characteristic of other old germanic languages. verbs are conjugated for tense (past and nonpast), person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, plural), and mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative). nouns are divided into 3 grammatical genders (feminine, masculine, neuter) and decline for case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative) and number (singular, plural). first and second person pronouns also have a dual number for pairs (we two, you two). adjectives decline to agree with the gender, case, and number of the noun they describe. given these heavy markings for grammatical functions, word order is much more free in old english than it is in modern english, though there are guidelines for the order of words.

  despite all these grammatical differences, maybe the biggest aspect of old english that makes it appear alien to modern english speakers is the vocabulary. modern english has incorporated a vast amount of words from languages such as french, latin, greek, and many others. the old english wordhoard, on the other hand, is made up mostly of inherited germanic words, with only a small number of technical vocabulary borrowed from latin and old norse. many of these germanic old english words have been supplanted in modern english by loans from other languages, though their descendants might still appear in obscure dialects of english.

  familiarity with earlier stages of english, such as early modern english or middle english, as well as familiarity with another germanic language, can help a lot in picking up on some of the unfamiliar old english vocabulary. additionally, some words in old english that have survived into modern english have shifted in meaning, so it is important to be aware when a word that appears familiar has a different meaning from modern english.

• sounds & letters

  it is important to note that, unlike today, there was no standard spelling in old english; scribes would spell based on their intuitions of how to map their pronunciation onto the letters they had available to them. for this reason, there is a lot of variation in how a given word can be spelled base not only on regional dialects, but even the preferences of individual scribes from the same monastery.

  some modern editions of old english texts are normalized, meaning their spelling has been regularized to a consistent standard that preserves (usually) etymological links as well as pronunciation in a given dialect. there is no single normalization standard for old english, so some modern scholars will not normalize old english texts, leaving the learner to work out the variations yourself. on this webleaf, i employ my own normalizations standards in glossary sections and when using made-up examples, but i retain the original spelling when quoting primary sources so that the learner can get used to spelling variations.

  consonants

  old english consonants can be geminated, i.e. they were doubled in spelling and pronunciaton. there are also some word-initial clusters which no longer exist in modern english, such as ‹cn›, ‹hl›, etc. in such clusters, no letters are silent. similarly, syllable final ‹ng› is pronounce [ŋɡ], meaning that the ‹g› is fully pronounced.

  oe has many sounds that are the same as modern english. the following consonants are pronounced pretty much the same as they are in modern english:

  b · d · k* · l · m · n · p · t · w** · x

  *‹k› is very rare — it sometimes replaces the letter ‹c›

  **‹w› or ‹uu› does occasionally appear for this sound, but it is usually written with the letter ‹ƿ› wynn, derived from the rune of the same name & sound value ‹ᚹ›

  the following consonants are pronounced differently from modern english:

  • • ‹r› is of uncertain pronunciation, but many old english scholars believe it is trilled or tapped as in many other old germanic languages.
  • • ‹h› is pronounced as it is in modern english at the beginning of words, but is a voiceless velar fricative /x/ at the end of a syllable or when doubled, as in scottish loch german Buch. after a front vowel (/i/, /e/, /æ/), it is pronounced as a voiceless palatal fricative /ç/, as in german ich.
  • • the letters ‹f› & ‹s› are pronounced as their voiced counterparts (/v/ and /z/) when between voiced sounds, i.e. vowels & sonorants (l, m, n, r).
  • • the letters ‹c› & ‹g› are highly variable. they each represent two phonemes — one velar, and one palatal. these are not always predictable from the spelling of the word, so many modern texts will write the palatal versions with a dot above (‹ċ› & ‹ġ›):
  • • velar ‹c› is pronounced /k/, as in modern english call.
  • • palatal ‹c› is pronounced /tʃ/, the sound that in modern english is usually spelled with ‹ch›, as in chin. the palatal cluster ‹sc› is pronounced /ʃ/, the sound that in modern english is usually spelled with ‹sh›, as in ship.
  • • velar ‹g› is usually pronounced as a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, the voiced variant of /x/. this sound exists intervocalically in spanish words such as amigo. when doubled, or in a cluster, velar ‹g› has the same sound as modern english /ɡ/ as in gold.
  • • palatal ‹g› is pronounced /j/, the sound that in modern english is usually spelled with ‹y›, as in yell. after the letter ‹n›, or in the palatal cluster ‹cg›, it is pronounced /dʒ/, the sound that in modern english is usually spelled with ‹j›, as in jar.

  old english also featured the consonants represented by modern english ‹th›. in old english, they were written interchangeably with the letters ‹þ› (thorn) & ‹ð› (eth). like wynn, ‹þ› descends from a rune ‹ᚦ›. word-initially, word-finally, when geminated, and in contact with voiceless consonants, the sound is voiceless, as in modern english think. between voiced sounds (vowels and sonorants), the sound is voiced, as in modern english weather.

  vowels

  old english vowels differentiate 3 tongue heights, backness, and roundness in the close-front vowels: ‹i y e æ a o u›. there are also long and short vowels, and several diphthongs that also distinguish length. while length was usually not written in oe manuscripts, modern texts can be written with macrons (‹ī ȳ ē ǣ ā ō ū›) or accute accents (‹í ý é ǽ á ó ú›)

  old english distinguishes 7 vowel qualities in long and short variants:

  • • the vowels ‹i› ‹e› ‹o› & ‹u› are pronounced roughly as they are in most languages with 5 vowel systems (i e a o u), such as spanish, but with long and short variants, where "long" means they are held for a bit longer than usual.
  • • ‹y› is pronounced as the vowel ‹i› but with rounded lips; it is the sound of french ‹u› in tu and german ‹ü› in Rüde.
  • • ‹æ› is an open front vowel, like the ‹a› sound in many english dialects’ pronunciation of the word cat.
  • • ‹a› is an open back vowel, like the ‹o› in general american hot.

  the west saxon dialect of oe had the following diphthongs (with both long and short variants)

  • • ‹eo›, pronounced as old english ‹e› & ‹o› in quick succession. some other dialects feature a diphthong ‹io›, pronounced as ‹i› + ‹u›, but words with this diphthong are instead pronounced ‹eo› in west saxon.
  • • ‹ea› is pronounced as ‹æ› + ‹a› in quick succession.
  • • ‹ie› only appears in west saxon, & is an umlauted* variant of the other dipthongs. its pronunciation is uncertain, but it may have been ‹i› + ‹y› or ‹i› + ‹e›. in later west saxon, this diphthong merged with and was spelled with ‹y›.

  * see sound processes for an explanation of umlaut

  abbreviations

  medieval manuscripts feature many abbreviations to save space on the expensive materials on which texts were written. the two most common abbreviations in oe manuscripts are ‹⁊› standing for the word ‹and› ‘and,’ and ‹ꝥ› standing for the word ‹þæt› ‘that, which.’

  sound processes

  ablaut

  umlaut

  vowel breaking

  consonant assimilation

• grammar

  english grammar in action

  nouns & adjectives

  nouns

  pronouns

  adjectives

  verbs

  prepositions & adverbs

  word order

• STRONG nouns
  	singular			plural
  	FEM	MASC	NEUT	FEM	MASC	NEUT
  NOM	·(u¹)	·		·a	·as	·(u¹)
  ACC	·e
  GEN		·es		·a
  DAT	·e			·um

  STRONG nouns
  	feminine		masculine		neuter
  	SG	PL	SG	PL	SG	PL
  NOM	béan lufu	béana lufa	catt cocc	cattas coccas	bæc folc	bacu folc
  ACC	béane lufe
  GEN			cattes cocce	catta cocca	bæces folces	baca folca
  DAT		béanum lufum	catte cocce	cattum coccum	bæce folce	bacum folcum

      feminine
      N    ù   a
      A/G  e   a
      D    e   um
  
      masculine
      N/A  -   as
      G    es  a
      D    e   um
   
      neuter
      N/A  -   ù
      G    es  a
      D    e   um
      
           singular  plural
           F    M/N   F  M  N
      nom  ·(u¹) ·   ·a ·as ·(u²)
    
          singular  plural
           F  M/N  F  M  N
      acc ·e  ·   ·a ·as ·(u²)
         
          singular  plural
           F  M/N   F/M/N
      gen ·e  ·es   ·a
  
          singular  plural
           F/M/N   F/M/N
      dat ·e      ·um
    
      
      

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