I make a webcomic called The Dark Ring, and in it, one of my characters is a battlemage named Meresteall who(in my head at least) speaks with a strong cockney accent, uses rhyme slang every now and then, and casts spells using Old English.

This is also a sort of homage to Dark Souls, and as such I wanted to include my own Moonlight Sword. I've narrowed the blade and just turned it into a sword-spear, but it is supposed to glow a cyan/green and is magical in nature.

I wanted to know how to best translate "Moonlight Sword" into Old English. I use an Old English translator, this one

https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/

You can only translate single words, so currently I have "Mona Leoht Bil". I think I could just name it "The Sword Of Mona Leoht" and call it a day there, but I wanted a second opinion from someone who knows the language.

As we do sometimes in today's English?

What it says on the tin. I'm aware of the well-known attested wordhord, and I noticed the book titled 'The Deorhord' by Hana Videen (has a PhD in OE). But I'm after something that is specifically about names. Thanks!

Hi, I'm a horror author, and in my current book, a creature which may well be a god talks through many languages and centuries, and after being asked to speak english decides on old english for a chapter. Obviously translation services can only go so far, so I was hoping I could find someone who might be able to help with both the translation of a handfull of sentences as well as POSSIBLY how to say them for my poor audiobook narrator

I can’t find it at all with Siever’s five type-lines alongside it, or even the slashes and dots. Anyone got a book or paper or something? I’m not scholar in this so idk anything about how the first step to even trying to do it myself correctly. Iċ eom forþancful!

Someone recently asked a similar question in an other post*, but i'm interested to know how Old English would've handled double genetive phrases of the type like: 'England's queen's crown'. In German, from what i've found, they tend to handle these by re-phrasing to say 'the crown of England's queen'. ¿Would Old English have done the same or similar; and, if so, would a speaker have used 'of/æf' or 'from/fram'?

*https://www.reddit.com/r/OldEnglish/s/9Cf8kTmPR1

Hope this is reasonably correct :)

https://preview.redd.it/qd85xybuyo3e1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=a2f416db51d6ce7feac9899b3338fe1ca76a8931

I'm not really sure on the social norms of food preparation and storage in medieval England and how much if at all this changed for the average person* vs the new culture for the ruling class in the 11th century, but what word(s) might have been used for such spaces in the home before the introduction of pantry (where food is stored, especially bread) or larder (a cold room where food is preserved in fat) both from Norman French, which surely existed throughout all homes in the north west Atlantic region (I imagine climate largely determined how food was kept and preserved)?

*Certain preservation techniques may have been introduced and therefore names came with them as they didn't have a name before, whilst other words were just replaced in time by French introductions

I'm hoping for some examples of precedence, if possible.

I swear I heard about this really specific OE or Old Norse poem somewhere, but haven't had any luck finding it on google. It's in the "dream" style, the narrator has a near-death experience where an entity (angel?) shows him a place with souls jumping between fire and ice, narrator says "wow, hell is horrible" and the entity says "oh that's not hell, THIS is hell" and throws narrator into Actual Hell, and Actual Hell is really really bad. Then later they go to Heaven, which is depicted as an open field and/or meadhall. Does anyone know what this is?

I have been thinking of a way to reimagine Christmas as an atheist and think that creating a parallel holiday that celebrated the turning of the corner from long dark nights to long days ahead would be fun. 90% of the activities and traditions could even stay the same like the tree, lights, and gifts. Not going back to Ġeol (Yule) because that itself had religious components, but wanting to give it a cool name I came up with Æfenleohtes Fæsten which seems like a good Old English translation of Evening Lights Festival, but I’m no expert. It could be shortened to Æfenleohtes.

Different languages could reinterpret the name and include their own traditions but everyone would be celebrating the same event under the same banner.

I chose evening light because I have fond memories of staying out later under a setting sun and cool breeze with friends, more than the sun rising earlier.

Please feel free to correct my Old English or suggest a better name. :)

Hi everyone,

I wonder if someone can help me. I have approx. 90 modern English words I'd like the OE terms for. What I'm really looking for are the most common/everyday/prosaic words in OE for these terms (keeping in mind that OE is somewhat rich in synonyms, including poetic ones). The words are for more or less everyday things like pond, eyebrow, and codfish.

The background is I'm making electronic image flashcards for common concepts/objects/creatures for OE. I have been using the (excellent!) book "Wordcraft" by Pollington towards this end, but of course it cannot cover everything.

Please contact me if you think you can help. I am willing to pay a reasonable amount for your time and knowledge.

Thanks!

I'm currently working through Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader and at the section on pronunciation. I've managed to go through the vowel and consonant pronunciations quite well especially with the examples given but I have just reached the diphthongs and I am suddenly very lost. I am trying to combine the sounds how they describe them phonetically however I no longer feel confident that my approximations are close to the actual pronunciation, and I'm struggling to find examples of pronunciation for the words they listed. Is there a good online resource with recorded pronunciations for me to use as a comparison? I appreciate any help that can be given.

Like German wiederhaben

Basically I'm trying to find a sentence for a fanfic that uses old english or similar. basic gist is "I can adopt you/Could I adopt you?" I'm using "cynn" for family, and "geinnian" for bring in. Combining these should give something along the lines of adopt, but now I'm not sure how to put them together. I know literally nothing about grammar, and cant figure out which form to use. I am using https://hord.ca/projects/eow/notes.php for word lookup, and https://www.verbix.com/languages/oldenglish-nouns + https://www.verbix.com/languages/oldenglish to try and find tenses, but its confusing me. If anyone can tell me what I need to use here, that would be great.

Hi, new to the subreddit and all it entails. I recently managed to pick up an old copy of Beowulf in the original old English and was looking for resources on beginning to learn and hopefully work on translating it recreationally. I unfortunately can't really afford to spend money on something like this so I'd appreciate any free/online resources which you know are effective in learning.

Thank you for your time!

Like 'secgenne' and how are they used in a sentence?

https://preview.redd.it/vk43s4xrhy1e1.jpg?width=851&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=56055c82648b86c273f4511dfc87f0642f6d53cd

Hello, I'm looking at the AS chronicle (878) and the first sentence is confusing me.

Her hiene bestæl se here - Here (in this year) the army went stealthily / stole away ....

Hiene I would assume is an accusative singular "him", but it doesn't make any sense, what is this referring to? And how can I translate it - ie. stole him away?

PS. hijacking my own post to add: Ond þæs on Eastron worhte Ælfred....

I would translate this as "During Easter, Alfred made..." but what about þæs? is it actually a genitive sing determiner? It doesn't make any sense. Can't it be an adverb? Like, thus or so?

Thanks everyone, you've been incredibly helpful so far, I appreciate it

I'm trying to figure out if I can trust this to learn Old English. https://polytranslator.com/old-english/

Wikipedia has the IPA as “le͜oːf” but I don’t know how to figure that out.

The reason I want to pronounce it correctly is that my girlfriend (my first girlfriend, as a late bloomer sapphic at age 35) is an academic with a focus in English literature from that time period and I want to call her lēof and surprise her by pronouncing it correctly. Please help me be cute and gay!

Just for fun, I threw together an Old English "war-words compound generator" — it randomly picks from a list of words for war and battle and mayhem and creates compounds.

https://www.mikepope.com/sweet/oe-war-compound-maker.html

Couple of disclaimers:

• I picked only 1 meaning for each term, so sometimes the compounds (if they existed, see next point) would probably mean something slightly different
• Many of the terms are probably NOT attested, though they might be plausible? Most of them, maybe. I like to think of compounding as a creative process in OE. :)
• It's just for fun, ok? I did this in large part because I'm a student and I've been trying to round up and distinguish the many (!) words that they had for the theme of battle.
• Also, the code isn't that great, but who cares.

Translation Assistance:

I've embarked on a project for a class making illuminated manuscript pages using the nuclear waste Warning messages. Would anyone be able to or have any idea how to go about translating this? I would like to specify, my project is in the designing, I have not been tasked with the translation. But for personal reasons I'd like it to be accurate Old English, or at least as accurate as I can manage.

"This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited."

Any suggestions?

So I'm playing Crusader Kings 3 and they have this DLC that allows you to play as a wandering noble. You create a traveling camp and can name the group you attract. My playthrough is set in the late 9th century in Britain and I wanted to try and come up with an Anglo-Saxon sounding name. In modern English I imagined the name as "Companions of the Wander". So with some research and a bit of help from Chat GPT I landed on this name: Gefēras Wræcniendra. Even if it's not very accurate I liked it and felt it provided some good roleplaying flavor.

So I was curious to know how accurate this name actually is in Old English for the time and location.

Hey everyone,

Hope everybody is doing well. I was wondering if there was anywhere online I could get the text of the OE Hexateuch as either text on a web-page or a pdf, either of which I would be able to print out.

Thanks.

Yet another question: What might the difference between these verbs? "Ymbhrinġan / Begyrdan / Ymbhabban / Ymbsellan / Besellan"
I've read they all have a similar meaning of "encompassing" or "surrounding" smth

Hi does anyone know what the "font" or the writing style is called? And if there's anyway to recreate it digitally?