I know not if anyone has already made tongue twisters yet. But I think it would be fun to make some. (I am nowhere near qualified to write in Old English)

Does anyone know of a vocabulary list for Beowulf? I would like to make an Anki deck so when I start reading it I won't have to look up so many words. Ideally it would be a list of all of the words used in Beowulf without words from other sources, but any extensive Old English vocabulary list would be useful.

Like Could King Alfred the Great be called, Ælfred Æthelwulfssun?

I know that Harold II had this, Harold Godwinsson

If the phrase “middle-earth” for the realm of man originates in Old Norse/Germanic mythology, why did the Christian Anglo-Saxons continue to use the phrase in writing and poetry, and when/why did this phrase fall out of use?

Hello! I see that one of the resources in this subreddit is the Old English Discord server, but for me it says that the link is expired... Is there a new updated invite somewhere around here? Thanks in advance for the help!

Or at least similar enough to be intelligible?

Was blæc more common or was sweart more common ?

https://youtu.be/qmFyKf7bP9A?si=hitM7CBiCRqRfGtz

This is an Old English translation of the "Universal Germanic Dialogue" (https://youtu.be/ryVG5LHRMJ4?si=fHx2IKFSfUFK25Wh)

Is this an accurate translation?

I’m trying to make a tinder pouch and want to label it in Old English, and have found “pouch” is sorted into a masculine and feminine word “pohha” feminine, and “pocca” masculine

Give me some resources yo

I translated “the dog bites the man” into “Sē hund bīt þone wer” is this correct or have I made a mistake

For a long while I have wondered what the *exact* number of words were in the OE lexicon. I looked it up repeatedly but could not find a proper answer. It is likely that no one has actually tried to make an exhaustive compilation of all types of words, with their variant spellings, hapax legomena of each work etc. But I wanted to get a rough number anyway.

So I went onto the Bosworth-Toller website and compiled the number of entries under each letter. Now, a lot of these entries, and I mean A LOT of them are alternative spellings, conjugated forms, prefixed or suffixed variants and so on. In most cases letters, suffixed, prefixes and etc. together with the re-spellings of the same word are counted as seperate entries. So the numbers are highly inflated.

Regardless, here are the entry numbers:

a - 3823
ae - 1468
b - 5174
c - 3023
d - 1768
e - 2793
f - 5960
g - 9681
h - 5040
i - 774
k - 2
l - 1939
m - 2181
n - 978
o - 1898
p - 502
q - 1
r - 1112
s - 5509
t - 1731
th - 1342
u - 2157
v - 1
w - 5766
y - 355

Total number of entries: 64,978

Assuming only one in every five or six of these happen to be the uninflected forms of the words and entries which are not suffixes or prefixes (which is being generous, in all likelihood), the *actual* entry count decreases to about 10,829-12,959 individual words.

This means that for a person to reliably *function* like an OE dictionary, he/she would have to memorise about 10.000 words (and possibly fewer than these), together with their grammatical inflections and conjugations.

This seems extremely doable (*not* easy), since most modern languages require around 10.000-15.000 words for academic proficiency (as far as I know, an ideal German C1 speaker knows about 10.000 words). With things like Anki, learning these many words in about a year with consistent effort would be a good challenge.

Oops Í messed this up bad, not Æ and æ I mean Ð and ð and I’m not sure if that’s the right Þþ either

I feel like a fool looking at the list of references and contructions given in the dictionary. What source do they refer when they mention Wrt. Voc. (e.g. módor-slaga, an; m. A matricide; matricida. Wrt. Voc. i. 85, 46.)

Ic habbe seoc wesen, mid heals-ontendinge, smeaþancollic to wesenne. Ic sceal weninga twa ofersprecinga macian nehstan monaþ.

Greetings,

I was cursorily reading through Beowulf today, through the Poetry Foundation's Old English version of the text. Generally speaking, a lot of variation in spelling seem to be preserved by this rendition of the epic. Oftener I found the same word spelled different in different parts of the poem and certain Anglisms over West-Saxon forms. It all makes sense since Beowulf was composed in Essex.

However, I noticed these two sentences and I can't wrap my head around it. It seems to be a grammatical error:

"Næs ofgeafon hwate Scyldingas; gewat him ham þonon goldwine gumena. Gistas setan modes seoce ond on mere staredon, wiston ond ne wendon þæt hie heora winedrihten selfne gesawon."

In the second sentence, shouldn't "gesawon" just be "geseon" or "gesawen", since "wiston and ne wendon" would naturally reduce the second verb to regular infinitive or plural subjunctive?

"They knew/thought and didn't hope that they would see their dear lord's self"
Shouldn't this therefore be
",wiston ond ne wēndon þæt hie heora winedryhten selfne ġesēon."

Furthermore I think the first word "Næs" here is an alternative word for "Næss/ness" which is headland/promontory. Am I correct in assuming the first sentence is "the bold Scyldings quit the headland".

Hi!

I generally like to play around with bringing back Old English characters - þ, æ, ð. Sadly the Apple keyboard doesn’t let me access wynn. I know the difference between þ and ð, although I do worry accent differences between myself and Received Pronunciation might make it inaccurate.

My main issue is using æ or a in a word. I gather that æ is pronounced like the a in ‘cat’, so I assumed that a would be long like in ‘father’. However, I then realised that names such as Æthelstan have an a when, imo, æ might have suited it more (Æthelstæn). To add to the confusion, Wikipedia’s Old English alphabet list adds the colon looking symbol from the IPA next to the pronunciations of each, which implies æ could be used for longer vowels. As with þ and ð, I do worry accent differences would cause me to make mistakes.

My main issue is differentiating between æ and a, so if anybody could clear that up for me, that would be great. The others are just bonuses lol.

Þanks! (Or þænks?)

I assumed it was old english cuz it looked so. Anyone know where this is from or what it's saying?

I have been wanting to learn Old English for years, as I’ve always been interested in English history and curious about the pre-Norman invasion period, and generally just want to connect more with my own heritage.

I’m curious as to why others are learning it? I haven’t had much of a look into online spaces besides this subreddit regarding the language, but there seems to be some interest in it. I would like to get to know some others as most people I know in real life think I’m mad for wanting to learn it.

Hu mæg ic þis woh betst wrecan, ge on him ge on eallum his cynne?

The paragraph is from Tolkien's Sellic Spell, which, if you don't know, is his Old English retelling of Beowulf's story. It was published by his son in the appendices to the Harper Collins edition of Tolkien's Beowulf translation.

Now I have a question about the part where it says "þone storm him on andan aweahte"

I read that clause as "and because the storm agitated/roused them into grudge/ill-will". Everything's fine and dandy. "Him" is plural (heom) here, I think, and "on andan" is basically "into/upon zeal". But what of that "þone storm"??? Is þone here a mangled form of "þonne", standing in for "because, for the given reason"??? Otherwise I may think Tolkien absent-mindedly wrote the accusative of "sē storm".

​

https://preview.redd.it/b2zfyqwk6quc1.png?width=721&format=png&auto=webp&s=f34369d40b478a0dad4a16b491d64acc85f980c6

Hi all,

Very new to Old English. I'm looking to use the verb 'ācennan' (to produce, to birth) in the simple past tense, i.e. 'she produced an xyz'.

The source I was using suggested 'ācenned' - would this be correct?

Any advice greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I’m very interested in the Anglo-Saxons and I love their language, but finding ways to learn it is like finding a way to read Minoan

Hello all! English and weak German speaker here. I'm interested in translating the phrase "Use well the days" (it's from "Many Partings" in The Lord of the Rings, said by Galadriel to Aragorn)—in an informal/imperative tone to one (male, if it makes a difference) listener. My attempt:

"Brúc wel þá dagas"

​

with imperative brúcan, "fit for use" wel, not sure the right article, and plural for days.

Thank you for your time!

Hi! I'm writing a short story as a school assignment, and I was looking for a translation of the phrase above. Imagine it having the same context as "Habemus papam". I know the Old English for prince (at least, in the context I want it to be) is aetheling, but I don't know how verbs work in Old English. Any help will be appreciated!

Hope you're all well. I've recently begun revisiting Old English after having left the language alone for about fifteen years. In the book I'm working thru, we see alternate forms for many of the pronouns:

1s acc: mec, mē

1du acc: unc, uncit

1p gen: ūser, ūre

1p acc: ūsic, ūs

2s acc: ðec, ðē

2du acc: incit, inc

2p acc: ēowic, ēow

3f nom/acc: hēo, hīe

3p nom/acc: hēo, hīe

3p dat: him, heom

I see similar variation in the interrogative pronouns. I've been wondering what to make of this variation. Wiktionary suggests that mec is principally Anglian, while mē is more common in West Saxon. Similarly, per Wiktionary, ðē predominates for West Saxon. Does anyone know of a good source on dialects in time that would help me figure out when to expect which forms? (I won't be surprised if some of this variation can't be pinned to a region & time, but that would be useful to know as well.)

Thank you!