Old English Discussion

[Nero]

So, is anyone fluent, advanced or intermediate in Old English?

check with sa wulfs, he knows alot. I'm somewhere between basic and intermediate.

[Antares]

Oh right, because neither spanish nor Catalan/welsh/lakota/arabic/etc have cases

Are you sure that in Arabic there are no cases?
What is the difference between "waladu", "walada" and "waladi"? And, of course "waladun", "waladan", "waladin?"

[sa wulfs]

So, is anyone fluent, advanced or intermediate in Old English?

check with sa wulfs, he knows alot. I'm somewhere between basic and intermediate.

Thanks for the compliment, but I would only consider myself a beginner

[Steisi]

I have found "Teach Yourself Old English" available from amazon.com. Does anyone have it? I'm interested in buying it myself.

Olen löytänyt "Teach Yourself Old English" amazon.com:sta. Onko kenelläkään sitä? Ehkä ostan sen itse.

[Le Serpent Rouge]

I generally find TY books to be seriously lacking, but I haven’t seen the OE version so I can’t comment on it. Though, for school, I had to use (and would highly recommend):

Introduction to Old English (Baker);
Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages(Robinson);
along with Old English Grammar and Reader(Diamond).

Just to give you an idea of what's out there.

[Steisi]

I generally find TY books to be seriously lacking, but I haven’t seen the OE version so I can’t comment on it. Though, for school, I had to use (and would highly recommend):

Introduction to Old English (Baker);
Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages(Robinson);
along with Old English Grammar and Reader(Diamond).

Just to give you an idea of what's out there.

Thank you for the info

[Condraz23]

I think Old English looks sort of similar to modern Icelandic and Old Frisian.

[sa wulfs]

I made a crappy recording for shits and giggles at another message board, and figured I could post it here to see if it encourages more discussion about Old English.

Of course, it's just a pretty poor reading of a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon poetry; my accent is very thick (it's the first time I've ever read Old English aloud, and it shows: I have front [a]'s everywhere, and I don't respect vowel length for the most part).

EDIT: Text

[Mezzo]

Does anyone have a list of Eald Englisc aux verbs and thier conjugations?

[sa wulfs]

béon, wesan
1. Used with the present participle to create constructions that are not equivalent to the modern continuous tenses: þa wæs se cyning openlice andettende þam biscope, "then the king openly confessed to the bishop".
2. Used with the past participle to form the passive voice: æfter þæm þe Romeburg getimbred wæs, "after Rome was (had been) built". Note that weorðan can be used as an auxiliary of passive; the difference between the two is not clear.

Indicative
Present
ic eom - béo
þu eart - bist
he is - bið
Pl. sind(on), sint - béoð

Preterite
ic wæs
þu wǽre
he wæs
Pl. wǽron

Subjunctive
Present
Sg. síe - béo
Pl. síen - béon

Preterite
Sg. wǽre
Pl. wǽren

Imperative
Sg. wes - béo
Pl. wesaþ - béoþ

My, if I do the same for all the auxiliary verbs this is going to take forever. Okay, I guess I'd better look for a list somewhere else, but if nobody finds one I suppose I could do this for the other verbs as well.

I took it from A Guide to Old English, by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson.

EDIT: Oh well, do I feel stupid now.
Here you can find conjugation tables for the preterite-present verbs, which are modal auxiliaries. If you scroll up and down you'll find tables for other verbs (including, you guessed it, beón/wesan). Scroll down to 7.6 to find a complete list of preterite-present verbs.

[ego]

I generally find TY books to be seriously lacking, but I haven’t seen the OE version so I can’t comment on it

TY books are indeed not a good choice for almost any language. They're mostly for touristic purposes. Most of the units are like "at the supermarket" "at the post office" etc. However for an ancient language there is no such need and the book can be quite good. I have the TY ancient Greek myself and I can tell it's a great book, it has nothing to do with the rest of the series

[Nero]

I found this link (with audio file) about Old English being pronounced, so I thought I should share it around:

http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/engli ... /beow.html

It's part of Beowulf.

[Nero]

I generally find TY books to be seriously lacking, but I haven’t seen the OE version so I can’t comment on it

TY books are indeed not a good choice for almost any language. They're mostly for touristic purposes. Most of the units are like "at the supermarket" "at the post office" etc. However for an ancient language there is no such need and the book can be quite good. I have the TY ancient Greek myself and I can tell it's a great book, it has nothing to do with the rest of the series

I have seen "TY Old English", but from scanning inside it, it looked like it just touched the surface of grammar topics and did not go into depth. By no means would it make you fluent. Just a "taste"

[Æxylis]

I've looked into Old English before... but I haven't actually 'learned' any of it yet... but thanks for the links, I'm sure they're bound to be helpful...

Also, a comment

I took an introduction to public speaking class and I did a speech on the history of English...
At the opening of my speech I used an excerpt from Beowulf...

[Infohunter]

I generally find TY books to be seriously lacking, but I haven’t seen the OE version so I can’t comment on it

TY books are indeed not a good choice for almost any language. They're mostly for touristic purposes. Most of the units are like "at the supermarket" "at the post office" etc. However for an ancient language there is no such need and the book can be quite good. I have the TY ancient Greek myself and I can tell it's a great book, it has nothing to do with the rest of the series

I have seen "TY Old English", but from scanning inside it, it looked like it just touched the surface of grammar topics and did not go into depth. By no means would it make you fluent. Just a "taste"

You are all likely talking about the newer TY series, the "Old English" title in which is by a Mark Atherton. I have the "Teach Yourself Old English" title from the old English Universities Press "Teach Yourself" series, this one by a Leslie Blakeley, PhD. That series was not so tourist-oriented; most of those books aimed at giving the autodidact an introduction to the target language with a view to going on from completing the book (via the "further reading" material list) to achieving scholarly proficiency. This title is no exception; though no longer in print, it can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Old-English-Teach ... 607&sr=1-3

[Farenhajt]

How do you pronounce the names of abbot Ceolfrid and king Ceadwalla (7th century)? As far as the online info I could find is concerned, the leading "ce" should be pronounced as modern "ch", and the rest is more or less the same as today - but is that correct?

[KingHarvest]

Yes.

[sa wulfs]

If by saying "7th century" you mean you actually want a 7th century pronunciation, palatalized c would be /c/, not /tS/ (ch). The exact nature of the digraphs <eo> and <ea> is disputed, but the modern pronunciation is probably OK as an approximation for non-pedants.

edit: After some research, since Ceadwalla was a British name and the most common spelling appears to be Cædwalla, it was most likely pronounced with [k].

[Kirk]

From the "English Spelling Reform" thread:

Yesterday I saw a past tense ahsode (presumably [ˈɑxsɔdə], "asked") which reminded me just how ancient the "ax" form is.
It wasn't the first time I see it but I had forgotten about it.

My one remaining question about "ask" is how /sk/ emerged in a native English word, since English (like German) changed PG *sk to /ʃ/ (compare Swedish "fisk" to English "fish" and German "Fisch"). Indeed, the Modern German cognate is "heischen," with /ʃ/ (somewhere along the line German acquired an unhistorical /h/ in that word). Some English dialects emerged with expected "ash" or "esh" but how do we explain the ones which kept /sk/ while still having /ʃ/ in other instances? It doesn't appear to be a Norse borrowing (like "scale" or "skin").

One solution I thought of might have entailed an early dialectal metathesis of PG-derived *sk in this word to "ks"--so early as to predate the /sk/-> /ʃ/ rule (this would mean it definitely predates recorded English and was perhaps not even really English yet), so dialects which metathesized early on got "aks" while those that didn't kept "ask," which later experienced the /sk/-> /ʃ/ rule to arrive at "ash." This would then necessitate some dialects further metathesizing back from /ks/ -> /sk/, which would postdate the productive time window of the /sk/-> /ʃ/ rule, leaving three forms by Old English (ignoring dialectal vowel differences here) /_sk/ /_ks/ and /_ʃ/. Kind of complicated, I know. But from what I can tell English as long as it's been recorded has had all three forms.

I made a BBcode table to illustrate what I'm saying under this scenario but it appears Unilang doesn't support BBcode tables. Boo.

[KingHarvest]

I understand what you mean without the table if that makes you feel any better.

Anyway, that's really interesting. I wish I were more up to snuff on Proto-Germanic and Germanic linguistics, but alas, no time to really research it at the moment.