English baby photos... some words on 

Old English ;)

Let me tell you something about our lovely English language. It was different from the one we know today. Duh! But have you ever wondered how the old one sounded or what it looked like? I have. I googled it, obviously, searched through youtube any videos with Old English lessons. And there, there was- a description of the Battle of Brunanburh, composed in the 10th century and found in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. It was read by some native speaker man, trying to give back an old pronunciation, which we can hear. We have no records of, for instance, Middle Ages English so we can only guess the pronunciation of it, basing on the comparison with other similar languages or the old linguistic books from 15th century. For me, it is really cool, that I can guess the ‘nowadays form’ from the old one. But sometimes it is hard… for real, because, even though the word did not change its form much, it could change the meaning, just like…  

DANGER- power od a lord or master, jurisdiction, dominion, power to dispose of, or to hurt or harm
DIZZY- foolish, stupid
LADY- one who kneads bread
PEN- a feather of a bird, a plume
READ- to have an idea; to think or suppose that, etc.

As much I’d like you to know some basic phrases, just the way they apparently sounded.

At the end I have a small ‘quiz’ for you. Here’s the runic system, that was used in Britain. Firstly I give you a tip (the runic alphabet):

Ok. So now try to read this text:

English transcription (also the key for that quiz) I’ll give you in my next post ;)

(*source: From Old English to Standard English by Dennis Freeborn)