Old English

[Dana_Dany Danuta]

Old English Spoken ...

Old English Language ...

[Stasia]

The Lord's Prayer in Old English (source):

Fæder ure şu şe eart on heofonum,
si şin nama gehalgod.
to becume şin rice,
gewurşe ğin willa,
on eorğan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas,
swa swa we forgyfağ urum gyltendum.
and ne gelæd şu us on costnunge,
ac alys us of yfele soşlice.

This is what English looked like until AD 1100. How can a language change in a thousand years...

Middle English (AD 1100-1500) version is also listed on the linked page.

[Corinnebelle]

@Dana_Dany Danuta How does one even learn how to pronounce that? How do they know it's authentic? Weren't there a lot of dialects back then?

@Stasia
Seems like the pronoun comes after the noun instead of before.

[Dana_Dany Danuta]

@Dana_Dany Danuta How does one even learn how to pronounce that? How do they know it's authentic? Weren't there a lot of dialects back then?

Hi,@Corinnebelle!

• I think you can learn pronunciation in this old language, just like in any other (ale potrwa to dłużej )

... dodam jeszcze: Old English Core Vocabulary

• "Because the language has been dead for 900 years, we cannot be completely sure how Old English was pronounced. However, we can make good educated guesses at how Old English was pronounced because the Anglo-Saxons almost certainly wrote quite phonetically (that is, they wrote words how they sounded); we can compare it with Middle English, various Modern English dialects, and other closely related Germanic languages; we can look at phonetic poetic strategies used in Old English poems; and we can look at spelling variations and clues within Old English texts themselves."(source)

• Four dialects of the Old English language are known: Northumbrian in northern England and southeastern Scotland; Mercian in central England; Kentish in southeastern England; and West Saxon in southern and southwestern England.

[Dana_Dany Danuta]

Old English vs German | Can they understand spoken Old English? | Part 1

Can Germans understand Old English? | Language Challenge | Part 2 | Feat

[XeO3]

Does it even matter that much how you pronounce a dead language? I'm guessing most Latin speakers over the last few centuries sounded nothing like the ancient Romans or 12^th century monks. One of my classmates in an Old Norse class had just come from studying in Iceland; our instructor was from central England - the rest of us were Americans. I'm sure none of us sounded like Egill Skallagrímsson when reading aloud, but hopefully he'd recognize enough of it...

[OCgXt4Pu]

Does it even matter that much how you pronounce a dead language? I'm guessing most Latin speakers over the last few centuries sounded nothing like the ancient Romans or 12^th century monks.

In case of Old English, I always found it simply fascinating how German it sounds. Especially in comparison with Modern English which is pretty much unlike anything in its language family.
I think once you find a motivation to learn a dead language in the first place, you also want to have some idea about its pronunciation. It might seem superfluous if you just want to make sense of some written documents, but it definitely matters when you try poetry. There is also this concept of using modern learning techniques to learn dead languages conversationally as if they were alive; you need some pronunciation for that too.
Although with Latin, it's a bit silly. Of course ancient Romans sounded different than 12th c. monks, or 18th c. scientists, diplomats, and clergy, for that matter. But they all read Cicero and considered it the gold standard. And today the pronunciation used when teaching Latin is usually the reconstructed classical one instead of the one used a century or two ago when Latin was still alive. Probably because everyone wants to read Cicero and Virgil rather than boring medieval treaties. Or because it's an easy compromise between multiple dialects of New Latin.

The Lord's Prayer in Old English (source):

Fæder ure şu şe eart on heofonum,
si şin nama gehalgod.
to becume şin rice,
gewurşe ğin willa,
on eorğan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas,
swa swa we forgyfağ urum gyltendum.
and ne gelæd şu us on costnunge,
ac alys us of yfele soşlice.

Looks like that page had some encoding problems. The letters ş and ğ were used neither in scribal practice of the period nor in modern transcriptions (which often put a dot on ġ when it's read as /j/ and use macrons on long vowels, &c.).
These ş and ğ here should be þ or ð (i.e. ‘th’).

[John Little]

Old English vs German | Can they understand spoken Old English? | Part 1

Can Germans understand Old English? | Language Challenge | Part 2 | Feat

Thank you for that. Fascinating!

[Dana_Dany Danuta]

Old English vs German | Can they understand spoken Old English? | Part 1

Can Germans understand Old English? | Language Challenge | Part 2 | Feat

Thank you for that. Fascinating!

Hi, @John Little! I'm glad to hear! The pleasure is all mine.