Se Þræd Eald Englisċes (The Old English Thread)

[The Archregimancy]

We really did a charitable act when we removed that abomination and replaced it by one of our patois.
Three cheers for Guillaume le Bâtard, I guess ?

See, this is why nobody likes France.

England would have been better off under Hardrada.

Nonsense.

A restoration of the House of Wessex under England's rightful king Edgar the Atheling would have spared our English cousins both the Normans and Hardrada.

This is, of course, why Scotland is the natural ruler of England; Malcolm Canmore's marriage to Edgar's sister Margaret meant that all of the Scottish monarchs from [Malcolm and Margaret's son] Edgar onwards had a better claim to the English throne than the usurpers in London.

Eventually, under James VI/I, we came into our rightful inheritance.

[Glath]

[

Doesn't Old English have grammatical case? How much of a pain is that?

Many many languages have grammatical cases and in fact this makes the language easier to deal with since you can place a lot of information inside a word and thus sentences can be treated like a simple equation rather than relying on word order alone which is highly restrictive for verse composition. Or even prose for that matter.

The word for wood: ƿudu declines like so as a noun:
singular -plural
Nominative -ƿudu -ƿuda
Accusative -ƿudu -ƿuda
Genitive -ƿuda -ƿuda
Dative -ƿuda -ƿudum

Verbs are fairly straight foward, they have a tense and a person though unlike in Latin the person is often expressed seperately.

I'd think that grammatical case would still be a pain for a monolingual speaker of Modern English. It would probably be easier for a German speaker to learn Old English than an English speaker.

[Hrythingia]

See, this is why nobody likes France.

England would have been better off under Hardrada.

Nonsense.

A restoration of the House of Wessex under England's rightful king Edgar the Atheling would have spared our English cousins both the Normans and Hardrada.

This is, of course, why Scotland is the natural ruler of England; Malcolm Canmore's marriage to Edgar's sister Margaret meant that all of the Scottish monarchs from [Malcolm and Margaret's son] Edgar onwards had a better claim to the English throne than the usurpers in London.

Eventually, under James VI/I, we came into our rightful inheritance.

Indeed, alas. If only the English were better at horses back then.

Inb4 Rohirrim...

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

French is a horrible language. It's disgustingly flamboyant; bringing shame to it's fellow Romance languages.

This is why no one like you Germanics, absolutely no taste and in top of that mistaking strengths for flaws, smh.

Excuse you, but I'm only half German - my other half is Italian and Scot-Irish. Thus, I know very well what beautiful languages look like and French is not one of them.

But at least it's not Portuguese. *shudder*

See, this is why nobody likes France.

England would have been better off under Hardrada.

Nonsense.

A restoration of the House of Wessex under England's rightful king Edgar the Atheling would have spared our English cousins both the Normans and Hardrada.

This is, of course, why Scotland is the natural ruler of England; Malcolm Canmore's marriage to Edgar's sister Margaret meant that all of the Scottish monarchs from [Malcolm and Margaret's son] Edgar onwards had a better claim to the English throne than the usurpers in London.

Eventually, under James VI/I, we came into our rightful inheritance.

Now this is something I can get behind.

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

Nonsense.

A restoration of the House of Wessex under England's rightful king Edgar the Atheling would have spared our English cousins both the Normans and Hardrada.

This is, of course, why Scotland is the natural ruler of England; Malcolm Canmore's marriage to Edgar's sister Margaret meant that all of the Scottish monarchs from [Malcolm and Margaret's son] Edgar onwards had a better claim to the English throne than the usurpers in London.

Eventually, under James VI/I, we came into our rightful inheritance.

Indeed, alas. If only the English were better at horses back then.

Inb4 Rohirrim...

Tolkien, is that you?

[The Blaatschapen]

See, this is why nobody likes France.

England would have been better off under Hardrada.

Nonsense.

A restoration of the House of Wessex under England's rightful king Edgar the Atheling would have spared our English cousins both the Normans and Hardrada.

This is, of course, why Scotland is the natural ruler of England; Malcolm Canmore's marriage to Edgar's sister Margaret meant that all of the Scottish monarchs from [Malcolm and Margaret's son] Edgar onwards had a better claim to the English throne than the usurpers in London.

Eventually, under James VI/I, we came into our rightful inheritance.

And how is that working out for Scotland?

[Hrythingia]

Indeed, alas. If only the English were better at horses back then.

Inb4 Rohirrim...

Tolkien, is that you?

Not quite, though like Tolkien I am a catholic mediaevalist with a keen pen for stories.

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

Tolkien, is that you?

Not quite, though like Tolkien I am a catholic mediaevalist with a keen pen for stories.

Get out of here, Tolkien. You're supposed to be dead.

[Autarkheia]

I've learned a bit of Old English, I really like it. It's useless but it's neat to see what English was like before the Normans fucked it up. It reminds me a lot of Icelandic.

If anyone wants to see what English without the Romance influence would be like, there is a conlang called Anglish which uses only words that are descended from Old English.

It is very much Old English (I actually just started learning it this earlier week). The spelling is funny, but it's actually not as different as it looks from Middle English. The main stumbling block is that there a lot more word forms, because that's how grammar works in Old English. The letter þ is "th" as in loath, and ð is th as in "loathe". "Sc" is pronounced like "sh" (for example, "scip"), although otherwise "c" is pronounced like "k" or German "c" (as is "h" in some contexts). "Girnan" for example means "desire", and that might look funny, but "g" before "i" is typically pronounced "y", so you read it aloud and suddenly you see the connection. Although there are obsolete words used, for example in the above Lord's Prayer, kingdom is "rice" (pronounced ree-keh), which is obviously nearer to "reich" than current use of "kingdom", although "kingdom" itself also comes from Old English ("cyningdom").

It's a pretty language, I'm enjoying learning it.

Old English <c> is not pronounced like German <ch> (which is what I assume you meant since German barely uses <c> on its own). It's like English <ch>, but only around some of the vowels. In that way it's like Italian, oddly enough.

[Angleter]

(Image)

My main attraction to Anglo-Saxon is the use of the letters thorn, eth, and æ (sorry, only one of those has Android keyboard support ). I would love the entirely impossible event that we go back to using them for actual writing:

So long, ænd þænks for all ðe fish!

The letters þorn (lol) and eð are definitely useful. Not so sure about æsc.

[Autarkheia]

English has more vowel sounds than it has vowel letters, so <æ> would be useful. It's the vowel of cat /kæt/.

[Kubumba Tribe]

(Image)

My main attraction to Anglo-Saxon is the use of the letters thorn, eth, and æ (sorry, only one of those has Android keyboard support ). I would love the entirely impossible event that we go back to using them for actual writing:

The letters þorn (lol) and eð are definitely useful. Not so sure about æsc.

I want those letters, they look cool.

[The Liberated Territories]

The Normans ruined everything. Let's go back.

[The Archregimancy]

Nonsense.

A restoration of the House of Wessex under England's rightful king Edgar the Atheling would have spared our English cousins both the Normans and Hardrada.

This is, of course, why Scotland is the natural ruler of England; Malcolm Canmore's marriage to Edgar's sister Margaret meant that all of the Scottish monarchs from [Malcolm and Margaret's son] Edgar onwards had a better claim to the English throne than the usurpers in London.

Eventually, under James VI/I, we came into our rightful inheritance.

And how is that working out for Scotland?

From 1603 through 2015, it worked absolutely brilliantly.

We could do all sorts of evil Machiavellian imperialist stuff - colonise Northern Ireland, exterminate the Aboriginal population of Gippsland, Australia, etc., etc. - and at the end of the day everyone would just blame the English rather than us.

Not really the topic of the thread, though.

[Hrythingia]

The Normans ruined everything. Let's go back.

Bugger the Normans as we say where I'm from.

[Hrythingland]

Bumping this, sad to see it died in my brief hiatus.

[Autarkheia]

I'm also sad to see that Old English died (or rather became the abomination that is modern English).

[LiberNovusAmericae]

Bumping this, sad to see it died in my brief hiatus.

Glad to see you back.

[Hrythingland]

I'm also sad to see that Old English died (or rather became the abomination that is modern English).

Modern English is no abomination, it has many beauties. Merely it is a shame OE was lost with such a small corpus of text and is not used academically as much. It should be given greater attention at school.

[Autarkheia]

I'm not a fan of teaching dead languages. It's a good intellectual exercise but mostly useless.

Modern English is just weird. I like its vast number of words but don't like how much Latin there is in it.

[Kowani]

I'm not a fan of teaching dead languages. It's a good intellectual exercise but mostly useless.

Modern English is just weird. I like its vast number of words but don't like how much Latin there is in it.

Now,what’s wrong with Latin?

[Autarkheia]

Now,what’s wrong with Latin?

Latin bores me. I like Romance languages, but I wish English had stayed closer to its Germanic cousins.

[Kowani]

Now,what’s wrong with Latin?

Latin bores me. I like Romance languages, but I wish English had stayed closer to its Germanic cousins.

...Not sure whether to burn you for Heresy or not.

[Autarkheia]

...Not sure whether to burn you for Heresy or not.

That's why I hate Latin. I associate it with the Church and tradition, i.e. things I don't care about.

[Kowani]

...Not sure whether to burn you for Heresy or not.

That's why I hate Latin. I associate it with the Church and tradition, i.e. things I don't care about.

Ah, but you see, that’s Ecclesiastical Latin, and which is a very heavy corruption of the pure Classical Latin.