Mark Atherton - What is Old English and how did it sound?

Why learn Old English?

Present-day English has a wide vocabulary with many synonyms. Even a basic adjective derived from the word for a king is not straightforward: In French the noun is roi and the adjective royal; in German the connection is also clear: König and königlich. But in present-day English there is a choice of three or four words:

royal, regal, kingly, King’s (or Queen’s)

We say Royal Mail and Queen’s Counsel, and regal behaviour. The reasons for this are cultural and historical – they can be explained by the history of the English language.

In Old English the noun was cyning , which meant ‘son of the kindred’, later cyng or kyng; the adjective was cynelic.

Old English is the key to etymology of everyday English and the origin of words and phrases, the basis of our English grammar, a window on the past: on cultural and political history and on early poetry and literature.
How did it sound?

In this session we will learn to count 1-10, and discover some basic everyday words in Old English. We will look at some ordinary everyday Old English and show the connections with the present day…
Activities

We will consider images of artefacts, historical sources, manuscripts. We will play ‘tinker, tailor…’ we will attempt to solve an Old English riddle from the Exeter Book … and tackle a couple of lines from the famous Old English epic poem Beowulf.

https://library.teachyourself.com/id004325519/Complete-Old-English
https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-mark-atherton

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Filming & Editing: Simos Batzakis

Видео Mark Atherton - What is Old English and how did it sound? канала Polyglot Conference