Hayden120

Thanks for your efforts here. You speak OE at all? — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ 02:50, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Nope, sorry. I am very interested, though. This place is excellent! Very nice work by you and the other editors; I don't think there is another website in Old English anywhere near as comprehensive as this one. Hayden120 02:55, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Two books I recommend are First Steps in Old English by Stephen Pollington, and Introduction to Old English by professor Peter S Baker. First Steps is great in that he makes OE seem more accessible, and he teaches it more in a matter like other language teaching courses (he also has an audio cd, separately), and Introduction does a far better job of explaining why things are the way they are, than anyone else. It's also written by a professor from the University of Virginia, near my homeland, so that's a bonus as well. Old English Grammar and Reader is an older one, but it's good cuz it gives tons easy-level reading material (such as Ōhthere and Ƿulfstān). — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ 03:19, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for the recommendations; I'll have a look. Does Introduction to Old English also have audio available? Also, are there any OE to Modern English (and vice versa) dictionaries available? Hayden120 03:35, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

There are MnE-OE dictionaries on line (see the Modern English article on Wikipedia - the external links), but outside of that there are only OE-MnE dictionaries. I'm working on one myself to print off. Willcume ic þec on míne brúcendsídan! 04:05, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Most books tend to include their own glossaries. Online, I use http://wandership.ca/projects/eow/ and http://oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/ . The structure and database of Wandership are useful, but it seems rather lacking. OET seems to have a very wide base of words, but you have to use its dictionary with a grain of salt, as it has user-submitted material (meaning sometimes incorrect or even nonsensical). I dont use http://ang.wiktionary.org myself, but it's there.

As far as Introduction having audio, there is additional website material to be used together with his book (as designed by him), and I believe it does have audio (although he himself isnt the best voice actor around...) which is available here http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/OEA/ . Gōd spēd! ("Good luck!") — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ 04:07, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the replies, guys. It would be great if there was also a machine translator (for entire sentences/paragraphs) available, but I'm guessing there isn't; maybe the editors here could work together to develop one? It would probably be a huge amount of work to code it, but it would be incredibly useful for learners (or perhaps anyone) trying to fill in a missing word, for example.

On the topic of books, I have also seen Teach Yourself Old English, which comes with two CDs. I'm not sure if either of you have used it, but if you have, would you recommend it? Also—and sorry for bombarding you with questions—is there a de facto standard pronunciation that is used when reading Old English? I have heard ic pronounced as either "ik" or "itch"; is one preferred over the other? Thanks, Hayden120 04:25, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Generally I've seen iċ spoken as "itch", although I'm sure there was dialect variant. I do have Teach Yourself Old English and I'll admit that I'm not too crazy about the book's method. It seems random and doesnt have solid direction (reminding me of those books that depend on memorizing premade phrases, rather than teaching the language), and the audio cd speakers often dont even pronounce things correctly (never pronouncing Æ as a flat A, even pronouncing eom as two syllables! ugh!) But even despite its hard "misses", I found it to be a little useful, although I'll admit that it's collected more dust than the rest of my collection. — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ 04:30, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Alright then, I guess I'll give that one a miss. Is it possible to pronounce Old English exactly the way it was originally spoken, though? I mean, we don't have any audio recordings, so it seems reasonable to assume that some modern pronunciations are simply guesswork. Hayden120 04:43, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Well there's many factors to consider: regional variance, dialect variance, as well as the wide range of time it covers (over 600 years of non-standardized speech). Even today's standardized speech has its variants, such as how northern Americans say pecan as "pee can" (dont truck drivers use those?), and how in Appalachian speech (btw, that IS pronounced with the "ch," not some friggin "sh"), an unvoiced consonant often becomes voiced (look > loog, okay > ogay, Baltimore > Baldimore, and so forth). But fortunately, it's not entirely guesswork, but alot of sweat and blood has been poured over comparative speech, word evolution, letters chosen, and various other angles to factor in the best possible (and often disputable) pronunciations. As long as you're understood and consistent in speech, then it's all good. — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ 04:50, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

I've seen and used "Teach Yourself Old English", too. It's very much a beginners book and won't take you far, although it may be good to hear the language spoken (as best we know how). I am quite sure that when the Saxons first arrived, at least, their dialects had no palatalization of c, sc, or g (or is it some magic coincidence that the later palatalized sounds were written just as their historical equivalent?); possibly the Anglian dialects had some less developed form of palatalization from a common Anglo-Frisian period. That palatalization was well developed in later Saxon dialects seems to be shown by that the y sound from a historical g was occasionally written as i (and that palatalization was fully distinguished in writing by the time of the first ME monuments, indicating that it was already fully developed). The exact time-mapping of the development of palatalization would be more or less impossible, but we can approximate (also, the effects of levelling would be almost completely unpredictable). For the meaning terms you cannot understand, check a dictionary or ask me later. Am in a bit of a hurry :). Willcume ic þec on míne brúcendsídan! 05:52, 6 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the information. However, I am a little confused about the usefulness of Teach Yourself Old English; is the audio actually wrong or just another dialect/time period? I would like to maximise the amount of resources I can use, and this one has been getting some good reviews on the web. Hayden120 07:46, 10 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, I can't remember if it had incorrect pronunciation on the sound recording or not - I'll get it out of the library and check. But like I said before, it is quite basic and won't take you too far. If you are wanting to save money, then probably best to channel it into a more substantial resource. Willcume ic þec on míne brúcendsídan! 08:23, 10 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

The audio's wrong. Not always, but I was able to catch every instance of it, and it stood out to me. In the reading of Riddle 66, the reader pronounced eom as eh-ohm, two syllables. Absolutely no dialect of English has ever had "am" spoken with two syllables. Plus they're British, therefore seemingly unable to pronounce the letter æ, as modern British speech has mostly lost this sound, but it survived in American speech. Steve Pollington's audio would be better to go by, in all honesty. — ᚹᚩᛞᛖᚾᚻᛖᛚᛗ 11:06, 10 Ēastermōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Front page

So, how do you find the new front page (colors, layout, content)?   Ƿes hāl!    07:29, 3 Hāligmōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I think it looks okay, but I'm not sure about the whitespace between the two boxes. The Latin Wikipedia's front page fits nicely together with no gaps. To be honest, I think we could do without the "on this day" box; a lot of it is currently in modern English, and it seems like it is a lot of effort for something that is rather trivial when there are plenty of other things to be done (we still don't have an article on Anglo-Saxons on the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia!). I might see if I can tweak with the Latin page's source code for something suitable for here. Hayden120 05:39, 19 Hāligmōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Ar. To be honest, I myself prefer not to imitate... but whatever. I think I'd like to set about translating the gecorene gemynddagas stuff, but some policy on here to do with writing standards is still a bit up in the air...   Ƿes hāl!    07:28, 19 Hāligmōnaþ 2010 (UTC)

Haha, it is not imitation, it is simply... inspiration. :) If someone does something better, why not learn from it? I am not saying that what you have done is bad, I just think the Latin one works well. I quickly whipped up a rough draft of the first section to get an idea of what it could look like. We obviously do not have to duplicate the Latin one, but it could help inspire something. Hayden120 09:59, 19 Hāligmōnaþ 2010 (UTC)