Comments on: Learning Old English

By: ACW

ACW — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:44:10 +0000

First, it occurs to me that my last n comments here all seem sort of patronizing when I reread them. I apologize. My intent was to share information, and I come off sounding like some sort of puffed-up know-it-all. I’ll try to be better.

Second, to address the actual subject matter: Everything about Old English pronunciation is more or less educated guesswork. The exact quality of OE /r/ can’t be reconstructed: it’s a trill or tap in the North, and an approximant in the South (and in America), and the OE source might have been either one. But we can be pretty sure that all the r’s were actually realized, not dropped entirely as in modern RP “far”. OE orthography was usually very close to the pronunciation; the scribe wouldn’t have written an r if he didn’t pronounce it.

I think if you pick a pronunciation for r and stick to it, you would be easily understood by a native speaker (if only there were any), whereas r-dropping might well impede understanding.

My captcha is “daily Geraldina”. Hee.

By: Carl Morris

Carl Morris — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:19:39 +0000

The web needs Old English learner content written in Welsh. kthxbai

By: Suw

Suw — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:12:38 +0000

I have no idea what constitutes a good Old English accent and what a bad one. I have, however, been wondering about whether the R would have been trilled. Having learnt Welsh, where all Rs are trilled, I find it hard *not* to trill the R but have no idea if that would be frowned upon.

By: ACW

ACW — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:16:53 +0000

I’m not an expert, but I don’t think the reader’s accent is very good. He lets aspects of his own variety of English color his pronunciation; for example, he uniformly drops syllable-final r, just as Englishmen south of the Humber do today. But all r’s had full (probably trilled) pronunciation in Old English.

I think his vowel readings are sketchy too.