Can Modern English Speakers Understand Old English? | Language Challenge | Feat. Eadwine
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Published 2023-02-21
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🤗 Big thanks to:
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🏴 Robert Sproul-Cran - a voiceover artist from Scotland, → www.robsproulcran.com/voiceover.html
🇺🇸 Dany - a linguist from the USA.
🇮🇪 Andrew - a channel subscriber from Ireland.
🎥Recommended videos:
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🕰 Time Stamps:
0:00 - Introduction
1:47 - 1. Challenge
6:06 - 2. Challenge
9:24 - 3. Challenge
12:08 - 4. Challenge
18:51 - 5. Challenge
23:49 - Commentary
🤗 Big hug for everyone reading my video descriptions! You rock! 🤓💪🏻
#languagechallenge #oldenglish
All Comments (21)
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It would be nice if you could see a complete translation of the descriptions
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As a Low German speaker this was actually pretty easy. I got so many words that neither a High German speaker nor especially an English speaker would have caught onto.
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As a Dutch speaker who also speaks Low German, this is actually quite easy. I had the first one without help from the text.
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My sis was taking a literature class for college. She was reading something in old English and was struggling, having to sound out the words. She got stuck and kept repeating two over and over. My son, two years old, looked at her, listening. He went up and pointed at his eye and said, “Me oy.” He was right, lol.
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This was a pleasant surprise from the Youtube algorithm! I wish Eadwine would create a Duolingo course for Old English.
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Now the real question is can Old English speakers understand Modern English?
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I don't think I've ever heard Old English spoken. It sounds like a completely different language. I wonder if our current modern English will sound just as foreign to those 1000 years from now.
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For a language that is 1573 years old, parts of it are surprisingly comprehensible!
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Absolutely hilarious that the New Yorker heard "thousands of them in the night sky" and thought airplanes instead of stars. Hard to think of a city that has worse light pollution than the one with giant lightup billboards going 24/7
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Eadwine here! Thank you Norbert for having me on your channel, I had a lot of fun!
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Lol…thousands of things in the sky at night geez could it possibly be stars?! I’m sitting here screaming STARS!!
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i'd like to see how a Danish, Norwegian or Icelandic speaker would do - old english is far closer to these than modern english
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Being German this sounds a lot like Plattdeutsch or even Dutch, both being Friesian languages/dialects. Some of what you spoke I heard as a child in the 50's in Barrow in Furness, they had a broad Lancashire dialect and used words that were unknown in London, even the pronounciations were different. Just love listening to the odl dialects, am now 72, but you never stop learning.
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The word blēo strikes again! I remember seeing it in one of the previous OE videos on this channel. It has no cognates in any of the most widely spoken Germanic languages today. Also, it's fascinating how the first challenge was the most difficult for me…really goes to show that once your ears become attuned to the sound correspondences, it becomes MUCH easier to follow along.
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I teach English for children here in Brazil, and once, we had to present some work about Middle Age churches in England. They found a text in old English, but I couldn't help them with its reading. Hehehe We had fun, but it was a hard work for all of us. Great channel! Congratulations!
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This was actually quite amazing to watch! Being fluent in Swedish and English (and having studied German), I understood a lot more than I would have thought! The Star Wars one was clear to me even as it was read! Well done, indeed! More of these, please.
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I got the last one. In my dialect of German, "Schwamme" (or Schwämme) means "mushroom", and with "cyninges dohter" and "gamen" it was clear that it was a game, something with a "kingdom of mushrooms" and a princess, so the only game that came to my mind was Super Mario.
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I was impressed how much I could 'guess' with my smattering of Swedish. This is fun!
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Obsessed with how common "þ" is as a sound! Old English sounds like one of those languages that physically "feels" good/fun to use 😂
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It's amazing how English developed to become a universal language used or understood by almost everyone!
