History of English: Difference between revisions
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... which, even with "and his" having helpfully survived unchanged, is just about impossible for the modern English speaker to turn into "Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven's kingdom, / The might of the Creator, and his thought..." without having studied Old English. Other words (''nu'' as "now", ''scilun'' as "shall", ''hefen'' as "heaven", ''uard'' as "ward" or "guard") are only obvious in a hyperliteral side-by-side translation, which necessarily ignores the changes in meaning which many of these words have undergone. If provided with a translation following [[Woolseyism|Woolseyist]] principles, these original words would be practically indiscernible.
People who might want to hear what Old English sounds like can watch the DVD of Benjamin Bagby's recitation of ''[[Beowulf]]''; keep the subtitles on if you want to follow the action. Michael Drout has also made recordings of all surviving Old English poetry available free at [https://web.archive.org/web/20160110112449/http://acadblogs.wheatoncollege.edu/mdrout/ his site]. The excellent Seamus Heaney translation of ''[[Beowulf]]'' is printed in Old English and modern English on facing pages.
The Old English alphabet has a few extra letters: þ, thorn<ref>makes a great emoticon, too! :þ</ref>; ð, eth; ȝ, yogh; and ƿ, wynn. The first two represent the "th" sound (as in "thin" and "then" respectively, although they are mostly used interchangeably in manuscript spellings); yogh, hard and soft "g"; and wynn, "w". (Thorn and eth are still used in modern-day [[Iceland|Icelandic]] for more or less the same sounds as in Old English.)
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