Old Engli.sh
The Portal to the Language of the Anglo-Saxons
About Old-Engli.sh
The website www.Old-Engli.sh is dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon language. It offers study tools, news on current linguistic research and resource development, a link directory, text editions, trivia articles and more.
About the Anglo-Saxon Language
Old English (OE) is the term used collectively for the earliest dialects of the English language, spoken by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in England from c. 400-1150. The first OE records date from c. 700 and all in all more than 1,000,000 word tokens in over 400 manuscripts have come down to us. OE prose boasts a wide variety of genres, ranging from legal and religious texts over historical, medical or scientific writing to fiction. The surviving OE poems, such as Beowulf or the Battle of Maldon, are among the finest examples of early Germanic legend and heroic poetry.
About Me
I'm a lecturer in English language and Linguistics at the University of Manchester. I'm maintaining this webpage on the side as a hobby. You can find out more about me by clicking on the My Research tab in the top menu.
Welcome to Old-Engli.sh!
| Man dēþ swā hē byþ þonne hē mōt swā hē wile. |
| 'Man does what he is when he may do as he pleases.' |
(Durham Proverb No. 14, 11th century) |
The latest Old-Engli.sh News |
January 2022 | |
 Logo of the DOE's Adopt-a-Word funding campaign with the Old English for "We thank you." | |
The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) 2020 progress report has been published. It showcases the DOE's achievments, which are all the more impressive given the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Notable updates concern words starting with the letter L as well as new staff members and funding. | |
February 2021 | |
 Manuscript Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 7965-73, f. 165r - a seventeenth century transcript of Old English charters now included in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus | |
As a dead language, Old English has a finite number of text sources its native speakers wrote while they were alive. The only way to enlarge the Old English corpus is therefore to discover new manuscripts of previously unknown texts. Such discoveries are extremely rare and noteworthy events. Yet, the DOE’s Corpus of Old English has just accomplished such a feat – several new texts comprising thousands of words were added to their database in 2019. | |
Old English Trivia of the Day |
Article for Thursday 1 December 2022 | |
 Apollonius returns to Tarsis (from a 15th c. manuscript, ÖNB 2886, f. 9r) | |
Apollonius of Tyre is the first fictional prose text of the English language. Why this fictional text was translated from Latin into the Anglo-Saxon vernacular remains a mystery. | |
Study Anglo-Saxon! |
Old English Language | |
 An Old English dictionary that's easy to use and accurate | |
Old-Engli.sh offers its own dictionary page. This online Old to Modern English glossary is simple, comprehensive and ideally suited for the translation of original Old English texts. | |
Old English Documentaries |
Produced in 1992 | |
 Before Babel A BBC-Horizon documentary | |
A BBC documentary on language reconstruction, the discovery of the Indo-European language family (of which (Old) English is a member), the hypothesis of language superfamilies and the notion of a mother tongue of all human languages spoken today. | |
Today's Featured Link |
Old English Language Study - Other | |
Richard Rawlinson Center The Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research at Western Michigan University fosters teaching and research on Anglo-Saxon England in particular and on the field of manuscript studies in general. It hosts the International Congress on Medieval Studies as well as other events and is involved in a wide range of research activities. https://wmich.edu/medieval/research/early-england |  |
Find here a collection of free,
downloadable Old English text editions and translations, including Apollonius
of Tyre. Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, Biblical Translations, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and
many other texts.
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