Old Engli.sh

The Portal to the Language of the Anglo-Saxons

The Old-Engli.sh Trivia Archive



The Old-Engli.sh Trivia pages offer easily-digestable and entertaining articles about Old English. Read small chunks of information about Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, texts, grammar, history and more.


2014
Cartoon inflected infinitive Old English
The infinitive after to had an inflectional ending in Old English.


2013
Wales beach and flag
Where does the name 'Wales' come from?
The Old English vocabulary had a word for 'foreigner' which is the ancestor of the Modern names Wales and Welsh.


2012
Beowulf fights Grendels mother Gareth Hinds
Beowulf fights Grendel's mother
Artist's conception from a Gareth Hinds comic
The Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, one of the most treasured gems of English literature, has been preserved in only one single manuscript.


2011
Apollonius returns to Tarsis 15th century manuscript
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.


2011
Verners law as allophones of PIE consonants
The development of Indo-European plosives
in Germanic
Verner’s law describes a sound change during the Proto-Germanic era. It explains, among other things, the s/r alternation in "was - were".





Old English Text Editions

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. Continue...