Can Germans understand Old English? | Language Challenge | Part 2 | Feat.

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This is a continuation of our Old English language challenge. We're trying to find out if German speakers can understand Old English. As usual big thanks to @simonroper9218 for coming back to the channel and sharing his Old English expertise with us all. Check out his channel if you want to learn more about historic linguistics.

In this episode of the Germanic languages comparison series we focus on understanding mostly the spoken language.

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🎥Recommended videos:

Part 1 of the video → • Old English vs Ge...

Simon and Moritz discuss English and North Frisian relationship → • Söl'ring North Fr...

Dutch vs English → • Dutch Language | ...

🤓 Can American, Australian, and Non-Native English speaker understand Old English? → • Old English Spoke...

🤓 American, Australian, and Non-Native English speaker vs Old English | #2 → • Old English Langu...

🤠 Old Norse | Can Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic speakers understand it? @Jackson Crawford → • Old Norse | Can N...

🤓 (feat. Eric) German vs Dutch vs Flemish | Can they understand the German Language? → • German vs Dutch v...

🤓 Latin Language Spoken | Can Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian speakers understand it? → • Latin Language Sp...

🎥Romance Languages Comparison Playlist → • Romance Languages...
🎥Slavic Languages Comparison Playlist → • Slavic Languages ...

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23 Nov 2022

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Comentários 1 176

Ecolinguist 3 meses atrás

The language of Bahamas | Can English speakers understand it? 🤓 → brvid.net/video/video-bu0juoLA2H8.html

sebaestschn1 Mês atrás

I stumbled upon that some time ago... try to find someone, who is capable to speak or at least reconstruct Gotic, and then put someone from slavic and germanic languages to try to understand that. Gotic appears to be pretty much a missing link between those 2 language groups (but it is just hypothetical ;).

J McK Mês atrás

Interesting, as a native Scots speaker, (after listening closely) I got the 1st sentence 100%. There is a baseline similarity to (lowland) Scots.

M C 3 meses atrás

Sorry is it really you who wrote that answer under my comment and mentioned a certain Andri ikh i?

Larry Hats 3 meses atrás

@Huy Quang Bui Certain words. Check this out: Latvian (by sound) - Sanskrit (by sound) vejas - vajus ( wind ) dievas - devas ( god ) naujas - navyas ( new ) asaru - ašara ( tear ) medus - madhu ( honey ) davat - adatat (give) ezers - saras (lake) Lithuanian (by sound) - Sanskrit (by sound) Lith. and Skt. sunus (son) Lith. and Skt. avis (sheep) Lith. antras and Skt. antaras (second, the other) Lith. vilkas and Skt. v?kas (wolf) Lithuanian (by sound) Sanskrit (by sound) Latin (by sound) Lith. dumas and Skt. dhumas and Lat. fumus (fumes, smoke) Lith. ratas and Lat. rota (wheel) and Skt. rathas (carriage). Lith. senis and Lat. senex (an old man) and Skt. sanas (old). Lith. vyras and Lat. vir (a man) and Skt. viras (man). Lith. gentys and Lat. gentes (tribes) and Skt. jánas (genus, race). Lith. menesis and Lat. mensis and Skt masa (month) Lith. dantis and Lat. dentes and Skt dantas (teeth) Lith. naktis and Lat. noctes and Skt. naktis (night) Lith. ugnis and Lat. ignis and Skt. agni (fire) Lith. sedime and Lat. sedemus (we sit) and Skt. sidati (sits down)

Larry Hats 3 meses atrás

@Edo Art influence of roman culture? hardly. It's the other way around once rome fell, because it's the German tribes that end up the ruling families in today's France, Spain, Italy. Literally Germanic Europe, minus the Slavs. Also as a student of Russian, it's pretty clear where many words and structures in Germanic tongue come from, and its the same that gives root to the Slavic tongue. They both descend from the same common ancestor. This idea of "borrowing" culture from either Rome or Slav is a nonsense fable.

A Man Called Jim 3 meses atrás

Never felt so foreign as an English speaker listening to old English.

Reverend Baker 29 dias atrás

@Paul Danaila It is still there: Italian, Spanish, Portugese, French, Romainan, Raeto-Romanic all the romance languages are the direct issues of Latin.

Axis Boss 29 dias atrás

It’s easier for me because I know a fair amount of German, a little bit of Dutch, and have looked into Old English before.

RoniBoi Mês atrás

I can actually understand it surprisingly well. I guessed the first sentence before they revealed it.

surfing bird Mês atrás

It is understandable as a German speaker, you need to erase the Latin and Greek vocabulary and you can identify or guess the words you don't understand at first.

To Ade Mês atrás

@Re_di_Roma_is_back In grammar, but not in phonology.

Claudio Ristagno 3 meses atrás

For me as a former linguistics student who speaks English, German and Dutch it was so interesting

Sher 5 dias atrás

🎯👍

JuWen 3 meses atrás

Hey Norbert, you should try this with one english speaker, one dutch speaker, one low german speaker and maybe one norwegian speaker. That would be very interesting, cause maybe we could see the steps of changing. Btw you have a great chanel! Very enjoyable to learn about the relationship between these 4 languages. Greetings from Berlin 😎

Re_di_Roma_is_back 2 meses atrás

By the way do you guys know if there are festivals (especially during summer) where Old English or Old Norse are spoken (like we in Italy do for Latin)?

Re_di_Roma_is_back 2 meses atrás

I studied a bit of German and read Old English at school (in Italy): there are similarities but of course pronounciation is tripping

Fusion Core Hoarder 3 meses atrás

Amazing idea right here

Rusty Balls 3 meses atrás

The Dutch and Low German speakers would easily beat anyone else at this.

Satunnainen Katselija 3 meses atrás

Please also try an Icelandic speaker! Icelandic is nearly Old Norse so that should be interesting.

Fab LB 3 meses atrás

As a french speaker I understand 0% of old english

Vbk2206 5 dias atrás

Because this is English before Guillaume le Conquérant

art 8 dias atrás

as an english speaker i understand 0% of this

Ǽ7MAD 8 dias atrás

good

James Martinelli 20 dias atrás

Brittonic hypothesis.

James Martinelli 20 dias atrás

As an English speaker I understand 1% - a few prepositions.

Parker Walker 3 meses atrás

This guy has now, for better or worse, become the face of an Old English native in my mind. If I travel back in time, I expect all the people there to look like him.

sam ye 9 dias atrás

@chris I think I saw a video about the origin of the celts on British Isles and the hypothesis was what I mentioned. I’m struggling to find it and have a deep dive in this topic. Would be great if anyone can link it if it is still on.

chris 9 dias atrás

@sam ye I have no evidence to prove or disprove your hypothesis but for some reason my guess has always been similar

sam ye 9 dias atrás

heres what i know，the “native” celts on British isles was not Celtic at first. It was the trading between indigenous people on British isles and the celts on the continent that washed the gene and culture of them. And then romans and Anglo-Saxon and jutes came for another wave of cultural and genetic wash but this time its less effective and the modern day British people still have a lot of Celtic dna found in their cells but the language and culture of germanic people stayed. Point out any mistake I made，I‘m interested in these topics.

Gretchen Pritchard 25 dias atrás

He looks like a Hobbit so you're right on target.

chris Mês atrás

😂

Patrick Bateman 2 meses atrás

When Germans and Dutch can understand it better than native speakers 😁😁

James Martinelli 18 horas atrás

I would never suppose that it's related to English.

Sarah Karoline 3 meses atrás

I studied modern and old Germanic languages a long time ago. Old English wasn't a module offered, so I'm particularly happy when this comes up. Thank you to Simon for sharing his knowledge and interest! On the subject of "soþlice" possibly being related to Danish "sand" (truthful) - Norwegian and Swedish "sann", I also thought it might be related to English "sooth" as in "sooth-sayer". I looked up the etymology of "sann" in the Swedish etymological dictioary (SAOB: Svenska Akadamiens Ordbok) and it looks like it is : Old Swedish: "sander"; compare with Danish "sand", Norwegian "sann", Old West Norse "sannr, saðr" even English "sooth"; Gothic "sunjis", Sanskrit "satyaḥ" (true, real) and shares a root with Latin "sum" (I am) . [I don't know if I can post a link, so I've just pasted and partially translated the text.]

Re_di_Roma_is_back 2 meses atrás

Sofos like Fernando hinted would point to the same Indo-European root anyway. Soth is definitely related to Sooth. I don't think the Latin verb esse has anything to do with sannr

Rural Squirrel 3 meses atrás

"soþlice" is clearly an adverb, and could be clumsily interpreted as "soothly" or forsooth, as Simon said. Old English is such a fun topic, and I am thrilled that it is becoming a popular topic again.

Akuvision2011 3 meses atrás

I got the sooth, but didnt know it was cognate with sand/sann

Redwald Cuthberting 3 meses atrás

Sum variant Esum The present stem is from Proto-Italic *ezom, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésmi (“I am, I exist”). Although *ezom is traditionally reconstructed with voiced -z-, this Latin verb lacked regular rhotacism as in expected *erum, and instead the first vowel of the intermediate forms esum and esom was deleted. Cognates include Ancient Greek εἰμί (eimí), Sanskrit अस्मि (ásmi), Faliscan 𐌄𐌔𐌞 (esú), Old English eom (English am). Sooth from Santhaz From Proto-Indo-European *h₁s-ónt-s (“being, existing”), the present participle of *h₁es- (“to be”) (from which the present forms of *wesaną). Compare also *sundī (“guilt, misdeed”), an abstract noun derived from *h₁sóntih₂, genitive *h₁sn̥tyéh₂s, the feminine form of the participle.

Sarah Karoline 3 meses atrás

@LWTech I got the words the wrong way round as I wrote it in a rush! I meant to write if "soþ" might be related to "sand/sann", as well as "sooth".

Stephan Popp 2 meses atrás

Even the German of 850 AD is very hard to understand for Germans, so this was a great performance. Old High German was much closer to Old English. It's a pity that we can't make Alfred the Great and Otfrid von Weissenburg talk to each other. They could have done it in their time. Otfrid, from his Gospel Harmony, thoughts on the Magi and their trip: Manot unsih thiu fart / Thaz wires wesan anawart. Wir hunsih ouh biruahen / Enti eigan lant suachen. Thu nibist es wan ih wis / Thaz lant thaz heizit paradis... (th as in English, z = ss. Codex Frisingensis, Bavarian State Library , no. CGM 14, p. 38.) This travel reminds us / That we pay attention to its essence: Let us care for ourselves too / And seek our own land. You are not aware of it, I think, / That land that is called paradise... fol. 38 (I know, the shreds of pagan poetry are cooler today, but Alfred the Great would have liked this.)

HiddenXTube 3 meses atrás

As a speaker of German, English and Wesphalian Plattdütsch I really like these challenges.

HiddenXTube 2 meses atrás

@zeutomehr My father spoke Märkisches Platt (Hohensyburg, Schwerte, Opherdicke) I have heard the language in my family as a kid, but learned to speak much more later as an adult.

zeutomehr 2 meses atrás

which kind of westphalian? and how did you learn it?

Darius Nicolaus Heinen 3 meses atrás

same bro so easy to understand

Zeta Reticuli 3 meses atrás

@B B Rrrammstein Gerrrrman 😂🤣😂

Uli Uchu 3 meses atrás

Westphalian Platt is already quite a significant link between all those languages/dialects... I don't speak it but heard it (especially eastern westfalian varieties) as a child a little bit and when I saw/heard frisian old english and danish for the first time i distinctly remember that feeling of familiarity...

Golden.Lights.Twinkle 3 meses atrás

I like the fact that 'Hw-' in Old English turned into 'Wh-', and '-yng' turned into '-ing'. We should not forget that there were many separate dialects of Old English which varied greatly. The one most people refer to today is just one dialect that was chosen to be the standard.

Irfan b 3 meses atrás

7:45 The German cognate you are looking for is Blei, it means lead but it also has an older meaning: i.e. Colour. -> German word Blei comes from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₁-, Proto-Indo-European - -éyti, and later Proto-Germanic *blīwą (Colour, hue. Lead (metal).)

Re_di_Roma_is_back 2 meses atrás

Great!

Dave Ingram 3 meses atrás

Fascinating .. Years ago I worked in Nordrhein Westfalen as a village postman for a few months and there this old guy that could speak Plattdeutsch as a living language and we tested a few sentences both ways from English via Dutch and Frisian to platt deutsch and back again... It was fascinating to see how close the languages were in each step....

Mark K 3 meses atrás

As a Dutchman I had trouble with understanding by sound alone but reading it I can translate it correctly up to a 100%.

Zeta Reticuli 3 meses atrás

And to me it sounded like Dutch ^^

Dwayne Ellis Mês atrás

As a Texan, I understand none of this🤣 The only Olde English I understand is the 40-ounce malt liquor variety. To be honest, I catch a few words here and there, but that's it. I love watching these videos because they're teaching me. Thank y'all!

Upside Down Man 3 meses atrás

9:50 I realized that "bleo" sounds a lot like "blue" or "blau" which led me to guess "the sky is an unfamiliar shade of blue". I did not realize that the word that we use for "blue" today meant any general color in Old English. Very fun video!

Binko Binev 2 meses atrás

@Re_di_Roma_is_back I connect it to German word Blüte, which means blossom, bloom. In many languages the words for colorful us related to the word for flower.

Re_di_Roma_is_back 2 meses atrás

Definitely Bleo is related to blau and blue

DanielKonate 3 meses atrás

I was thinking the same way and that's what the old english translator says: Old English bleo Modern English bled deli see Old English bleó Modern English a colour hue complexion Old English bleó Modern English blue or azure colour Old English bléo Modern English color appearance form So Ithink the "blue/blau/bleu" guess seems correct.

Aluminium Minimalimmumität 3 meses atrás

This reminds me of the Japanese word for blue "ao" which was used for green traffic light in Japan because they didn't have a word for green. Blue was used for a wide range of colors. It seems funny to me that both worlds for blue had a similar development despite being in geographically separated cultures.

SebtorDude 3 meses atrás

You might have a point. I was also thinking of "Bläue" or "Bläuung", which would indicate a particular shade of blue colour.

M C 3 meses atrás

As an Italian with a C1 level in English and German, I was able to guess some words and phrases. And as a keen person on germanic languages, I found it very interesting!

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️ 👆

Avishai Edenburg 3 meses atrás

I just checked, and Moritz had a very good hunch regarding the original form of "sooth". The reconstructed Proto Germanic is "sanþaz". For whatever reason, this word was only used in the North Sea Germanic (English, Frisian and Continental Saxon) and in the North Germanic languages. The Old Norse had the same issue pronouncing "nth", so there were two forms for this word: "sannr" and "saðr". Today, most North Germanic languages have some form of "sann", whereas Danish has "sand". Of the North Sea Germanic languages, English appears to be the only one that retained this word past the "old" stage of the language.

Reverend Baker 29 dias atrás

@XTSonic in German there is "versündigen" but more or less confined to a religious context and thus gotten out of fashion recently.

Avishai Edenburg 3 meses atrás

@NA a more tenuous link to the original meaning is soothe, which comes from reaffirming, and through semantic drift has meant to calm in a more general sense.

Avishai Edenburg 3 meses atrás

@NA that is indeed the etymology. A soothsayer is one who speaks truths.

NA 3 meses atrás

i wonder if 'soothsayer' has its roots in this old english word. seeing the future/seeing the truth? maybe a tenuous link

Neat Chipops 3 meses atrás

Quite strangely, there is a usage of "sand" in English... to attribute possibly 'courage; stamina; perseverance' to an individual's character or speech... maybe "guts" or "determination" sometimes... although I bet it's a completely roundabout happenstance, that anything close to "veritability" is arrived at, again... oh wait, but then there's... "grit." Hmmm

kebman 2 meses atrás

In Norwegian the word we use for _heofon_ or heaven is _himmel._ It could mean the sky, but then we usually say _himmelhvelvingen,_ (the sky sphere) or it can be interpreted from context. We do have a false friend of sky, however. _Sky_ (pronounced _shy)_ means cloud in Norwegian. Plural: _Skyer_ means clouds. In archaic Norwegian _sky_ can also refer to the sea. _Eg var ute på skyen:_ I was out on the sea (as in beyond the far-out mist). The closest we get to heaven if if we _hiver_ something. It means to throw something (up in the air). _Han hev den opp i luften:_ He threw it up in the air.

Jennifer Leckenby 3 meses atrás

I feel like as a native English speaker from Scotland with a lot of Scots sprinkled in there I got a lot more than I would have otherwise.

F Egberts 3 meses atrás

I will say, as a native German English Ostfriesen (East Frisian) and Plattdeutsch (Low German) speaker, I understood quite a bit very well without too much effort, especially when seeing the written text. Culturally, I think it’s typical of Germans to see (and often overemphasize) differences over similarities. Even with some cognates, the Germans tend to focus and even fixate on what is “other/different/foreign” rather than how much they have in common. They all said they understood around 20-30 percent, but based on what we saw it was closer to 30-45, just based on this video alone. However, I think Old English still has far more in common with Modern High German than it does with modern English, and that would be apparent to any native English speaker, who doesn’t speak any other Germanic languages.

JoeyNyesss Mês atrás

@DezRav668 lol why do you hate England so much?

DezRav668 Mês atrás

To me old english seems like a bastardized version of Icelandic

JoeyNyesss 2 meses atrás

Frisian is the closest language to old English

said hammar 3 meses atrás

As a totally none European, I still see a lot of ressemblance between old English and both modern English, German, and Danish, at least very noticeable in written form.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️ 👆

HægleWōden18 3 meses atrás

Yes, very much so in written. If you take Old English, Old Norse, Vedic Sanskrit and Old Persian, like the oldest forms of all, you can still see the Indo European connection and cognancy between them, when written and not modernized.

Legatus Tacitus 3 meses atrás

As a historian (focus on Roman history) that speaks German, English, and Spanish (I can also somewhat understand Latin and Arabic), I have been trying to get into Old English and Old French. Not exactly sure where to start or what would be considered credible sources. I have been fascinated with Old English/Saxon since my sister has traced our family back to the early 500s in what is now the Hamburg region.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️ 👆

Thomas Dahill Mês atrás

Another fun one! I could only get a bit of the last conversation. It's amazing how similar Old English and Dutch are!

Giorgio Di Francesco 3 meses atrás

It's incredible how the old germanic forms for "today" are similar to the latin form "hodie" (from which derivate the italian "oggi", the spanish "hoy", the french "hui" of "aujourd'hui", etc.).

Wilson Barbosa 3 meses atrás

E do português,hoje

Claudio Pereira 3 meses atrás

@Giorgio Di Francesco didn't say that Portuguese is closer to Latin than any other romance language, only said that in some words Portuguese is closer to the Latin "raiz" than Italian for example.. it's all good Somos parte da mesma fraternidade linguistica. Ciao

Giorgio Di Francesco 3 meses atrás

@Claudio Pereira Aaaaaargh. Deus è una parola colta, ecclesiastica. Per quel motivo si è mantenuta. Perché la vostra chiesa locale ha voluto mantenerla. Tutte le lingue neolatine hanno parole che derivano sia dal latino popolare, che da quello colto. A volte provengono da uno e altre volte dall'altro. La lingua neolatina che più assomiglia al latino classico è il sardo. Così dice la linguistica.

Claudio Pereira 3 meses atrás

@Giorgio Di Francesco interessante, então diz-me a palavra Deus em Português em Latim é Deus mas em Italiano, Espanhol e Francês é: Dio, Dios, Dieu....concorda que o Português neste caso está mais proximo da raiz latina ou é relativo de novo? Nunca li ou ouvi um galego dizer que o Galego-Portugês não deriva do Latim vulgar. Um abraço amigo

Sonderborg75 3 meses atrás

Hi, German/English speaking Dane here. 😊 Funnily enough, the word sky in Danish means cloud. When we talk about the sky both as in heaven and sky, we use the word himmel, just like the Germans. So in Danish the himmel is blue, the skies are white. 😂 The word “fremd” or in Danish, “fremmed” is both used to describe someone foreign and something unknown.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you ⤴️

Fredrik Edin 3 meses atrás

In Swedish “sky” means the same as in English, but it can also mean cloud, whereas himmel means both English sky and heaven. So slightly different than Danish.

Terence Petersen-Ajbro 3 meses atrás

@Sonderborg75 Blinkers or blinders in English.

Sonderborg75 3 meses atrás

@Terence Petersen-Ajbro Yes. 😂 I don’t even know, what they’re called in English (I am a horse owner myself), but the Danish word is very descriptive of them. Flaps you put on the bridle to prevent the horse from getting scared/afraid. I just remembered, that we also call, what the French call jus, sky.

Terence Petersen-Ajbro 3 meses atrás

@Sonderborg75 at have skyklapper på is a good expression!

Catherine Koller Pope 3 meses atrás

It'd be interesting to see the experiment involving the reverse bilingual component - using native English speakers who are speakers of another West Germanic/North Germanic language. A friend and I - both British from SE England who have been living a while in a German speaking country - were able to discern our way through most of the phrases. Also just to note sanft is not cognate with sooth, and Austro-Bavarian definitely has the word Heide/heath in its lexicography. 🙂

Sean Brown 3 meses atrás

Native English speaker from the US. I find Old English fascinating. Studied standard German in school for many years and have a slight passing familiarity with Dutch. I really have to dig into my Germanic languages background to make any sense of Old English. Def not mutually intelligible with modern English. I also learn so much from the comments section!

Re_di_Roma_is_back 2 meses atrás

Not at all. THere's less difference between Latin and modern Italian. Maybe because Latin has been (and still is) more used even nowadays in official documents

Universe 3 meses atrás

Not sure if it could help but you could search Kurdish language to find a connection? It is the "ergative" language that evolved from Sumerian which is start up of the Indo-European. Thanks

marius j 3 meses atrás

You should invite a Norwegian contestant, old English, Norse , German and Dutch are all quite understandable for most of us. I listen, by happenstance, to some old 900 CE English in a church a year back, and it’s heavy influence of German and Norse was quite interesting.

Danny Baars 3 meses atrás

This is very interesting as a Dutchie because in the current English I miss a lot of cognates but seeing this old English nr guessing along with Germans makes way more sense having all Germanic as an ancestral language. I speak German, English and Dutch so I always missed the link in some words

Caleb Dahlheimer 2 meses atrás

As an English speaker with minimal old English exposure, I also correctly deciphered many of these The only stick ups were words that no longer exists

Josua Aschbacher 3 meses atrás

Old English remembers me quite to Dutch wich I always had recognized as some mixture between English and German. Quite interesting.

Skylin Winter 3 meses atrás

I was so surprised because I, as a German understand most of old English. i wonder if it also has something to do with where you come from in germany and what dialect you might speak within germany

Jason Childs 3 meses atrás

Thank you for this, I think that most Non-English speakers think that English just appaired out of nowhere and is simple. But it was once a very complicated language that evolved into what we speak now.

J W &apso 3 meses atrás

me too

Mark Ledbetter 3 meses atrás

Loved this. I got from the discussion that sooth of soothlice means truth. It then hit me there may be a remnant related to soothlice in modern English: soothsayer. (Truth sayer) Edekje, I’m not sure if you are being serious. But your 17th/18th c. linguist noticed some interesting similarities among languages. However, the understanding of relationships between and among languages really developed in the 19th c thanks to the work of countless linguists building off each other. In a nutshell, EVERY language (with a few special case exceptions) is a modern variation of the oldest or original language. That original language was likely spoken maybe 70,000 years ago in or near the Horn of Africa. As the speakers of that language spread around the world, their language split and split again as groups separated from each other, and developed separate languages. Most European (and also Iranian/Pakistani/N. Indian) languages came from a variant of the “original” language spoken by one small group living between the Black and Caspian Seas maybe 6 thousand years ago. They spread west, southwest, and southeast to become the IndoEuropean mega family. One branch off of that mega family is the Germanic branch, which includes Dutch.

t t 3 meses atrás

Would love to see another Simon Old English video with Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and/or Icelandic native speakers. I've been learning Danish for a few years and I made a lot of the same Danish-related observations that Eric did.

Mr. Snow Leopard 3 meses atrás

I would like to see a similar film, but with Finno-Ugric languages (Finnish, Estonian, Karelian).

Thomas O'Connor 3 meses atrás

And Elvish

ferretyluv 3 meses atrás

@XTSonic More like Irish to Greek or German to French.

Alex Storm 3 meses atrás

Those also include Finno-Ugric languages of Russia such as Udmurt, Mordvinic languages, Komi-Zyryan, Mari and Karelian, which you already mentioned.

ferretyluv 3 meses atrás

And Sami!

XTSonic 3 meses atrás

@Eduard Hungarian is too far removed. It's as close to Finnish as English is to Greek.

Bjørn Are Stølen 3 meses atrás

As a Norwegian, it was interesting to guess at the sentences!

Kuhmuhnistische Partei: Muht zur Kuhzunft! 3 meses atrás

'Fremder' actually doesn't just refer to foreigners in modern German. It can mean all kinds of things. "Fremdes Eigentum" just means "Other peoples property", "fremde Tierart" means an unkown animal species to a specific person or "gutes Verhalten ist ihm fremd" means "Good manners are unfamiliar to him". And "Fremdverschulden" doesn't mean "foreigners are to blame", it means "fault of a third party/ another person" legally distinguished from "Eigenverschulden" - someones own fault (Fremdverschulden und Eigenverschulden are terms mostly used for something like a car accident or other lawsuits where you have to determine who caused it). A "Fremder" can just be a stranger, like "Warum ist da ein Fremder in unserem Garten?" - "Why is there a stranger in our garden?". When I'm honest, the only examples where "Fremder" has explicitly to do with "foreigner" is in the term "fremdenfeindlich" (xenophobe

ichglotzTV 3 meses atrás

Not to forget Fremdsprachen

Charza Kwinn 2 meses atrás

At 10:00 it is mentioned that Blēo means “color”. I as a Frisian thought it meant “Blue” which would make perfect sense within the context of the sentence. “Heaven has a strange (kind of) blue”.

NanaKatz 3 meses atrás

German, speak English and a bit of Swedish. I got the first sentence of the Conversation right from listening and then the whole thing when I saw the script. I got lucky with „the truth“ because I thought of the Greek „sophie“, too. 😅

bear Mês atrás

Hurray, I got it too! Love this! I'm glad to see young people fascinated by languages ❤ Sophlice can probably mean wisely

UnshavenStatue 3 meses atrás

Wiktionary is a great reference for looking up etymologies on the fly. Searching it for soþ quickly leads to PGer *sanþaz, including anglo-frisian descendants but also modern norsish sannur/sann/sand, all meaning something like "true". That also gives the PIE source *h₁sónts, and it lists numerous other descendants, tho with a wide variety of meanings -- Latin sons, meaning "guilty" or "criminal", Ancient Greek on or eon, meaning "reality", and Sanskrit sat, meaning "existing" or "real".

Small Wisdom 3 meses atrás

@SurfinScientist these translate to german "Sinn" and "sinnvoll" with very similar pronunciation. Not sure if it's a cognate to the old english one.

SurfinScientist 3 meses atrás

@Small Wisdom We Dutch have the word "zin" or "zinvol".

Languages 3 meses atrás

ων in Ancient Greek is exactly the active present participle of be and is used now as an neuter adjective ον meaning something that exists and some other forms. -sens is used for the active present participle of be in Latin in some compound verbs like absum.

geisaune 3 meses atrás

etymonline is also a very good resource. It only has english words and their origins though

Small Wisdom 3 meses atrás

But as written in the other comment, might also be english "sin", german "sünde". Very curious.

BlameThande 3 meses atrás

Having the short conversation as well as just the sentences was a nice addition - after hearing it a couple of times I started adapting and hearing more of the meaning.

Sean Faherty 3 meses atrás

How is this not a game show ? You could do different language groups every week. Good thing nobody lets me produce TV shows.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️ 👆

Sher 5 dias atrás

Old English has such a beautiful smooth sound Wish it was still spoken commonly.

Caillean McCain 3 meses atrás

Regarding the third sentence, reading it afterwards I spontaneously thought, that it makes a lot of sense that "bleo" is colour, seeing as the sky would normally be blue... so I looked it up: from Old English blēo, bleoh ("colour, hue, complexion, form"), from Proto-Germanic *blīwą ("colour, blee", also "light, glad"); Cognate with Scots ble‎, blee, blie ("colour, complexion"), Old Frisian blī‎, blie ("colour, hue, complexion"; > North Frisian bläy‎), Old Saxon blī‎ ("colour, hue, complexion"), Old High German blīo(h)‎ ("colour, hue"), blīo ("metallic lead") (German Blei‎), Danish bly‎ ("lead"), Icelandic blý‎ ("lead"). So it rather has to do with a metallic-grey shimmer regarding German - which today you can still find in word "bleiern". You can use that to describe the colour of a greyish-blue sky similar to the color of lead (but in a rather depressive sense). Originally it referred to the blueish-white colour of freshly cut lead, so a rather friendly color, and is very close to the adjective Old High German 'blīdi', Middle High German 'blīde' ‘heiter, freundlich’, Old High German also ‘glänzend’, those mean "fair/bright/cheery, friendly/pleasant" and "shiny/glossy/radiant". Then, the conversation with the word "truthfully", "sothlice", that has the descendant "sooth"/"truth" in English, and ascendants: From Middle English sooth, from Old English sōþ (“truth; true, actual, real”), from Proto-Germanic *sanþaz (“truth; true”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁sónts, *h₁s-ont- (“being, existence, real, true”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- (“to be”). Akin to Old Saxon sōþ (“true”), Old High German sand (“true”), Old Norse sannr (“true”), Gothic 𐍃𐌿𐌽𐌾𐌰 (sunja, “truth”), Old English synn (“sin, guilt"; literally, "being the one guilty”). Honestly, I have never heard of the connection between "sand" and "truth" in German before. As a sidenote, I also found out, that the word "soothsayer", who is now someone predicting the future, used to be someone who is telling the truth. I guess that back in the days, that would have seemed to be the same thing...

AntoniusPaganorumRex Mês atrás

I got the word that follows "spricst", although it took me a moment. Recognizing that the third letter is thorn, and that the rest is an adverbial suffix equivalent to "ly" as in "comely" or "like" as in "lifelike", I recognized the first three letters as cognate of "sooth", which at least in Shakespeare's day meant "truth", so my translation is "truly".

S H 3 meses atrás

I feel like if you had dutch/flemish speakers on here it would be easier to understand for them than any other germanic language speakers

Reverend Baker 29 dias atrás

@Prospekt Arty I whart you claim is true I don't understand why linguists put german frisian, dutch and english into the wester variety and danish, swedish and norse into the northern germanic varietiy of germanic languages.

Prospekt Arty Mês atrás

The confusion between modern English and old English is that modern English is not directly descended from the version of old English used in this video. Modern English is descended from Anglo-Norse or a heavily scandinavianised form English spoken in the Eastern half of England from Yorkshire to London. This language developed in the Anglo-Viking settlements in England as a result English lost its West Germanic grammatical structure and adopted a distinctly Scandinavian grammar and syntax that has survived into modern English. The old English used I this video ceased to be the language of England after the Norman conquest. People forget that before 1066 the Capital of England was Winchester where the prestigious Wessex dialect was spoken and most literature in old English were written in that dialect by clergy. Unfortunately the Normans moved the capital back to London from Winchester. London north of the Thames had been the southernmost part of Danish England - an area that covered 45% of England where an Anglo Danish or Anglo- Norse dialect had developed when English retuned as official language of England that was the dialect that was used as the standard language known as Middle English. By that time Middle English had diverged significantly from old English. If Anglo Saxon had survived in its purest form it would resemble Dutch and German. But it hasn’t so what we speak today is part West Germanic and part North Germanic, with the grammar and syntax being almost entirely north Germanic in origin and this can be confusing for many linguists who may not have made the distinction. It also shows why most modern English speakers struggle with Old English.

Niall Russell 3 meses atrás

"and other germanic language speakers" would also include modern english speakers!

SurfinScientist 3 meses atrás

I am Dutch with some knowledge of German and I understood as much as the German speakers.

Rua Whitepaw 3 meses atrás

I'm Dutch and I still had a hard time understanding it spoken. But in writing I found it much easier. I have studied a bit of Old English though so I'm not an average Dutch person.

Renee Rasanen 3 meses atrás

As someone learning Icelandic, this wasn't so difficult to understand.

Ben S 3 meses atrás

I find this sort of thing fascinating, finding cognates between English and German. Having not studied German or Old English, I daresay you guys will have spotted these almost immediately, but it was fun to figure out what the English cognate of "Zeit" was - "tide" in English, like "Yuletide" (and, also, being an island, chances are the actual sea tides would have been seen as intrinsically related to times of day). Also, I learned something about English from this! I knew from a different source that "Heide" is German for "heathen" - I didn't realise it also meant "heath", and therefore it was a discovery for me that the etymology of "heathen" in English is directly from "heath", i.e. that non-Christian polytheists were viewed as living in open, wild country, "away from civilisation", so to speak.

sebaestschn1 Mês atrás

With Austrian / South German, it is very difficult to get the connections to Old English. But around 20% was understandable. Very interesting.

Pilzjäger 3 meses atrás

What I find super interesting is that I can't make out what it'd be when I hear it but written old English makes much more sense to me and looks very German.

SideWalk Astronomy Netherlands. 3 meses atrás

it is way closer to old Dutch/lowgerman and Frisian than to high German

[moːʁɪt͡s la͜ʊɐ] 3 meses atrás

@Ontario Traffic Man well you could argue that Low German as an ingvaeonic language is closer to English than Dutch is

Ontario Traffic Man 3 meses atrás

@[moːʁɪt͡s la͜ʊɐ] Sorry I meant North Frisian (Sylt Frisian in this case). Sylt Frisian is influenced by Danish as well as Low German, and both of those languages are more distant from English than Dutch is.

[moːʁɪt͡s la͜ʊɐ] 3 meses atrás

@Ontario Traffic Man there was no East Frisian in the video and I think that East Frisian wasn't influenced by Danish, but more by Low German.

Ontario Traffic Man 3 meses atrás

Also I suspect that West Frisian is more similar to English than East Frisian because it's been influenced by Dutch rather than Danish, and Dutch is more similar to English than Danish

Arthur Dent 3 meses atrás

of course it is. No pesky High German sound shifts in English, Dutch, Frisian, or Low German.

Jeff Williams 3 meses atrás

I've seen a few of these videos, and for what it's worth, I'd like to see this as a cooperative activity rather than a "competitive" one. Everyone could brainstorm together for the answer, and we could all learn from their reasoning without the weird element of "who did it better." Just my 2 cents.

Arthur Dent 3 meses atrás

2:31, actually "heute" derives from Old High German "hiutu", which in turn is a contraction of "hiu tagu", literally "on this day". So still a perfect cognate.

Junctionfilms 3 meses atrás

@Ænglisc Mid Eadwine - Old English with Eadwine It is nevertheless an interesting sounding word - I wonder if it was a 'vernacular' - Indeed - Todaeg , would probably have also been recognisable as the German speakers also forestood English well.

Neat Chipops 3 meses atrás

@Junctionfilms Well, the Dutch were also inundated by the Spanish, for a time... ironic if they had brought more of the VisiGoth back w them.

Ænglisc Mid Eadwine - Old English with Eadwine 3 meses atrás

@Junctionfilms In the most generous interpretation, he chose a word that would be more likely to be understood by Germans. However he also could just like the word - he's used it before. It could just be that he didn't look into frequency of the two words.

Junctionfilms 3 meses atrás

@Ænglisc Mid Eadwine - Old English with Eadwine or 'Scathefrolic' is maybe more accurate :-) Interestimg what you mention as then I wonder why Simon chose 'heodaeg'.

Ænglisc Mid Eadwine - Old English with Eadwine 3 meses atrás

@Junctionfilms "or even people spoke 'to' in some OE times but it was not written in the more formal texts" - actually no. "Heodæg" was used exactly once in the Old English corpus - and it is in Genesis B, a poem which was translated from Old Saxon - the ancestor to Low German. "Todæg" is used hundreds of times in the Old English corpus. Seemingly "heodæg" was an invented word created to literally translate a German word - comparable to if we were to literally translate "zeitgeist" as "time-spirit" or "schadenfreude" as "hurt-joy".

18SpursMarco82 3 meses atrás

I’m completely ignorant to language beyond my own but I find this fascinating, excellent watch, to see there are similarities which are quite clearly understandable across current language used is fascinating, as is the development of the English language from its origins…

Rosh P 3 meses atrás

These videos are strangely addictive/interesting! Good job!

capt geesh 3 meses atrás

Very cool. English speaker, here, and whenever I here old English, I always feel like I'm JUST outside of comprehension. Like I'd pick it up super quick if immersed

LadySensei Mês atrás

Fascinating! Great work guys. I really loved this.

Geezer | Rust Builder 2 meses atrás

As an English speaker with an English degree (who speaks just a bit of German) I got most of this with the text, and the very general context listening, including sothlich... which I guessed was a cognate of sooth (retained today only as soothsayer)... for truth. I had no idea about cystig, but understood contextually. Spicst and weald I got becuase of I know a bit of German.

Флинтхард 3 meses atrás

Cheers, Norbert! Thanks for making further videos! Simon's interesting in particular.

RoniBoi Mês atrás

I understood surprisingly quite a bit. As an English speaker. I just had to listen carefully and think of what is sounded like in English.

Dennis Wilkerson 18 dias atrás

I could listen to these guys speak about what words are cognates in other languages for hours

Theoderich 3 meses atrás

Watching this I learned that some words in my language, like "genug" (=enough) are over a thousand years old.....and have not changed since - just like the 2nd person singular of the verb "sprechen" which is still "sprichst" - amazing to me. Reading "wuda" I was reminded of "Widukind", the "child of the woods" the famous Saxon leader who lived, fought and died here in eastern Westphalia in the 8th century....

Reverend Baker 29 dias atrás

Try to read some middle high german. I tried it once und habe so gut wie alles verstanden. Amazing.

Ducdashot Mês atrás

its kinda funny how as a native english speaker i only understand parts of old english because i learnt latin in school and german in my adulthood and using the 2 i can kinda cross reference them to decipher what hes saying, if i was going just by my english knowledge i'd be completely lost. its pretty funny how old english is completely unintelligible from modern english but if you know frisian or northern german you can start to work it out

Ducdashot Mês atrás

personally i find it far easier to understand old english written as opposed to spoken but thats just because my spoken german is god awful

Dizzy Lizzy 3 meses atrás

Oh! So fun! Just a Midwest housewife here…I got the first one, and after reading the last written exchange, I got that one, too! I speak English, a little German, and a little Spanish. 😋

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you ⤴️👆

Rachel Dali Hug 3 meses atrás

I enjoy when you play this game so much! It is amazing how much I can pick up on. English is the only language I speak well, but I grew up hearing German, and I study Old Norse a bit as a hobby. Thank you for doing this!

Florian Ackermann 3 meses atrás

To me the old English word for colour in the phrase "the heaven has a strange colour" sounds like blue. Which would kinda give the right meaning in the context of the blue sky: the sky has a strange blue. Not sure if that works, but I feel like it could make sense.

Ice baby 3 meses atrás

I find old English is very different from modern German, despite that some words look alike, the difference is much bigger than German and Dutch.

J Koperski 3 meses atrás

Loving this quartet. It's my favorite together with Dr. Crawford an Norwegian/ Danish/ Swedish/ Icelandic /Finnish speakers. But that's because I'm certainly interested in the Nordic languages. All languages are beautiful though, and I love the diversity incredibly much.

Pelagius' Hipbone 3 meses atrás

Absolutely loving these old English vids. I’m just holding I it hope for one with Dutch, German and maybe Icelandic speakers then I can rest in peace

klila16 3 meses atrás

10:10 The cognate for bleo could be blue/blau. Perhaps colour was at one point synonymous with blue. Would have to look at the etymology. Edit: yes it’s related to German Blau via proto-west Germanic blēwaz, bliwa, blīu. Which meant colour or hue. We ended up with colour from French and probably borrowed blue back to mean blue this time instead of colour more generally.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️ 👆

BetonPark Studios 3 meses atrás

I think Dutch and North German with a Frisian dialect make it much easier to understand than the normal High German dialect. super interesting... thanks

Earthquaker Mês atrás

Frisian is the closest relative to English so that makes sense

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️ 👆

jerem aronno 3 meses atrás

Thanks you Norbert once again for this very interesting video! So nice to hear some old english to trace back its history!! Could you make some videos with the baltic languages or the altai like finnish and ungarian? Thank

Alex Avendano 3 meses atrás

As someone who speaks Spanish, English & French I understand 1% of old English.

Anduriel7 3 meses atrás

I love these germanic challenges. I'm german and i also speak english and norwegian. The last one was great. I read it in my mind like. Hva ... in that hus? Edward. That timber is verotten. Du sprichst ... auch he ... wald genug. Ick mag dir meine würde gegeben haben. Du bist sehr richtig? (That one's tough).

Max Edelstahl 2 meses atrás

To me "soþlice" looks a bit like the Danish adjective "södlig" söd = sweet/nice/pleasant/kind lig = like

TC Safavi 3 meses atrás

I find it so interesting that I can always hear the grammar of each sentence, even if I understand zero of the words. It has that niggling "I should understand this" feeling of when you hear someone use a word you don't know in a sentence, where you struggle with trying to infer the missing word from context so you can answer without sounding foolish. Except this works like that with ALL of the words. For "Se heofon hath fremdu bleo" the only word I understood was "hath" (using the early modern spelling for lack of special symbol ability at present), but I achingly knew that the sentence was "article subject hath adjective object" and it drove me crazy going back and forth thinking how i should be able to infer one word from the next, but i didn't have a starting point. This is fascinating because it's so different than how I hear other languages where the grammar is different, as if it were some puzzle I have to decode. There's an inherent otherness to my ear, it's not just 'someone speaking to me' but rather 'someone giving me a coded challenge I must think hard about.' It takes a lot of mental energy to keep up the effort of trying to decode what my brain will always read as some kind of test or trick. In this case, English grammar has an identifiable cadence and order that is train so deeply into my brain that it can't sound foreign. It emotionally feels like someone is trying to talk *to* me, to simply communicate a thought to me as another person, instead of a teacher or a prankster trying to trip me up. So i think I'd be much more motivated to 'fake it till i make it' and try to figure out what 'that one word i embarrassingly don't understand in this convo' as a result, and would probably learn it quicker. It still feels like MY language and that I should be just an inch away from getting it, you know? Does anyone else who speaks English as a first language get this effect?

Reverend Baker 29 dias atrás

Now but you certainly and definitely described the effect listening to the examples had on me. First language: German. I did get some words though and I derived some meaning out of the conversation (rotten wood for instance)-

Michelle Franklin 3 meses atrás

Love when Simon is here. You know it's gonna be good!

Ad. Ke. 3 meses atrás

I can see similarities to my alemannic dialect. Espacially when it comes to grammer. We sometimes form the plural by changing a vocal. A famous football coach ones formed the plural of Doktor by saying Döktor, which only makes sense in context of his dialect. The older people say Mannen when the form the plural of Mann, what I also discovered in Old English.

Michael Hahn 3 meses atrás

I mean it's easier to understand the sentences if you read them. Spoken and unrelated, the meaning is much more difficult to figure out. Otherwise: Very interesting concept! (Micha from (Northern) Germany)

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️👆

Chris 3 meses atrás

These videos are excellent! The participants brought their own particular experience and added something to the whole. For example, the suggestions for cognates in different Germanic languages which were not necessarily immediately apparent. Thank you!

PerksJulien 3 meses atrás

I am American but I am fluent in French, have studied Spanish for one year and German for one year. I only briefly had to read exerts of Beowulf in high school but I literally got just as much as the Frisian guy! The only thing I didn’t understand was knowing what a heath was, I heard it correctly but didn’t know what it was, the line in the conversation saying he would have given him some of his wood, and therefore I understood the last to mean you are very… adjective. No clue about the last word but I can see now how the second to last sentence makes sense.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️👆

Luca 3 meses atrás

“Sophlice” is actually quite similar to the Italian word “soffice”. But it is used to describe an object, for instance a bed or a pillow.

MoonOnAStick 3 meses atrás

As an English speaker the only way I have any idea what these are is to use German to vaguely understand some words. It’s amazing how far English has morphed - and continues to change rapidly.

slubert 3 meses atrás

As a speaker of english German and Icelandic (that has traveled allot in scandinavia) this was not so difficult. :D

LauraJane LuvsBeauty 3 meses atrás

This was very interesting! Definitely understood some of it, but not all for sure

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️ 👆

Peter Weiss 3 meses atrás

Well, firstly, very interesting indeed! But still, I want to disagree with my german compagnions. Im not as educated in these depths of language studies like e.g. Moritz, but I still think, that I at a few points, I understood more than them, even from simply hearing the repeated phrases. For me, it feels like I can understand 30-60% of the phrases, just from hearing it again and again... Its really captivating !!!

Amanda Helmers 3 meses atrás

Moin! English speaker living here in Germany. I was surprised by how much I could understand of the OE conversation after it was shown writen out. Really cool stuff!

wayne hellyer 14 dias atrás

Love this I wish we kept our old English

rojbalc77 3 meses atrás

Great stuff! I was wondering whether bleo had any connection with bloom. It sounds a bit like Blömche (flower in the Kölscher dialect), bloeme (flowers - Dutch) or Blüte (bloom/blossom - German). This would imply a colour connection.

Alex Bowman 3 meses atrás

It’s really only in the past few decades with first radio and then television that languages have become fixed and widely fully understandable. Before we would when meeting people from outside our locality spoke in a lingua Franca, a common word language.

Reverend Baker 29 dias atrás

@Alex Bowman I would really like to travel back in time to do some testing. Old texts can bis a substitute to some degree, What I can see is that English went through some more fundamental changes during the last 1000 years compared to German. I can read and understand middle high German, it appears more ore less like a dialect of modern standard German, while there seem to be severe changes and differences from old english to the lingua franca of today.

Alex Bowman 29 dias atrás

@Reverend Baker yes, I imagine in old times languages were Lingua Franca's where it wasn't exactly fixed and rather loose

Reverend Baker 29 dias atrás

I would guess that alphabetisation and printing did their contribution fixing languages and maybe the abscence of turmoil and conquest. But in the essence I agree.

sam ye 9 dias atrás

English is one of my second language and to me old english sounds like german or dutch but with a strong sense of old norse and other modern Scandinavian germanic languages because I notice the tone of the old English is very similar to old norse

Joel Mattsson 3 meses atrás

Sky in modern swedish means the same as it does in english, although it's percieved as maybe somewhat archaic/poetic, and himmel (loaned from old saxon, replaced native himin) is perhaps the slightly more common word

Christy OToole 3 meses atrás

This was so interesting. I would like to see if they could understand a more complicated sentence at all as well. As I have a few german words and when i see it written i can get the jist of it.

Slim567 3 meses atrás

Would be interesting to do old English with Afrikaans, Dutch, and Low German 😁

Irfan b 2 meses atrás

2:30 The Old English word for today makes me think of the Dutch word hedendaags, which means contemporary.

TJB 3 meses atrás

Amazed by how well I understood most of this with my A2 level of german and linguistics studies

Desmond 2 meses atrás

As someone who knows almost no Old English, I could *mostly* read the last dialog, once he put the written words on screen. They didn't really talk about it but the last sentence is basically "Thou art well - (something)". Not sure of the last word.

robbert89rl 3 meses atrás

As a dutch speaker I almost understand everything, especially when it's written. I saw people from other countries struggling with it, even Germans, in videos, while I exactly knew what was meant. What could be the reason for that?

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩+𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟗𝟑𝟕𝟖𝟎𝟏𝟏𝟎 3 meses atrás

⤴️ Tell Andrei jikh i referred you, has something to share with you⤴️

Ice baby 3 meses atrás

Anglo-Saxons came from the coastal regions in northern Germany to the east of the Netherlands and to the south of Jutland in Denmark, maybe that's why you understand old English better than the Germans.