Old English Lesson 1 : Pronounciation

Lesson 1 of my series of Old English Lessons

[clivegoodman]

Old English pronunciation makes much more sense than Modern English pronunciation.

[onthelamb]

If anyone knows this man, can they tell him about Duolingo. I really want to learn this language.

[niechcezyc]

This used to be my specialisation at the Master's tutorial. Loved all those accents, processes and the cognitive approach. Wherefore no longer then? Please, do not abandon your passions like I did.

[harrymcnamara]

I would have loved if we spoke like this today, we would have a closer relationship with our European brothers; the Germans and the Scandinavians the Dutch, etc...
It's almost like we've lost our identity. Like whenever you watch a fantasy film or game, the characters will sound like this. It's so fascinating to find out or heritage. It's hard to believe that if a few events hadn't occurred, we'd speak like this today.

[Crocheting_Cat_Mom]

I want to double major in English and History (I'm currently undeclared), and one of the classes offered at my university that fulfills the linguistics requirement for an upper-division course is Old English! Totally wanna take it!

[fahrudinduratovic]

I find worldwide history interesting, but English history is extra special to me although I have nothing to do with it, everyone should have a understanding about past languages

[TrigintaSeptem]

Yeah, languages are very fun. I'm pretty much obsessed with them. The history of the English language certainly is a quite complicated one and, though probably the most studied, strangely enough, is largely a mystery. With so many words from so many different places, through changes like the Great Vowel Shift (as well as a very large need for a spelling reform), there is definitely no lack of knowledge to be acquired concerning it.

[terrysky]

I'm Cantonese, and I love the English language.

[Arclocki]

we have still all these vowels in Hungarian. :) Thank you for your videos, it explains a lot to me! (y)
Old English has many similarity to "old" and the modern Hungarian, our language did not change so much. I want to talk to you about this.

[uiruu]

Thank you for telling me. Linguistics and the history of languages fascinates me, so to be proved wrong on something I thought was simple is cool.

[ruser]

You have a point. English does allow for some variation and the color /colour ( sorry I am not British) dichotomy has been a famous feature of the language globally.

[silenteyesspy]

in northern Germanic languages sk is sh and sk..depending on the word..therefore in Old English it could very well be shk. what you have to remember is that Old English is technically Anglo and Saxon..two different regions..Anglo is north German close to where Denmark is now and Saxon is south western German between/in Netherlands and Germany..it honestly all depends on where you would have come from. I like this man's videos the best because they're the closest thing to Old English

[SiriClub]

It is pronunciation and not pronounciation.

[kingjae]

the accent mark should still be in modern English it would make things way more easier

[TranceExplosion]

I think alot of people tend to forget that there is different dialects of Old English, each having different pronunciations, spellings and words.

[TrigintaSeptem]

They were originally. But it's very possible that the change occurred in Old English or Early Middle English. We don't know for certain their pronunciation until Modern English.

[Unbrutal_Rawr]

There are many mistakes in this video:
1) _é_ is [e:~ɛ:] as in German Rede/Räder or Australian there, not the diphthong [ɛɪ] as in -may-
2) _éo_ and _éa_ are [e:o] and [e:ɑ], without an [ɪ] inbetween.
3) _ó_ is [o:~ɔ:] as in caught, not the diphthong [əʊ] as in -boat-
3) the voiceless velar fricative is spelled _h_, the voiced one is always _ġ_
4) you pronounce _h_ as uvular instead of velar, resulting in "throat-clearing"

Overall, no attempt has been made to detach the pronunciation from the speaker's mother tongue, which is exactly why most any language sounds horrible from an English native.

[hochspannunglebensgefahr]

As an American who speaks German, I have high hopes for learning this

[teery]

That German/French U sound is also found in the Yorkshire accent and, as I understand it, used by some Irish and Scottish people.

[SuperSixTeam]

I'm Italian and I study Latin at school. This guys is very easy for me to understand, even if Latin itself has its hard stuff.
However, some letters are very similiar to our letters and so do their pronunciation, as for the "sc" sounding like "shoe", as for the "o" and "oa". In this case, what I thought as the first huge difference is the "ae" not being read like an open "a". In Latin the "ae" is read "e" as in "fed".