Learn to read dead languages

Urling teaches you to read old languages in their real texts, starting with a real line in your first few minutes. It is free, and you need no account.

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Choose a language

• Old EnglishOld English is the language of England from about 450 to 1150. It is the ancestor of what you are reading now, and it looks stranger than it is.
• LatinLatin is the language of Rome, and for a thousand years after Rome it was the language of European learning. You can start reading it far sooner than a grammar book suggests.
• Ancient GreekThe Greek in this course is Koine, the everyday Greek of the eastern Mediterranean after Alexander. It is the language of the New Testament and of letters people sent home from Roman Egypt.
• Old NorseOld Norse is the language of the Vikings and of medieval Iceland. It is the language of the sagas and the Eddas, and of inscriptions cut into stone from Sweden to the Black Sea trade routes.
• Biblical HebrewBiblical Hebrew is the language of most of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. Its sentences are often short and its vocabulary repeats, which makes it kinder to beginners than its unfamiliar script suggests.
• Biblical AramaicParts of the Bible aren't in Hebrew at all. About half of the Book of Daniel and several chapters of Ezra are in Aramaic, the shared language of much of the ancient Near East.
• GothicGothic is the oldest Germanic language we can read at length. It is an extinct cousin of English, German and Swedish, and almost everything we know of it comes from one Bible translation.
• Old Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic is the first written Slavic language. It was created for Bible translation in the ninth century, and it is a close early relative of Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Polish and the rest.

Read these first

• The opening of Beowulf in Old EnglishOld English
• Cædmon's Hymn in Old EnglishOld English
• The opening of The Wanderer in Old EnglishOld English
• The Viking raid on Lindisfarne in the Anglo-Saxon ChronicleOld English
• Wulf and Eadwacer in Old EnglishOld English
• Catullus 85: Odi et amoLatin
• The opening of the Aeneid: Arma virumque canoLatin
• All Gaul is divided: the opening of Caesar's Gallic WarLatin
• What people wrote on the walls of PompeiiLatin
• John 1:1–5 in the original GreekAncient Greek
• A boy's furious letter to his fatherAncient Greek
• Hávamál: “Cattle die, kinsmen die”Old Norse
• Hávamál: Odin hangs on the treeOld Norse
• Grendel comes to Heorot, in Old EnglishOld English
• The ending of Beowulf in Old EnglishOld English
• Bede's sparrow in the hall, in Old EnglishOld English
• The opening of Hávamál in Old NorseOld Norse
• Thor's stolen hammer in Old NorseOld Norse
• “Fair is the hillside”, from Njáls sagaOld Norse
• Catullus 5 in Latin: “Let us live, my Lesbia”Latin
• “Quo usque tandem”: Cicero against CatilineLatin
• “Carpe diem”: Horace's original LatinLatin
• The Lord's Prayer in Latin: Pater nosterLatin
• The Lord's Prayer in Ancient GreekAncient Greek
• The Beatitudes in Ancient GreekAncient Greek
• Hilarion's letter to his wife, from 1 BCAncient Greek
• Psalm 23 in HebrewBiblical Hebrew
• The Shema in HebrewBiblical Hebrew
• Genesis 1 in Hebrew: “In the beginning”Biblical Hebrew
• The Ten Commandments in HebrewBiblical Hebrew
• The Priestly Blessing in HebrewBiblical Hebrew
• Psalm 121 in HebrewBiblical Hebrew
• The Book of Jonah in HebrewBiblical Hebrew
• The writing on the wall, in AramaicBiblical Aramaic
• Daniel in the lions' den, in AramaicBiblical Aramaic
• John 3:16 in the original GreekAncient Greek
• The Prodigal Son in Ancient GreekAncient Greek
• The Nativity in Ancient Greek (Luke 2)Ancient Greek
• The Magnificat in Ancient GreekAncient Greek
• The Lord's Prayer in GothicGothic
• The Lord's Prayer in Old Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic

The app also has early-access courses in other languages, including Sanskrit, Middle Egyptian and Akkadian.