Old English grammar for readers
Short notes for reading. Old English is the ancestor of the language you are reading now, so a lot of it is closer than it looks. Every example comes from a text in this course.
Start reading Old English
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It is still English
Old English has letters we lost: þ and ð, both “th”, and æ, the vowel of “man”. Its verbs have the endings you know from old Bibles: “thou sayest”, “he hath”.
Read words aloud when they look strange. Very often you will hear the modern word inside them.
Hwæt sægst þu, yrþling?
What sayest thou, ploughman?
hwæt is “what”, sægst “sayest”, þu “thou”.
Hu begæst þu weorc þin?
How dost thou do thy work?
hu is “how”, weorc “work”, þin “thy”.
Verb endings say who
The present tense usually has -e for I, -st for thou and -þ for he or she. All the plurals share -aþ.
“To be” is irregular, as it still is, and you can already see “am”, “art” and “is” in it.
| eom | I | I am |
| eart | thou | you are |
| is | he, she, it | he is |
| syndon | plural | they are |
| wæs | past | he was |
| wǣron | past plural | they were |
“The” changes with its job
Old English nouns change for their job in the sentence, but many of those endings look alike. The word for “the”, which also means “that”, is often the clearest clue.
| se | nominative | the one doing it |
| þone | accusative | the one it is done to |
| þæs | genitive | of the |
| þām | dative | to, with or in the |
Ongeat þā se gōda
Then the good man perceived
se shows who does the perceiving.
Ofsæt þā þone sele‐gyst
Then she sat on the hall-guest
þone shows who it is done to. “She” comes from the context.
Noun endings
The commonest group of nouns has endings you partly know already. Our possessive 's comes from -es, and our plural -s comes from -as. The ending -um usually means “to, with or by” several things.
| eorl | one | a nobleman, doing it or having it done |
| eorle | dative | to or with a nobleman |
| eorlas | plural | noblemen, doing it or having it done |
| eorla | genitive plural | of noblemen |
| eorlum | dative plural | to or with noblemen |
þǣr wæs hearpan swēg, swutol sang scopes.
there was the sound of the harp, the clear song of the poet.
scopes has -es: “the poet's”.
flota wæs on ȳðum,
the ship was on the waves,
ȳðum has -um, after the small word on.
He, him and hine
Most pronouns are close to modern ones, with one catch: him means “to him”, and “him” as a direct object is hine. Also watch hīe, which means “they” or “them”, and sometimes “her”, and hēo, which means “she”.
| hē | nominative | he does it |
| hine | accusative | it is done to him |
| his | genitive | his |
| him | dative | to or for him; to them |
hine fyrwyt bræc
curiosity troubled
hine is what curiosity troubles: it comes first, and the doer second.
him wæs geōmor sefa,
sad was their spirit,
him, literally “to them”, stands where English would say “their”.
Two kinds of past
You know both kinds already. “Walked” adds an ending; “sang” changes its vowel. Old English does the same: weak verbs add -de or -ode, strong verbs change the vowel.
With “they”, the past tense ends in -on.
| hæfde, hæfdon | weak | he had, they had |
| wolde, woldon | weak | he wanted, they wanted |
| hēold | strong | he held |
| cwōm, cwōmon | strong | he came, they came |
Swā þā driht‐guman drēamum lifdon
So the retainers lived in joys
lifdon: “they lived”, with -d- plus -on.
Word order and “then”
Plain prose is often close to modern order. After þā “then”, the verb tends to come straight away: “then was the voyage over”.
Poetry moves words around far more freely and can put the subject long after its verb, so rely on the endings there.
þā wæs sund liden,
then the sea-voyage was
þā, then the verb wæs, then the subject sund.
Cōm þā tō recede rinc
Then the warrior came to the hall
A verse line: the verb is first, and “warrior” comes four words later.
Ne, and double negatives
“Not” is ne, placed before the verb. It often fuses with the verb: næs is ne wæs, “was not”.
Several negatives in a row only make the “no” stronger, and they do not cancel out.
sorge ne cūðon,
they knew no sorrow,
ne right before the verb.
næs þǣr māra fyrst,
there was no longer time
næs: ne plus wæs.
nē gē lēafnes‐word gūð‐fremmendra gearwe ne wisson,
you clearly did not know the password of warriors,
Two negatives, one meaning.
Shall, may and will
Our helping verbs are here already, though sceal means “must” rather than “shall”, mæg “can” rather than “may”, and wille “wants to”. The main verb, usually ending in -an, tends to come at the very end.
lof‐dǣdum sceal in mǣgða gehwǣre man geþēon.
by praiseworthy deeds a man shall prosper in every tribe.
sceal early, and geþēon “prosper” at the very end.
wolde hire bearn wrecan,
she wanted to avenge her son,
wolde “wanted”, and wrecan “to avenge” at the end.
-ende and ge-
-ende is our -ing: murnende “mourning”. The prefix ge- often marks a past form, like “-ed”, and it survived into Chaucer's y-clept. German has the same prefix in gemacht.
“To do” can be -an, or tō with -enne or -anne.
murnende mōd.
mournful their mind.
murnende: “mourning”.
þā wæs hring‐bogan heorte gefȳsed sæcce tō sēceanne.
then the heart of the ring-coiled one was eager to seek battle.
gefȳsed has ge-; tō sēceanne is “to seek”.
Words built from words
Old English makes new words by joining old ones, and poets use this for vivid pictures, called kennings. Translate each half, then ask what it points at.
sǣ‐wudu sǣldon
they moored the sea-wood
“Sea-wood” is a ship.
hord‐weard oncnīow mannes reorde;
the hoard-guardian recognised the voice of a man;
“Hoard-guardian” is the dragon.
Practise on real texts
These notes make most sense once you have seen the forms in context. Urling brings each one up as you meet it in a text.
Start reading Old English
Free, no account. Your first line takes about three minutes.
Notes written by Claude and checked against Henry Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer (8th edition, 1905). Not yet reviewed by an Old English teacher.