As a living soul of the twenty-first century, if you take a glance at the opening lines of Beowulf, the Old English poem, the chances are that you won’t be able to understand it. If anything, you may perhaps recognise its famous first word, hƿæt. This is absolutely fine, I should add; Old English isContinue reading “You Know More Than You Think About: Beowulf”
Category Archives: Germanic
The High German Consonant Shift and How to Use It
If you already know English and are in the process of learning German, you may be struck by how similar words in the two languages can be. It can surprise novices that English sentences like ‘I have two cats and six books‘ or ‘it drinks water‘ are so close to their German counterparts ‘ich habeContinue reading “The High German Consonant Shift and How to Use It”
Walloons, Wales and Cornish Walnuts
The Wonderful World of *walha– Reading time: 10-15 minutes This article is an adaptation of one first written for the brilliant interdisciplinary magazine Porridge, which you can find out more about at porridgemagazine.com. Note that an asterisk * is used for historically undocumented and therefore hypothetical words. I’d like to tell you the tale ofContinue reading “Walloons, Wales and Cornish Walnuts”
Danny L. Bate 