A Guide to Pronouncing Anglo-Saxon

[weofodthignen]

Written Anglo-Saxon is a medieval language, so it is written basically phonetically-all written letters should be sounded (including r), except that in some cases they are part of a digraph where the combination represents a single sound (like modern th and in some people’s pronunciation, wh). (The Anglo-Saxon digraphs are: ig, cg, hl, hn, hr, hw

Comments

[exeyel]

Apologies for this being posted here, but I believe you are a mod at all_heathens, and I am not certain but I believe I know who is behind the trolling as of late. This is not an attempt to spread rumours or hurt anyone's reputation, merely an observation of evidence.

The initial post by dpetrel was answered first by hakuzo. I noticed that the first user, dpetrel, has had the account since november of last year, but has never posted in it. I also noticed that hakuzo is the only person who has dpetrel listed as a friend. How quickly they became friends and this post: http://hakuzo.livejournal.com/49236.html which speaks of "Christ consciousness" and mentions it being part of hakuzo's 'shadow' seems suspicious. Then grayscout responded to me, I am assuming that dpetrel had been banned from all_heathens. In the reply grayscout mentions "Celtic Christianity" being their belief system. hakuzo is a member of the lj community celtichristian, while neither of the other members has this listed as a

[weofodthignen]

Thanks for the headsup--wulfmann had noted the connection to "Celtic Xianity," which he and I have encountered before, but I think the other mods must have been busy today, no one else alerted me about grayscout's comment. I've duly banned that person too. I hate to think what tortured paths hakuzo is walking based on that entry in his LJ, and will warn the other mods of the connection.

Yup, I can read OHG/OS with a dictionary to hand :-) But I'm shaky on the pronunciation, if that's what you're hinting you'd like to know about '-) The grammars I have explain it in such technical terms I'm not sure I'm guessing right what they mean. The next project along these lines is Old Norse pronunciation, but that has to wait behind a couple of other projects with higher priority, and will take a bit longer since there are two rival systems and I would like to collaborate with somebody to make sure I get the one I don't use myself right.

Frith,
M

[cartoonmayhem]

I did as you suggested and contacted tchipakkan about compiling information about Asatruar and their stories. I read her bio and she is interested in the hidden heathen, which I can provide a lot of information for her and that's what I said. There are many approaches to the book. Miracles, Handicapped Asatru and Asatru with special needs children.
Very informative research on the Anglo-Saxon tongue. You and my husband could talk for hours because Germanic languages are a special interest for him. He loves the evolution of language, especially in the Migration era. He's interested in Icelandic because Icelandic and English are the only two languages left that still use the "th" in both the soft sense and the hard sense.
Anyway, you know your stuff and I'll be happy to work with you to get our stories out there.
I friended you so you can look at my journal, which is mostly friends only and I talk quite a bit about the paranormal. Rune divining interests me too. So, anyway, it's nice to meet you.

[weofodthignen]

Nice to meet you too :-) Friending you back so you can see the few heathen posts I make--LJ is not a primary focus for me, especially not my own journal, and I'm very busy writing for the Heathen Thing website these days, I seem to write more and more slowly as I get older--and in case your husband doesn't have an LJ, I'm going to be cruel and add you to the Anglo-Saxon Word of the Day filter. Let me know if you want off that!

Good--tchipakkan, heathenhulagirl, and yaqub should all be good people for you to work with on your book project :-)

Frith,
M

[zenaletam]

He admitted that he could not translate the passage so well into French or German. Such experiments go a good way towards proving the case for an artificial language.

[cartoonmayhem]

Thank you for inviting me to join heathenthing. I joined under a.gravelle, just so you know. :-)
Do you mind if I tell another Heathen friend of mine or do you want to keep this invitation only?
I want to do the right thing.
In Frith and in Faith

Astor

[weofodthignen]

Of course I don't mind--spread the word around. As well as piping up about what you like and don't like, of course :-)

Frith,
M

[spi_sto_let]

Thanks a lot for this. Any idea how to pronounce the name "Beorhtel"? I need it for the book I'm translating, and I really need to know how to trancsribe it...

[weofodthignen]

BAY-urchht-ell :-)

M

[spi_sto_let]

Oh, thank you so much =) So that's [beiə:k'tel] then, is it?

[weofodthignen]

Not quite--the r is sounded; a short trill would be my guess in this phonetic context, so [r], but it could be like a US r, which I dimly remember is an upside down r in IPA??? And the "h" is not a k with glottal stop--it's like the "ch" in German "ich," the unvoiced version of what IPA (and Cyrillic) represents as X. As you can tell, I don't have IPA easily within reach, so I don't remember the symbol for that. But yes, it's a schwa ([ə]) for the second half of the diphthong. At least in my opinion. Not a long one though--Anglo-Saxon still pronounced the /r/s that have become length markers in modern British.

Hoping that makes sense ...

[boolan]

Hello I'm just an ignoramus monolingual anglophone who found your very detailed Anglo-Saxon guide quite educational. What was interesting was your reference to German sounds with some of the vowels and consonants. German and English are similar and that comes as a big help to me as I learn how to speak German. It's funny one's knowledge of English grammar naturally improves when learning a foreign language.