This is English

THIS IS ENGLISH – AND I WILL NOW SAY WHAT I WILL ABOUT IT

I recently saw a video on Youtube (not the one linked to below) whose theme was “how far back can you go in English and still recognise it as English?” Myself, I’m a professional translator – a professional linguist, no less – so I wouldn’t blame you for being interested as to my own response to that question.

Brief background: I remember reading both Shakespeare and Chaucer back at school, and while Shakespeare’s works sounded a bit odd to me in places (forsooth), there was no way I could pronounce or read the original version of The Reeve’s Tale; for me, studying The Reeve’s Tale without a modern English version to hand would have been out of the question (just like everyone else, of course).

Anyway, what we have here is an Old English version of the Lord’s Prayer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDM-ibezJQ – how anyone knows how to pronounce that after all these years is a wonder in itself, especially as it includes letters that you won’t find in modern English. Basically, I decided to go through it and decipher what I could (of course, I inevitably weighed it against the modern English version of the Lord’s Prayer, and if I didn’t know the text of that I never would have undertaken this but it is what it is)…

“Fæder” can only mean “Father”, and “ūre” “our”, but why it’s “Fæder ūre” and not the other way round is beyond me.
I suppose the first two syllables of “heofonum” (as they are pronounced here) sound like “Heaven” in modern English. Of course, considering the “art in heaven” bit”, “eart” stands in place for “art” and “on” in place for “in” – even though “on” is also a preposition in modern English just like “in” but it means something different… what can I say?
“nama” must mean “name”; then there’s “gehālgod”, which I can sort of understand being the Old English word for “hallowed” when you consider that English is a Germanic language and, in modern “German”, also a Germanic language (as if that needed explaining), “ge-” is used as a prefix to signify the past tense of most verbs.
Comparing “Thy kingdom come” and “Tō becume ðīn rice.”: it’s evident to me that “becume” is for “come”. Meanwhile, “ðīn” is pronounced “deen” – this will be the word for “thy” / “your” when you consider that “dein” is one of the words for “your” in modern German, and German and English, as already explained, are both Germanic languages. That said, compare “rice” in Old English with “Reich” in modern German, which means none other than “kingdom”.
Considering the “Thy will be done” bit, “willa” will definitely be the word for “will”. But I compare “Gewurde” with “geworden” in modern German (“become” – perfect tense / past participle) (having already explained that English is a Germanic language just like German), as if to suggest that someone’s will “becoming” is to insinuate that it is being “served” (“thy will be done”). It seems like poetic language, I suppose, but, hey, it is what it is.
Again, “heofonum” will definitely be “Heaven”, while “eorþan” will definitely be “Earth” (although I have never seen the character “þ” used in English before)
Meanwhile, “gedægwhamlīcan” presumably is some permutation of the verb “give” (considering that, in modern German, “ge-” is used as a prefix to signify the past tense of most verbs as I said earlier). “tōdæg” surely means “this day” (“today”), especially as the days of the week tend to end with a g in Germanic languages other than English (Dutch and Swedish as well as German, for example).
The next line is easy: “forgyf” = “forgive”; “ūs” = our; “ūre” = “our”; “gyltas” = this can only be the word they used for “trespasses” in the modern version of the Lord’s Prayer – compare “gylt” with “guilt” in modern English)
Looking at “Swā swā wē forgyfaþ ūrum gyltendum”, I deduce the following: “wē” = “we”; “forgyfaþ” = “forgive”; “ūrum gyltendum” = basically (this is a loose but quite comprehensible translation) “trespassing / sinning / guilty actions upon us” – “ūrum” can only really be viewed as “us” in the dative sense; not, say, genitive, ablative or vocative.
“gelæd” – is that – meaning “led” – part of (essentially) “let us not be led into temptation”?
And “Sōþlice”, seeing that it’s a single word on its own, must mean “Amen” in Old English.