Please don't let criticisms make you reticent about speaking. I have found the most damaging thing for people learning to speak a language is being criticized for poor grammar. Many of us are here just to hear the language spoken. Poorly or well doesn't matter. We just want to hear it spoken, and you are one of the only people who are willing to speak it on KZfaq. Please don't stop. If the critics want perfect grammar, then maybe they should start a KZfaq channel and educate us. Until then, I want to keep hearing you speak.

Today I've learned that lakes don't jump

As a native Dutch speaker who also speaks English and some German, Old English is pretty easy for me to follow. Both vocabulary and word order are pretty similar to Dutch.

More informative and entertaining than school.

That poor hedgehog has gone through a bewildering spectrum of temperatures there, I find the Surrey climate wildly inconsistent 😝😝

Very similar to modern German: "Der rote Fuchs sprang in einen grauen See." Der: nominative, masculine, singular, definite article rote: (in this case) nominative, masculine, singular, weak form of the adjective. Fuchs: masculine noun in the nominative singular. sprang: the verb "springen" in the indicative, third person, past simple form. in: works like "on" here, requires the accusative because it means "into," not "in." einen: German does use indefinite articles, and the word meaning "lake" is masculine, not neuter, so you have the accusative, masculine, singular, indefinite article. grauen: the indefinite article requires the use of mixed-strong adjective forms (German actually has strong, mixed-strong and weak adjective forms), so you have (in this case) the accusative, masculine, singular, mixed-strong form of the adjective. See: masculine noun in the accusative singular. Word order is also similar: "Dann sprang der rote Fuchs in einen grauen See." The changed words follow suit as well: "Die rote Ente sprang in einen grauen See." "Die rote Ente" is feminine too. "Die rote Ente springt in einen grauen See." "springt" is present tense too. "Die rote Ente springt in graue Seen." "graue Seen" is plural too. "Die rote Ente ist in einem grauen See." "einem grauen See" is in the masculine dative singular form. "Die rote Ente ist in dem grauen See" or rather "Die rote Ente is *im* grauen See." "dem" is the dative, masculine, dative, singular, definite article. "grauen" stays the same in the mixed-strong and weak forms of the adjective in this configuration. "in dem" usually gets shortened to "im" in German, though. The word order of dependent clauses ALSO changes in German: "Er fragt ob die rote Ente im grauen See ist." I don't really know if by "he asks that it *be* in the lake" you mean that he's asking *whether* it is in the lake (what i showed above) or he *wants* it to be in the lake, in which case it'd be more like: "Er bittet darum, dass die rote Ente im grauen See ist." There is a "subjunctive" form in German, called the "Konjunktiv," but it is no longer used like that. You wouldn't really use it here. You could use it in a sentence like: "Er sagt, dass die rote Ente im grauen See *sei."* Because it is claimed that the duck did it, but it is not coming from you, but from someone else. The verb meaning "to help" works the same in German, except it's always the dative, never the genitive: "Du hilfst *mir",* not "*du hilfst mich" or "*du hilfst meins."

As to the dative/genitive I’ve always thought of it as “to me” rather than “my.” So “You help to me.” This tracks with German, “Du hilfst mir.” Almost like saying “You give help to me.”

Hi Simon, you just explained Dutch word order to me, using Old English vocabulary. Thanks for the great videos!

You explaining how English is constructed it really makes me realize how complex English can be to others when trying to learn English.

It's a li'l Hedgehog. 😊 0:08

The fact that in modern English all objects are felt to be equivalent in case makes it easy to convert sentences from active to passive voice: simply make the object of the active sentence the subject of the passive sentence. Example: I hit the man => The man was hit (by me). The man helped me => I was helped (by the man). In modern German, which still has verbs that require a dative object (and a few verbs that take the genitive in very formal language), simple passive transformations are limited to verbs that take an accusative object. Example: Ich schlug den Mann => Der Mann wurde geschlagen. But with the verb helfen (help), one cannot make the same transformation. The dative object cannot become the subject of the passive sentence. It must remain in the dative case, and the verb becomes impersonal: Ich half dem Mann(e) => Dem Mann(e) wurde geholfen. One cannot say: * Ich wurde geholfen. It has to be: Mir wurde geholfen, or Es wurde mir geholfen. Contrast modern English: I was helped. Do you know whether Old English had a similar rule with passive transformations?

Syntax in modern German hasn't changed much since the days of Old English))

It's interesting that all the Old English words still have modern cognates, ie. "the red fox leaped into the grey mere".

I believe jump is intransitive here (meaning move off/to smth) and hence, “into a grey lake” is an adverbial clause rather than object. Compare with a transitive verb: the red fox dragged the rabbit into the hole. Here, “rabbit” is the object, “into the hole” is still adverbial.

I knew how similar modern German and Old English grammatically are, but this is just impressive, from the gender, to the cases, from strong and weak declensions of adjectives depending on whether you used a definite article or no article, from the changes in cases some prepositions take depending on whether they convey a movement (into) or a position (in, on). It is basically the same. The forms are different, of course, but the rules are identical. I am pretty sure even the grammatical gender of the words was the same pretty much, so anyone knowing that German "Fuchs" is male would have known that OE "fox" must be male as well. Even the word order rules seems the same including the finite verbs moving to the end of the sentence when they are subordinate. It is the same frickin' grammar! Really impressive, and you haven't even started of verb conjugations which are also extremely similar.

I love how similar the grammatical rules regarding prepositions, inflections and so on, are to German

One useful element to keep in mind in languages that have more liberal word orders are concepts such as theme/rheme (topic/comment). European languages generally prefer to establish a topic and then make comments on it. I often use this to present how to approach word order in Spanish. A quick example is a sentence such as "John says he wrote the book, but in reality, I wrote the book". In this case, Spanish could express "I wrote the book" as "escribí el libro", but within this context, you're making a comment as to the subject, so you'd likely place that last and invert the object, as in "el libro lo escribí yo". This also means that an adverbial such as "in reality" is less necessary, you'd likely have "John dice que él escribió el libro, pero el libro lo escribí yo". Modern English uses relatively more adverbials to clarify coherent and cohesive relationships as well as occasional cleft sentences and passive voice. In speech, English also has very strong intonation patterns to reinforce these ideas. Other languages use word order to similar effect.

Simon is modest about his OE Syntax in my opinion, because his explanations are very good. Best way to be, stay modest and reduces the number or smart ass wannabes being critical for no good reason.

It's like a harder version of German.

Graphics are getting better and better. Next goal: arrows ;)

Ahhhh your clear and simple description of the grammatical purpose of each word in the first example was just music to my ESL teacher ears! Just beautiful 😭

Another awesome video simon. Watching your content really awakened a linguistics and history bug that I didn't know was there, thanks for all this and keep it up

You basically explaining the modern German grammar :-)

Thank you for this. Much appreciated.

Great step by step explanation of cases and declensions! Thank you! I always struggle with when to use dative or genitive etc...

As someone who is currently learning German I like learning about old English and different languages related to my target language to help me understand things better. This was a massive help, I still plan on learning old English but it’s a bit down the road. Thanks again for the resources

Interesting. In Modern German they use both strong and weak adjective endings. They always have endings that show exactly what gender, case, and number the noun phrase is. If the definite article is used, it generally is very specific, so any following adjectives don't need to be, so they take the weak endings (generally -e or -en). The strong endings are used if there isn't a definite article, so the adjective must show the gender, number and case with their endings. I always assumed that OE was the same.

Brilliant and fascinating video, as usual. Thank you for the entertaining education.

I found Fulk's inroductory grammar independently of this video (but the link provided here also works). It seems like an excellent resource. I was wondering whether you agree with his suggested pronunciation (IPA transcription) at the end of the reading passage in chapter 2. I was surprised that he had all 3 diphthongs (long and short) ending in "u" but he does provide good reasons for believing that even if this were no longer the pronunciation used in late OE it would have been the pronunciation at some time in the development of EWS. His differentiation between tense and lax vowels, depending on stress and whether followed by a nasal was also new to me. I've ordered the separate book on OE Phonology by Hogg that he revised, I believe. It will be interesting to see whether his ideas on phonology as laid out in the Introductory Grammar tally with those in that volume. Every time I think I've arrived at a reasonably accurate idea of how OE was pronounced I read or hear something that casts serious doubts on my assumptions. Chnage of subject: did you know that some Swiss dialects, e.g. in Wallis, not only preserve the genitive but also have a separate noun-ending in the plural ("-o" cognate with OE "-a"), giving, for example, IIRC, Taga, Taga, Tago, Tagu. I was made aware of this by a lecture on OHG, where the lecturer comments that Höchstalemannisch is the closest living langauge to OHG.

Awesome stuff, great for a complete beginner like me! Plus thanks for the Grammar book link, it's great.

love this, hope you make more like it!

Brilliant video, thank you so much for a concise and comprehensible introduction! I'm relieved that a lot of it (even though not all, of course,) is like Modern German...

Nicely done. Thanks, Simon!

Why didn't you put this video into my subscription box? Such good content can't go unnoticed!

Ha-ha, I saw the thumbnail and instantly thought "Hmm, he's going to do "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"".

fantastic video as usual, the syntax is much closer to modern german than i might've guessed. i did study old english for a bit in a linguistics class, but i don't remember us talking about syntax that much, mostly just the individual pieces of grammar like the many cases it had.

Really interesting, thanks so much! I'm one of the people who queried your word order in a previous video (though I promise it was a genuine query, not having a go), and it's great, as people have said, to see you being so candid about all that stuff. I'm learning German at the moment, and it really helps with all this; though it's not a wholly reliable guide; there's an indefinite article, Meer is neuter (though they'd use See, which is masculine), they'd use the cognate of "spring" rather than that of "leap", and so on. Der rote Fuchs sprang in den grauen See. Dann sprang der rote Fuchs in den grauen See. Die rote Ente ist auf dem grauen See. Er bat darum, dass die rote Ente auf dem grauen See sei. Etc. Not a million miles away.

Brilliant! Learnt more in 15 min than in those endless clausal/phrasal syntax seminars.

I LOVE learning about languages so this might become a thing I look into for fun!

This whole video reminds me of learning German at university. It’s as if Old English has exactly the same grammar and syntax as German. 🤔

Fascinated but not surprised at the fact that OE grammar is so similar to modern German. From V2 word order to moving the verb to the end in a dependent clause to changing the case of the object based on whether the verb implies motion or not. I wonder if this suggests a native German speaker would learn OE faster than a modern English speaker.

This was super interesting! As a Latin student, it was interesting to see how many grammatical rules are the same between Old English and Latin, even if the vocabulary is completely different. Most parts, case uses, word order, prepositions, were similar between the two, but the biggest difference is that Latin has no definite/indefinite article (the/a).

Simon, you make me realise what a dreadful language teacher I was. Videos like this would make great teaching material.

I could watch this all day.

Very good explanation.

I love how some old English word look like modern romance words.

You're a linguist man, and a damn good one! Embrace it!

Never have I watched such a clear explanation of Old English syntax as this one! Could subject/verb inversion following "negative fronting" in ME be a survival of the tendency of OE verbs to maintain second position in a sentence? (Also in such sentences as "In the grey lake were both ducks and foxes.")

Thanks that is really helpful

I'm happy to get any info like this on Old English. With languages, my primary interest is, "Am I making myself understood? Can I understand what the other is telling me?" it's not like we can immerse ourselves in Old English. I'm officially going to stop expecting myself to learn the intricacies in a few months. If I just keep reading it and looking up the words that give me difficulty, I can more or less figure out what is being said.

At roughly 12:34, you may have made a mistake. The text blurb explaining that the duck is _in_ the lake and therefore 'on' gives us the dative ends with, "'Grey lake' is now in the accusative," but I think you had meant to say dative.

Jumping across ditches in Friesland in the North of The Netherlands is called Fierljeppen. Apparently Fries is our sister language.

I wish I had a fox,but my cats wouldn't dig it. Ha. Good vid man. Still gotta finish your collab video with Jackson Crawford.

Have to say I'm pretty impressed with my own sort of innate understanding of old English! 😂 I did all you ecolinguist canst thou understand this sentence and got pretty much full points without any previous knowledge or any training in linguistics. (I am half Spanish though so from a young age was kinda fascinated when I'd realise and english and Spanish word that were similar) With this I got pretty close t what the sentence was from the thumbnail which is entirely in old English I got 'the red fox leaps into garden mine' (my garden)

It helps if you speak Dutch (Flemish). Like the verb in second position in a sentence, and at the end of a subordinate clause. Also the adjective ending in "e" if the noun is definite, but without "e" if it is indefinite (Het Vlaamse blok, but Vlaams blok).

Such a fun video to watch! I kept predicting that everything would have to change into the equivalent form it would take German. Turns out, that was the case with everything except the (lack of an) indefinite article! A quick look at the Proto-Germanic Wikipedia page reveals that it also didn't have indefinite articles. I wonder when the (precursors of) modern English and modern German picked these up.

Fascinating how modern German grammatical structure is nearly identical to this when English has changed so much.

I love the little hedgehog. I have like this in my garden. ❤

on the dual-case prepositions: i assume they work as they do in german. in that case "motion" is a slightly misleading word to discribe how to decide which case to use. if the duck swims in the lake (i.e. is in the lake while swimming all around said lake) the preposition would still take the dative. "change of position" seems a better label for the criterion. (as stated, this assumes it works like it does in modern german)

If it hasn't been pointed out already, the slide at 12:55ish has a mistake, it says "'Gray lake' is now in the accusative" when it should say "'Gray lake' is now in the dative"

Thanks for another fascinating video. I know to a speaker of the era, this would be natural and such a person would give little thought to what word works where, but to a modern speaker of modern English, superficially, there is so much to consider that we no longer have to worry about. That said, in the same way that some people possess a relatively weak grasp of the language today (probably myself included!), is it likely there would have been reduced adherence to these rules in certain localities of social classifications?

I had forgotten that mere was OE. I come from Blackpool and Marton Mere near the old village of Marton (not to be confused with Marton Mere in Cheshire) was a huge kettle hole, now much reduced by drainage, and its outlet, black because of the peaty soil, gave the name to the then hamlet of Blackpool. Or so the story goes.

I'm going to count this as my Dutch practice for today.

The final example given illustrates something I've noticed many times in reading Old English: that it's helpful if one is familiar with the English of about four hundred years ago (in particular the King James Bible, which I grew up hearing and reading, having been raised in a fundamentalist Christian family in the American Bible Belt). A basic familiarity with early Modern English acts like a bridge with the older forms. So the final OE sentence in this video, though spelled differently, is actually not very different from early 17th century "Thou helpest me". For comparison, a reading of Psalm 23 in the KJV is useful.

Swedish is like that too, where adjectives have plurals and take on the plural form with definite articles.

Der rote Fuchs sprang in den grauen See. I find it quite amusing how Simon Roper is talking about Old English as if its grammatical structures were completely obscure and unlearnable, while modern Standard German's grammar is not less complicated than Old English's. All the obscure, outdated things English speakers have given up many, many centuries ago are still present in today's German. :D

Just started that book you recommended on Elves (ælfisc? Ylfig?? ælf???? Elvis????????) in Anglo-Saxon England, this is proper helpful thank you! Why did we get rid of ligatures they look cool af and it just makes so much more sense?

4:27 on the contrary, based on Polish and what I've heard about Spanish and French, masculine nouns probably were considered manly (or at least manlier than similar feminine nouns)

I really don't know anything about you but I hope some university pays you great sums for imparting your knowledge...and thank you for sharing it with us for free!

A Simon Roper out of context Twitter bot would be great.

I've studied German, and I always new about how old English was much like modern German in how it had three genders, case endings, more conjugation on verbs, including the "thou" forms. But it was interesting to see the way the word order, particularly pertaining to the verb, in Old English had the exact of the same quirks as German. Der rote Fuchs sprang in einen grauen See. 　→　Dann sprang der rote Fuchs in einen grauen See. Die rote Ente ist im grauen See. 　→　Er bat darum, dass die rote Ente im grauen See sei. In the first change, if we use "Dann" the verb "sprang" goes second right after it. In the second change, if we use a "dass" clause (like English that-clause) the verb goes at the end. Also German has the exact same thing going on with the accusative vs dative cause after it's preposition "in" → One jumps "in den See" (accusative) and will then be "im See" (dative). Also German has the exact same thing going on with the subjunctive "sei" instead of "ist" (is). An interesting difference is that German does have an indefinite article, "ein" which much like English "a / an" comes from the word for "one." However, a similar distinction exists about which declination pattern you use for adjectives. Depending on the case and gender, there are some slightly different patterns for "the red ~" "a red ~" and just "red ~" In nominative, masculine: der rote Tee; ein roter Tee; roter Tee In nominative, neuter: das rote Wasser; ein rotes Wasser; rotes Wasser In nominative, plural: die roten Getränke; keine roten Getränke; rote Getränke. In dative, feminine: der rote Milch; einer rote Milch; roter Milch. To name a few examples. German also has a very limited set of verbs that take the genitive: Ich gedenke deiner (Where "deiner" is "yours."). However for a word like "help," we use the dative: Ich helfe dir, which when coming from Modern English is similarly strange. So in conclusion, even though I was familiar with the fact that Old English is very German-like, I didn't quite realize just how many quirks they share. Definitely seems like understanding German will make learning Old English grammar way easier.

Native Afrikaans speaker who can also speak German. The interaction of case and gender, and movement distinction between dativ and accusative, as well as the distinction when adjectives take the strong or weak form, is exactly the same as modern German. The conjugation of the verb is also the same (bearing in mind the t-th sound correspondence). The not true action (subjunctive) is also the same. “Ist” in that case changes to “sei”, just like “is changed to “sea” in old English. In German it is called the konjuktiv. The word order applies to Afrikaans and Dutch too.

I am learning german, and I am very surprised how similar old english is with german in context of grammar. How the declination of adjectives change because of the cases (Dative location, Accusative movement to that location), and how the second verb is found at the end of the sentence.

As far as I understand it, the deal with Germanic "strong and weak" elements has to do with the level of inflections present. A "strong" verb or noun or adjective has retained its native Germanic inflections. A "weak" verb or noun or adjective has lost or assimilated its inflections. So, the weak nouns have -an as the suffix for multiple cases, contrasting with the strong masculine nouns with more inflections. The strong verbs have umlauts while the weak verbs have assimilated to a simple dental suffix. The strong adjectives follow the inflections of strong nouns (which are more inflected), while weak adjectives follow the inflections of weak nouns (less inflected). Only describing the names, of course, not the things themselves.

Various modern languages are spoken higher or lower in pitch than others. I have noticed that when Simon speaks old English he kicks his pitch higher. Sometimes as much as a third. I don’t know what that means. But it’s an interesting thing to note.

Look at that hodgehegger ❤

could you make a video on favourite oe texts?

I am German. I understand what you are saying. 🤩 And I am really enjoying it.

Yeah, you are right: Usually(!), genus (as compared to sexus) isn't considered manly or womanly, but studies show, that still can shape the way, speakers of a certain language think about a word resp. a thing described by that word: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iLF7atp4pr-0Zp8.html

I wonder why the verb always tends to take the second place in the English sentence, and why it's always about auxiliaries when it comes to inversion.

08:18 Wow, skirt and shirt are related, mind blown by a one letter difference never noticed, and a similarity never connected.

Hi Simon. How would you pronounce “freht” as in future? Frett, frecht or frext? (I’m not very good with phonics!) thank you sir

Doesnt OE have lacu for lake? Mere makes me think of mire and moor which suggests more like a swamp than a lake.

For a laugh I was trying to translate “my dog was stung by a bee” into old English. I only got as far as translating the words, but I don’t know what order they should go in. “Wæs min hund onga be an beo” 🤣🤣🤣

The subject is marked by being placed before the verb. That's the accurate explanation.

I'm only a moderate compatiant beginner in Welsh, but lots of the grammar reminds me of Northern Welsh, which I know is quite old in it's syntax. Wonder if this is the link with Celtic and Anglos/Jute/Dutch/Nords all cramming into this isle?

If we had learned old english either before or while we were learning latin ( compulsory until O level at grammar schools in the long ago days of my youth) it would have helped with the dative and ablative absolute.

Ah, I was wondering why Norwegian uses instances of the English equivalent of "on" but in places where we'd only use "in" (namely phrases like "jeg snakker på Norsk", lit. I am talking *on* Norwegian); good to know this is just a quirk of some languages and that in a slightly different turn of events modern English might've shared this quirk with its cousin language!

It would be interesting to see if there's comparisons between old saxon and frisian. Has anyone done this? (I don't mean anglo saxon but mainland old saxony old saxon.) And if there is a comparison then that could then be used with figuring out reconstructions of anglo saxon.

Does the hedgehog have a name?

All those bloody cases, the reason why I can speak a version of German but not pass an exam in it. Du Kennst was ich meinst.

Does anyone else thinks his voice is so relaxing to listen to 😌

Interesting, thanks. Old English syntax seems complicated compared to less structured modern English. I wonder if this tends to happen to all languages over time, or what?

Lakes, of course, have no sex, but in German fox can be der Fuchs or die Füchsin, and in Spanish el zorro or la zorra, depending on the sex of the individual animal, assuming it's known. Was there no such distinction made in old English? I would expect there would be.

@Simon. I can tell you with certainty that Dutch has the exact word order you picture here in the old-English sentences about the duck. Thank god, the declensions of nouns and adjectives and definite articles has , officially, been abandonded in 1951 so you get a situation like modern English but with old English word order. Each time I watch one of your videos, I am amazed how close Dutch is to old English. I have been told that around 800 CE old Dutch and old English were mutually intelligeable to the point of being indistinguishable in some phrases. One give-away is the abundant use of 'particles' in Dutch (and Geerman), while English has few and their use sounds a bit awkward to modern English ears. E.g. "Why did the fox jump in the lake?" could be, in Dutch, word by word "Why did the fox now jump in the lake?" (Waarom sprong de vos nou in het meer?) this 'now' intensifies the question and its meaning has no reference to time at all, only to the degree of curiosity of the one that asks the question.

What was the word order of old English before the Danish invasion? Was it open or it was a particular word order?

I live in Melbourne Australia We don't have Hedgehogs, we do have imported Fox, rats , cat, stouts, Camel's, cane toad's mice rabbit etc... Unfortunately they all are creatures of Night, competing with Native Nocturnal indigenous life. You feed Hedgehogs I feed Australian Ringtails. I grew up in NZ full of imported Hedgehogs. Always road killed and hated for eating Marajuara plants. Paradoxical.

My first reaction to this is how remarkably similar the grammatical analysis is to Latin (perhaps not surprising). However, in Latin, the dative case implies movement, whereas the accusative indicates that a noun is the direct object of the verb. This difference is curious. 🤔

Question: How does Old English aspect function? Looking through various tables it seems like its not represented at all through conjugation.

The hedgehog!