Repost: Archeopteryx was a theist in the year 700.
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Some links to the only Youtubing I've ever done. Check it out if you want to know what Old English sounded like, and if you want to see me looking like an absolute inexperienced YouTube fool. =] Translations provided in real-time.
The Our Father/Lord's Prayer in OE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHtvm-IQD6o
(Note: The line about the kingdom, the power, and the glory is absent
because it likely wasn't part of the original Our Father.)
Another lesser known one, Cædmon's Hymn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmL2NxIEueg
(Making translation subtitles for this was extremely difficult because of OE's sometimes peculiar syntax, which to the modern ear would sound something like word salad. So sorry if its hard to know what is what.)
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
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Yikes, Old English is weeeeeird !
I much prefer the new and improved version. 
It's been ages since I took college literature but it seems I remember the OE word for cross was "rood" and I had to study a poem called "Twa Corbie" ( spelling is approximated ) meaning Two Crows.
Anyway, thanks for vocalizing it. I'd never heard it spoken before.
Well, everyone needs a hobby...
=
Yes, it is. As in the poem "Dream of the Rood". =]
They had a lot of different words for the cross actually. Their poetry emphasized alliterating consonants instead of rhyming vowels, so that required them to have a shit-ton of different words for everything important or common. So they can also refer to the cross as the tree, the killer, the beam, the gallows, etc, etc. They also have like 100 different ways of just saying "man". That's only in poetry, though, since that's the only place it's really necessary. (How many poems/stories could you tell about a man if you could only alliterate with "M" ?)
Another interesting thing about what Anglo-Saxons called stuff: I just learned recently that in all of the surviving Old English literature, they never once refer to Jesus as "Jesus". They refer to him as either "the christ" or as "hælend" (i.e. savior, hero, deliverer), but never ever by the name "Jesus". Jesus, after all, is just another way of rendering the name "Joshua". Josh Christ? Weird.
Interesting, though.
That's actually okay since the notion of "correct spelling" didn't exist back then. So, in all seriousness, you could spell it however you wanted, as long as it basically looked like what you were trying to communicate, and it would be considered correct. And I mean that in all seriousness. The notion of correct spelling didn't come about until the late 15th century. (Thanks, Gutenberg!)
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
I can't wait to hear it. Having studied the lord's prayer in various langauges as part of my university education (Linguistics), I've always liked reciting it in different langauges... for fun. It'll be interesting to see how accurately you match the supposed accent of typical Old English (West Saxon)... that is presuming you recite it in West Saxon. I can't watch it now, because at work youtube is blocked.
Oh, and the notion of correct spelling may have come about in the late 15th century, but there was hardly concensus on spelling until standardization, which came much later.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
I, too, have an interest in Linguistics, which is how this whole thing came about. Unfortunately, my university doesn't offer a full linguistics program, so the best I can do with my bachelor's is to get an English degree with a linguistics minor, but I'm loading up on all the linguistics classes my university offers and I plan to go on to grad school for more linguistics. As things stand, I'm still somewhat a newbie, but I'm learning more all the time and loving it.
What field of linguistics interests you most? I'm trying to narrow down my own interest, actually. I was really pumped about psycholinguistics there for a while, after reading Steven Pinker, but now that I've been studying OE, historical linguistics seems pretty fun, too.
I think it is West Saxon, actually. The professor I've been studying under says that my pronunciations are decent, but that they're actually better in the Caedmon's Hymn than the Our Father. I think the biggest problem I have is that I can't pronounce the R's very well. Old English had a sort of roll to their R's, and I am utterly incapable of producing a rolled R, but I try and fake it.
About the same time it was decided that English isn't enough like Latin?
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Could you elaborate? I'm not sure if I get your meaning.
If I were to transliterate the prayer into IPA, wouldn't the IPA simply reflect the pronunciations I'm already using? What would be more useful to me is if I knew more about the comparative research that has been done to determine what OE supposedly sounded like. I'm aware of certain rules, such as that the phoneme [ f ] usually represents [ f ] but becomes the allophone [ v ] when occurring between two other voiced sounds; or that the phoneme [ h ] becomes a velar fricative when following a vowel, and so on and so forth. But some rules I don't fully understand. For example, it's not clear to me when the phoneme [ g ] is meant to be pronounced as [ g ] versus when it is meant to be pronouned as its allophone [ j ]. The best rule I have to work with is that the letters "ge-", especially as a prefix, are almost always pronouned [ jə ]. (Sorry for the lack of notation.)
To further complicate matters, OE uses a phonetic alphabet, but it is so inconsistent in its spelling---sometimes with the same author spelling the same word two different ways within the very same sentence---that it seems like the best you can really do with OE is get it "close enough". At least that is my impression up to this point.
I tried finding the commercial, but all I could find was a bunch of videos of people criticizing the contest.
I get the feeling we may have similar feelings about self-appointed prescriptivist grammar police.
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
[quoteI tried finding the commercial, but all I could find was a bunch of videos of people criticizing the contest.
If you want to talk more about linguistics, I'm geeked, so pm me or whatever.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."