Talk:Old English

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	Old English was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result April 28, 2006 Good article nominee Listed September 24, 2007 Good article reassessment Delisted
Current status: Delisted good article

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"0ld English" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect 0ld English has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 4 § 0ld English until a consensus is reached. Bearcat (talk) 19:51, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong translation of "HVÆT"?

The translation of Beowulf starts with HVÆT! translated to "What!" but that makes little sense to me.

Isn't the more obvious translation: "Know!"? That is, the poet would recite the poem in front of an audience and start by telling them that they should pay attention. "You must now know/hear the following..."

I'm no expert on the subject, but as a Dane, that would make sense in Danish... To know = 'at vide'. The imperative is "Vid!"

In Old Norse, it would would be "Veit", which seems very close to Hvæt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:AA7:410D:CADB:21C1:F4BD:E1B0:76B1 (talk) 14:24, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2A02:AA7:410D:CADB:21C1:F4BD:E1B0:76B1 (talk) 12:31, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We would translate it as per the sources. There is no doubt, of course, that hwæt is the source of English what. But then there is the matter of semantic drift. This word really has no exact translation here. It has been translated so, listen, indeed and probably others. What is not unreasonable and if that is in a source translated text, we should not be changing it. We could, perhaps, use a different source text that translates differently, but that would affect the whole translation and not just that word. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently J.R.R. Tolkien used to begin his Oxford lectures with a loud "HVÆT". "What" seems a poor translation. Johnbod (talk) 13:28, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Surely it's worth keeping in mind that Tolkien was a scholar from several generations previous. It's not as if the corpus has grown or what have you, but I recall at least several occasions reading the opinion of contemporary scholars that translation as 'listen' is itself distinctly problematic, even if more natural on this end at first blush. Remsense ‥ 论 13:33, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The paper "The Status of "hwæt in old English" (2013) by George Walker (doi:10.1017/S1360674313000129) argues that, since supposed instances of exclamatory "hwæt" seem to effect word order in following clauses, and since this is unusual in general for interjections, it is actually an exclamatory, similar to Modern English "how...!" as in "how good it was!" In this case, the correct translation is "How (much) we have heard of the Spear-Danes..." Hroðgar Stæfwita (talk) 07:01, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just to give an answer to the first post, no, the word is not a verb of knowing. The HW or HV sound in old Germanic languages was distinct, and not the same as W or V.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:24, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lord's prayer

This is how the Lord's prayer is given in the page: "Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen" As we can see it is modern English yeah, but it is early modern English and very old-fashioned. Nobody speaks like that. Does it have to be so difficult to understand? I think the language used in 21st century would be something like this: "Our Father, you who are in heaven, may your name be holy. May your kingdom come, and everything go according to your desires on earth as well as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, just like how we forgive our debtors. And don't lead us into temptation, but rather free us from evil. Yeah, for real!"

Also if I didn't understand this properly I am sorry, I am a foreigner who is a bit bad at English. Is there some copyright reason or something for using old texts? And this is only a suggestion I am sure there is just so many possible publicly available translations made by experts, someone else is better than me at judging it. I hope I am not breaking seriously any rule. That's why I will rather discuss it first Nipieznicabeza (talk) 01:14, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The early modern translation is relatively well-known to many older native speakers, because it has continued to be used for so long. However, there are indeed more recent English versions and I'd be surprised if they're all blocked by IP considerations. Overall the literature section of this article is quite eccentric, and as it goes beyond mere translation in many places it possibly borders on OR. Sometimes it "translates" to cognates, and sometimes it doesn't. It is kind of fun in a nerdy way, but I hope it will eventually be made policy-consistent and useful (informative) to non-experts.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:07, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]