>read Beowulf >can barely understand anything English is

>>8422466
It's not funny.

>>8422462
Beowulf was written ~500 years before El Cid. Trying to read Vulgar Latin is a fairer comparison than Old Spanish.

And yeah, only dedicated early Medieval historians can read Beowulf in the original.

>>8422488
Bullshit my student teacher at UTK could fluently read Old and Middle English.

>>8422462
Old English is a totally different language, Beowulf is over 1000 years old. No modern English speaker could understand it either. Just find a translation.

>>8422485
>It was written in England sometime between the 8th[4][5] and the early 11th century.[6]

> La versión conservada fue compuesta, según la mayoría de la crítica actual, alrededor del año 1200.1 2

8th and 11th century seems pretty broad, so I guess it's difficult to know.

>>8422462
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K13GJkGvDw

its not "english"

I assume your native language is romance in origin or in modern realization; old English is more close to Norse than to the modern latin-influenced tongue.

>>8422462
u hwæt m8?

>>8422631
top kek

Since we're having this thread, how hard would it be for a romance language speaker to understand elizabethan english?

I've had quite a hard time with some parts of Oxen of the Sun, but can't properly name them.

File: check it out.png (7KB, 210x230px) Image search: [Google]

7KB, 210x230px

>>8422631

>>8422657
Dunno. Why not give it a go?

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples and do set the word itself
Against the word:
As thus, 'Come, little ones,' and then again,
'It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.'
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and by and by
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing. Music do I hear?

[Music]

Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To cheque time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours: but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock.
This music mads me; let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

>>8422462

It uses letters and pronunciations we don't have any more. It also doesn't have all the Norman French that makes up so much of our language. I can puzzle out a lot of French just because a ton of words are the same.

>>8422676
That's probably Shakespeare's most difficult soliloquy lol. I love Richard II but first time I read that it had my head spinning.

Richard is just about my favourite Shakespeare character btw

Old English is easy to learn if you already know English, but to learn it you shouldn't start with Old English but instead Early Modern English. Read Early Modern English (Shakespeare) until you understand it, then Middle English (Chaucer), then Old English (Beowulf).

A good book to get is "Old and Middle English Poetry" and read from back to front cover.

>>8422685
Eh, maybe true. It's soooo beautiful though.

>>8422631
thank you for that