real Old English

:: making grammar tangible ::

This website, currently in the earliest stages of development, is intended as a tool for Old English language learning. Its approach is to make grammatical principles and paradigms more palatable for students by providing them with ample model sentences and phrases taken from real Old English, with an emphasis on prose. Anyone is free to use the facility for non-commercial purposes on the condition that you'll contact me if you find any mistakes.

The setup is very straightforward indeed: The menu at the top of the screen takes you through the various parts of speech, each of which is represented by a group of common paradigms. Each entry in the paradigm is a hyperlink to a list of model sentences illustrating the grammatical form in question, roughly graded by difficulty. Since the Old English corpus is now easily searchable, no references are given.

In addition, there is a dynamic quiz mode: click on any category in the table, such as "genitive" or "masculine", and you will be taken to a "gap text" composed of all sample sentences of that class now in the system, displayed in random order every time the page is loaded. The historical form is displayed only when the mouse cursor is hovered over the gap. Similarly, clicking on the lexical form of the word displayed in the paradigm header will generate a randomised list of all the example sentences of the paradigm, again with the forms in question hidden from view.

Comparatively little has so far been processed, but you can click through the demonstrative pronouns for a preview.