ABSTRACT
In the lines from Beowulf only two words in eight are familiar (we and in); in the sixteen words by Chaucer, possibly three are not, and that is just a matter of spelling (shoures, soote, perced); and the two lines from Shakespeare are perfectly clear to any reader of English who understands metaphor and recognizes a pun. Not all of Shakespeare is so “modern” as these two lines, but learning to read or hear his poetry is like learning to understand another dialect of English, whereas in order to read Old English one must study it like a for-
eign language. Old English even had fi ve letters not in our modern alphabet, þ, ð, æ, ʒ, and Ƿ, named respectively thorn, eth, ash, yogh, and wynn. Thorn and eth are both pronounced like our combined consonants “th” (in either thin or then), ash is pronounced like the vowel in the word ash, wynn is pronounced “w,” and yogh is sometimes pronounced like a hard “g” and sometimes like “y.” Only thorn and ash appear in those two lines from Beowulf.
