As a Medievalist, one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone calls the language that Shakespeare wrote in "Old English." It is a common mistake - even after warning my students twice this semester that the language in Macbeth (which we read for class) is "Middle English," not "Old English," several students mistook the two on their quizzes. Yes, it is old... yes, it is English... however, it is quite far removed from the language or dialect that scholars call "Old English."
Old English was the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon peoples who migrated to England in the early part of the Medieval period (roughly the middle of the 5th century). This was the language spoken in England until the Norman conquest of 1066. The language itself actually sounded a lot more like German than modern English. As an example, check out this poem - the first ever written down in the English language:
Nū scylun hergan hefaenrīcaes Uard,
metudæs maecti end his mōdgidanc,
uerc Uuldurfadur, suē hē uundra gihuaes,
ēci dryctin ōr āstelidæ
hē ǣrist scōp aelda barnum
heben til hrōfe, hāleg scepen.
Thā middungeard* moncynnæs Uard,
eci Dryctin, æfter tīadæ
fīrum foldu, Frēa allmectig.[6]
*Yep, that means "Middle-earth" and was the inspiration for the name of Tolkien's world.
You can find out more information on this lovely poem by the peasant "Caedmon" via the wonderful British Library site.
Unlike Old English, which you can't really understand without taking a class (or two or five), the next iteration of English (which came after it got Frenchified by the Normans) is much easier to read. This was called "Middle English," and is what both Chaucer and the poet who wrote Gawain and the Green Knight wrote in. Chaucer's writing is much easier to understand for modern audiences than the Gawain poet, because his London English was the direct ancestor of what we speak today. Check out this excerpt from the Friar's Tale from the Harvard archives - it contains translations directly underneath:
1301 Whilom ther was dwellynge in my contree
Once there was dwelling in my country
1302 An erchedeken, a man of heigh degree,
An archdeacon, a man of high rank,
1303 That boldely dide execucioun
That boldly carried out the law
1304 In punysshynge of fornicacioun,
In punishment of fornication,
1305 Of wicchecraft, and eek of bawderye,
Of witchcraft, and also of pandering,
1306 Of diffamacioun, and avowtrye,
Of defamation of character, and adultery,
1307 Of chirche reves, and of testamentz,
Of robbing churches, and of wills,
1308 Of contractes and of lakke of sacramentz,
Of marriage contracts and of failure to take the sacraments,
1309 Of usure, and of symonye also.
Of usury, and of simony also.
While it takes a moment to figure out, Middle English is at least recognizable as the same language that we speak today, if a very distant ancestor. Some nouns like "Testamentz" and "wicchecraft" are easy to figure out, even with the odd spelling.
Our language then took another jump towards modernity in the 1500/1600s, with the wonderfully named "Great Vowel Shift of 1500" that took Middle English and shifted it to what scholars call "Early Modern English." I am not going to go into the full history of the linguistic changes of this time, but suffice it to say a lot happened. We go from a language that looks like it could be English, to one that definitely is. Check out this excerpt from Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7, from the 1623 folio:
To pricke the sides of my intent, but onely
Vaulting Ambition, which ore-leapes it selfe,
And falles on th'other.
The King James Bible was also written in Early Modern English, and many people are used to the language from that source.
Another interesting note regarding Early Modern English and the KJV: many people think that using "thee/thou" is more formal, because that is what the KJV Bible uses. However, the "thee/thou" form is actually the more personal form, and the "you, your" is more formal! Eventually English dropped the "thee/thou" form and kept the formal "you," so you only see "thee/thou" in older texts. I think this is important, because when the Bible puts the "thee/thou" in God's addresses to humans (or our addresses to Him), it is actually using the "thee/thou" to stress the intimacy of the relationship. I bet you didn't know that linguistics could have theological implications!
One last thing about Old English: did you know that there were actually several characters (letters) we don't use anymore? My personal favorite is the "thorn" symbol, which stood in for the "th" sound and looked like "þ." If you ever see a pub with the name "Ye Olde Pub" or something similar, they are actually working off an mistaken use of the thorn symbol. People didn't walk around medieval England saying "ye this" and "ye that." Rather, the top of the þ symbol was lost over time, and finally firmly killed when the printing presses didn't have a thorn symbol, and so replaced the þ with a Y whenever it occured. So actually, that pub should be called "þe Olde Pub."
The idea for this whole post actually came after I shared this image on Facebook:
As I said on Facebook:"A beautiful little comparison! Many people mistakenly call what Shakespeare wrote in "Old English," when in reality it is "Early Modern English" - the same kind of dialect that the KJV is written in, and actually two removes from Old English ("hwaet" Beowulf is written in). English's ability to change and flex over the years is one of the reasons it makes such a good international language.
Also, at this time of year you may be singing some Christmas hymns/songs that have verses that don't really rhyme. More than likely, those hymns were written before (or right after) the Great Vowel Shift of 1500 when vowel sounds were changing. Either that, or they were written to evoke an earlier type of speech. So they probably did rhyme in the original!"
I hope you've enjoyed this little linguistic foray into the past. I am no linguist myself, but as a Medievalist, language is something I have to deal with in any scholarly paper. I will let my other, more knowleadgeable Medievalist friends correct the many mistakes I have likely made. For the rest of you, thanks for sticking around, and go out and enjoy correcting all of your friends (actually please don't, because that is pedantic... just send them this blog post instead!).