Fun Stuff

Some of the work for the course is intended to be mostly fun, and to help you engage with the way the language was formed and held together. Each class, one student will do a brief (5-minute) presentation in one of the following formats. Note: each student will do 2 of these presentations during the semester.

(i) Complete one section of a unit from the website Learning with the Online Thesaurus of Old English (TOE) Links to an external site.. This site explores the semantic relationship between Old English and Modern English words for lots of different things.

(ii) Choose an English word that comes from Old English and research the way it developed between then and now. Start with the Oxford English Dictionary Links to an external site., and move backward through the Middle English Dictionary  Links to an external site.to the Dictionary of Old English Links to an external site. or Bosworth & Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Links to an external site..

(iii) Write a very brief (about 50 words) journal entry in which you tell the rest of us what did over the weekend. Here's the mind-blowing part: you write it in Old English! Obviously a lot of things will not have exact equivalents, but there are a surprising number of sites to help you find the closest thing! [See the Dictionaries page.] Towards the beginning of the course, I won't expect much in terms of proper noun and verb inflections. You'll read it aloud in class and explain your translation choices.

(iv) Pick 1-2 sentences from anything you like - your favorite novel, a news story, a tweet or two, a blog post, or anything that catches your eye - and translate it into Old English. You'll read it aloud in class and explain your translation choices.

Note: I'm assuming that (i) and (ii) will be more popular in the early weeks, before people start to get a feel for the language itself. If you're doing (iii) or (iv), check the Dictionaries page, and you might want to glance at this forum Links to an external site. for composing in Old English!