Polyglot · course
Learn Old English
Learn to read the English of a thousand years ago
The course teaches the standardized Early West Saxon of the teaching grammars — the dialect of King Alfred's court, and close kin to the West Saxon that Beowulf, the Chronicle, and The Wanderer survive in — with the long marks (ā, ē) and letter dots (ċ, ġ) of the standard student editions. In other words: exactly the Old English you need to read the real literature.
About 5–10 minutes per lesson
By the end of the course
Finish the course and you read Old English itself — Beowulf, the Chronicle, the riddles — in the original.
Try it — the first check of Lesson 1
Quick check
Read it: þæt spells…
Old English, the language of Beowulf
Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is the English of roughly 550–1150 AD — the language of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the riddles of the Exeter Book. This online course takes you from the alphabet to reading real passages of that literature in the original, unabridged.
It is built for beginners: no prior Old English and no grammar-term fluency required. Unit 1 starts with the alphabet — only three letters will be new — and the first word it teaches you to read is þæt: “that”.
What the course covers
6 units · 18 lessons — progress saves in your browser.
Real texts, from the first unit
Every reading is a real, attributed passage, quoted exactly as standard editions print it — never invented app-sentences alone. By the final unit, the readings are the literature:
- Beowulf— from pronouncing line 1 aloud in Unit 1 to parsing the full three-line opening in Unit 6
- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle— the year 793 — fiery dragons over Northumbria, then the Vikings
- The Wanderer— the ubi sunt lines Tolkien reworked for Rohan
- The Lord's Prayer— Fæder ūre — the most-read Old English sentence there is
- Words of fate— wyrd bið ful ārǣd (The Wanderer) and gǣð ā wyrd swā hīo scel (Beowulf) — the word behind “weird”
How the course works
The method is graded reading: short lessons that teach one system at a time — the letters English lost, gender and case, the weak and the strong past — and then put it to work immediately in real, attributed text. Every literary passage is quoted from the standard editions, in the classroom spelling this course teaches; the one practice fable is retold after Aesop and labeled as such.
Every example word carries audio in the reconstructed pronunciation, every word in a reading can be tapped for its meaning and grammar, wrong answers explain why, and vocabulary returns for review on a spaced schedule. The whole course was checked line-by-line against the standard grammars and editions before publication.
Common questions
Is Old English the same as Shakespeare's English?+
No — Shakespeare wrote Early Modern English, which you can already read. Old English is centuries earlier and effectively a foreign language, with four extra letters (þ, ð, æ, and ƿ — though modern editions print ƿ, wynn, as w, so you'll read three) and a case system. Between the two sits Middle English, the language of Chaucer. This course teaches the real thing: the English of Beowulf.
What dialect of Old English does the course teach?+
The standardized Early West Saxon of the teaching grammars — the dialect of King Alfred's court. Almost all surviving Old English is West Saxon (Beowulf itself survives in a West Saxon copy, with traces of other dialects), so the grammar you learn here is the grammar you will actually meet on the page, complete with the long marks (ā, ē) and letter dots (ċ, ġ) that student editions add as reading aids — the same conventions this course uses. Learn West Saxon and every Old English edition opens.
How long does the course take?+
The foundations course is 6 units — 18 lessons of about 5–10 minutes each — so the core is a few hours of focused work, plus spaced review. By the end you read real passages of Beowulf, the Chronicle, and The Wanderer with tap-glosses. Fluent unassisted reading of the full poems takes months more — this course is built to get you started honestly.
Do I need an account?+
Unit 1 is open to everyone with no account at all — progress is saved in your browser. From Unit 2, a free account keeps your lessons, streak, and review deck saved to you across devices.
What did Old English sound like?+
Closer to modern German or Icelandic than to modern English: every letter was pronounced — cniht, the ancestor of knight, began with an audible k. Every example word and reading line in the course has audio in the reconstructed pronunciation, so you hear it from the first lesson.
How do you speak Old English?+
Start with the sounds, because almost every letter is pronounced and nothing is silent: cniht (knight) begins with an audible k, hlāford (lord) with an audible h. Learn the four extra letters first — þ and ð are both th, æ is the a of cat, and ƿ is w — then the vowel lengths, which change meaning: god is god, gōd is good. After that it is vocabulary and the case endings that tell you who did what to whom. The course teaches exactly this order, and every example word and reading line has audio in the reconstructed pronunciation, so you hear each sound from the first lesson rather than guessing at it.
How do you write in Old English?+
Writing it means using the real alphabet and the real grammar, not swapping modern words for old-looking ones. You need þ, ð, æ and the macrons that mark long vowels, and you need the case system: the ending on a noun does the work that word order does in modern English. If you only want the letterforms — the blackletter script people often mean by 'Old English' — that is a font, not a language, and our Old English translator will convert text for you instantly. If you want to actually compose it, the course covers the alphabet in Unit 1 and the endings in Unit 2.
Do I need to know grammar terminology?+
No. Every term the course uses — case, gender, nominative — is defined in plain words before it is used, and every word in every reading can be tapped for a full explanation.
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