The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English

Love dipping into this book - great to read a few pages before bed. Really well written.

When I first received this book I looked at the first chapter and I have to say I was a little disappointed. Then I actually sat down and started to read and was my initial outlook wrong.In this book Hana Videen takes you on a journey of learning. She explores the origins of the language and while explaining the history of Old English she skilfully introduces the reader to Old English words and how they would have been used in everyday life. Reading the etymological meanings of words has helped me to understand and remember the usage of them.As a bonus there are wordhords throughout the book and they are based on the chapters you have just read. They can be used as a resource for remembering or as a dictionary when needed.I can thoroughly recommend this book. It is a delight to read and enables you to forget that you are actually studying the language. I am looking forward to future books by this author.

To a language-origins nerd like me, utterly compelling. Shame the pages are falling out 1/6 of the way in so will get the Amazon chaps to replace it foc.

This book has been a pleasure to read. Each chapter explains an aspect of life from the time and closes with the chapter's word-horde (or dictionary) of the words used in the chapter.I liked the suggested pronunciations for each word and slowly but steadily as you meet new words, you realise you already know how to say them.If, like me, you end up helping your child with Beowulf or enjoy Tolkein, then this book can add to your understanding and enjoyment.

A huge amount of work has been put into this gem of a book, very interesting to see how some of the words relate to English slang in regional areas also! Highly recommend the book and also the free app, can’t believe it’s free it is that good!

really interesting.once you know how to pronounce old english it is strange how many are still around in a similar language vein today.not sure about skink being obsolete as it is still used in cullen skink, ( cullen being a place),confusingly this is a fish soup whereas I thought skink was knuckle of pork.Correction.Seems skink is from the gaelic for essence,which makes more sense.It would be interesting to know where and when the old names for woman/man developed from wifman/werman.Do these predate the period covered by the book?

I am a learner of languages and have been waiting for this book all my life!It is absolutely fascinating; full of details about daily life in Anglo-Saxon times, as well as information about words and literature.The author loves words and their history... and her enthusiasm is obvious.

- Great idea and there are no close analogues that I know of – we need more books about OE vocab!- The book is fine and very informative, yet somehow fails to quite hit the mark- It seems to promise to describe everyday life in OE times, yet much discussion is of words from the poetic vocabulary, including kennings and words that only appear a single time in the extant literature (hapaxes); not especially much about everday life in A-S England here- There is also a deal of discussion of what seems to me periphery matters and "padding"- Overall, I came away slightly disappointed, and I even scan-read some of the later partsFor me, it's a great read, but fails to really deliver on what it promises. I would give 3.5 stars if I could.

An excellent read. I found it fascinating how many words still persist in today's language or have been altered but are still recognizeable and how the ancient words have been used in place names. I will be using this book continually as a reference.

I like how the chapters are divided into topics with a relevant set of words at the end of each chapter to assist readers in building their own "word hord". It's extremely helpful how the author gives pronunciation info and hints using English sounds/words so readers can sound out the Old English words. It's fun learning which words are still in use today and those that have changed meaning over time. I want to make a proper study of this book to learn to read and speak Old English.

Für jemanden wie mich, der gerne Worten, ihren Bedeutungen, Herkunft und Zusammenhängen zwischen den Sprachen nachspürt, unverzichtbar! Sehr unterhaltsam, lehrreich und kurzweilig. Viele Aha-Momente!

After following Hana Videen's Twitter, diving into this and getting it all at once is a treat.

Hana Videen's 'Wordhord' got my attention immediately. She tells the long story of the linguistic patterns evolving from barely discernable Middle English (Chaucer) to undiscernible Old English (Beowulf). If you're like me wrestling with the mental pronunciation of these strange words, then Videen assuredly helps clear it up. It's a must-read for the deep diver of 'Dark Age' Britain and generally the lingua franca of North Sea peoples. It's a rich look into the 1500-1000-year-old words we use every day. It's Videen's use of phonetics from runes through the modern alphabet that I can roll around under my breath that brings to clarity the Old English linguistic anchor in current English.Language is a hallmark of our species — so much so that until the mid-16th century the capacity for language was the key difference between us and animals, between humans and the animals that God placed under Adam's authority.Language and the 'collection' of words, these words tell a story, delineated medieval social class. More valuable than gold which a low-brow thief might possess, a large collection of words, one's 'wordhord', ones vocabulary separated the high status and educated from the masses.Language has always created intellectual constructs in time. The word concept example of "Nature" is unknown, our modern understanding meaningless in OE & ME. Nature is not God created 'mann'. 'Not man' was scary theme, Beowulf's thinking but non-speaking Grendal, raw, unknown, and untouched by God's care keeper humans. The uncontested mission of 'Mann" was to submit non-man to man control and God's good. When everyone, everywhere agrees in the truth of daemons and ghosts, what does every mind conjure in daily routine? Such was the universe of thought until the mid-16th century. It's 180° from the 19th-century origins of our 'nature' understanding.In this world lit by fire, candles represent another ubiquitous concept of light and darkness and similar to the Innuit language of many words to describe snow. 'Sea candles', a term that I've seen in ancient maritime contexts and experienced only poetically as 'candles' caught my attention. The bright reflections from the rising and setting sun and moonlight upon rippling water create a scene like thousands of candles on the water. The sun of course was logically the big candle and so known in the wordhord. Candlelight language is slipping from modern word imagery.First, the otherwise unintelligible spelling is unchanged or slightly changed as in an accent, in modern pronunciation. Smith is "smith." Corn is 'corn'. A child is "child" but, in symbolically ancient spellings and runes.Second, the phonetics of predecessor runes flow into understandable English words with many of the same relative meanings. The 'thorn', g, p , f - rune characters most especially.Third, Germanic and Scandinavian origins in Old English suggest a 'Mare North Sea' lingua franca that looks suspiciously akin to Romance languages formed around the Mediterranean in the same period.Fourth, the book is an immense help in sound picturing the strange spellings and characters in my mind when I read the period history.Fifth, as a student of Latin and Greek, I had a mental image that the two perhaps contributed more to English than Old English and Nordic/Germanic root. I was wrong. English is thoroughly rooted in Dark Age Old English.Videen's narrative technique, humor, and use of the word-hoard in context and at the chapter's end become a mini-Old English learning lesson.Fascinating, reasonably short read. Well worth it. I followed this read with CS Lewis's Oxford-don scholarship in "The Discarded Image" to comprehend more fully the extent and limits of the medieval mind. The pair make a rather complete set.