Modern English → Old English
| Modern English | Old English |
|---|---|
| Hello! (to one person) | Wes þū hāl! |
| What is your name? | Hū hātest þū? |
| I love you. | Ic lufie þē. |
| Thank you. | Ic þancie þē. |
| Yes · No | Gēa · Nā |
| The sun rises over the hills. | Sēo sunne ārīst ofer þǣm beorgum. |
What Old English is
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, was spoken in England from roughly 450 to 1100. It is the language of Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It was written in the Latin alphabet plus a few extra letters: þ (thorn) and ð (eth) for “th”, æ (ash) for the vowel in “cat”, and ƿ (wynn) for “w”, which modern editions usually print as w.
To a modern reader Old English looks like a foreign language, closer to German or Frisian than to today’s English. Nouns had cases, verbs had many endings, and most words borrowed from French and Latin later on did not exist yet.
Old English or Shakespeare?
Most people who search for an “Old English translator” actually want the language of Shakespeare: thee, thou, doth and hath. That is Early Modern English from about 1600, six centuries after Old English. If that is what you are after, use the Shakespeare translator; for Chaucer’s English in between, use the Middle English translator.
How accurate is it?
The translator uses AI to write real Old English words and grammar in normalized West Saxon spelling, with macrons marking long vowels. It is an approximation: modern things like phones have no Old English word, endings can be wrong, and scholars might choose different words. To check a word, look it up in the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. For a tattoo or anything permanent, ask an Old English specialist first.
Old English letters and words
- þ (thorn) · ð (eth)
- both “th”, as in thin or this
- æ (ash)
- the a in “cat”
- ā, ē, ī, ō, ū
- macron = long vowel (a modern editor’s mark)
- hāl
- whole, healthy (the root of “hail” and “hale”)
- ic · þū
- I · you (thou)
- frēond
- friend
- cyning
- king
- hām
- home
- eorþe
- earth
- mōna · sunne
- moon · sun