Beowulf

[savinnah]

Well, I regret having missed this epic poem of Old English literature at the University. At the Language history lessons (which I personally adored) we have read only a fragment of it in Old English. Amazing how many similarities I have found between Old English and Modern Swedish

Comments

[astralromantic]

Wouldn't the similarities make sense if Old English was similar to German and I know German is similar to Norwegian, so isn't it similar to Swedish as well?

[savinnah]

Yes, these all are Germanic languages so they have a lot in common. :-) Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge of German but I wouldn't say that it is that similar to either Norwegian or Swedish. As knowing Swedish I understand Norwegian (or Danish) almost perfectly and I can't say the same about German texts :-(. May be there are similarities in phonetics, but not in grammar or vocabulary.

Old English experienced heavy influence from Old Norse in the vocabulary and that is exactly what attracted me most. Though Old English grammar reminded me about my classes of Latin... brrr...

[svartalfen]

I'd say similiarities are mostly in grammar and vocabulary, at the same time phonetics have some serious difference.

MMM... Classes of Latin... $-)

[savinnah]

Similarities of what languages do you mean? I was speaking about Modern German and Modern Swedish. Modern Swedish grammar is almost identical to Modern English grammar. German Grammar is the reason why I didn't pick it as the second foreign language at the university!