Ransom Riggs
The Land Where Old English Survives
by Ransom Riggs - February 8, 2010 - 7:07 AM

No, I’m not talking about inexpensive malt liquor — that land would’ve been my high school. I mean the language that predates modern English by some thousand years, having come about when certain Germanic tribes migrated to Britain in the fifth century A.D., the language of Beowulf and big, hairy, dark-ages dudes which looks and sounds most unlike our own. Gradually supplanted by Middle English around the end of the eleventh century (which introduced large doses of Norman French and Latin) it’s been a long time since anyone heard or spoke the tongue of our linguistic ancestors.

Or has it? It turns out there’s a small region in the north of Holland called Freisland where people speak a language that greatly resembles Old English — Fresian — because that’s where some of the old Anglo-Saxon tribes originally come from. To demonstrate their similarity, the comic linguist Eddie Izzard took a trip to Freisland, found a farmer, and tried to communicate with him in Old English — with some success. Watch and be amazed!

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Comments (13)

  1. I will watch this video later, but Eddie Izzard is a linguist?!? I had no idea! Anyway, crossing my fingers and hoping that this video is classroom-friendly :)

    posted by Fruppi on 2-8-2010 at 7:29 am

  2. I could almost understand the farmer. It was like the Swedish Chef-occasional perfect English words with some rhythmic lilting in between.

    It was nearly impossible to understand Izzard’s halting and stilted Old English.

    posted by David on 2-8-2010 at 8:08 am

  3. I understand both perfectly fine. Old English is pretty easy to read if you know any Dutch/Frisian/North German dialects, so it’s not really surprising… (it’s the odd modern English pronunciation that made things difficult)

    (it’s FrIEsland, btw)

    posted by annek on 2-8-2010 at 8:17 am

  4. I understood a lot of what both had to say (as a German teacher with an English minor–and as someone who had to read Canterbury Tales in Middle English and excerpts of Beowulf in Old English). I also had to study some Old German in college, so maybe all of that helps, but “braune Kuhe” is pretty similar to “brown cow” and that makes things easier :)

    posted by Fruppi on 2-8-2010 at 12:13 pm

  5. Annek is correct. The region in the Netherlands that’s referred to here, is called Friesland and the language spoken isn’t Fresian, but Frisian (or Fries in Dutch, or Frysk in Frisian). The map shown in the clip is terrible though. Only about the western half of the indicated area is actually Friesland. And the eastern half would be rather found dead than admit they have Frisian roots ;) But indeed Frisian and English share the same roots; look up the family tree of Anglo-Frisian languages (e.g., wikipedia) for more on this.

    posted by Tom S on 2-8-2010 at 1:59 pm

  6. That’s really cool to hear our language’s ‘ancestor’. It’s also amazing how Dutch Eddie sounded, while trying to speak Old English.

    Fruppi – it’s perfectly fine for classroom viewing. I think this is the only time Eddie Izzard has been on camera and not cursed or referenced genitals. :P

    posted by Bakedpotatoes on 2-8-2010 at 2:49 pm

  7. That all sounded very similar to German.I speak German and English and could understand it very well.

    posted by Emma on 2-8-2010 at 3:11 pm

  8. So Eddie Izzard is a hobbit, trying to buy a cow in Middle Earth. I’m not sure I quite get it.

    posted by Chris Higgins on 2-8-2010 at 4:56 pm

  9. Eddie Izzard also speaks French, (I know that his Dressed to Kill DVD features part of his stand-up routine in French) so maybe Old English is his next language to pick up?

    posted by Lindsey on 2-8-2010 at 5:25 pm

  10. Although the dutch I speak is not of the Frisian dialect, it’s still quite similar to English. As long as it’s spoken slowly, the phrase “like double Dutch” has absolutely no grounding in my opinion!

    posted by Rachel on 2-8-2010 at 6:41 pm

  11. @Rachel: Yes. Dutch is the closest language to English. You can call Dutch and English as “close sisters”.

    posted by Karl on 2-9-2010 at 4:29 am

  12. Friesland is… complicated. As Tom said, only the western part of what’s marked on the map in the video is “Friesland”, yet as soon as you go even further east to Northern Germany you get a whole lot of other Frieslands (although Frisian is only spoken in a tiny little enclave) with their own little insane geography (East Friesland being the westernmost part).

    posted by annek on 2-9-2010 at 6:34 am

  13. Yes, this is a lot of fun. It’s a bit of a stretch to say it’s Old English, though. Old old English? Let’s see him stride up to the old farmer and say:

    ‘Hwæt syndon gé searohæbbendra
    byrnum werede þe þus brontne céol
    ofer lagustraéte laédan cwómon
    hider ofer holmas?

    (Who are ye, then, ye armed men,
    mailed folk, that yon mighty vessel
    have urged thus over the ocean ways,
    here o’er the waters?) – Beowulf lines 237 – 240, Gummere translation.

    That’s Anglo-Saxon, which is Old English. Frisian sounds to me more like early Middle English. Disclaimer: I am not a linguist. But still.

    posted by David on 8-11-2011 at 11:40 pm

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