Professor E

Available at Balcony Paris

Hello there, dear. Ohhhh, I want to read Carmilla so bad!

Oh my… I am wondering if you mean Middle English or old English? Middle English is still often difficult, think of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Meanwhile, old English is pretty much an entirely new language.

Anyway, my tips for reading Middle English is to read it out loud! After some hours of practice, you’ll start to pick up on the flow of things. Also by reading it out loud, your ears will be able to better identify the words on the page, as often they are pronounced in a more recognizable way than what your eye sees on the paper. Look up strange words you don’t know, because usually they stem from old English and have an entirely different meaning than what one might think.

My tip for reading old English is get a dual language edition! You can get a copy of Beowulf with the original old English and modern English side by side! Unless you have the time to learn a new language, though, you may find reading old English incredibly difficult, but that’s not a fault of yours. One of my favorite professors is a medieval scholar, and so he can read old English. When we read Beowulf with him, he made us read both translations and taught us a lot about it. It’s immensely difficult but a fascinating language to understand.

I’ll put some examples from my books here!

Left: middle English (Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales)

Right: old English (Beowulf, by an unknown poet)

Professor. E: A/W 2020 Collection.