How Old English Actually Works: A Quick Guide for Writers and Developers

OET Team — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 01:59:28 +0000

Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is the language spoken in England from roughly 450 to 1150 AD. It's the ancestor of modern English, but most people can't read a line of it today. If you're writing fantasy, naming characters in a game, or just curious, here are the basics.

It looks familiar but isn't

Compare "The king rode to the hall" with the Old English Se cyning rad to þære healle. You can spot cyning (king) and healle (hall), but the grammar is different: Old English had grammatical gender and case endings, much like German.

Letters you won't find on your keyboard

þ (thorn) and ð (eth): both used for the "th" sound
æ (ash): the vowel in "cat"
ƿ (wynn): an old letter for "w"

Runes came first

Before the Latin alphabet took over, Anglo-Saxons also wrote with the Futhorc runic alphabet, which is why runes show up on old inscriptions like the Franks Casket.

Try it yourself

If you want to translate to Old English without memorising declension tables, I built a free tool for it: translate to Old English. Type a modern English sentence and it gives you the Old English wording plus runic and Anglo-Saxon script versions. You can also try it at https://oldenglishtranslator.app.

Caveats

Automatic translation of a dead language is always approximate: vocabulary gaps get filled with the closest attested words. For anything permanent (like a tattoo) double-check with a scholar or a dictionary such as Bosworth-Toller.