> We have an excellent idea of what the Anglo Saxon language would have sounded like, in part because it has close living relatives.
The phonology is well reconstructed; that is not the issue.
The issue is that it is not just a dead language, but a dead passive language which is only read, but never written, unlike, say Latin, which is both read and written — I seriously doubt that there are more than a handful of people on this planet who can claim to have true Sprachgefühl for any period of Old English, and if they have it for 800's English, it is unlikely they have it for 1000's English.
It's simply prætentious to claim that one can enjoy the æsthetics of a poem written in this language, for which one requires an intimate sense of Sprachgefühl — I can Latin myself and understand the meaning of the text, but I cannot claim to have the same sense of æsthetics I have for English, where I can decide what phrasings sound beautiful, and what sound stiff, and that's very hard to ever acquire for a dead language.
Listening to the sounds is different from understanding the meaning and nuance, much of what you wrote seems to be about surface realization of sounds rather than appreciating the choice of words from an æsthetic standpoint.
That speaker also clearly sounds as what he almost certainly is: a non-native who would certainly appear to have an heavy accent and appear stiff and wooden to actual native speakers.
Enjoy it, don't enjoy it, hop in your time machine and go back to the 9th century to enjoy it; whatever floats your boat. Personally, I enjoy it, "pretentious" or not.
And can you claim to have Sprachgefühl for 900s English and be able to feel the difference between a poetic phrasing an an ordinary phrasing in that language?
I don't know. Can you claim not to be "prætentious," while throwing around words like "Sprachgefühl", as if this isn't a forum for communicating with ordinary people in plain English?
PS, 9th century is from 801-900 CE. Might want to set the dial correctly when you hop in that time machine to get some Sprachgefühl.
Sprachgefühl is a completely normal English word, used all the time, not only that, much like Schadenfreude there is no alternative that captures the meaning.
But that response was simply an attempt to dodge the issue raised.
The phonology is well reconstructed; that is not the issue.
The issue is that it is not just a dead language, but a dead passive language which is only read, but never written, unlike, say Latin, which is both read and written — I seriously doubt that there are more than a handful of people on this planet who can claim to have true Sprachgefühl for any period of Old English, and if they have it for 800's English, it is unlikely they have it for 1000's English.
It's simply prætentious to claim that one can enjoy the æsthetics of a poem written in this language, for which one requires an intimate sense of Sprachgefühl — I can Latin myself and understand the meaning of the text, but I cannot claim to have the same sense of æsthetics I have for English, where I can decide what phrasings sound beautiful, and what sound stiff, and that's very hard to ever acquire for a dead language.
> If you want to hear it, you can listen to the first few lines here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-_GwoO4xI
Listening to the sounds is different from understanding the meaning and nuance, much of what you wrote seems to be about surface realization of sounds rather than appreciating the choice of words from an æsthetic standpoint.
That speaker also clearly sounds as what he almost certainly is: a non-native who would certainly appear to have an heavy accent and appear stiff and wooden to actual native speakers.