Lord's Prayer: West Saxon Dialect (Old English, Anglo Saxon): Wessex Gospels/ Southern England

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• published: 10 Dec 2011
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At the end of the 10th century, there appeared in Southern England an anonymous version of the four Gospels in Old English, known as the West-Saxon Gospels or Wessex Gospels. This version evidently had some currency in England, because seven copies of it have come down to us. Also at this time a scholarly priest named Ælfric in Dorsetshire was translating a number of commentaries into English, and at the request of a local nobleman Ælfric went on to produce an abridged English version of the Pentateuch. Ælfric was aware of the fact that such translation of Scripture was frowned upon in the past, and he several times expresses reservations about it in his works, yet he continued. It is believed that the Wessex Gospels were translated by him. A Note About My Pronunciation: I know a lot of scholars say to pronounce "ge" as "y" not "g." I disagree. According to some pronunciation guides, the "g" is pronounced 4 different ways in Anglo Saxon depending on the letter or vowel that comes before or after it. I have looked at facsimiles of the original manuscripts and the "g" that is handwritten is not always the yogh or cursive z that we see in transliteration. Anglo Saxon, as all other languages besides modern English and French is a phonetic language. Although the understanding of the "y" sound may help you when reading Anglo Saxon documents when studying the etymology of language and what modern English words have derived from Anglo Saxon, such as "dagas" is now "days," it does not make logical sense that in the 9th and 10th centuries, that scribes had "created" exceptions to their rules of pronunciation when they were for the first time in the origins of a new language, writing it down for others to be able to read the words and know what the words were saying in their language based on phonics. Even today, day in the Germanic languages retains the hard "g." My husband has lived in Germany and Norway and is studying the Gothic Language from 320 AD. The "g" was always pronounced and still is the same way, as "g." My study of Spanish and courses I have taken on linguistics and the etymology of languages confirms my belief that we cannot use modern rules, standardized by Noah Webster, and apply these rules to a written language that is over 1000 years old, with not even spelling standardized. I know that "to daege" is now modern "today," but that does not mean I will or should pronounce it "today." However, as I am reading out loud, since I know the "g" is sometimes the modern "y," but not always, I can understand many more Saxon words without having to look in a glossary. If anything, to totally understand whether the "g" should be pronounced "g" or "h," you must either look up the surviving handwritten facsimiles to see if a different letter or symbol was used, but poorly transliterated, or use the "all or nothing" rule. In Middle English, all letters were phonetic. The g was a g sound every time. It does not make since that scribes during the Middle Ages all the sudden lost their standards and became more sloppy than the scribes of Anglo Saxon, and since Anglo Saxon more closely mirrors the Scandinavian and Germanic languages, as does Gothic, then we must actually look at how words are pronounced in modern day Scandinavia and Germany for proper Saxon pronunciation, rather than English-- a language that pronounces "ough" about 8 different ways.