Old Common - Eald Folclic (Eh-ahld Folk-lich)
Old Common is the predecessor of the modern Common language we speak today. It is estimated that Old Common (known simply as 'Common' at the time) died out about 400 years ago as intermingling with other language speakers lead to simplification and intermixing of both vocabulary and grammar.
Old Common looks very foreign, at first. The spellings can be quite different, but the two languages have many similar words, especially the commonly used ones. Take for example, the Common word 'father' and the Old Common 'fæder'. Or again, 'welcome' with 'welcumen'.
While it wasn't always the case, Old Common tended to form sentences with the Subject first, then the Verb, then the Object, or 'SVO', like Common does today. Also they tended to put the adjective before the noun it modified, again very much like our Common.
The biggest difference between Common and Old Common is that Old Common is known as a synthetic or inflected language, while Modern Common is more structural or analytical. What does that mean? In Old Common, word order in a sentence didn't matter that much, because there were endings, or inflections, on verbs and nouns that told you what they meant in the context. In Modern Common, we use sentence order to provide the structure that gives us the context of the word. For instance, if I said "Mary I apple gave to," you wouldn't know if Mary or I gave the apple, or perhaps the apple gave Mary! The word order is important. In Old English, it is noun declensions and verb tenses.
Nouns in many languages, including Old Common, have cases that tell what part of
speech they are. The noun is said to decline through these cases, forming a declension. Old Common had four cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. Nominative was used for direct objects (the subject of the sentence, for example 'I'), Accusative for indirect objects (the object of a sentence, for instance 'the apple', Genitive to show possession, for example 'the horse's', and Dative for prepositional phrases, for instance 'to Mary.'
Verbs, on the other hand, have tenses. We still have remanents of this in Common, with past, present, and future tense, for example. They often show when something is happening, and whether the subject of the sentence is 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person, as well as singular or plural.
We don't have many texts written in Old Common, and scholars are uncertain of how precisely it was pronounced. The pronunciation we use is an approximation. We also have a limited vocabulary available to us. Spelling was inconsisent back then, too, making understanding Old Common quite difficult.
Old Common Letters
Letter Name |
Upper Case |
Lower Case |
Pronounced |
|---|---|---|---|
Ash |
Æ |
æ |
'ah' in 'father' |
Eth |
Ð |
ð |
'th' in 'bath' |
Thorn |
Þ |
þ |
'th' in 'this' |
Wynn |
Ƿ |
ƿ |
'w' in 'went' |
Who speaks Old Common?
Technically, no one does, it is what is known as a dead language. It is studied primarily by scholars and sages, sometimes wizards will learn it in hopes of finding old spells. Often, the children of the noble families will be given a grounding in Old Common as lessons in languages and history. There are some poets and writers who write in Old Common, in an attempt to revive the language, but primarily it is used in bits and phrases, either to show off ones' learning or to politely use an indelicate phrase.
Common Phrases
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