The English word 'beef' comes from Norman French (boeuf), while 'cow' comes from Anglo-Saxon (cū) — because peasants raised the animals while nobles ate them. Old English (Englisc) was spoken in England roughly from 450 to 1150 CE, written in a Latin-based alphabet supplemented by runic letters like þ (thorn) and æ (ash). It is the language of Beowulf, Cædmon's Hymn, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — and is mostly unintelligible to modern English speakers without training.
Each round presents 10 randomized questions from a pool of 50, with four multiple-choice options and instant feedback after every answer. Your final score comes with a performance tier and shareable results.
You'll cover Beowulf, Cædmon's Hymn, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the four dialects of Old English, the special letters þ ð æ ƿ, the runic futhorc, Alfred the Great's role in preserving the language, the Norman Conquest of 1066, and how Anglo-Saxon vocabulary mingled with French and Latin to create modern English.
Beowulf is a 3,182-line Old English epic poem about a Geatish hero who slays the monster Grendel, Grendel's mother, and finally a dragon. It survives in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A.xv, c. 1000 CE) and is the longest and most celebrated Old English poem.
þ (thorn) is a runic letter borrowed into the Old English alphabet to represent the 'th' sound, both voiceless (as in 'thorn') and voiced (as in 'this'). It survived into Middle English before being replaced by the digraph 'th.'
The transition is conventionally dated to around 1150, with the Norman Conquest of 1066 as the critical trigger. By the mid-12th century, the inflectional system was crumbling and French loanwords were flooding the language, marking the shift to Middle English.
Last updated: May 2026