Hey, it's Mignon. Today's show is the third in a series of interviews called Grammar Girl Conversations

that I'm doing with my favorite people, authors, linguists, dictionary

editors, and more.

Today, medievalist Hanovideen, author of the Deo Horde, will tell us about delightful old English words like Air Worm, Walking Weaver, Heaven

Candle, and the origin of fire-breathing dragons. Enjoy the show.

Hannah, welcome to the Grammar Girl Podcast. Thank you so much.

Yes, so I love your work and the Word Horde,

your daily Old English Word, and the Deo Horde

is your new book, so delightful,

and I can't wait to talk about the animals, but also I would like to use it as a bit of an excuse to talk about old English.

I know you have a PhD in Old English from Kings College London and can you start by just

telling us I think there's a lot of confusion about what old English is or when it was spoken.

So maybe just orient us that way before we get completely into your book.

Sure.

So a lot of people think that old English is the language that was spoken around the time of Shakespeare and that English is old and different from the language we speak now, but it's actually still early modern English and going back further to

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, sometimes you might think that that's old English, but that's

actually middle English, which is still fairly readable to buy modern English readers.

But then if you go back further to the language that was used in England between around 550 to

1150, that's old English.

And that's quite a bit harder to read and understand understand even if you're fluent in modern English.

Yeah, it is really so different. I'm sure you don't know this, but your daily word hoard is an essential tool for me to put

together the Grammar Girl podcast because whenever I see an old English word I don't

...