Sometimes, poets used a weak adjective where you might actually expect a strong adjective (e.g., when the adjective is unmodified – gamola Scylding rather than gamol Scylding). For instance, Old English poets could use adjectives as nouns (e.g., se gamela ). MEMES RELATING TO OLD ENGLISH POETRY Old English poets would often bend some of the rules of Old English grammar so as to fit their metre or other aspects of their poetic form (e.g., alliteration), to the great frustration of students of Old English. The kind of questions that should keep you awake at night… A meme explaining how preterite-present verbs came to be: the past tense of a strong verb was re-interpreted as a present tense. If you thought three classes of weak verbs was challenging, try out the seven classes of strong verbs! A distinguishing feature of class III of the strong verbs (and some class VII strong verbs) is the fact that their stems end in two consonants (e.g., bind-an, drinc-an, swing-an, belg-an, sweorf-an, etc.) While weak and strong verbs may be hard to grasp the preterite-present verbs of Old English are notoriously difficult. Distinguishing between class 1 and class 2 weak verbs is not difficult if they are in the past tense class 2 weak verbs have an -a- or an -o- preceding the dental suffix (e.g., lufode ), while class 1 weak verbs have an -e- if they have a short stem (e.g., fremede ) or no vowel before the dental suffix if they have a long stem (e.g., drencte ). The PLURAL present tense indicative ending of weak verbs class 1 (-aþ) is the same ending as the third person SINGULAR present tense indicative ending of weak verbs class 2 (-aþ).

Old English has three classes of weak verbs – the third class is a bit of an odd-one-out, since it consists of only four frequently used verbs with distinctive paradigms: libban, habban, secgan and hycgan. However, as this meme demonstrates, there are some common weak verbs that also change their stem inthe past tense: brengan (brohte), þencan (þohte), secan (sohte), tellan (tealde) and s ellan (sealde) A more accurate distinction between strong and weak verbs: strong verbs do not add a dental suffix to mark the past tense (they do not have such weaknesses…). Commonly, strong verbs are defined as those verbs that change their stem (vowel) to form the past tense. MEMES RELATING TO OLD ENGLISH VERBS Old English has three verbal moods: indicative (used for FACTS), imperative (used for COMMANDS) and subjunctive (used for DOUBT, as well as the expression of desire, possibility and reported opinion). A basic reminder that Old English does not have indefinite articles. Within a noun phrase, the noun, adjective and demonstrative pronoun all share the same case, gender and number. Another crucial distinction within nouns are those that have a short stem (like scip ) and those that have a long stem (like þing ). MEMES RELATING TO OLD ENGLISH NOUN (PHRASES) Another buff doge vs cheems meme, demonstrating the difference between strong and weak nouns. However, there are two exceptions to this rule: comparative adjectives ending in -ra and ordinal numbers (except oþer ), which are always declined weak! Usually, -um at the end of a word indicates dative plural in the case of strong adjectives, it can be either dative singular or dative plural.

Here is an explanation of when adjectives are declined strong. The reason why adjectives are declined weak is because they are modified by a demonstrative pronoun, a genitive noun (phrase) or a possessive pronoun (or because they are in a vocative expression). The fact that weak adjectives tend to end in -an is not the REASON why they are declined weak. M EMES RELATING TO OLD ENGLISH ADJECTIVES Weak adjecives and weak nouns are characterised by the fact that the ending -an occurs frequently in their paradigms.

Two memes explaining the conflation of the instrumental and the dative in late Old English A ‘Kalm Panik’-meme explaining dual case prepositions, where a dative object implies ‘stasis’ and an accusative object implies ‘movement’. MEMES RELATING TO OLD ENGLISH CASES The five grammatical cases of Old English A simple meme showing the difference between the case system in Old English and the case system in Middle English The Germanic stress rule (which puts emphasis on the first syllable of a word) resulted in less emphasis falling on the final syllables of words and, as such, Germanic languages may be said to self-sabotage their case systems. If you want memes in actual Old English, you can find those here: Please let me know (by e-mail or otherwise) whether you found these memes helpful in your endeavours to learn (or teach) Old English! Here is a collection of Old English grammar memes that I made to help explain elements of Old English grammar to my students.

Grammarly meme