I'm obviously not done yet.
Despite all the changes in English over the centuries—the respellings, the intensifications, the redefmings, and the confusions; the consonant shift upheavals and the continental drifts; the invasions and surrenders; the neologisms and crumbling antiquities; the poetic, the didactic, the ephemeral, the persnickitorial— despite all this swirl and vortex and shimmering change, there is one constant. I find comfort and invigoration in a word that we continue to spell just as we did in Old English, a word that has seen
variant spellings over the centuries, yet today retains the spelling just as the author of Beowulf used it. You’ll see its familiar face in this excerpt from Beowulf.
Him se yldesta ondswarode, werodes wisa, word-hord onleac:
“We synt gumcynnes Geata leode ond Higelaces heorbgeneatas. ”
To him the stateliest spake in answer;
the warriors’ leader his word-hoard unlocked :—
“We are by kin of the clan of Geats, and Hygelac’s own hearth-fellows we. ”
The word, of course, is word.
And from mine own word-hoard: So much that you know about English is wrong. So much much more that you know about English is exquisitely, vibrantly, resonantly right. Sing our modern songs of Beowulf my friends. Sing them in quiet conversations and in chat rooms and talking in your sleep. Sing them in poetry and novels and postcards. Sing me thy words, my kind hearth-fellows, sing me the centuries.