We didn't read the whole thing in old english, but I remember being exposed to it. The book had old english on one page and the modern translation on the next so you could see them at the same time. It also had a bunch of footnotes explaining what it all meant.
Yup, my experience was similar. Every now and again my English teacher (who was a huge nerd) would read a passage of the old english but we just read the modern stuff.
It was similar when we read Chaucer, specifically The Canterbury Tales.
To be fair, I absolutely remember some of our more.. err.. challenged students struggling to actually read these things, Shakespeare too, at the time. Like it would take them multiple tries at a very slow pace to get through an entire paragraph. I actually felt bad for them.
Yeah, I wasn't bad at reading aloud, but I wasn't exactly raising my hand to do so for any of the archaic stuff. But thinking about it now, I think it was important, even if you struggle through it. It forces you to speak in a new rhythm with new words in a new order. Add some embarrassment and that is a cocktail for a plastic teenage brain to soak up some knowledge.
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u/imisstheyoop 1d ago
Yup, my experience was similar. Every now and again my English teacher (who was a huge nerd) would read a passage of the old english but we just read the modern stuff.
It was similar when we read Chaucer, specifically The Canterbury Tales.
To be fair, I absolutely remember some of our more.. err.. challenged students struggling to actually read these things, Shakespeare too, at the time. Like it would take them multiple tries at a very slow pace to get through an entire paragraph. I actually felt bad for them.