(The last word, with a hyphen, is the first part of the Old English word for thousand.)
Still confused? Here is a translation into modern English, from The Saxon Chronicle, AD 1 to AD 1154, translated by the Rev. J. Ingram, first published in 1823.
...The king went home, with the aldermen and the nobility; and thus lightly did they forsake the ships; whilst the men that were in them rowed back to London. Thus lightly did they suffer the labour of all the people to be in vain; nor was the terror lessened, as all England hoped. When this naval expedition was thus ended, then came, soon after Lammas, the formidable army of the enemy, called Thurkill's army, to Sandwich; and soon they bent their march to Canterbury; which city they would quickly have stormed, had they not rather have desired peace; and all the men of East-Kent made peace with the army, and gave them three thou-
(The last word, with a hyphen, is the first part of thousand.)
You might recognise or be able to work out some of the words, for example:
|
cyng |
king |
|
ealdormenn |
aldermen |
|
scipe |
ship |
|
Lundene |
London |
|
Angel-cynn |
Angle-kin (English-kin) |
|
threo |
three |
If you have some knowledge of German, you can see some similarities, for example:
|
cyng |
König |
king |
|
scipe |
Schiff |
ship |
|
gerswine |
Gerschswindigkeit |
headway (nautical) |
|
ungemetlica |
ungemächlich |
troublesome |
|
|
ungemütlich |
unpleasant (translated as formidable) |
As you can see, there is a strong historical link between English and German. There will be more about this in a later section where we will look at the way English is related to a surprising number of other languages. We might even ask, ‘Is English an Asian language?’