Reply #2: Old English is awesome.

[Odin2005]

I heard a funny story about an expert on Old English going into a store in Friesland, a region in northern Holland whose people speak a form of Low German called Frisian that is considered the language most closely related to English, and talked to the Frisian shopkeeper in Old English and the shopkeeper understood the guy perfectly! English and Frisian would still be somewhat mutually intelligible were it not for the Normans leading to the loss of the Germanic words Old English had for things involving law, government, cuisine, culture, and intellectual stuff and their replacement with borrowings from Old French and Latin. The contrived sentence "Goose, butter, bread, and cheese is good English and good Friese" sounds almost identical in both languages. The "ch" sound in "cheese" (Dutch "kaas") and the lack of an N in "goose" (Dutch "gans" in both languages links them together.

This is the Lord's Prayer in Old English:

<1> Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
<Father ours, thou that art in heaven,>

<2> Si þin nama gehalgod.
<Be thy name hallowed.>

<3> To becume þin rice,
<Come thy rich (kingdom),>

<4> gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
<Worth (manifest) thy will, on earth also as in heaven>

<5> Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
<Our daily loaf sell (give) us today,>

<6> and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum.
<And forgive us our guilts as also we forgive our guilty>

<7> And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele.
<And lead thou us not in temptation, but loose (release) us of evil.>

<8> Soþlice.
<Soothly.>