#(but also i am probably making the research for the podfic more complicated than it needs to be so i think it's just a trait of mine)

[mayonnaisetoffees]

saw your tags about reading a textbook on old english for podfic reasons---please tell me more! 👀

We're doing a multivoice podfic of the Merlin fic And like the cycle of the year, we begin again and I'm Merlin. Part of the fic involves him casting spells which the author has done in Old English like the show did

Fun fact about me is that I have a BA in Linguistics and most of my optional modules in second and third year were around the history of English and a specific Old English module. In fact my dissertation was a translation of an OE poem, an analysis of my translation, and then an analysis of a bunch of other translations. I very nearly did an integrated masters/PhD on translation techniques in dead languages (looking at the effects new translation techniques had on how we translate works and whether the discovery of new works affects this) with a specific focus on Old English but just before I handed in the paperwork I asked myself what are you DOING?? and did not do that

Anyway so I'm rereading one of my textbooks (Introduction to Old English 3rd ed. Peter S. Baker) to refamiliarise myself with the pronunciation "rules" for OE (and going on MANY tangents because this stuff is INTERESTING and it's great to get a go at it now that I'm not a. being assessed on it and b. dealing with depression) to help figure out how the words should sound.

I'm also using the website associated with the textbook (Old English Aerobics) to find where the words are used in OE texts and if there is audio for them, listening to that. Then because even if there IS audio, it's not in the sentence structure of the lines, I'm putting my pronunciation notes together (and looking a bit at the section of my textbook on syllable length/accentuation) to figure out how the sentence should be said as a whole.

I'm then wandering around the house saying the line over and over until it sounds natural. I've actually realised as I'm typing this, that I've been putting the stress in the wrong place on the line I'm currently working on so back to the drawing board on that one!

This answer got away from me a bit but yes that's why I'm reading an OE textbook for podfic purposes 😂