Comment by thaumasiotes
8 hours ago
> There is not enough detail in this article to know how compelling the case is or what the counter arguments would be.
The only real way to make the case compelling would be to discover new Old English texts. So there is enough information; the case is not going to be compelling.
May I suggest Old Frisian (& Old Saxon) as well
https://xcancel.com/thijsporck/status/1395838213198127111
Video from this week
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMIfHNn9KGs&t=12m57s
Addresses Shakespeare's objection
Commenters there point to German translations that open with "Wie.."
https://archive.org/details/beowulfdasltest00beowgoog#:~:tex...
(Karl Simrock, 1859)
Check out the paper - someone else linked it. It has several examples from Old English and other related languages which support its case. It seems pretty compelling to me.
The fact that earlier translators had to break up the original sentence and insert an exclamation point after "What" is already a bit suspect. Walkden's interpretation actually makes more sense, when you see examples like "Hwæt stendst þu her wælhreowa deor?", meaning "Why are you standing here, cruel beast?"
This may be a case where early translators over-indexed on e.g. Latin patterns and made a mistake which was then just accepted by subsequent translators.