Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 1 Jan 2021, 23:25
What surprises me is how little these words have changed in a thousand years, and also that if you speak them aloud, articulating all the letters, you get a kind of feel from how they might have sounded then.
an
forma
twa
oðer
ðreo
ðridda
feower
feorða
fif
fifta
siex
siexta
seofon
seofoða
eahta
eahtoða
nigon
nigoða
tien
teoða
forma and oðer have been replaced by first (which looks like a natural vowel and then consonant shift perhaps, I think the German is erste) and second, from Latin secundus.
Counting in Anglo-Saxon
What surprises me is how little these words have changed in a thousand years, and also that if you speak them aloud, articulating all the letters, you get a kind of feel from how they might have sounded then.
forma and oðer have been replaced by first (which looks like a natural vowel and then consonant shift perhaps, I think the German is erste) and second, from Latin secundus.