The Þog of 2023-10-21 — If Modern English was Directly Descended from West Saxon OE

NOTE: I'm not an expert in OE or linguistics. My 'reconstructions' are purely on gut feeling with some basic knowledge of the sound shifts between OE and NE. I'm sure to have made mistakes or uneducated guesses in places. Please let me know if you have any corrections!

Modern English derives from the Mercian dialect of early middle English, which in its older form, was different in a few ways from the literary standard West Saxon dialect of old English. This lead to a few words in modern English which seem unrelated to the standard OE ones.

Word Sound Differences

Below is a list of terms in modern English, the OE it came from, the West Saxon OE equivalent, and what the West Saxon word would look like with modern spelling and sound rules.