Scip, bæð, bricg, and þæt might look wholly foreign but their pronunciations—respectively “ship,” “bath,” “bridge,” and “that”—have not altered in a thousand years. Indeed, if you take twenty minutes to familiarize yourself with the differences in Old English spelling and pronunciation—learning that i corresponds to the modern “ee” sound, that e sounds like “ay” and so on—you can begin to pick your way through a great deal of abstruse-looking text.
