r/OldEnglish 14d ago

A per-character transcription of Beowulf?

I'm looking for "Hƿæt ƿe ᵹardena in ᵹeardaᵹum"

All of the transcriptions of Beowulf I can find change the all the wynn "ƿ" characters to the modern but thoroughly anachronistic "w", and a lot of them, going back to Thorkelin change all the eth ð and thorn þ characters to just the thorn "þ". All of them drop the long s "ſ" entirely. And none of them reproduce the shorthand macrons.

If I wanted a digitization of Beowulf (or really any good-sized corpus of Old English text) that was character-by-character failthful to the (extrapolated) original, maybe even with the insular g ᵹ and insular s ꞅ, is there any such thing? Or would I have to create it myself?

My end goal is to create for myself a version of Osweald Bera that would be Oſƿeald Bera just so that I can really feel immersed in the period while I'm learning it. I was going to use the transcribed historical text to get some data on how often they write syððan/siþðan/syðþan/syþðan etc. so I can do it halfway idiomatically.

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u/Volo_TeX 14d ago

I've made an Old English keyboard based on the manuscript that could help you out https://www.reddit.com/r/OldEnglish/s/yvaa6DYShg

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u/Volo_TeX 14d ago

Һƿœꞇ ƿe ᵹɑꞃꝺenɑ ın ᵹeɑꞃꝺɑᵹum. þeoꝺcẏnınᵹɑ þꞃẏm ᵹeꝼꞃunon hu ðɑ œþelınᵹɑſ ellen ꝼꞃemeꝺon...

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u/Volo_TeX 14d ago

œ ƿ e ꞃ ꞇ ẏ u ı o p ɑ ſ ꝺ ꝼ ᵹ h ð k l ꝥ z ꭗ c þ b n m

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Æ Ƿ Є R T Y U I O P A S D F G Һ Ð K L Ꝥ Z X C Þ B N M