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How to Say “Hello” in Old English!

In the poem Beowulf, we find the Old English (or Eald Englisċ) way of saying “hello”:

Line 407 is “Wæs þū, Hrōðgār, hāl!”

“Wæs þū hāl” is the basic form of “hello” in Old English when you’re talking to one person. It literally means “Be thou healthy” or “Be thou hale”.

However, this phrase changes depending on how many people you’re talking to, and their gender.

This is sort of like how the Portuguese “thank you”, obrigado/a, changes according to the speaker’s gender.

When you’re talking to exactly 2 people that are both of the feminine gender, you’d say:

Wesaþ ġit hāla.

For exactly 2 people of any other gender, you’d say:

Wesaþ ġit hāle.

For more than 2 people that are all of the feminine gender, you’d say:

Wesaþ ġē hāla.

and, for more than 2 people of any other gender, you’d say:

Wesaþ ġē hāle.

Note that certain dialects of Old English used wes instead of wæs. Also, some dialects eliminated the gender distinction in the plural, with the adjective then being simply hāle regardless of gender.

Just a few more things:

1) The “Wes þū hāl!” version of “hello” is more common than the “Wæs þū hāl!” version online, but both are equally valid! As mentioned, the difference is based on the age and dialect of Old English that is used. The “wæs” version is based on the West Saxon dialect.

2) According to Ælfric’s Grammar, a contemporary Old English grammar, another way of saying hello is “Bēo ġesund” for the singular, and “Bēoþ ġesunde” for the plural (and in Early West Saxon Bēoþ ġesunda for an all-female group). (Pronouns may be added to this phrase for more clarity or emphasis)

3) It’s totally fine to leave out the pronouns “þū”, “ġit”, and “ġē” since the information of singular/plural depends on the verb “Wæs” or “Wesaþ” and the adjective “hāl” or “hāla”/ “hāle”. Therefore, when omitting the pronoun, there is no difference between the dual (or 2 people) form and the plural (more than 2 people) form.

4) The letter “æ” is pronounced as in “hat”, in this instance “þ” is pronounced as in “thing”, and “s” between vowels is pronounced as in “zebra”. The vowel “ā” is a lengthened “a” sound sort of like “father”, the vowel “a” is a shorter version of that sound, the letter “ē” is pronounced as in “ate”, and the letter “e” is pronounced as in “met”.

5) The little dot above the “g” in “ġit” and “ġē” is optional. It tells the reader that the letter is read as a “y” or IPA [j] sound, not as a “g” or IPA [g]/[ɣ] sound.

This version of “hello” appears to be the most widely used on the internet, and is found within the lines of the texts Beowulf and Andreas.

Here’s Ælfric’s Grammar, which lists another way to say “hello” in Old English (skipped to the page that handles “Bēo ġesund” etc.):

https://archive.org/details/grammatik00aelfuoft/page/n217/mode/2up