For a long time, I have been worried about the accusative endings in both the singular and the plural of strong feminine nouns. On investigating it looks as though in nearly all the declensions the singular accusative can either have no ending or an -e ending and the nominative and accusative plural can have either an -a ending or an -e ending.

The exceptions are the with i-mutation, so that
Bōc is always bēċ in the accusative singular and the nominative and accusative plurals.
Sweostor usually remains the same in all three cases, although it can have an -a (or rarely a -u) in the nominative and accusative plural.
Dohtor can stay the same in all three cases or it can have an -a ending in the plural.
Mōdor stays the same in the singular but has an -a or -u ending in the plural.
In the plural of sweostor, dohtor and mōdor  the second “o” is normally dropped if there is an ending e.g. dohtra and mōdru.

Can anyone tell us more about this?

I can make this event, looking forward to it

Jenny has done so well to make this happen.

Martin Carver is not charging us a fee, only expenses.

Sutton Hoo are not charging us.

It is important that you come and make this a success we can build on. It is not too far. Jenny and Martin will be travelling further than nearly all of us to attend.

I was glad you took a while in the Exhibition Bowerthane - it gave me an excuse to go back in! It took me ages to find you as I kept being sidelined (just wanted another gawp at the Book of Durrow, Winfarthing Pendant, etc!) . I went in for a third time just before we left - that time the guys on the entrance didn’t even bother to check my ticket!!!


Yes I’ve received the follow-up email, which I thought was a really nice touch and I’m keeping it for future reference!


It was really nice that you came Bowerthane, wouldn’t have been the same without you. Hope your lurgy is better (I developed a bit of a sniffle too, must be the London air!).

I have been reading The Horse The Wheel and Language for years. The first 20% of the book is excellent. It talks about the family of Indo-European languages and why we think there was an original Proto-Indo-European language.  It even goes into linguistic evidence to where those people lived. The remaining 80% is all about the archaeology differentiating the Indo European and their non Indo European neighbours in different times and places.

If you want to go deeper into the language there are a couple of books I could recommend. These are The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots by Calvert Watkins and From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic by Don Ringe.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots is about vocabulary thought to be derived from a Proto-Indo-European language. It starts with a discussion of Indo-European languages and how to reconstruct the proto-language. This is followed by a dictionary of suggested Proto- Indo-European words which give the words and the words they developed to in daughter languages and then into modern languages. This is followed by a list of modern words, giving the Proto-Indo-European word it came from. So you can look up a word in the last section to find the Proto-Indo-European root. Then look up the root to find how it and its cognates developed into the modern words.

Ringe’s book gives his suggested grammar of Proto-Indo-European, declining and conjugating the words. He then suggests how these words changed to form the suggested Proto-Germanic words and then gives his suggested declining and conjugating of these words. This is very heavy going. This is volume 1 of Ringe’s A Linguistic History of English. He has since volume 2 called The development of Old English which takes us from Proto-Germanic to late Old English.