Even in the written form it's absolutely impossible for me to decipher, it might as well be a completely different language:
>HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
>þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
>hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
The language evolved so drastically over the past thousand years that his germanic roots are buried pretty deep. Nowadays you're likely to find more cognates in a french text than in a german one.
Meanwhile I can find french texts even older than Beowulf and still understand the general gist of it. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_of_Saint_Eulalia#Text . Even if you don't speak french comparing the original and modernized french version should be enough to convince you of the similarities:
>Buona pulcella fut eulalia. (Bonne pucelle fut Eulalie.)
>Bel auret corps bellezour anima (Beau avait le corps, belle l’âme.)
>Voldrent la veintre li deo Inimi. (Voulurent la vaincre les ennemis de Dieu)
Even in the written form it's absolutely impossible for me to decipher, it might as well be a completely different language:
>HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
>þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
>hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
The language evolved so drastically over the past thousand years that his germanic roots are buried pretty deep. Nowadays you're likely to find more cognates in a french text than in a german one.
Meanwhile I can find french texts even older than Beowulf and still understand the general gist of it. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_of_Saint_Eulalia#Text . Even if you don't speak french comparing the original and modernized french version should be enough to convince you of the similarities:
>Buona pulcella fut eulalia. (Bonne pucelle fut Eulalie.)
>Bel auret corps bellezour anima (Beau avait le corps, belle l’âme.)
>Voldrent la veintre li deo Inimi. (Voulurent la vaincre les ennemis de Dieu)