Not only is it surprising how utterly different Old English is from modern day English.
Not only is it surprising how utterly different Old English is from modern day English. But it becomes shocking when you consider that one millennium — despite seeming like a long time — was only forty generations ago. You, your parents, your grandparents: You might all speak roughly the same English. So if we experience virtually no change over the course of two or three generations, how is it that we achieved that much change over the course of forty generations?