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Letter of Recommendation: Old English

nytimes.com

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Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#11

Post by petecox »

waserwill wrote: post #4
dunham wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I thought ð was voiced in old english, but it's been a very long time since I tried to learn it. I do recall that ð was voiced in the old norse that I was taught in college. It probably doesn't matter too much since you don't have an old englishman to speak to.

Both used to refer to the same sound (the first sound of thing), which mutated into what we have today (as in the), in part due to surrounding sounds (note, for example, that words ending in th are soft/unvoiced). The presence of two different characters has something to do with the integration of Latin and runic alphabets, but the choice of which was used isn't clear to me.

The wikipedia page on the Icelandic alphabet [0] sheds some light, þorn is runic, eð is from 'd'.

Icelandic employs a 19th century reconstruction of the old norse alphabet noting that "Various old features, like ð, had actually not seen much use in the later centuries" - which corresponds to their merger into one digraph 'th' in English. The article also notes that the letter ð undergoes a devoicing depending on its surroundings.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_orthography#Histor...

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#12

Post by gerdesj »

combatentropy wrote: post #8

I'm an amateur student of language, particularly English. This article taught me about kennings, or compound words in Old English poetry. At first I thought that the writer, Josephine Livingston, was saying that these were the main words --- like, the Old English word for sea is hronrad, "whale road." But no, if you look up "sea," that is Old English too. People normally said "sea," but sometimes if you were writing…

I see no reason why you couldn't write a poem today with custom-made compound words like "whale-road" and "bone-house."

I agree with you - I suspect that modern english has far more in common with its predecessors than we might think at first. I'm pretty sure I have seen poetry and prose that riffs like that - bolting together nouns in a way that would invite inspection for meaning, some of which might become expected (formulaic) in a way that might be an in-joke or a shared experience or perhaps a description that can be considered a shared pseudo experience ("I know what you mean")

Maybe it would be a little more jarring these days."

We might consider ourselves more sophisticated in some way and yet the term "bone house" does still resonate in some way for me but not in the context of "general term for a body/person". It does work rather well in the context of war/battle/conflict.

Kennings - seems to me to be cognate with "ken" (know). They seem to be designed for inventing nouns for context - a bit like the reverse of the effect of some adjectives. You include the adjective(s) within the agglomerate noun in some way, either explicitly or via convention (think of the imagery around: "bone house")

I love language.

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#13

Post by anyfoo »

combatentropy wrote: post #8

I'm an amateur student of language, particularly English. This article taught me about kennings, or compound words in Old English poetry. At first I thought that the writer, Josephine Livingston, was saying that these were the main words --- like, the Old English word for sea is hronrad, "whale road." But no, if you look up "sea," that is Old English too. People normally said "sea," but sometimes if you were writing…

While in German, jamming an adjective and a noun together to form a new compound word is still totally common. Apparently it was common in English, too? (I don't know enough about the common roots of the two languages.)

I just randomly mashed the words for "green" and "plate" together, and if I type the resulting "Grünplatte" into Google's image search, I see that LEGO had the same idea as me, apparently.

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#14

Post by combatentropy »

gerdesj wrote: post #12
combatentropy wrote: post #8

I'm an amateur student of language, particularly English. This article taught me about kennings, or compound words in Old English poetry. At first I thought that the writer, Josephine Livingston, was saying that these were the main words --- like, the Old English word for sea is hronrad, "whale road." But no, if you look up "sea," that is Old English too. People normally said "sea," but sometimes if you were writing…

I see no reason why you couldn't write a poem today with custom-made compound words like "whale-road" and "bone-house." I agree with you - I suspect that modern english has far more in common with its predecessors than we might think at first. I'm pretty sure I have seen poetry and prose that riffs like that - bolting together nouns in a way that would invite inspection for meaning, some of which might become expecte…

> Kennings - seems to me to be cognate with "ken" (know).

Yes, I think you're right, https://www.etymonline.com/word/kenning

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#15

Post by saghm »

combatentropy wrote: post #8

I'm an amateur student of language, particularly English. This article taught me about kennings, or compound words in Old English poetry. At first I thought that the writer, Josephine Livingston, was saying that these were the main words --- like, the Old English word for sea is hronrad, "whale road." But no, if you look up "sea," that is Old English too. People normally said "sea," but sometimes if you were writing…

Reminds a bit of https://xkcd.com/1322/

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#16

Post by mc32 »

combatentropy wrote: post #8

I'm an amateur student of language, particularly English. This article taught me about kennings, or compound words in Old English poetry. At first I thought that the writer, Josephine Livingston, was saying that these were the main words --- like, the Old English word for sea is hronrad, "whale road." But no, if you look up "sea," that is Old English too. People normally said "sea," but sometimes if you were writing…

Off topic, but when you look into Anglo-Saxon English, you come across some Anglo-Saxon/Celtic/Hibernian art/motifs[1] which are quite clean and elegant, some very meticulous and intricate (specially some metalwork).

[1]https://brewminate.com/anglo-saxon-england-and-decoding-angl...

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#17

Post by Rebelgecko »

gerdesj wrote: post #9

There are ways of expressing feeling in the Old English kennings that do not exist in the formal English of today. An accusation that might be levied against any language vs another. Funnily enough I found Ms Livingstone's final para a rather good example of the sheer power of modern english to concisely link several concepts when wielded with precision. That said, I rather like the sound of the freedom that is impli…

I think that many Old English works such as Beowulf had specific meters and patterns in how they used alliteration. I would guess that at least some of the more metaphorical kennings were created to fulfill those constraints in a poetic way.

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#18

Post by mrami »

combatentropy wrote: post #8

I'm an amateur student of language, particularly English. This article taught me about kennings, or compound words in Old English poetry. At first I thought that the writer, Josephine Livingston, was saying that these were the main words --- like, the Old English word for sea is hronrad, "whale road." But no, if you look up "sea," that is Old English too. People normally said "sea," but sometimes if you were writing…

Modern 'street' poetry: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Danger%20Noo...

Re: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

#19

Post by jhanschoo »

anyfoo wrote: post #13
combatentropy wrote: post #8

I'm an amateur student of language, particularly English. This article taught me about kennings, or compound words in Old English poetry. At first I thought that the writer, Josephine Livingston, was saying that these were the main words --- like, the Old English word for sea is hronrad, "whale road." But no, if you look up "sea," that is Old English too. People normally said "sea," but sometimes if you were writing…

While in German, jamming an adjective and a noun together to form a new compound word is still totally common. Apparently it was common in English, too? (I don't know enough about the common roots of the two languages.) I just randomly mashed the words for "green" and "plate" together, and if I type the resulting "Grünplatte" into Google's image search, I see that LEGO had the same idea as me, apparently.

I'm quite sure that this way of deriving compound words is generally common among Germanic languages. On the other hand, Romance languages are more productive using standard prefixes and affixes.

In English the putting two nouns together still exists, but the orthography is different: you write it as two words or with a hyphen in between, but the more common ones are written together. Loveseat, whorehouse, wheelbarrow, crankshaft, screwdriver, etc.

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