Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

tcd.ie

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 143 posts

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#121

Post by KurSix »

simonask wrote: post #5
pouwerkerk wrote: post #3

Of course the article is about the archaeological discovery, but if you're curious (as I was) what the poem is, it's "Caedmon’s Hymn": "Now we must praise the protector of the heavenly kingdom the might of the measurer and his mind’s purpose, the work of the father of glory, as he for each of his wonders, the eternal Lord, established a beginning. He shaped first for the sons of the earth heaven as a roof, the holy m…

Thanks, came to the comments for this! Reading Old English as a Scandinavian is always interesting, because if you squint hard enough, you can easily see how the languages are so deeply related. So many modern Scandinavian words have what seem to be lost cognates in Old English, and I suppose vice versa. That said, I wish translations into contemporary English went further to preserve the etymology of certain words a…

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes Old English fascinating even if you don't know the language properly

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#122

Post by KurSix »

alex-moon wrote: post #65

I absolutely love post-Roman, pre-Norman British writing because it's so rare it gives the era a sense of mystery. This is of course the time when King Arthur is supposed to have lived. In the absence of contemporary records, the impulse to fill it with wizards and dragons is understandable.

Yes, that "thinness" of the record is a huge part of the appeal

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#123

Post by [deleted] »

rsynnott wrote: post #26
PaulRobinson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is claimed as being influenced heavily by every nation that conquered England, because of course it was: Latin via the Romans; Anglo-Saxon/Gemanic; then Viking; and, then the Latin/Romance influence again via France/Normandy. And of course, English develops organically (unlike, say, French), allowing new words to emerge, and for old words to take on new meanings. I love it. As an Englishman, I always find it…

> I particularly like the irony of the far-right going on about English identity on a march in London before going to have a lager and chicken tikka masala before heading home to a bungalow and putting on their pyjamas... :) Stewart Lee had a good bit about this: > [..] > ‘Bloody Beaker folk. Coming over here, rowing up the Tagus Estuary from the Iberian Peninsula in improvised rafts. Coming here with their drinking…

[deleted]

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#124

Post by maximinus_thrax »

Not sure why they classified this language as 'old English'. It's so far removed (from all perspectives including a fundamentally different grammatical system) from modern or even early modern English, it's a completely different language altogether. I find "old English" to be a highly a misleading name as it implies continuity that simply isn't there in the same way it exists in say German.

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#125

Post by xdennis »

rubzah wrote: post #105
rsolva wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing both Norwegian and Dutch, most words here is surprisingly similar to modern words: hefenricæs = himmelrikes (no) uerc = werk (nl) eci = evig (no) / eeuwig (nl) ærist = eerst (nl) barnum = barn (no) sceppend = schepper (nl) EDIT: Hearing the poem read also gives dutch / germanic vibes: https://gutenberg.org/files/19677/ogg/19677.ogg

thanc = tanke (thought) uuldurfadur = alfader (all-father) uundra = under (wonder) halig = hellig (holy)

It's a bit unconnected to all-father. My impression would be that uuldurfadur would be literally "world-father". But it actually means "glory-father"[1]. It's more commonly spelled wuldorfæder. (Also unrelated to the word "wundor" meaning wonder.)

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wuldorf%C3%A6der

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#126

Post by SSLy »

WillAdams wrote: post #57
simonask wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, came to the comments for this! Reading Old English as a Scandinavian is always interesting, because if you squint hard enough, you can easily see how the languages are so deeply related. So many modern Scandinavian words have what seem to be lost cognates in Old English, and I suppose vice versa. That said, I wish translations into contemporary English went further to preserve the etymology of certain words a…

Yes, but J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a guide on this (after seeing a couple of really bad quality translations) which later translations benefited from: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Guide_to_the_Names_in_The_Lo... that this was in _A Tolkien Compass_ which was one of the first books I purchased w/ my own money (along w/ _A Tolkien Reader_) is arguably a big part of why I chose to study languages early on in my life.

wish the link would let itself be read

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#127

Post by Agingcoder »

engeljohnb wrote: post #118
agos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is super interesting! I wonder if there is something like this for other languages!

There's tons, if you look up "[language] graded reader" or "[language] nature method." Familia Romana by Hans Orberg is a great one for Latin. I frequently see people call it the gold standard for this kind of book, but they're all Latin enthusiasts, so they're not exactly unbiased.

I didn’t find that many - you can find graded readers, but very few ‘graded novels’ ( as in a full novel where chapters are progressively harder, not multiple independent tiny stories ) if I may say so

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#128

Post by devilbunny »

celebril wrote: post #38
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the "King James" version is considered the standard within the Anglican churches in the UK I don't find this to be true. Even at high mass ('bells & smells' type communion) you get more modern versions. To my recollection NIV would be most common. Obviously not a representative survey. Also, it might be at traditional/formal services you get [N]KJV as I've been to less of those. Amongst very old people you see stron…

A bit of correction: the version you'll most likely see being used across the Church of England nowadays is NRSV. It's the scholarly translation. NIV is the preferred translation for the low-church side, the evangelicals, so definitely won't be used by the bells-and-smells high church crowd. KJV is preferred by a niche who also prefers the Book of Common Prayer liturgy over Common Worship. Usually this is either an o…

> It's the scholarly translation

And even then, only written at IIRC ninth-grade level (don't know the UK term; ages 14-15). I bought one in college because it was the highest-reading-level Bible they had at Barnes and Noble (major US bookseller; think Waterstones) and I wanted a decent text for some religion classes.

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#129

Post by lproven »

amdsn wrote: post #97
lproven wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I preferred Interlingua... But these days, Slovio would help me more. I've tried Slovio on Slavs of about 10 nationalities. None had ever heard of it. All of then, no exceptions, could just understand it perfectly well, to their great surprise. https://www.interlingua.com/interlingua-en/ https://www.slovio.com/

I find slovio to be jarring. It's like someone took vaguely slavic words and slammed Esperanto-inspired grammar onto them. Something like Interslavic at least has noun/verb morphology that is much more familiar to all Slavic language speakers. I could imagine myself actually speaking Interslavic, but not the case for Slovio. It's simply too strange. Straight from the Slovio website: >Slovio es novju mezxunarodju jazi…

Very interesting. Thanks. Those are good points...

Re: New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

#130

Post by devilbunny »

engeljohnb wrote: post #118
agos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is super interesting! I wonder if there is something like this for other languages!

There's tons, if you look up "[language] graded reader" or "[language] nature method." Familia Romana by Hans Orberg is a great one for Latin. I frequently see people call it the gold standard for this kind of book, but they're all Latin enthusiasts, so they're not exactly unbiased.

Familia Romana is the first part of Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata.
Post reply on HN