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

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

#21

Post by Agingcoder »

For those interested in learning old English, I’ve been going through Oswald Bera by Colin Gorrie -

https://colingorrie.com/books/osweald-bera/

Basically it’s a full blown story/graded reader with no modern English apart from vocabulary. You build an understanding of the language as you read the book and what is initially gibberish becomes quite clear as you progress . It does help if you’ve had a lot of exposure to German ( vocab and grammar), or barring this any case inflected language.

What’s noticeable is that it’s about 200 pages long, so the story gets quite sophisticated , and rather unexpectedly the book is a bit of a page-turner !

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

#22

Post by pbhjpbhj »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #15
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…

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…

>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 strong support for KJV because that's what they learnt 70 years ago. It sounds very archaic to modern ears. I'd say KJV hasn't been favoured this side of the millennium.

Just my impression.

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

#23

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rubzah wrote: post #20

This is the text in Old English for anyone looking: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47296/caedmons-hymn-5... Actually, here is the full text with the modern English inserted: Nu scilun herga hefenricæs uard Now let us praise Heaven-Kingdom's guardian, metudæs mehti and his modgithanc the Maker's might and his mind's thoughts, uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuæs the work of the glory-father—of every wonder, e…

Oh, what? Is "eci" (eternal?) the origin of "Ecki Thump" - Yorkshire version of OMG?

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

#24

Post by shelled »

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…

As someone with native command over Hindi and, unless it's spoken by folks from certain UK countries, English, who also spoke and read Sanskrit quite well during school, I had a period of a few months when I went down the rabbit-hole of wonderful general linguistic history and the interrelation among them. I was shocked beyond imagination to see how we might actually have been more the same than different, if we go back far enough (not even prehistoric 'far enough') in each case (even the languages which are geographically distant currently). But then, of course, civilisation happened.

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

#25

Post by jibal »

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…

The article has a link to the poem under the text [Caedmon’s Hymn] (unsurprisingly).

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

#26

Post by rsynnott »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #15
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…

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 vessels. What's wrong with just cupping up the water in your hands and licking it up like a cat?’

Racism always tends towards the silly, of course, but British ethnic nationalism particularly so, given the history. What’s ’British’, anyway?

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

#27

Post by dghf »

ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #10
pegasus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I felt the same. Especially since 1300 uses the same numbers of characters as 1.3k

Probably they mean to convey significant digits, though I feel it's safe to assume people would read "1300" as an approximation, not pointing to the year 726. I found it odd too. Edit: "The newly-discovered manuscript in the National Central Library of Rome of Caedmon’s Hymn dates from between the years 800 and 830, making it the third oldest surviving text of the poem." So... 1.2k then?

The manuscript is ~1200 years old, but the poem was composed earlier. The Venerable Bede, who died in 735, includes it and the story of its composition in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People: according to that story, it was composed while Saint Hilda was abbess of Whitby, c.660-680.

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

#29

Post by agos »

Agingcoder wrote: post #21

For those interested in learning old English, I’ve been going through Oswald Bera by Colin Gorrie - https://colingorrie.com/books/osweald-bera/ Basically it’s a full blown story/graded reader with no modern English apart from vocabulary. You build an understanding of the language as you read the book and what is initially gibberish becomes quite clear as you progress . It does help if you’ve had a lot of exposure to…

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

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

#30

Post by TFNA »

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…

> I wish translations into contemporary English went further to preserve the etymology of certain words

This is how the Icelandic sagas were translated into English in the nineteenth century. Translators then almost always chose the English cognate of the Old Norse world, even if that English cognate was obsolete or its meaning had changed. Far from helping immerse readers in the medieval world, the effect (at least for modern sensibilities) is offputting and goofy, and in the twentieth century publishers like Penguin replaced those translations by new ones with a very different approach. More judicious use of the Germanic lexicon in English, à la Tolkien, provides a more appealing atmosphere of olden times.

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