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Reading English from 1000 AD

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Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#51

Post by us-merul »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #44
us-merul wrote: post #11

For a while, I mistakenly thought that “Germanic” meant related to German specifically. Old English makes more sense if you’re aware of Frisian, Dutch, and other non-Scandinavian Germanic languages, since that’s the area it originated from. German and Spanish make this distinction explicit (Deutsch/Germanisch and Alemán/Germánica).

> For a while, I mistakenly thought that “Germanic” meant related to German specifically. ...it does. That's why the form of the word is "Germanic". That's what it means. There are different levels at which you can be related to something. In this case the contrast is between Indo-European languages related to German and Indo-European languages not related to German (except through the shared ancestor called proto-In…

There isn’t one singular “German.” Sure, there’s a standard form in the country Germany, but the language family is more diverse than that. My point is that the English terminology fuses the language family with the modern country of Germany.

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#52

Post by yobbo »

rob74 wrote: post #3

As a native German speaker, I can at least say that knowing both German and English doesn't really help in understanding the text. Not even the most "dumbed down" version - ok, he's apparently saying something about his wife, but no idea what exactly. And when I read " shyne (Modern English "sheen" but German cognate is closer) ", I was even more confused. "Sheen" is the property of an object that is shiny, which in…

Also knowing (archaic?) Scandinavian helps a little more.

"swa" is like a contraction of german "so wie". sindon is probably like german "sind": is/were.

soþ - sweet? gefeohte - past-tense born/nurtured/raised. ƿælfæst - wellfed. sƿylce - equivalent to modern "swole"? andƿlite - cognate with "anlete" which means face. ƿynsum - "finesome". searocræftum: specially-forceful (fantasy modern swedish cognate "särkraftigt"). "for þy" - since/because ("fördi"). forlætan: forgive.

ƿifode - wifed (strangely modern)

ofslean: probably closer to modern "avslå or "Abschlagen" than "slain". Defeat?

Ac - maybe like "ach"?

naƿiht: antonym to "evig"?

geƿitan - go/leave/escape/flee? (Scandinavian "vidd" means expansive landscape, cognate with "width" and "weit")

Nefne - negation of efne: "not even"?

stede - meaning is probably "farms" or "smallholdings"

gebunden - cognate with "bound", but the meaning is probably closer to "enserfed".

gefultumige - feels like past-tense of a verb that means "filled with"?

Squinting:

"And what she said was all sweet. I wifed her, and she was fully? beautiful wife, wise and wellfed . Not met I ever "swoler" woman. She was born so bold as any man, and though-whatis her face was fine and fair.

"Alas we never free were, since we never might from Wulfsfleet left, and never that Hlaford find and him defeat. That Hlaford had these places with such force bound, that no man may him forgive. We are here like birds in net, like fishes in weir.

"And we him secaþ git, both together, man and wife, through the dark strife this grim place. Whathere God us filled-with!"

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#53

Post by thaumasiotes »

us-merul wrote: post #51
thaumasiotes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a while, I mistakenly thought that “Germanic” meant related to German specifically. ...it does. That's why the form of the word is "Germanic". That's what it means. There are different levels at which you can be related to something. In this case the contrast is between Indo-European languages related to German and Indo-European languages not related to German (except through the shared ancestor called proto-In…

There isn’t one singular “German.” Sure, there’s a standard form in the country Germany, but the language family is more diverse than that. My point is that the English terminology fuses the language family with the modern country of Germany.

> There isn’t one singular “German.” Sure, there’s a standard form in the country Germany, but the language family is more diverse than that.

This is a statement with no implications; "Germanic", in its meaning "related to German", will mean exactly the same thing regardless of which dialect you designate as "German".

Compare how "canids" are the same taxonomical group of animals regardless of which animal within them is called the "canine".

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#54

Post by FarmerPotato »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #49
FarmerPotato wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the second is borrowed from the English linguistic terminology. Borrowed from Latin Germānicus, from Germāni.

Think a little harder. You can trace the word back that far. Is that how it got into German or Spanish?

I do not know who borrowed when.

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#55

Post by LAC-Tech »

inkyoto wrote: post #48
FarmerPotato wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, find it confusing. The "German cognate is closer" is not helpful! I think the ö is significant. It could correspond to English ē, but not ei, -ine. Under sʜᴇᴇɴ, Partridge [1] states that OE scēne, scȳne are related to G schön, from PIE *skauniz "Ultimately, to E sʜᴏᴡ." I think we have two compartments here: 1. ö/ē words - schön, E shown, shewn. Under Partridge [1] sʜᴇᴇɴ 2. ei words - G schein and E shine. OE…

> The "German cognate is closer" is not helpful! It is not helpful because comparing English from 1000 AD with Modern High German is the wrong premise to start off with. The correct and more interesting comparison would be with Old High German from around the same time although it did not indicate the umlaut in the spelling at the time (which would happen 400-500 years later) – even though the i-umlaut had already de…

It is not helpful because comparing English from 1000 AD with Modern High German is the wrong premise to start off with.

I hear this premise repeated time and time again. Search the internet. I believed this premise, and actually started studying German again while waiting for my Old English textbook to arrive. It did not help.

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#56

Post by LAC-Tech »

canjobear wrote: post #29
rob74 wrote: post #3

As a native German speaker, I can at least say that knowing both German and English doesn't really help in understanding the text. Not even the most "dumbed down" version - ok, he's apparently saying something about his wife, but no idea what exactly. And when I read " shyne (Modern English "sheen" but German cognate is closer) ", I was even more confused. "Sheen" is the property of an object that is shiny, which in…

Knowing German would mostly be helpful for understanding the grammar of Old English. The three genders and four cases, participles prefixed with ge-, verbs like sindon (=sind). There are tons of cognates with German (like þurh = durch) but they're hard to recognize immediately unless you know the kinds of sound changes that are common.

I guess the concepts and some of the vocab are important (though I feel compelled to point out that þurh is cognate with through as well).

But Old English inflecting nouns, rather than relying on indefinite and definite articles, gives the language a very different quality to German. Also stuff like negative concord.

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#57

Post by inkyoto »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #55
inkyoto wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "German cognate is closer" is not helpful! It is not helpful because comparing English from 1000 AD with Modern High German is the wrong premise to start off with. The correct and more interesting comparison would be with Old High German from around the same time although it did not indicate the umlaut in the spelling at the time (which would happen 400-500 years later) – even though the i-umlaut had already de…

It is not helpful because comparing English from 1000 AD with Modern High German is the wrong premise to start off with. I hear this premise repeated time and time again. Search the internet. I believed this premise, and actually started studying German again while waiting for my Old English textbook to arrive. It did not help.

I do not need to search the internet as I am fluent at German as well.

The knowledge of Modern High German helps little to none as far as the comprehension of Old English is concerned. From a modern German speaker's perspective, Old English – with a relatively small number of exceptions – is gibberish.

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#58

Post by internet_points »

swaminarayan wrote: post #42

most of the english language words are derive from Sanskrit. Checkout : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Sansk...

Well that's simply not true. There's lots of shared history ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognate ), common ancestor-words, and of course modern loans like "lacquer" and "crimson", but the "parents" of Sanskrit and Germanic languages diverged before Sanskrit appeared around 1500 BCE (earliest assumed date of Vedic Sanskrit, same time as Mycenaean Greek), there's lots of language trees online that make this clearer

https://jacklynch.net/language.html

https://learn.kids4alll.eu/sites/default/files/unit/oer/doc/...

https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-... is a beautiful one

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#59

Post by swaminarayan »

internet_points wrote: post #58
swaminarayan wrote: post #42

most of the english language words are derive from Sanskrit. Checkout : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Sansk...

Well that's simply not true. There's lots of shared history ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognate ), common ancestor-words, and of course modern loans like "lacquer" and "crimson", but the "parents" of Sanskrit and Germanic languages diverged before Sanskrit appeared around 1500 BCE (earliest assumed date of Vedic Sanskrit, same time as Mycenaean Greek), there's lots of language trees online that make this clearer…

Well above articles are misleading, it depends on who writes it, nobody has concrete proof. so please don't blindly trust.
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