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Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

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Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#91

Post by bitwize »

WWWWH wrote: post #14

I used to use this (still do really) as a technique when starting undergraduate lectures. They’re there, ready to listen, but chatting away and need a moment to focus their attention. *SO* let me tell you further fun facts about carbonyl chemistry… Works. Those Anglo-Saxons knew what they were about.

To close the loop, I had a chemistry professor who linked concepts together in lecture with the phrase "Meaning what?" E.g., "In the alkyne molecule, the carbon atoms share a triple bond. Meaning what? Meaning that the bond is much stronger than in alkanes or alkenes..." It was less a technique for getting attention and more for holding it through a chain of reasoning. But it worked.

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#92

Post by thaumasiotes »

antonvs wrote: post #90
thaumasiotes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a crackpot.

I think they're just confusing Old Norse with Proto-Germanic, i.e. the common ancestor of both Old Norse and Old English.

>> French also began as a Nordic language, but over time only a few hundred or so words remained, with the rest being mostly Latin-based.

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#93

Post by antonvs »

nephihaha wrote: post #83
antonvs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does however help drive home the point that such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale. Beowulf was written in Old English, which is not a Nordic language. > ... any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse. Similarly, Old English didn't develop from Old Norse.

Beowulf has a Scandinavian background to the story. Shortly after "hwæt", it mentions "gar-Denas" or spear Danes. (Old English had become heavily influenced by Norse by the time of the Norman invasions, especially in ita northern dialects.) There may be a Celtic influence upon it as well, as with some of the Icelandic sagas, but you would have to dig much deeper for that.

The language and style of Beowulf is Old English, though. Old English was a West Germanic language, already closely related to the North Germanic Old Norse and mutually intelligible to a high degree.

But it doesn't make sense to say "such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale" without some sort of explanation for the focus on "Nordic" languages. Subsequent comments have made it clear that the commenter is under the mistaken impression that Old English was a Nordic language. It was not.

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#94

Post by antonvs »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #92
antonvs wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're just confusing Old Norse with Proto-Germanic, i.e. the common ancestor of both Old Norse and Old English.

>> French also began as a Nordic language, but over time only a few hundred or so words remained, with the rest being mostly Latin-based.

Oh haha I missed that, thanks. That's quite the theory!

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#95

Post by nephihaha »

spyrja wrote: post #85
nephihaha wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beowulf has a Scandinavian background to the story. Shortly after "hwæt", it mentions "gar-Denas" or spear Danes. (Old English had become heavily influenced by Norse by the time of the Norman invasions, especially in ita northern dialects.) There may be a Celtic influence upon it as well, as with some of the Icelandic sagas, but you would have to dig much deeper for that.

Actually, the introduction of Old Norse in Britain began in the early 5th century and by the time of Beowulf, Old English was still more than 90% a Nordic language. The Norman invasion of 1066 changed that dramatically (as Old French became the "new" official language) and to this day Modern English could reasonably be considered mostly French, then Latin, and only in small part Nordic (although the most common words…

Germanic and Celtic languages have been in contact for at least two thousand years. Probably longer. There are Celtic loanwords in English which predate the Anglo-Saxon invasions. After the invasion, English took centuries to expand into areas which spoke P Celtic, and it seems to have profound influences on its verbal structure. Another wave of Celtic loanwords entered English via French.

As for modern English, there are numerous Celtic loanwords and calques in American, Canadian and Australian slang and dialect.

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#96

Post by nephihaha »

stavros wrote: post #58
rmunn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first day of class in undergrad, most professors are handing out the syllabus and talking about class requirements and basically doing zero lecturing. Not my Philosophy 101 prof. The minute the class was scheduled to start, he opened the door and walked into the room saying, "The Greeks had a fantastic project. They were going to catalog all the knowledge in the world." I don't remember the rest of the lecture…

Unfortunately, cataloguing all the knowledge in the world created new knowledge, leading to a sort of Zeno's paradox of cataloguing.

I remember Arthur C. Clarke quoting someone saying that the universe was designed to keep scientists and astronomers in work. I liked that.

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#97

Post by wduquette »

IanCal wrote: post #16

I’ll share another great version of Beowulf- Bea Wolf. Based on kids, with fantastic artwork and a great story/version. My kids absolutely love me reading this and I absolutely love reading it as a large passed down story of battles. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60316971-bea-wolf

It's a whole lot of fun.

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#99

Post by WorldMaker »

spyrja wrote: post #29

I agree with Dr. Walkden here. While it was used as an interjection at times (just as it is today when someone exclaims, "What?!") in the context of the opening line of Beowulf "hwæt" is more likely being used to reformulate a statement in order to convey a sense of emphasis. An example in modern English would be something like, rather than saying "That was a gorgeous sunset!", one says "What a gorgeous sunset that w…

It could also have been both, as well. In the immediate moment it functions as an interjection and as the rest of the sentence develops it fills in a pronoun gap. Like starting a shanty with a loud, slow single syllable to get attention (and maybe catch others on to the key) and that still being also a part of the first line of the song.

Re: Beowulf's opening "What" is no interjection (2013)

#100

Post by WorldMaker »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #30
slwvx wrote: post #9

"What ho" as in British English seems like a descendant of this usage https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/77151/what-ho-of...

There was a more colloquial translation a few years ago that rendered it as "Bro!"

I feel like Lil Jon would remind us that "What?!" still works pretty well today.
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