A Sentence from Proto-Germanic to Modern English
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- čas přidán 9. 11. 2021
- For a bit of background that explains the development of Proto-Germanic phonology, see 'From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic' (1996) by Donald A. Ringe.
R.D. Fulk's 'Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages' is another good one for the syntax of Proto-Germanic.
This would be an excellent short video to show non language nerds about the evolution of English. The only thing I would add is super rough dates as it progressed.
Adding even super-rough dates would make this great casual content for anyone curious about language evolution. Super approachable IMO Very cool video
Agreed! That would have been useful
It would be excellent if it were edited to remove all that presumably unscripted waffle apologising about how the video is too scripted.
IPA is great for linguists, and for correctness, but your average listener won't follow it very well.
I concur. We went along by varying periods of time and I don’t think they’d be able to tell how modern we were getting until the very end.
It would have been cool to have the corresponding spelling below.
As a Spaniard, all I can do when I hear those subtle differences in the vowels is screaming "BUT THEY'RE THE EXACT SAME THING!!!!!!"
Just like B and V, ey? ;)
I felt the same way when I was trying to learn Hindi and there are four different ways to say ‘d’ with their own distinct letters and they all sound exactly alike to me. As babies we have the capacity to hear the full variety of human vocalisations but as we learn our specific mother tongue our brain optimises our hearing for the distinct sounds of our language, whittling away at the other possible sounds. So it’s not that we can’t hear these sounds, it’s that our brain slides them into the closest sounds we are familiar with.
Same here, for many of them, and I'm American!
I remember trying to teach a Spanish friend the difference between "cat" and "cut". He was convinced I was winding him up and insisted that they were identical. Saludos.
That's what happens when a person with the pin-pen merger hears pin or pen, they sound identical to them, and when they say pen and it sounds like pin. Russian has two kinds of sh and Polish has three, so when I hear ш and щ they sound like two variations of sh.
"Katten i huset åt bröd" in swedish for anyone interested in what the scentence looks like in other germanic languages. The equivalent of "the" comes at the end of words. Katt (cat) + en (the) = katten (the cat).
Nice. It's "De kat in huis at brood" in Dutch.
Essentially the same in Norwegian. "Katten/katta i huset åt brød", although many would use the word "spise" instead of "eta". In my dialect I would say "Kattn i husi åt brø". Here, "husi" is the dative of "hus", like in older English. In most dialects, the "d" in "brød" is silent, and was actually an "ð" before it stopped being pronounced, never "d".
@@tob there's a very weird moment that happens to an English speaker studying Norwegian where he realizes he can understand Swedish more easily than the language he was studying
@@rueisblue would you be suprised that some Norwegians, like myself, actually understand the Swedish dialect just across the border from where I live better than some Norwegian dialects?
@@espenschjelderup426 That makes complete sense. Regional variants, as well as (sub-)ethnic groups, often don't care about national borders. In the Netherlands, eastern and northern regional variants of Dutch Low Saxon and West Frisian form a continuum with, and are much closer to other North Sea Germanic variants in northwestern Germany and southwestern Denmark when compared to their respective nation's standardized language (in the Netherlands it's Dutch, which is a combination of Low Franconian variants, which are Wezer-Rhine Germanic; High German in Germany, which is an Elbe Germanic language) that originate from the southern parts of those countries.
As a German whose great-grandma spoke "Platt" or Frisian, this was a lot of fun to watch, mainly because I basically already understood the original sentence :D
We actually talked about this back in high school and in English class, students who usually struggled with the English language actually were a lot more confident when we were examining old English texts because they are a lot more like German.
Yea, I'm a native Platt speaker. It came of to me like someone speaking Platt trying to do pretend to have a Norse accent.
Wonderful stuff as always. Took me till halfway to get it! Might’ve been a nice addition to have rough dates for each iteration, if that’s possible to know for each change?
Yeah, I was also thinking dates would be nice.
@@preussischblau lol lol lol
@@preussischblau he must be jesting about the jest in linguistic vocal is not cord but flap polmao polymathy is even a pilot Dern it icarus
I got it from the very first.. I'm surprised it's that close to modern.
Yes showing approx dates would be great. Thanks Simon, brilliant work as always.
note to self : recruit this guy in case undertaking time travel expedition to 9th century british isles.
So, I just learned that people do pronounce "ate" as "et". This brings several questions up in my mind.
1) How common is the "et" pronunciation?
2) Assuming that my "ate (eight)" pronunciation descends from the unshortened vowel (/e:t/ and not /et/), what caused the split between /e:t/ and /bre:d/?
i'm from northeast pennsylvania and some older folks around here say "et" instead of "ate"
As somebody else noted in another comment, I think the “et” pronunciation is becoming less common and is being replaced with “ate (eight)”. When I was a kid in the 80s I think you heard people with working class London accents say “et” a lot, but a lot less now (I think).
it basically seems to only exist in older people and a few regional dialects. But it used to be quite common. It does still exist though. I have friends from northwest England who pronounce it that way
The monophthong used to be standard, but the spelling pronunciation has eclipsed it for most of us. I spontaneously say it homophonously with “8”, but I don't think my parents did.
bread/great/beat and ate, I think, are due to some dialect interplay. Sociolinguistics shows it's generally upper class accents that trickle downwards; the reverse happens, but it's rarer. But it could probably be attributed to one of the few times power shifted away from London, or if a hypercorrection or something caught on among the nobility. Or even just a memetic expression like is maith sin -> smashing, but, there's a bit of systemization to it.
Here are all the timestamps for anyone who wants to listen to them by themselves:
0:04
1:30
1:43
2:01
2:18
3:43
3:51
4:13
4:31
4:41
4:59
6:40
7:16
7:37
8:07
8:20
8:34
8:46
9:27
9:43
10:00
10:09
10:40
11:39
11:59
12:29
12:44
12:55
Hint: on pc (not sure about mobile) click on the upload date of the comment to "pin" the comment above all else. That way when clicking a timestamp you will not need to search for it each time and hence you can easily compare all pronunciations with little time in between
I like both your scripted and not scripted styles... I would suggest that this seemed more technical, so I feel it was appropriate that it be scripted. I think it may have helped to follow.
Thank you for your work.
Scripted with a few asides sound very good. Technical but still friendly and open.
Agreed.
I also agree. The scripted reading was not disturbing at all. It seemed to fit the nature of the content very well. I enjoyed this explanation and it was not difficult to follow. If I may make a suggestion, when you added text on the screen to further explain what you just said, could let the text stay there about twice as long? Then it would not be necessary to pause the video to read all of the text. Thank you.
It was weird understanding the original form of the sentence, I'm Afrikaans, little brother of Dutch. We would say "Die kat in die huis eet brood"
De kat in het huis eet brood
I could understand/guess it instantly as well. In Swedish, it's "Katten i huset åt bröd".
Good vid. I'm a German speaker, and I was convinced of the meaning at 8:21, but I suspected it already around 5:00, but I was doubtful on semantic grounds, since cats eating bread is an exceedingly strange concept. This makes it however maybe a better sample for testing, to remove any premature inference.
And as a dutch speaker I suspected the meaning from the beginning already (although of course also confused about a cat eating bread ;-) ), and then certain from about 5'. Even closer to Dutch (and I've heard old english more often)
Okay, honestly, for a while, because bread seemed so unlikely, I also considered the cat had breeded (had had infants in the house) :-D
I'm a Turkish speaker but I got it right at the beginning
I'm a German native and I immediately heard sth about "cat in", though I wasn't sure at first whether the last words were "house eat bread" or "house are brothers" lol
Sorry for double post, but I also wanted to add that I was once the proud hooman of a cat who did in fact love bread. Freshly toasted crust, especially, idk, she liked to gnaw on that.
I love the sorts of videos that show how languages progress over time, especially in sort sentences like this
It's change, but I wouldn't call it progress. It usually just becomes lazier and as a result often less clearly articulated as well. Compare Icelandic to Old Norse, or Modern Mongolian to Old Mongolian, or Modern Danish to Old Norse, etc.
@@ingwiafraujaz3126 I guess I meant 'progress' in the sense of "moving forward" rather than "getting better".
I tried to feed my cat some bread, once. He just looked at it for a moment, and then he walked away.
Usually you'll get an angry death stare from your cat if you try and feed them bread.
I was looking forward to this concept for so long!!!!!
Your delivery even during the scripted sections was perfectly alright, so I don't think you need to worry!
Also feeling pleased with myself for guessing the meaning almost from the start!
In Dutch it is "De kat in het huis at brood".
IPA: "Də kɑt ɪn hət hœy̯s ɑt broːt"
It's interesting to consider how English and Dutch evolved from Proto-West-Germanic along similar but not identical paths. "House/huis" ended up being pronounced almost the same, while the vowel in "bread/brood" diverged in opposite directions.
Both languages gained the same definite article "the/de". But nowadays English completely lost grammatical gender and thus uses it for all words, while Dutch still uses the definite article "het" (cognate with English "it") for neuter nouns such as "house/huis".
Also similiar in German of course, but not quite as close as dutch, because of the second vowel shift in German: "Die Katze in dem Haus aß Brot"
@@kanister21 Is Haus neuter in German like huis is in Dutch? You'd think these things would line up, but I'm often surprised by the inconsistent genders. Like "Das Auto" in German (neuter) but "De auto" (masculine/feminine) in Dutch.
@@OntarioTrafficMan De auto is ook nieuw. Voor (gokje) de tweede wereldoorlog was het in het Nederlands ook "het auto". Omdat auto een afkorting is van "het automobiel". Er schiet me zo even niets te binnen, maar geslachten van woorden veranderen soms in de loop der tijd. Voornamelijk (denk ik) omdat het lekkerder bekt/mooier klinkt. Een echt al heel oud verschil tussen Duits en Nederlands is "Das Boot" en "de boot".
@@OntarioTrafficMan I've studied dutch at A2 niveau, some years ago. If I remember correctly, most of the genders are same in both languages. There only a minor differences like you mentioned "das Auto", "de auto".
@@rattikommtundallesindsowoah da man im englischen "in the house" und im niederländischen "in het huis" sagt, habe ich es nur zur Verdeutlichung der Ähnlichkeit "in dem Haus" geschrieben. In der Alltagssprache wird natürlich eher "im Haus" statt "in dem Haus" verwendet.
"My qualification is in archeology, not linguistics" doesn't matter, linguists make mistakes on a regular basis, it's a part of the trade lol
Yeah like trying to recreate dead languages via "devolution" of their successor languages.
Porto Germanic is nothing more than an educated guess.
@@bingobongo1615 peer review gang
@@Adhjie I don't know how peer review would verify the educated guess.
Pronouncing "ate" as "et" seems to be dying out in favour of pronouncing it as "eight", perhaps because the latter is more common in the USA.
But it does explain why some Brits say et and not ate. I'm more familiar with northern accents and et is quite common
I mean, it is also literally spelled in a way that suggests such a pronunciation
I've always pronounced it as "eight", although in theory we were taught BE in Finnish schools. That is, in the past - nowadays they try to avoid "britocentricity".. (is that a real word or not?)
@@omenoid It's not an attested word in a dictionary, but it is understandable. Long live linguistic productivity, dictionaries are overrated.
@@Mercure250 I once had a German colleague who used to come up with non-existent Finnish words that were immediately understandable. ;)
Mr Roper, your channel is nothing short of a treasure. A tiny island of calm, erudite and yet earnest interest in an extremely niche area; where I can feed my mind's amateurish philologist at a lovely pace. A decidedly rare commodity in today's CZcams. You'll always have a viewer in me. :)
Thanks for the continued uploads!
the ET goes for a walk, then got back to being ET.
It goes for 2 walks, in the same direction
It would be cool to do the same process with the same sentence from Proto-Germanic to Modern German, to see the differential sound changes that ocurred over time.
"almost nobody says whom anymore"
me (who says whom): *cries*
Me too, but not in every context. "To whom were you speaking?," yes, but "Who were you speaking to?" The first sounds formal, if not pompous.
@@davidfried7279 Agreed, it depends who I'm speaking to (to whom I am speaking). I'd always use whom in a formal written communication though.
I like whom a lot, just like whose. My native language is German so the distinctions appear very natural to me, but since I speak English mostly with other non-natives, many of whom did not have the chance to learn English too well, and with whom I thus have to speak carefully so they can follow me easily, I am often shy with those forms and more complicated expressions and phrasing in general. I'm always glad to let it all out on occasions like this. xD
We're an old-fashioned kind of guys.
Omg you're so cultured and different your so cooool
I wish the TV show “Barbarians” had use Proto-Germanic. Those shifted Hochdeutsche consonants were like nails on a chalkboard.
The thing is that they only used Latin for cinematic purposes. It was a german show made for Germans
@@rueisblue And for Latins like Luke Ranieri.
Maybe some day someone will organize a proto-Germanic dubbing... Id gladly participate in that xD.
@@domsjuk I also think people underestimate the difficulty in making something like that. Latin is one of the most documented and attested languages of the past. And even with all the examples we have, there are still humongous challenges that production teams have to deal with. Proto Germanic, not to mention authentic proto Germanic for the tribes they use, would be even harder
@@rueisblue I sure agree with that, besides most of the vocab and grammar we "have" being logically reconstructed, it would take very creative and productive linguists to add that degree of authenticity and casualness of normal speech (which I found particularly interesting e.g. in some of Simon's spoken Old English) while trying to remain as accurate as possible.
9:23 The exact same thing is going on in modern German, and the feelings towards the strong and weak forms of the dative are very much as you describe.
Wow. Thank you Simon for you amazing work. I thoroughly enjoy it. As a danish speaker I was surprised that I could guess the meaning form the start. “Katten I huset åd brød”. As it didn’t really make sense though I changed my initial guess to “the cat in the house was brown” = “katten I huset var brun”.
Great video. I think one nice addition in future versions would be at the end to put the original Proto-Germanic and the modern sentence on the same page and read them out one after another, perhaps with a Middle English version between them too, in order to summarise the difference and change (by the time you are at modern English I can’t remember the original). Keep it up Simon! Thanks!
Thanks for the new upload!
I've been learning old English for a year now and I'm frustrated to find I could only get 'bread' when we entered the middle English period. I thought it might've been 'broad' but that didn't make sense. I also got confused by the 'thaem hus' (why wasn't it huse or husum?) but it was obvious from well before old English that it was about a cat in a house, I just didn't know what it was doing. I thought it might've been the 'cat in the house was abroad'. This was an excellent game and gave us plenty of time to work out the clues. Do another.
I also thought it was broad, or brood. It's amazing how a back diphthong has changed to a front short vowel, via A diphthongs, where in continental West Germanic it's become long O vowels.
You're right, it is "in thaem huse", but that's precisely the way he has it in the video.
@Matthew McVeagh interesting observation. I wasn't really consciously aware of that pattern, until Simon mentioned other examples later in the video, e.g. for English - Standard German: bread - Brot, red - rot, or I just happen to think of some simple past/praeteritum irregular verbs, like flee/fled - fliehen/floh, fly/flew - fliegen/flog.
@@domsjuk Yep there are lots of such examples. Interestingly there are some where it seems to have gone the other way. E.g. dough /Teig.
I first thought it might meant brother, then broad. I finally cracked it at 4:55.
I'm a native English speaker, and the first iteration was completely incomprehensible. Then I thought the last word was "brother". Then I remembered Old English "hus" was "house", and that "cat" goes back a long way and is in both Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages. That gave "cat in house ? brother". Then it became clear the last word was "bread", so the second-last word must be "ate" like it sounds. That gave the whole sentence. That was just before or after articles were introduced.
I love this video. It would be really cool to see this sort of thing done with other related languages for contrast-although probably very challenging-such as the same sentence developing into Dutch and German, or even seeing an North Germanic version. Great work and thank you!
Starting at West Germanic, the point of divergence between the three languages:
kɑtːu in huːseː ɑːt braud
5th century central continent (aka "Frankish"), short final -u and -i are lost: kɑtː in huːseː ɑːt brɑud
Diphthong ɑu is raised to ou, then becomes a monophthong in northern dialects: kɑtː in huːseː ɑːt broud > kɑtː in huːseː ɑːt broːd
Long final vowels shortened, "cat" changed into a different inflectional category: kɑtːɑ in huːse ɑːt broːd
9th century Dutch, final devoicing: kɑtːɑ in huːse ɑːt broːt
10th century but possibly earlier, voicing of s: kɑtːɑ in huːze ɑːt broːt
11th century, appearance of definite article: ðie kɑtːɑ in ðemo huːze ɑːt broːt
12th century, fronting of u, diphthongisation of long e and o: ðie kɑtːɑ in ðemo hʉːze ɑːt broɔt
13th century, i > ɪ, ð > d, weakening of unstressed vowels, beginning of Middle Dutch: die kɑtːə ɪn den hyːzə aːt broɔt
Sometime in Middle Dutch, replacement of "ate" by analogy: die kɑtːə ɪn den hyːzə ɑt broɔt
15th century, diphthongisation of yː, monophthongisation of ie: di kɑtːə ɪn den høyzə ɑt broɔt
Early modern Hollandic, loss of final schwa and long consonants: di kɑt ɪn den høys ɑt broɔt
Merging of oɔ back into oː, weakening of unstressed words: də kɑt in dən høys ɑt broːt
Loss of accusative and dative cases in speech: də kɑt ɪn ət hœys ɑt broːt
Diphthongisation of long o in northern dialects: də kɑt ɪn ət hœys ɑt broʊt
Amazing video. I love hearing sound changes over time
Mate, you are a legend. The rough dates would help those who watch this as a hobby understand it more but, like you, I would just do my own research as a fellow nerd and someone who actually likes using their time to find out about whatever it is they are interested in. So thanks mate you're so much help and also a good bloke. Hope you never stop posting videos :)
Kat in house ate bread is what my guess is at the start.
So I was correct.
it took me 3 a d a half minutes
I thought it was brown for half the video 👀
I had 'house' and suspected 'cat' but I was unwilling to commit further.
@@vickiekostecki It is very unlikely for a cat to eat bread, so it wasn't very obvious.
Well done! I got ‘cat’ and ‘house’ but I though he last word might be ‘brother’!
For those interested in more proto-germanic and other old germanic languages, it’s one if the languages the band Heilung uses them for their songs
Super interesting and lucidly presented. As always. Thank you, Simon.
I really like this video. Its so interesting to see how many subtle changes compound to completely change the language. One thing I'd be interested in seeing if you do something like this again is rough dates that correspond to the changes as they occur.
Since you're a Cumbrian lad, have you ever thought about doing a video on Cumbric and its leftovers in North West England and Lowland today?
Leftovers?
hes done several his grandfather speaks cumbrian
Simon is from Surrey.
The Celtic language?
@@shesmoonlight514 Yes, place names and it's influence on the accent of the area
Scripted is just fine. :)
I'm on that bandwagon, not only does it not bother me, but I like the accuracy. Saves having to edit the video with "whoops I made a mistake, this other thing is X"
Scripted has reasons for existing. Well-ordered. Moves along without a lot of air time. Etc.
seeing this and this whole channel really makes we wanna find some time to research what is possibly distinct about new england english and how it developed/diverged
I very much enjoy how you demonstrate pronunciation in detail!
I think a great addition to this video would be an estimated time period/year for each pronunciation. Very interesting!
I was hoping you'd choose a cat for this exercise. Thank you meowy much!
Summons fond memories of long past English philology courses at the Sorbonne so masterly taught by Guierre and Culioli. Ah! The many challenges of the Great Vowell Shift! Thanks for the memories!
Fascinating video as always. I came across the idea of linguistic doublets today and wondered if you had considered doing a video on some interesting examples. Looking forward to the next one!
I don't have a problem with scripting it, as long as it serves a real purpose - which this obviously does. I love your usual style, but here it would have made it harder for you and no more illuminating for me. So, good call. Oh, and some of us still say "whom", though I try to remember not to where it might be felt to be too much.
A lot of what Simon Says (sorry, ha!) goes over my head, but man it's so fascinating. He's brilliant.
I loved seeing how smooth this transition was, then skipping way back in the video and listening to the harsh difference
I may be a weird costumer, but this has to be hands down one of my absolutely favourite videos on CZcams like ever. It's just so God damn satisfying to **feel** the language getting more familiar with each sound shift
Awesome 😎 video, Mr. Roper! Your observation about “who” and “whom” was interesting as I still make the distinction.
Before the word " 'brauðã " (Old Norse had " brauð "), the word for bread would have been closer to Gothic " hláifs " ( hlɛːɸs " loaf "). That would be closer to the Proto-Germanic word for bread than " 'brauðã ".
Great video, by the way. :)
Sure but it's also better, when talking about phonological and grammatical history, to not have words just get replaced by other words in the middle of the process, at least for educational purposes; it would make it harder to follow
@@Mercure250 I'm sure people are mentally capable enough to follow a single word change.
You missed my point, which was that " 'brauðã " was not the word for bread those who spoke Proto-Germanic would have used. Therefore, the initial sentence was not entirely Proto-Germanic.
@@nobs8862 People are also capable of withstanding the pain induced by a slap in the face; doesn't mean I'm gonna do that to them.
Joking aside, there are cases where it's better to leave things aside as to not complicate things, even if it looks simple. If you have a specific goal in mind, don't add unnecessary stuff. Here, the goal was just to show sound changes and some grammatical changes, not lexical changes.
I don't know how the semantic shift means it's not a correct sentence; the sentence still works. He didn't have to use a different word, because he didn't say "This is what "The cat in the house ate bread" was in Proto-germanic". What he could have done, though, is specify that there was a semantic shift, so that people don't assume it meant the same thing.
@@Mercure250 Again, you miss the point I was making. The sentence is presented as if it's entirely Proto-Germanic. However, it's not entirely a Proto-Germanic sentence. Speakers of Proto-Germanic would have used a word closer to Gothic " hláifs " ( hlɛːɸs " loaf "). I'm not arguing Simon's purpose nor how he explains the evolution of the spellings and pronunciations. He did quite well with that. I merely pointed out that Gothic " hláifs " ( hlɛːɸs " loaf ") would have been closer to the correct word used in Proto-Germanic. I understood, all along, that he may have substituted " 'brauðã " to illustrate the evolution of the letters of that word and how the pronunciation of them evolved. You're not being constructive here with your rebuttals of my posts.
@@nobs8862 He could actually have meant brauđã. Both words are Germanic, so both would have been in Proto-Germanic. Gothic isn't the sole authority for Proto-Germanic. It's as much a branch off of the proto language as West and North Germanic are. Plus, we have limited attested vocabulary in Gothic; nothing says that brauđã wasn't also reflected in Gothic, just that it didn't make it into the Gothic Bible.
I loved this!! Fantastically interesting and concise
Damn! I remember watching one of his vids years ago, around the time Paul and Jan Misali were getting rec’d to me. Lol his style has dramatically improved! It’s like watching a man running, who a few years ago you saw walking with crutches and speaking with a slur from Parkinson’s.
I love the simple clean approach. Content is exceptionally thorough from what I see, and the sporadic footnotes helped me out and really added to it. I felt in the earlier videos I saw that, lol there’s that demonstrative, the camera work was difficult to “enjoy”. Here the video is all legible and clear and let’s the audio breathe. Only thing I’d change is have footnotes remain an extra 1.5-2 secs on screen on a per line basis. You did say we could quibble
If you’re reading Simon, then great job, I think you’ve really improved 🎉
cool video, would have been interesting to note when english branched from the other germanic languages at various points.
Also interesting how you can see how the proto-germanic words are closer to other modern indo-european languages than modern german, like the words for cat and house sounding more similar to the spanish "gato" and "casa"
I find your videos endlessly fascinating, even though I understand none of the technical language.🤣 Thanks.
I'm surprised with how quickly I figured out, or rather vaguely assumed, the correct sentence. It probably helps that I grew up bilingual in two Germanic languages. Awesome video!
Just wow. I'm fairly new to your work, in that I've only listened to a few of your videos in the past, so I didn't realize you don't script your videos. I appreciated the focused direction that this scripting provided, but can't really say I noticed a difference.
I understood the sentence from the start. We in Iceland haven't evolved much in the past millenium or so -> "Kötturinn í húsinu át brauðið" 🤟
I've heard your language is one of the most conservative language. They froze the language
Any Germanic speaker would. Icelandic has evolved just as much as any other language.
@@BurnBird1 Wouldnt say that, Icelanders can read texts from 1000 years ago in the original writing and understand it, while Norwegians cant. Both of those languages come from Old Norse but one evolved more to the point its not close to its original language
@@danielthorsteinsson9698 Yeah, because Icelandic consciously keeps it's spelling as archaic as possible and don't update it according to how the modern language is spoken.
English speakers can very easily read Shakespeare since the spelling hasn't been updated since then, but that doesn't mean that it would be as easy to understand if English had reformed its spelling.
It could be argued that Icelandic retains a more conservative grammar and vocabulary. The spelling has been kept artificially archaic and the pronunciation of Icelandic is much more innovative and far removed from Old Norse than either Norwegian or Swedish, with Danish being the only real competitor there.
BurnBird A good example of this is the digraph, which is pronounced like /tl/ - which is bonkers to anyone who doesn't already know it
It took me about 8 minutes in to guess what the sentence might be. 😂 I loved being able to clearly see and hear the evolution over time.
This was an interesting progression. the vowel shift thing is something the History of English podcast covered either earlier this year or late last year quite nicely. (I don't remember the exact date).
we need more of these
Very interesting, detailed and well-reasoned video. I'm sure even "professional" linguists and philolohists would like it a lot.
Maybe, if you want to do this a bit more you could try a parallel comparison of English with other Germanic languages (which I did a bit in my head with my limited knowledge about the sound changes etc.). Its interesting to see in parallel how languages split and gradually drift farther apart and are affected by different phenomena.
Also got me thinking if geminates in modern Swedish phonology for example are actually conserved forms since proto-Germanic days, or whether they have developed and proliferated independently. Does anyone know more about that?
I enjoyed this more scripted video. It gave the video sort of a direction it was going that was easy to understand and a destination that I had fun trying to puzzle out in my head.
This is a delightful video.
It's really fascinating to see this. I managed to understand just looking at the thumbnail.
Remarkable! I have known for years a simple past of eat was also "et", but now, from this, when and where did that simple past form become "ate"?
Very much fun following along with you on this!
This video left off the process of shortening that happened during the Great Vowel Shift, which is responsible for the short vowel in "bread" while words such as mead went on to be pronounced with /i/. Also, AFAIK, "ate" had an /a:/ vowel in Middle English, not an /ɛ:/ vowel, explaining why the two words have differing pronunciations in most dialects. For the most part, good video.
I’ve often enjoyed sharing your videos, especially those of language transformation such as this. In a way I like to make it a game to see at what point in the transformation someone recognized Matt least the gist of what is being said. But because working IPA is somewhere between a chore and impossible for most it would be helpful, if you can appreciate such amusement, to number each transformation in the corner of the screen so it might be easier to say something like (hypothetical, I didn’t count this one out), “I caught on around number 9, and by 16 I was not only no longer in suspense but the rest just sounded like different accents but the meanings remained the same.”
not excessively scripted, Simon. excellent, to the point, and super interesting!
Þe: khat in þe: hu:s e:t bre:d sounds very similar to Plattdütsch.
Well English and Platt are both part of the north sea germanic family, so there’d be a lot of similarities
The language is officially called Low Saxon or Neddersassisk (in the New Saxon Spelling or Nysassiske Skryvwyse).
If someone said that sentence to me, I would assume they were a foreigner speaking English to me. It is easy to understand. The most difficult word is "hu:s", but it's not hard to figure out.
I would have very much appreciated you leaving the "last pronunciation" on the screen with each change. Have the last one move up the screen so one can see the new and older line.
Though unrelated to English, your explanation of voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds and the demonstration of the differences did help me make a bit more sense of how similar voiced and unvoiced consonants are pronounced in Korean. That's one thing I've struggled to wrap my head around when I tried learning that language, and I didn't really make the connection between that in a language like, say, Spanish. I was able to mimic its sounds well, ironically. Good vid, and pretty neat to see how English evolved over the centuries.
Thanks very much for making this, and scripted style is just fine by me!
Wonder how this sentence might sound in some hundred years.
It took me like 75% percent of the video to realize the sentence was "The cat in the house ate bread." Really demonstrates how much English has changed in the past centuries.
What an amazing video! It's amazing to think that modern English with just be another sound change someday!
Great video, as always mate, thanks
I'm Dutch, I got the meaning at 3:45. Before that I wasn't sure if it "braude" meant bread or brother.
I also wasn't sure if "khat" meant "to go" (dutch = gaat) or simply "cat". So I thought there was a small chance the sentence meant something like "I go to my brothers house".
An excellent and scholarly video as always!
I’m an American English speaker.
Wow. I actually understood “The cat in the house” part of the sentence throughout the entire video. I wasn’t sure that I actually did understand it, but my conjecture just instinctually felt right. I didn’t understand the “ate bread” part until you changed the vowels at 08:34.
same!
i knew the last word was bread, i was just confused most of the time as to how a cat could be "at bread" until i realized it was ate LMFAO
@@penntopaper9305 fascinating that you caught the bread part. If you don’t mind answering the question, what variety of English do you speak? I’m from USA and specifically the North East.
@@BulletTheEnforcer im also from the north east of america! funilly enough, i actually caught bread before cat or house. i just knew it sounded kinda like bread, and bread being such a broad and old concept, means that the word probably hasn’t changed much. i probably could’ve figured out cat faster, but i think i was distracted by bread LMFAO
Just love the language morphology. Thanks, Simon.
Simply wonderful. As a performer of early music, mostly in Middle English and _Mittelhochdeutsch,_ this ties in so nicely.
Lunch is on me if you're ever in town. Cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott
I like the scripted format personally!
Interesting to see that the „Z“ in „katuz“ disappeared in English yet remained in Modern German (Katze). I really enjoyed this.
Not quite. The z at the end of the word disappeared in German too - it was lost before English and German diverged. The t later became an affricate in German - ts - spelled tz or just z - compare English ‘to’, Dutch ‘toe’, German ‘zu’.
@@longuevalnz oh okay, I see. Thanks for explaining!
@@Mindartcreativity
It does remain in Icelanidc (köttur) and Faroese (køttur) where the /z/ turned into an /r/
We don't use the ending in Swedish any more, but it wouldn't be out of place in some old rhyme as "katter"
@@HwyadylawInteresting! -z also survived in West Germanic monosyllables, eg in German as the -r in words like wir.
That's the High German Consonant Shift. Stops turned into fricatives or affricatives across the board, so the t turned into ts (spelled z or in this case tz). It's the same reason as English/German ship/Schiff, apple/Apfel, tongue/Zunge, make/machen, two/zwei, open/offen, shut/schliessen, etc.
this is quite fascinating
that was pretty damn fascinating bro
In parts of (old) Lancashire there is 'etten' as the perfect participle of 'eat'. "'Ave you etten yor dinner?" "Yes, I et at aeyt u'clock." (sorry no IPA, can't do it, but I hope those make sense.)
Same in Sheffield
" 'en ya yetten yer dinner?" "Yis, O yet at eight o'tlock"
This does make me wonder if anyone has reconstructed Schleicher's fable in Old English. I found one in Proto-Germanic and (obviously) Modern English, but it'd be interesting to see how it changed inbetween.
I've found a translation once:
Ēow, þe ne wull hæfde, seah ēos, ānne hefigne wegn pulliendne, ānne micelne berendne, ānne guman snelle berendne. Ēow ēom cwæþ: min heorte me þrǣsteþ, guman ēos drīfendne to sēonne. Ēos cwǣdon: "Hlysn, ēow. Ūr heortan ūs þrǣstaþ þis to sēonne: guma, hlāford þæs ēowes wull seolfes wearmum wǣdum to āwendanne. And ēow nāne wulle hæfþ." Ēow, þǣm gehȳred, þǣm æcre flēah.
it's not mine, but I can't find the credit now...
@@kartonkartonski i also love iirc old English of the poem odes\carmina of Horace especially the phrase mae dimidīum animae full poem from
Eg the interpretatio of Æolus
Excellent! Very well explained
Loved this video! Very interesting!
You know, at first I had no idea what the heck was going on but as soon as khatuz lost the -z it just struck, because all at once it became rather similar to my dialect of Swedish: katta i huse åt bröd (as opposed to standard "katten i huset åt bröd").
A cool mini game to play is to say when you could recognise what the sentence was trying to say. As an English only speaker (with some interesting Old English) I could guess the sentence at around 4:40 and perfectly understand it at 10:00
Comment your first language and how quickly you got the sentence below!
Swedish, immediately.
My first language is English, and I got it immediately, as I like reading etymologies. But as I'm American, the last few stages swerved. I pronounce "ate" /et/ (with an off-glide, which is not phonemic) and "bread" /bɹεd/, and don't pronounce final as a glo'al stop.
Swedish, immediately as well. Although I thought it was "eats", not "ate", so I was waiting for the s to appear....
Fantastic video as always
Fascinating and don‘t apologise for the presentation. Seeing it written helps.
Just a quick question regarding the who/whom thing today: Simon mentions using whom sounds old-fashioned, does that apply only to speech or do you natives sort of wince at whom if you encounter it in, I don’t know, a news article or something like that? And is it really that bad?:) My brain is apparently just too attached to the lovely chaos of Slavic grammar so my heart breaks a bit every time I have to make peace with yet another vanishing inflectional thingy
Regarding the use of "whom" in _written_ English:
It depends a lot on context and register: "whom" is seen as formal language. In a casual text chat, you normally wouldn't expect someone to write it, but it wouldn't sound out of place in an article in a respectable newspaper.
@@KudistosMegistos
In written English, I'd say "whom" is still much more commonly used than "who" whenever preceded by a preposition. ( eg: "The boys, one of whom was only six years old, found themselves in deep water.")
"the cat in the house ate my brother" (first guess before watching)
OK. I would have thought that cats are more likely to eat brothers than bread.
I'm studying linguistic anthropology now and hoping to focus on the Germanic languages. As I've always been keenly interested in the development of English, this video made me feel like a kid in a candy shop, lol. Impeccable video.
Love seeing the evolution. Also, awesome to see how similar modern Icelandic is to the original sentence; 'kötturinn í húsinu át brauðið'
Please make a video like your London accent one where you act out different characters! You could do 1600-2020 general American, Australian etc. You could get native speakers to help with the modern ones.
I think he mentioned a few months ago that he would like to do a northern English version (I guess, Cumbrian dialect, based on Simon's background.) Being a northerner myself, I would love to see that... and more accent progression videos, of course. I guess the USA would be really difficult to do due to the high level of immigration to the States? But general American is more conservative and could be probably treated as a continuum of an early 17th century English dialect - you could start from that point.
@@leod-sigefast is it really more conservative though? Many or most Americans, such as myself, have lost the dark l - clear l allophony, have significantly reduced the contrast in low back vowels, have merged t and d intervocalically before unstressed syllables, and have still gone through many of the same changes RP went through (such as the final stages of the great vowel shift and the quality of /r/ changing from a tap to an approximate), to name a few. Obviously American English is more rhotic, but that's just one aspect.
At around 11:00 the word 'bread' starts to become Australian
I liked the slightly more scripted nature of this video.
Really good work as usual Simon
Excellent brief exposition of historical phoneme development, with to-the-point explanations and demonstrations, and I most certainly didn’t mind this more scripted form at all; in my opinion, videos like this one make a good complement to your more free-form videos.