Old English: Mistakes to Avoid
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- čas přidán 1. 11. 2023
- In this video, I go through some mistakes to watch out for when learning Old English. Some of them are thing I've done myself, and others are things that I've seen other learners do.
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This channel's Patreon: / simonroper
Simon, I just want to say a massive thank you for all your videos over the years, including this one. They've always been informative, intriguing and entertaining, and you've done the world a huge favour by making them. Cheers!
It's a joy to read comments like this, and it makes it all worthwhile! Thank you so much :)
Experts or those more knowledgeable make mistakes too, even when correcting others' mistakes. No big deal as long as the intent is good.
Even if you made a lot of mistakes in the first Baldric video, you can't call it awful! It's one of the main reasons that I (and probably many others) got interested in old languages and linguistics!
Yes, maybe there were people who didn’t speak with what we consider correct grammar in those days too, who knows?
This still happens today, so sometimes different forms are used that aren’t the same as the ones considered grammatically correct - for example, the other day I was learning Icelandic and in one video a native speaker said that kvöldið is a feminine noun because ppl say góða kvöldið and, I was like, no way, I could have sworn kvöld was a neutral noun in Icelandic, and it actually is a neutral noun, so the grammatically correct form would be gott kvöld, but it turns out ppl always say góða kvöldið in Iceland and treat kvöld as if it were a feminine noun, and there are probably many natives that think it’s a feminine noun, and I didn’t know that before!
@@FrozenMermaid666 thanks for the insight
Funny she read them as O. To me, before I learned what they were, I mistook them for p and d. I suspect I’m typical.
Concerning the placement of the verb at the end of a subordinate clause...
As a native speaker of German I find that a quite ingenious way of marking the beginning *and especially* the end of this "sentence within a sentence"
In English a sentence like "I saw the dog that had bitten the man in the woods." is a bit ambiguous. Does the "in the woods" belong to the relative clause or to the main sentence? Is it "I saw the dog {that had bitten the man in the woods}." or "I saw the dog {that had bitten the man} in the woods." ?
In German the relative pronoun ("that") and the verb form a bracket, that tells you exactly what belongs into the relative clause. So it would be either...
"Ich sah den Hund {der den Mann gebissen hatte} im Wald. (So I saw the dog/hound in the wood.)
or
"Ich sah den Hund {der den Mann im Wald gebissen hatte}. ("im Wald"/in the wood is now included in the bracket. Thus it is now an additional information on where the dog had bitten the man.)
I think there's even three readings of that English sentence, not just two!
"In the woods" could apply to:
a) the act of seeing. I saw a thing in the woods. That thing that I saw was the dog that had bitten the man.
b) the act of biting. I saw the dog who had bitten the man. The biting happened in the woods.
c) the man. I saw the dog who had bitten a man. The man it bit was the man in the woods.
My German is only what I learned at secondary school. The first German sentence you give would apply to case a), but I am not sure whether the second German sentence could mean c) as well as b)? Could you read "den Mann im Wald" as a single object specifying the person who was bitten, to distinguish him from other men? Or is there some other way you would say that in German?
@@zak3744
If the act of biting happened in the wood, "im Wald" must be placed within the subordinate clause: Ich sah den Hund {der den Mann im Wald gebissen hatte}.
"den Mann" and "im Wald" are independent parts of the sentence, that you can move around independently. So "Ich sah den Hund {der im Wald den Mann gebissen hatte}." is just as possible and you can put further information in between: "Ich sah den Hund {der im Wald gestern dreimal den Mann gebissen hatte}." So "in the wood" specifies the action, not the man.
In contrast, if the sentence were 'Ich sah den Hund {der [den Mann aus London] gebissen hatte}." the "aus London" mustn't be separated from "den Mann".
@@zak3744
You're right that "Ich sah den Hund {der den Mann gebissen hatte} im Wald." doesn't specify beyond any doubt whether...
I am myself in the wood seeing the dog
or
I am next to (but outside the wood) seeing the dog, who is *in* the wood.
I am not sure if it there's a perfect solution to that problem other than giving the reader/listener more context. But you have the same problem in English when you say "I saw the dog in the wood".
I'd say the position of the speaker is undefined.
It's only ambiguous because you have to adjust for lazy people who don't think about possible ambiguity in their words.
The alternative version should be "In the woods, I saw the dog that had bitten the man".
Even better is "I saw in the woods the dog that had bitten the man". Unfortunately this seems to have passed out of favour, despite being the clearest alternative.
Thank you, I'll keep this in mind when talking to medieval anglosaxons
Do you talk to them often?
Context is important, however I'm commenting at 1:12. I loved the first time that I saw your disclaimer and there are few CZcamsrs, social media stars and, or celebrities in any medium that are so upfront, honest and self-deprecating in their self-awareness!
Even if I assess someone as being an expert in their field, there are usually differing opinions, perspectives, or takes (in online vernacular) and so I never follow someone blindly. To have someone with a platform sincerely encourage this is as rare as chicken teeth and rocking horse sh*t!!
I also admire how you have a consistent theme to your channel now and yet there's good variety 🤠💜
Swiðe god, definitely some good tips here. Couple of observations:
Verb-final subordinate clause word order (or at least verb in third position or later) is the most common statistically, but it's not quite as rigid as I understand it to be in modern German and Dutch though. You do often see SVO subordinate clauses in prose, especially towards the end of the Old English period where the inflectional system was decaying and word order became more important. But you see main clauses with verb-final word order at times too. There was a lot of room for deviation for emphasis, or even just because the writer felt like it.
And speaking of decaying inflections, there's good reason to believe that schwa reduction happened in late OE (mainly in suffixes), from about the year 1,000 onwards. Inflectional suffix spellings were generally consistent before then, but you start seeing a lot more confusion of unstressed vowels from around that time, like the dative "-um" suffix being spelled as "-an" or "-em", and similar verb suffixes alternating more freely (although scribal conservatism meant that you still saw the older forms quite a bit). So schwas are probably fine for late pronunciation, at least in word endings, but I'd avoid them if you're aiming for Early West Saxon pronunciation, or even the earliest Late West Saxon.
So, the word swiðe means tips (or advice) in Old English? It is actually one of the many languages I want to learn, but I haven’t started learning many words in Old English yet, because I have many ancient languages on my list of languages I want to learn and improve, which are usually category 2 languages, and I cannot do more than 5 category 2 languages at a time, and this year I am learning Norse and Gothic and Icelandic and also Hungarian and Slovene, which are all category 2 languages, and once I get to an advanced level in these languages, I want to start learning lots of new words in Old English / Faroese / East Norse! By the way, re the rigid word order of Dutch and German, the reason why they have a different word order is, because they have infinitive forms that end in en, and verbs ending in en don’t really sound right if the preposition etc is added after them! I am advanced level in Dutch at the moment (also, intermediate level in German and Swedish and close to advanced level in Norwegian and close to intermediate level in Norse and Icelandic and Welsh) and I must say that I can now tell if something sounds off or if something sounds right, but when I used to be beginner level, I couldn’t really tell because I didn’t know the words and I didn’t know how the language works, so one cannot really tell if something sounds right or not as a beginner! Dutch words are constructed differently, so things that sound right in English don’t sound right in Dutch, for example, one can say in English I shall wear / I want to wear / I’m willing to wear etc because it sounds perfectly right, as English has very neutral word endings and very few verbs ending in en, and even those are considered differently, so in English it always sounds right, but in Dutch saying ik zal draag / ik wil draag sounds totally off, and very few verbs in Dutch would sound right in such case, such as the verb gaan, so one could technically say ik zal ga as it doesn’t sound totally off, but no one really uses the conjugated form ga in such case, so the infinitive form gaan / dragen etc is always used if it’s the 2nd verb or the 3rd verb etc, and when one uses the infinitive form that usually has en at the end and different letter combinations that are exactly like the English ones, it doesn’t really sound right in Dutch if the preposition etc comes after it in most cases, only in very few situations does it sound right, and usually in very short sentences that only have the subject and 2 verbs and the preposition and what comes after the preposition, but no extra words that would be used in the main sentence, and only when certain prepositions are used, so in most cases the 2nd verb is added at the end of the sentence! Technically, all languages say certain things differently and have different word orders in some situations etc, depending on what sounds best in that particular language, while a language like English has a very flexible word order because of the neutral word endings, so in English one can say things in any order and it doesn’t really sound off, I’ve even seen Modern English poems and lyrics that use word orders that were normally used in Old English that still sound perfectly fine, however, in most languages certain word orders can make the sentence sound unnatural, because most languages don’t have mostly words with neutral word endings, so they aren’t as flexible as English!
Re the schwa sound at the end, lots of German nouns / verbs are pronounced with a schwa sound at the end, like in Old English - this could also be a regional thing, because I noticed that in some parts of Germany, the schwa sound is used more...
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038swīþe as far as I know simply is something like "very"
[Unrelated to the video topic]
I would like to bring up my requeat from about a year ago where i asked if you could (if possible) make a video about the evolution of PIE into modern english.
On how sounds (specifically) but also sentax evolved from PIE base inventory into the current inventory modern dialects of english have now.
You could include other languages as well if you'll like
11 2 23
Thank you for the excellent advice to learners of Old English. I agree that learners of a language with grammatical gender should memorize vocabulary with the appropriate definite article, rather than sorting words into the conventional categories of masculine, feminine or neuter. Historically, these terms go back via Latin to Greek grammatical terminology: each substantive was assigned to a γένος (genus, category). The Greek grammarians designated the first γένος as masculine (ἀρσενικόν) because most words designating males fell into it, although it included many items that had no natural gender. Similarly with the second category (θηλικόν) feminine. The third category was called οὐδετερόν (neither) simply because such words did not fit into category 1 or category 2, not because there was anything “sexless” in them. Latin genus has a similar range of meaning as Greek γένος, while English gender (via French genre) specifically designates sex. The upshot: learn the Old English words as sē, sēo, þæt words, and treat the conventional terms as an afterthought.
Like in Swedish we do have grammatical gender, but which in modern times has basically 0 connection to "non-grammatical gender" because (apart from a couple idioms and archaic hangers-on) we used to have three genders like German etc. and then masculine/feminine collapsed into "common gender" (utrum in Swedish)
In what little grammar we talked about in Swedish class, it was definitely called "genus" and I made absolutely 0 connection at the time that it would have any connection to non-grammatical gender/sex (which would be _kön_ in Swedish)
Norwegian is an interesting language to compare with English (modern and old). In the way that you have with German. It's lost all its cases. It's has a huge Low German borrowing and has a smattering of French somehow.
Like a parallel evolution
Hansa?
@@wurzel9671 yeah I think so
From the late 17th to the early 19th century French became the language of prestige in Europe, and throughout the continent some of the nobility even spoke in French among themselves. This is how a lot of French words entered German and also the Scandinavian languages. English of course has French words coming in two waves during two separate eras. The first wave after the Norman conquest with a huge vocabulary of words coming in from medieval Norman-French, and the second wave during the early modern period and the enlightenment, so you have pairs like castle and chateau with different meanings, but ultimately the same origin.
The Low German influence comes via the Hanseanic League, when Low German was still the predominant language in northern Germany.
Some good advice, not just for Old English but for anyone learning a language related to one they already know.
Collocations and prepositions can be particularly tricky. Sometimes I see something in Icelandic that I recognise from both English and Swedish, but that has a completely different meaning.
Preposition and parts of the face/head are utterly confusing even in Swedish vs English. Most of them are cognates but used in different ways. Chin=haka; cheek=kind; heels=nacke; throat=hals.
Please bring back the Baldrick videos. Just include disclaimers at the start regarding the validity of the old English spoken.
As speaker of entirely different branch of Indo-European languages (East Slavic), some of the things about Old English seem far more "natural" than they are in Modern English. However, it is not at all easy - there are some of the typical hurdles with learning Germanic languages, such as articles and word order (E. Slavic languages have almost no requirements for word order, and variability is in fact used for emphasis). The funny letters, very different from standard modern Latin alphabet, also give pause to people. And, grammatical gender for same concept being different between languages is experience speakers of most Indo-European languages can share.
@@piotrbojkoff Often, but there is enough "poetic" flexibility that some prepositions can be turned into postpositions. It will sound unusual but if it is adjacent to the noun (and there are no other nouns around), it is understandable.
Life-saving tips for me: Android and Windows both support Icelandic keyboards, for easy access to þ, ð and æ characters.
Study from a textbook and don't be afraid to scribble notes in it, but Wiktionary and Bosworth-Toller online dictionaries provide indispensable definitions, etymologies and examples.
I just use dead keys on Linux: þ (Compose t h), ð (Compose d h), æ (Compose a e). Similarly for German characters ä (Compose " a), ö (Compose " o), ü (Compose " u), ß (Compose s s); Spanish á (Compose ' a), é (Compose ' e), í (Compose ' i), ó (Compose ' o), ú (Compose ' u), ñ (Compose ~ n); Turkish ğ (Compose b g), ı (Compose . i); long vowels ā (Compose _ a), ē (Compose _ e), ḗ (Compose _ ' e), etc; and so forth.
Concerning the point that German use the infinitive forms of verbs in the plural I have to add that this is true for Standard German but not necessarily for German dialects. In the Alemannic dialect I speak the verbs do change in the plural.
Standard German: gehen ('to go'), wir gehen ('we go')
Alemannic dialect: goh ('to go'), mir gohn ('we go')
and
Standard German: gehen ('to go'), sie gehen ('they go')
Alemannic dialect: goh ('to go'), sie gohnd ('they go')
Btw. the 'h' from the dialect words above is not pronounced, I have just written it to indicate that the 'o' is spoken long.
Thank you! I didn't know this :)
@@simonroper9218
Modern German plural endings in 1st and 3rd person (-en) derive from the Old High German present tense subjunctive endings which migrated into the indicative mood. (All the subjunctive plurals in Old English ended in -en, too.)
In my native Carinthian dialect the 3rd person plural has retained the final dental stop at the end of the 3rd person plural as well ("se rednt", "sie reden", they talk). The "-nt" seems to be an archaic feature for 3rd person plurals (compare the Latin, where 3rd person plural ends in -nt as well).
The only verb where this feature is still present in modern Standard German is "sie sind" ("they are").
@@Galenus1234 Very interesting, I did not know that about Carinthian!
It's the same in the dialects of the Swiss cantons of Valais and Grisons. (In at least some dialects of Valais, they even have "-unt", "-int" or "-ent" depending on the verb class and/or the dialect).
Generally speaking, German dialects are often a treasure trove of interesting archaisms. I speak Bernese German and Viennese German, and, for example, in Bernese German the vowel lengthening that Simon describes using the example of "bear" did not happen (except in some special cases, mainly one-syllable words): In Bernese German "Bäregrabe" ("Bärengraben"), for instance, both the "ä" and the "a" are short. In Viennese German, on the other hand, the second person plural ("es habts" instead of "ihr habt") derives from the old Proto-Germanic dual (as in most Bavarian dialects).
Coming back to Alemannic dialects, the differentiation goes even further. Im my Bernese German:
gehen (infinitive) = gaa
(sie) gehen (present indicative) = (si) göö
(sie) gehen (present subjunctive) = (si) gönge
In fact, unlike in Standard German, the present subjunctive is different from the present indicative in most forms of most verbs.
The only thing that I am not sure about is whether the Standard German present tense endings were really "migrated" from the subjunctive. I was under the impression that with the general weakening of the Old High German endings (in both verbs and nouns), the indicative and the subjunctive simply merged in a lot of forms in most dialects, including the ones that are the basis of modern Standard German,, i.e. that it was about phonological changes, not a grammatical migration. But I may be wrong.
@@chriflu
The final t at the end of the verbal ending of 3rd person plural depends on the speaker and the situation. In strong "archaic" dialect I expect it to be there. In my own natural way of talking it probably is optional...
as for the dialectal "ihr gehts" (or "es gehts"):
I wouldn't have expected "es" as a common second person plural pronoun ("y'all") in Viennese German. To me it sounds rather like something that one would hear in conservative, archaic alpine dialects.
On the other hand the verb ending -ts (ihr/es gehts; ihr/es habts; ihr/es schreibts;...) is a common Austrobavarian feature, where in Standard German it is just a -t (ihr geht; ihr habt;...). I don't know if all Southern German dialects have a -ts there, so take my generalizations with a grain of salt. The additional 's' derives from the old dual second person pronoun "es", which was positioned after the verb so often, that the "es" was reconsidered a part of the verbal ending ("-t es" --> "-tes" --> "-ts". So "ihr gehts" contains "one and a half" personal pronouns: firstly the "ihr", and secondly (?) the "-s"
The same goes for "mia gemma" ("wir gehen"), where the "mia" is equivalent to Standard German "wir" and the "-ma" suffix to the verb derives from a second "wir" that got assimilated to the verb.
@@Galenus1234 The theory of the verb repetition is very interesting because my best Italian friend (who is from Florence) does this a lot: "They are really crazy!" "Ma sono pazzi sono!" Literally "But they are crazy they are!"
Viennese dialect is a bit tricky because there are so many sociolects. When I talk to my friends from high-school (Gymnasium), I would probably say "ihr"(for "y'all") in most contexts and situations, but when talking to my plumber or my electrician I will probably use "ehs" instead. It would sound posh or condescending to use "ihr" in such situations.
It's still 'Katze' in modern German, and a female cat is a 'katta' in modern Swedish. In Swedish dialects 'katta' is also the definite form, while in standard Swedish it's 'katten'. 'And in German it still is: "Die Katze hat *den* Hund gebissen".
Und der Fuchs hat die Gans gestohlen. 😅
@@dirkbimini5963 Tatsächlich🦊
@@dirkbimini5963und was ist mit: "Die Gans hat der Fuchs gestohlen." Wer wen gestohlen hat ist eindeutig, denn sonst stünde der Fuchs im Akkusativ: "den Fuchs"
Oder gestohlen hat die Gans der Fuchs.@@a.b.w.h.3151
Wonderful video, Mr. Roper. Thoroughly enjoyed!
Unrelated note; would you consider doing a video about archaeology concerning the Corded Ware Culture, and/or the potential Indo-Europeanization of the Globular Amphora Culture (as posited by Gimbutas)? If I can really push my luck, I personally think it would be really cool if you could collaborate with Stefan Milo (which I’m sure he’d be open to; he’s collaborated with others many times before); maybe one of you can cover Corded Ware, and the other Globular Amphora. Both of your specialties are in archaeology, as I understand things; it would be really cool, I think, to see these major cultures explored by such high-quality, accuracy-concerned channels as yours. There is an unfortunate major dearth in terms of detailed analysis of these two, especially Globular Amphora.
Cheers
Watching this as if I could even imagine crafting a sentence in OE.
Good to see you returning to these types of topics, however, I miss the clips of your back garden and the wonderous broken buckets, overgrown plants and insects it beholds.
I have some recorded and will be sure to include them more often :)
Wonderful advice!
Hi sharing one's mistakes and recourses often takes more courage than sharing one's successes. I congratulate you for it.
That's very kind, thank you :)
"seo catte bat thone hund".
And yes, we still do this in Modern Greek:
example, Kostas loves Flora (we put the article before names in GR depending on usage)
Ο Κώστας αγάπει τη Φλώρα, and as Simon showed us with the hound then the cat you can change these around in order so that Τη Φλώρα αγάπει ο Κώστας yet it is still Kostas who is doing all of the loving because η Φλώρα is still in the accusative (τη), no specific noun order necessay. 💙🧿
For a while I have been pondering which Germanic language resembles proto Germanic the most actually. I myself am Dutch and I have little experience with the Scandinavian languages, but I do with English and German. In my opinion Dutch (be it NL or BE) would be the most conservative of the three.
Is this perhaps a subject you could touch upon? Including all the other living Germanic languages?
why is dutch the most archaic ?
Simon, thank you for your latest video. I've loved your uploads ever since you started your channel (but this is the first time I've commented, I think). Thanks for all the amazing information you've found out and shared with us. Kind regards, Sim
Simon, I love your content. I've dabbled in a few languages, and studied a few more (all indo-european: French, Latin, Spanish, a little Russian, Old English, and now studying German) and I've noticed the Indo-European 'logic' to be present in all of the aforementioned. I find them all in a way similar, like they share some old soul in different ways (obviously, the IE part!). I wonder if for your studies in daily speech if you rely on trying to turn later phrasing into Old English- ie, taking Middle English and somewhat translating it back into OE in order to approximate how someone might say something.
Not sure if that makes sense, I just know our corpus of OE is limited compared to Classical Latin (and completely eclipsed by Greek- wow!)- obviously we have King Alfred's Colloquy and the like, but I'm curious about your process for finding old phrases. Do you have any videos on the topic of how you are able to work out conversational OE? Hilariously, my only experience writing OE was for the final of my class, when I wrote a poem instead of an essay.
Simon, I should like to hear your views and a possible explanation of English polari.
I believe it has quite a long history. It would be interesting to know your view.
"I am an expert in making mistakes". I love that. :)
My mother's most recent husband was from a language group (from Kentucky, iirc) that would pronounce the pronoun 'it' as 'hit'. I always wondered where that came from. Of course, I still don't know, but OE seems a likely source. I have been told, in casual conversation, that the speech patterns in the American Southeast are more closely related to older forms of English than others are, e.g., ones in England. If that is so, perhaps this is an example?
Hi Simon! Thank you for all your hard work. Would you consider making a video about the resources you use to conduct your research? I want to know where to go. Google is not always the greatest tool. Are there any useful sites, keywords, or anything else that could help us curious minds?
It seems that Old English is more closely related to Old Frisian than Old Saxon, how did this come about
Old Saxon was heavily influenced by more southerly inland dialects. The coastal dialects would have been closer to OE and OF.
"Expert" You don't have to be one there are just patterns in every language that you have to get used to that's all.
Your observation about "sceal" seems to persist to this day in the Scandinavian languages. I doubt I'll ever understand how to use "ska" in Swedish as a native does, since it seems randomly to denote obligation or merely intention. I've made peace with that.
Ska du det?
If it's anything like Norwegian, "ska" denotes something in the future you have control over or an injunction.
"Jeg skal gjøre det i morgen" - I will do it tomorrow.
"Døra skal lukkes kl. 5" - The door shall/must be closed at 5
In the Swedish expression "som det ska", it refers to how things must be.
@@RedHair651 It's exactly like that! And you can take or leave the "vara" at the end of the expression you mentioned, "som det ska vara" as it's implied with the "ska" on it's own.
We Icelanders got thorn and eth from an old english alphabet and still use it.
People read thorn in Icelandic as P. So the national park Þingvellir often changes to Pingvellir and recently mount Þorbjörn (that is close to a possible eruption site near Grindavík and the Blue Lagoon) turns to Porbjörn. I absolutely hate this haha
if you were to be suddenly transported to 10th century england how easily could you get by? assume that the people around you are speaking whichever dialect you're most comfortable with
The english word meat is a cognate word with the danish word mad.
If the word for goat was feminine as you said, what if the specific goat being spoken about was male, would you still use the feminine pronoun to refer back to it? Would you use a masculine version of the noun goat, like "billygoat" in modern English to make the distinction. I know grammatical gender isn't based on sex, but I thought for living things it usually corresponded.
I may be mistaken here, but I believe that in OE, animals would be treated as belonging to the "objects" category when it comes to grammatical gender regardless of their sex, so you would in your hypothetical example use the feminine pronoun. If they had to be specific about the goat's sex, they would use a different word to describe the goat.
In modern English, you would use the pronoun corresponding to their sex or social gender, as grammatical gender has disappeared.
This is a good question, I don't actually know how far this extended to non-human animals - I think this could only be known by finding an example of a text where the same animal is referred to using mixed pronouns because two different words are used to describe it (e.g. masculine 'bucca' and feminine 'gāt' being used to describe the same goat). I don't personally know of any examples of this, but somebody else might!
Even earlier forms of modern English have constructions like "she bear", so I wouldn't be surprised if these constructions existed and were used in Old English when there wasn't a handy word like "buck", "bull", or "tomcat" available.
I would suspect there be a lot of genderspecific words for animals, even of different ages. When I talk to farmers in austria they have different words not only for male and female horses (like stallion and mare in english) but even words to differentiate male and female foals. There is a word for a female cow, that has not given birth yet (Kalbin, like Kalb(calve)+in (female suffix))
People usually have lots of words for things that are important to them, like animals are to farmers :)
Not sure it's the right niche but if anyone's interested in hard-core Anglo-Saxon history I hotly recommend Schwerpunkt's videos series
When he started talking about grammatical gender at 10:26 I was immediately reminded of that one @hivemind bit where Riley says “it’s never okay to objectify a woman, but it’s always ok to womanify an object”
Hey bro, could you do an accent timeline for New Zealand? We’re a young country. Indigenous people here have been here for about 900 years. But our accent is strange lol it sounds abit different to Australian but it’s similar ish enough.
Sounds more like something Dr Geoff Lindsey might some day deal with on his channel. NZ English has had a vowel shift on its short vowels, just a thing languages do, not so strange. Edit spelling
Is the r in 'bera' a tap or a trill?
We don't know at that level of detail - I've tapped it here, but it may have been a trill (or varied between speakers/regions).
Blimey, I was feeling paranoid thinking this was aimed at me. How on earth did he know I was deliberately gliding the vowels of a 13th C piece to make modern ears go, "ah, it's old but English! I shall go away and learn some more?" How on earth did he know I was composing something irreverent about beran, scítaþ and wuda - of course using a long e with bera to make it understandable to modern ears - after a new tutorial someone else had put up made me giggle with the possibilities? How this very week I had just done a quick (unsolicited) translation for someone that included the phrase 'on hus' and translating it as 'to house' which you say is 'in house'. Because 90% of my translating is to do with toponyms in Saxon boundary charters, 'on' is nearly always 'to', but the narrowness of (what could laughingly be called) my 'field' might have led me astray. I (and I'm sure the other amateurs here) thank you for the advice. In the same translation I made a note that said that I want to connect modern ears to familiar sounds in the past, in this piece you disagree: do you not think that it would be advantageous as a starting point for the casual beginner to show the nearness of many Old English words?
2:22 So its pronounced the same way as *the*? Like Smi*tha*s has *the* hots for Mr. Burns?
How have you gone about learning Old English, especially the pronunciation?
"You'd say 'the dog owns'."
Yeah, dogs *are* pretty cool.
Cool
I wish edh still existed. I have a DH sound in my name. Everyone butchers it.
modern german plural form with -en, evolved from plural subjunctive form of the verbs I gues
It's probably a merger of it and the 1st plural -em (word final m frequently turns to n in German).
The 3rd person indicative plural -ent is preserved in some high german dialects, and in standard German in the verb form sind. Otherwise a regularizing shift from -ent to -en is easy to imagine.
Old English had lost the n sound before dentals, so its expected indicative plural verb forms are -m, -th, -th so it's easier to see how the -th got generalized here.
@@user-pk9qo1gd6r i see, thanks a lot!
I mean… we native speakers can’t even get this right
I doubt you medieval folk even had dictionaries or organisations to standardize your language. No wonder that the language changes drastically from region to region.
I’m probably gonna be struggling with Old English grammar for the rest of my life tbh😂
Why
þwnd
9:50 "socially", no, just male or female
@Ptaku93 Even if you take the position that in a well functioning society social and biological gender should always coincide, it's useful to have terminology to describe the shenanigans that occur in poorly functioning societies. Thus the term "social gender". Whether you use it pejoratively, or neutrally, or think the concept is the best thing since sliced bread, it's a good thing to have in your vocabulary.
"I demand less nuance!"
We often refer to ships in the feminine. As inanimate objects, their natural gender is neuter. So why do we say “she” and “her”? Because we see them as socially feminine. Similarly an actor in drag (for example at a pantomime) is clearly biologically male - but we still use “she” and “her” when referring to the character created. The term “social gender” is perfect for these cases.
@@Besthinktwice not imagining pregnancy as the most feminine thing is such a huge strawman, I can't even begin to comprehend how one can gaslight oneself into such a bizarre position
@@raylewis395 you seem to be very confused by grammatical gender and its reflexes in modern English (I hate that I had to add "grammatical" up there) and you also seem to be a big believer in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Well, just know this - thinking and speaking about anything differently doesn't literally change the reality :)