One of the goals I listed from The Big List of 2023 goals is " Study Old English. Be able to translate a text by December 2023". That may seem like a fairly obscure goal - okay, it is a fairly obscure goal - with no noticeable impact on modern living or really on my life, except as an exercise in trivial knowledge of dead languages.
So what is Old English and why study it?
Old English is (perhaps not surprisingly) to forerunner to Modern English via Middle English and Early Modern English. The dates of such a thing are fairly fluid: one scholar dates it from 450 A.D. (The initial arrival of the Angles, Saxons, and the Jutes en masse to Britain) to 1150 A.D. It is derived from what are now called the North German dialects of German (the fancier word is Ingvaeonic), a postulated language encompassing Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon. It was originally called englisc or "pertaining to the Angles", which came to cover what turned into a multitude of dialects in Britain (Mercian, West Saxon, Northumbrian, and Kentish). West Saxon won the initial linguistics battle by the time of Alfred The Great (848 A.D. - 899 A.D), although in a twist of fate it was Mercian, not West Saxon, that was passed on to Middle English (and thus to our time).
(source)
Old English as a written language had less of a history than the spoken tongue (which ran 700 years or so). The first Old English text we have is a hymn written in the late 7th Century called Cædmon's Hymn. From there, the corpus of English writing grows and proliferates until it begins to decline after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 A.D.. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that yearly testament of events in England, continued to be kept until 1154 A.D. The language of business and ruling had become that of the Norman conquerors; englisc continued to be spoken by the countryfolk and lower classes.
If it seems like there is a lot of history that is inferred here there is; my thought it cover that in a second posting (because history an integral part of understanding any language). For me it is actually rather interesting; in the late fifth Century there was no guarantee that Anglo-Saxon would be the language of England, beating out the then currently existing Romano-British and their Brittonic (Celtic) and Latin (Romance) languages. The history of Britain in the 5th and 6th Century is one I wish more people studied.
But other than historical interest, why study it?
While Old English is not the same as the Modern English we currently speak, one in four words (28%) of English vocabulary is drawn from some version of Old English and the basic structure of Old English remains with us to this day. So, for example, in an entry from 1043 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "Her wæs Eadward gehalgod to cinge" we have an almost completely recognizable modern English sentence:
- "wæs": was, past tense of to be
-"Eadweard": Edward, a proper name
- "gehalgod": Consecrated; current cognate is "hallowed"
- "to": to; we would say "as"
- "cinge": inflected form of "king"
They are not all like that, of course; only 28% means 72% did not transfer into modern English. But there are some surprising times where reading Old English is no harder than reading any other of English.
Mark Atherton, in his handy volume Complete Old English (included with CDs; a fantastic volume for anyone wishing to start the journey) notes that the Irish Poet Seamus Haney compares English to an archaeology dig, with layers based on periods of history:
Enlightenment: Latin and Greek scientific terms
Renaissance: Latinate learned words
Middle Ages: French literary and cultural influences
Norman French administration
Old Norse everyday words, especially in north and east England
Old English - the foundation
Thus, the study of Old English is a sort of archaeological dig, a way to get back to one's linguistic or actual ancestors (both for me) in a way that is more than just reading historical works. To find Anglo-Saxon is, in some sense, to find a small part of myself.
Finally, it is worth studying because it is so rich. We have stories (Beowulf), we have fantasies (The Dream of The Rood, The Seafarer), we have poems and riddles and charters and proclamations and histories. Unlike many of the peoples of the so-called "Dark Ages" that came and disappeared almost without a traces - the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Lombards - the Anglo-Saxons have left us a great deal about themselves, their lives, and how they saw the world.
And frankly, it is fun. It may be an unusual day when one can blurt out the opening to Beowulf:
Hƿæt! Ƿē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum
Þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon,
hū ðā æþelingas ellen fremedon.
(What! We spear-Danes in ancient days inquired about the glory of the nation-kings, how the princes performed bravery.)
but it is a good day.
Hmm. You've got me tempted TB. I've been doing a lot of knitting and handwork these wet chilly days, and find that this is a great time to play foreign language videos as a learning project. I'm particularly interested in the history of if, I think because in my genealogical studies, most of the family lines I pursue trace back to Great Britain.
ReplyDeleteThe comments in your previous post about the study of history point to what we lose when history becomes obscured, and I reckon we could add ignored or forgotten. Language and literature tie us to that history in ways opinion never can. Even though I mostly feel like a wayfarer and stranger in this world, there's still something comforting in tracing the roots back and making a connection to the past. I'm probably not explaining it very well, but language is a marvelous and revealing thing about a culture.
Leigh, I am going to confess I am not a disinterested party - I love and truly thrive on this sort of thing. Language is so tied to history (I am working on next week's post on how we started to get to a Germanic language being in what was essentially a Celtic nation with a Latin veneer and just enjoying myself to no end) that it makes for endless joy of learning - not just in the language (and the thrill when I can actually read something) but realizing where words come from. And I would argue that any "dead" or endangered language is a great place to start, as 1) The grammar and vocabulary does not morph as it can in modern languages and 2) Small language learner groups are pretty easy going people who are happy anyone is just speaking the language. There is also the fact that there are many languages which are in danger of being lost - in Britain alone you have Welsh (which is doing okay), Cornish, and Scot's Gaelic as well as the regional dialects of English.
DeleteYou have hit exactly on yet another of my fascinations with language - it tells us about culture. One simple example: Germanic languages tend to emphasize the Noun and what the other part of the sentence do to or impact the noun. For example, "I am hungry". Celtic languages tend to have things in balance, impacting each other: for example, in Manx Gaelic one could say "Ta accyrs orm" (I am hungry, or literally "hunger is on me"). Viewing hunger as a thing that exists and is "on me" is entirely different world view than something that I am.
I didn't point it out then but on both your goals post and this post you said that you would translate a text by December of 2022, which as you may recall, is already in the past. I'm assuming you mean 2023 or that one of your unmentioned goals is to invent time travel.
ReplyDeleteI guess studying a particular moment in the English language doesn't really fascinate me for one reason, it is a changing language that continues to change as I write this. Words we use now weren't used 100 years ago and a 100 years from now, they will be using words we can't possibly comprehend today. To single out a group of words by a timeframe just doesn't seem like something I want to do. But I'm all for it if others choose to do so and I might be interested in reading the translated text when you are finished. I already read Beowulf or one person's translation of it many years ago.
Ed - Thanks! Yes, I meant 2023. Updated in both places.
DeleteLanguage is a very malleable thing, and one of the things that fascinates me is how it changes. Even using my Old English Flash Card App (yes, there is such a thing), I can still see words or cognates of words. That just fascinates me endlessly.
To be clear, "translating" may very well be a series of entries from the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Riddles (Anglo Saxon monks were big on riddles), or a passage. The goal is to do it with as minimal help as I can.
Well, somebody has to study these things to keep dead languages alive so more power to ya. There is learning for learning's sake and then there is practical learning. Though I'd never insult academia by calling myself a student, I did major in English. I have found my decent Spanish and fair German comprehension not only useful in comprehending modern English etymology and meaning, but in their own right when reading the Internet and travelling. I'm not convinced learning to translate Old English that's already been translated many times will pay dividends like learning a modern tongue but as you say it connects you to the spirits of your ancestors, which you value.
ReplyDeleteAgreed that it has not a lot of value inherently to translate a dead language - except that I do enjoy such things and gives me a relationship to my forebears (which I do indeed value).
DeleteIt does one other thing for me, which I value: it encourages me to read things and translates them myself - in that sense, get the direct meaning of the author, or at least the words - rather than rely on somewhat else to inject their meaning. This is a subtext in my mind (probably another post) about how we less and less come to read or listen to the original things and instead read or listen to derivatives (people who report the thing second or third hand). It certainly does not lead us to question and think for ourselves.
More power to you! In another time 50 years ago I took a course in Old Norse, and so recognize the difference between an ‘eth’ and a ‘tharn’. Spelling is slower to change than pronunciation as evidenced by the monks use of ‘gh’ to write a guttural in Roman letters. For example cough, though, bough, slough, thought, all pronounced differently and with no guttural. Lallan Scots preserves the guttural “ ‘‘twas a bricht moonlicht nicht’”. Compare the letters that have gone silent between English knight and German knecht where they are all pronounced. One can truly be fascinated by a study of languages.
ReplyDeleteOh, I would love to do Old Norse! Sadly, I think my grasp may exceed my reach.
DeleteThey truly do fascinate me as well.
A very fun to read little book is "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" by John McWhorter. Our language is a mashed together amalgam of many, many disparate pieces.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more fascinating courses I had as an undergrad was a semester of Linguistics. For one class, we had a guest professor who could do accents. He'd stand in front of a huge map with a pointer, and could switch accents in mid-sentence.
Greg, that is why I find the chart Atherton referenced so fascinating: you can see by historical periods the layers of the language accreting.
DeleteThat sounds like a marvelous read. Thanks for the recommendation!
Accents fascinated me. I really cannot do a good "anything". Had I money and free time, I think it would be fun to engage a voice coach and "pick up" an accent.