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"Now we must praise the protector of the heavenly kingdom the might of the measurer and his mindâs purpose, the work of the father of glory, as he for each of his wonders, the eternal Lord, established a beginning. He shaped first for the sons of the earth heaven as a roof, the holy maker; then the middle-world, mankindâs guardian, the eternal Lord, made afterwards, solid ground for men, the almighty Lord."
via https://imagejournal.org/article/caedmons-hymn-the-first-eng...
Reading Old English as a Scandinavian is always interesting, because if you squint hard enough, you can easily see how the languages are so deeply related. So many modern Scandinavian words have what seem to be lost cognates in Old English, and I suppose vice versa.
That said, I wish translations into contemporary English went further to preserve the etymology of certain words and the grammatical structure of the poem, even if it would make for a much more awkward text. For example, this text translates "middangeard" as "middle-world", which is correct, but it is cognate with "MidgĂĽrd", which is the Norse mythological name for Earth. (In Scandinavian translations of J.R.R. Tolkien, "Middle Earth" is translated as "MidgĂĽrd".) I think this lets us understand more about how writers of Old English understood the world, and how it was connected to the broader mythological landscape in North/Western Europe around this time, how Christian and Pagan belief systems were interacting through language as the region was in the process of christianization.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Guide_to_the_Names_in_The_Lo...
that this was in _A Tolkien Compass_ which was one of the first books I purchased w/ my own money (along w/ _A Tolkien Reader_) is arguably a big part of why I chose to study languages early on in my life.
Tolkien's "Middle-Earth" is itself a "folksy mistranslation"
Closer translation-- "Middle-Yard"
Old English word eardgeard =Earth-Yard
/ ËĂŚÍÉrdËjĂŚÍÉrd / "ardyard" /
https://www.theundergroundmap.com/article.html?id=104937
https://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/wanderer/notes/no...
For something completely different, try learning Mandarin.
It is a very great thing that so many peoples now speak languages with clear common roots buried behind the deviations of use; and outmost interesting to recognize the plan and the deep thought in those radixes.
Lithuanian and Celtic had no direct contact with each other AFAIK, although Celtic was in contact with Vasconic, Romance, Germanic and Slavic... And Lithuanian was in contact with Slavic and Germanic, maybe Finno-Ugric...
Obviously numbers...
Sniegas - Sneachd â Snow
In â An(n) â In
Najas â Nuadh â New
Marios â Muir (genitive mara) â Sea
SrĹŤti (to flow) â Sruth (stream)
Mirti (to die) â Murt/mort (murder)
klausytis (to hear) â cluas (ear), cluinntinn (listen)
sekla â sĂŹol â seed
Senas â Sean â Old
Vyras - Fear (plural Fir)- Man (wer(e))
Dantas (tooth) - Deudag (toothache)
Ugnis (fire) â Aigeann (fireplace)
Raudonas â Ruadh â Red
Dienas (day) â Di- (day in day names) â Day
Pilnas â LĂ n â Full
Kaire â CeĂ rr â Left
DeĹĄinÄ â Deas â Right
It would be a gargantuan effort just alone to devise a language that would unify historic language origins roots in a contemporary time. The objective would be to stop the death and eradication of languages, e.g., Welsh, German, or any of the numerous other smaller languages and dialects that are all under varying states and types of endangerment or extinction risk, but also prevent an ignoble, unstable, and inadequate language like contemporary English from dominating the whole world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D54D1C7DAE31B36&si=Kw3J...
or "The History of English" series:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV50II2XzmY-9GLZWAuieOp27...
In the second series, there is a weather report in Frisian that vaguely sounds like English.
This is how the Icelandic sagas were translated into English in the nineteenth century. Translators then almost always chose the English cognate of the Old Norse world, even if that English cognate was obsolete or its meaning had changed. Far from helping immerse readers in the medieval world, the effect (at least for modern sensibilities) is offputting and goofy, and in the twentieth century publishers like Penguin replaced those translations by new ones with a very different approach. More judicious use of the Germanic lexicon in English, Ă la Tolkien, provides a more appealing atmosphere of olden times.
Oh my. I find the reverse. It's spooky and enchanting because once I know all the cognates I feel like I can magically understand the original.
In the center, humans inhabit MidtgĂĽrd. The gods in Valhall and the Jotun in Jotunheim.
Then there's also Helheim or Hel - for the dead, Alfheim for the elves, Svartalfheim for the dwarves...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Locations_in_Nor...
- Vanaheim, home of the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility.
- AsgĂĽrd, home of the Aesir, the big-name gods (Thor, Odin, Freya, etc.).
- JĂśtunheim, home of the Giants.
- Alfheim, home of the elves.
- Helheim, the underworld ("Hell").
- Svartalfheim / Nidavellir, home of the dwarves.
- MidgĂĽrd, home of the humans.
- Muspelheim, home of fire elementals.
- Niflheim, world of mists.
(This is the commonly accepted list, but it's always worth mentioning that surviving literary sources of Norse mythology are very scarce. Much of the lore was reconstructed in the 19th century.)
And of course, English develops organically (unlike, say, French), allowing new words to emerge, and for old words to take on new meanings. I love it.
As an Englishman, I always find it interesting that there is this weird defined notion of "Englishness" in language, culture, whatever, when our entire history is one of mashing and remixing ideas over at least 2,000 years, and recent discoveries at Stonehenge push that back potentially by 3,000-5,000 years more.
I particularly like the irony of the far-right going on about English identity on a march in London before going to have a lager and chicken tikka masala before heading home to a bungalow and putting on their pyjamas... :)
I think the Scandinavian roots you talk about trace back to common Germanic roots perhaps, but also the Viking aspect will influence a lot. I think English has been "dipped into" by those roots a few times in history, as has Latin.
On the need to keep the etymology aligned in translation: I think this is a routine challenge of the translator's skill, and why so many people have different views of different translations of the same texts.
The Bible could easily be translated in many different ways, but the "King James" version is considered the standard within the Anglican churches in the UK (and seems to be the common root for US church bibles too), but a more modern translation would be possible, as would one that has a closer etymological meaning to the original sources.
It's all interpretative. If people are building entire belief systems and ways of life (and arguably, laws for society), around a translation, and getting it off in a few places, it's likely we're going to run into the same problems even more when translating Tolkien or an ancient poem...
I don't find this to be true. Even at high mass ('bells & smells' type communion) you get more modern versions. To my recollection NIV would be most common. Obviously not a representative survey. Also, it might be at traditional/formal services you get [N]KJV as I've been to less of those.
Amongst very old people you see strong support for KJV because that's what they learnt 70 years ago. It sounds very archaic to modern ears. I'd say KJV hasn't been favoured this side of the millennium.
Just my impression.
Stewart Lee had a good bit about this:
> [..] > âBloody Beaker folk. Coming over here, rowing up the Tagus Estuary from the Iberian Peninsula in improvised rafts. Coming here with their drinking vessels. What's wrong with just cupping up the water in your hands and licking it up like a cat?â
Racism always tends towards the silly, of course, but British ethnic nationalism particularly so, given the history. Whatâs âBritishâ, anyway?
My understanding is that Old English vocabulary mostly predates Viking invasion, but even then the colonizers would have a large shared vocabulary with (non-Celtic) British natives, who would be the descendants of Anglo-Saxon settlers a couple of centuries earlier.
Latin influences English as a learned tongue, used by clerics and academics. Other than that most of it comes via French, when the Normans brought it.
Actually, here is the full text with the modern English inserted:
hefenricĂŚs = himmelrikes (no)
uerc = werk (nl)
eci = evig (no) / eeuwig (nl)
ĂŚrist = eerst (nl)
barnum = barn (no)
sceppend = schepper (nl)
EDIT: Hearing the poem read also gives dutch / germanic vibes: https://gutenberg.org/files/19677/ogg/19677.ogg
uuldurfadur = alfader (all-father)
uundra = under (wonder)
halig = hellig (holy)
[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wuldorf%C3%A6der
I recently tried some light research (ok, i ddg'ed) recently on this topic as it wasn't that long between the Viking invasions and settling down in claimed territory, "how continuing-to-be-Norse were the Normans?" I was looking at a similar idea to another comment/statement here from a Scandinavian, "would the Normans have maintained enough knowledge of Norse language to have seen connections to Anglo Saxon/Olde Ănglish? (ok, i just wanted to use a ligature)
I didn't find it easy to to find specifics in great detail, but interestingly in William the Conquerer's family tree, his great^n-grandparents and their cohort were frequently marrying French noble women for local connections and prestige, but also having children with their "soulmate" Norsewoman side piece, made more convenient because the Norse marriage practice was more akin to "common law marriage" anyway.
I'm not reading or judging anything into this (what noble of any culture wouldn't pursue extramarital relations, hell the peasants do it too) except from variety of partners they were clearly maintaining connections to their heritage at least as Italian- or Irish-Americans frequently do in the current day.
https://www.goodiesruleok.com/articles.php?id=17
https://www.llapgoch.org.uk/
https://librivox.org/caedmons-hymn/
The text is read in the Early West Saxon dialect. Same version found here (incl. OGG Vorbis format):
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/19677
"Caedmon's Hymn"There is still an entire Medieval European world out there in the archives still waiting to be discovered. Sadly, there are not many of us who have the skills to do this and we are not paid very well or often not at all.
Old books aren't that neat, you tend to have a lot of notes and other documents, translations, scribal annotations from different eras interleaved or in the margins. You need to make decisions about that stuff as you go, which requires being informed about the context and meaning of those documents, that may well be in another language, or from hundreds of years before or after the document you're trying to process. For any given physical object it's quite likely that no single scholar has all the information necessary.
It is also extremely important to preserve all the context, things like which exact pages a fragment is stuck between, even its orientation, can be critical information to later scholars. And then in all of this you're handling ancient & precious one of a kind paper documents. It's just slow going, and well beyond what I would even consider "skilled labor" this very much is the work of research & scholarship. By the time you get a camera pointed at a page you're at the easy part.
As for imaging, there is Irish Scripts on Screen (https://www.isos.dias.ie/) which covers many different places and time periods.
Answering the grandparent comment, LLMs are not good at Old Irish. Seriously, they are awful at it. There is just too little data for it to work. I wrote a very little bit about text clustering in Old/Middle Irish (see https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110680744-005). I think the better place to start is transcription and there are some tools out there which help, like Transcribus (https://www.transkribus.org/), which I haven't used but it looks useful.
edit:typos
That said, I've found the recent LLMs will happily accept an entire book of scanned pages (just the images) and summarize the complete contents in one single go, which definitely has a very useful purpose in cataloging and indexing publications. For a project I'm doing I have millions of documents in hundreds of languages where only images of the pages exist, so I'm trying to get a good idea of the contents, then a user can choose to open the document and read the full text in its original format and layout.
And of course, title pages are a later invention so the only way to know whatâs in a manuscript is to actually read it.
Although The Poetry Foundation still promises to track all your content
The OP article, published by Trinity College Dublin, and the original, and the photograph, are expressly CC-BY-ND 4.0. This is not a "free license", but it is a Creative Commons License.
https://theconversation.com/we-found-a-lost-copy-of-the-earl...
So you can write it down to tech brainrot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Conventions_...
Edit: "The newly-discovered manuscript in the National Central Library of Rome of Caedmonâs Hymn dates from between the years 800 and 830, making it the third oldest surviving text of the poem." So... 1.2k then?
https://colingorrie.com/books/osweald-bera/
Basically itâs a full blown story/graded reader with no modern English apart from vocabulary. You build an understanding of the language as you read the book and what is initially gibberish becomes quite clear as you progress . It does help if youâve had a lot of exposure to German ( vocab and grammar), or barring this any case inflected language.
Whatâs noticeable is that itâs about 200 pages long, so the story gets quite sophisticated , and rather unexpectedly the book is a bit of a page-turner !
Familia Romana by Hans Orberg is a great one for Latin. I frequently see people call it the gold standard for this kind of book, but they're all Latin enthusiasts, so they're not exactly unbiased.
https://www.youtube.com/@CambrianChronicles
Now let us praise Heaven-Kingdom's guardian, the Maker's might and his mind's thoughts, the work of the glory-fatherâof every wonder, eternal Lord. He established a beginning. He first shaped for men's sons Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator; then middle-earth mankind's guardian, eternal Lord, afterwards prepared the earth for men, the Lord almighty.
Also worth pointing out that the Old English version at each of those dates probably varied quite a bit. This was the time period over which Old English was being influenced by external factors such as Norse and Latin.
- I'll get my coat...
The sign above the door at the primary school outside Karlstejn Castle is unreadable to a speaker of modern Czech.
School website: https://www.skolakarlstejn.cz/
Better pics can be found easily.
It's quite rare for a language to remain close enough to be intelligible.
English is a mongrel, with influences from old French and ancient Saxon and Norse and Celtic. Every few centuries you go back, you strip away whole layers of additional vocabulary left by the descendants of successive invasions.
What? No it's not. It looks no more than ~100-150 years old, and is perfectly readable if you've ever seen a long s (like Ĺżo).
It's obvious that today's connected society - leading to any single language being very widespread for mutual intelligibility - bears no resemblance to the way things were many centuries ago. But we're conditioned to think in terms of our own experience until we really think about it or have it pointed out. Back then, the UK was split into many different dialects, largely consolidated later by the use of the printing press. Those dialects had so much difference in some ways, that snippets of them could sound like related-but-different languages.
(And there's very little relative difference between modern English and "middle English", which is easy for us to read, notwithstanding differences in the not-yet-standardised spelling.)
And most importantly, across history, the literary language has always been the language of the elites, the ruling class, which is often not the same language spoken by the plebs. Since the language they spoke is therefore missing from the historical record, it's sometimes open to interpretation and guesswork. Many historical linguists try to make it known that middle-to-modern English can't have come directly from the dialect of Anglo-Saxon we now call Old English, but overturning (or even clarifying) dogma from the early days of any field, against years of written encyclopedias, is very difficult.
This was in a modern library that was built recently (1975), by historical standards. This book would have been, at minimum, catalogued, packed, and unpacked to verify it made the trip. It was't missing. It wasn't unearthed. It was just never read.
https://www.cenl.org/library/the-central-national-library-of...
There was a Bohemian monk
Who went to bed in a bunk
He dreamt that Venus
Was sucking his elbow
And woke up all covered in perspiration.
kick âem in the knee
Sis boom bass
kick âem in the other knee.