The Mother Tongue

[NoJo]

Can you understand this piece of Old English?

With a bit of effort, I got most of it.

(From The Mother Tongue by Lancelot Hogben)

English, A.D. 1000


SE EALDA MAN BENEOTHAN THAM TREOWE NEAH THAERE BRYCGE WUNETH ON THAM HUSE UPPAN THAM HYLLE BEGEONDAN THAM STREAME MID HIS HUNDE AND TWAM CATTUM. HIS WIF IS NU DEAD. HE NE HAEFTH BEARN AND FRIEND NE CUMATH OFT TO HIS DORE. ON THAM GEARDE BEHINDAN HIS HUSE BEOTH TWA GAET, FEAWA HENNE AND BEON. HE MACETH CIESE TO ETENNE OF THAM MEOLCE FRAM HIS GATUM AND BAECTH HIS AGENAN BREAD. THURH THONE SUMOR HAEFTH HE MANIG AEGRU FRAM HIS HENNUM AND FISCAS OF THAM LYTELAN BROCE WITHINNAN HIS GEARDE. THONNE CYMTH HAERFEST THA BYGTH HE MEOLU HIS BREAD TO MACIENNE. HE GADERATH AEPPLAS OF THAM TREOWUM AND HONIG FRAM THAERE HYFEON HIS GEARDE. THONNE CYMTH WINTER THA IS SNAW OFER THAM GRUNDE. THURH THONE DAEG MAEG HE GADERIAN WUDU FRAM THAM FELDUM NEAH HIS HUS TO MACIENNE FYR. WULFAS BEORCATH TOFORAN HIS HUSES DORE THURH THA LANGAN NIHT. HIS HEORTE IS GLAEDU THONNE CYMTH LENTEN. THA DAEGAS WEAXATH LENGRAN. SEO SUNNE SCINTH. TREO BEOTH GRENE AND HEOFONES FUGLAS SINGATH ONGEAN. SONA CYMTH HIS ENDE AC HE NE IS SARIG. DAEGLICE THANCETH HE HIS GODE FOR LANGUM LIFE AND NE WYSCTH LENG TO LIBANNE WITHUTAN HIS GODAN WIFE.

Clue 1:Neglect the suffixes in bold type.

Clue 2: They pronounced “G” as “Y”, so “DAEGAS” is “DAEYAS” – “days”. “GEARDE” is “YEARDE” – “yard” (or “garden.”)

Clue 3: “WUNETH” – German “wohnen” – to live (survives in “as is his wont”)

 

[Guest]

 

[Svenskaflicka]

It sounds rather sweet. And it reminds me a lot of Swedish. The Scandinavians did have a great deal of influence on Old English, thanks (?) to the vikings.

 

[NoJo]

Could you figure the words out? I guessed "HEOFONES FUGLAS SINGATH ONGEAN" is something to do with "heaven's" birds singing again. But I wasn't sure about the "FUGLAS". What's Swedish for "bird"?

 

[Guest]

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Could you figure the words out? I guessed "HEOFONES FUGLAS SINGATH ONGEAN" is something to do with "heaven's" birds singing again. But I wasn't sure about the "FUGLAS". What's Swedish for "bird"?

Bird = fågel, birds = fåglar.

 

[NoJo]

Thanks, Sven. I'd just got it too -- through my Cockney Yiddish. A "fagel" means a queer in Yiddish. But it also means a bird.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Thanks, Sven. I'd just got it too -- through my Cockney Yiddish. A "fagel" means a queer in Yiddish. But it also means a bird.

*growls*

Take that back!!!

 

[NoJo]

Okay. A fagel means a wonderful Nordic Goddess...

(bloody Vikings, so sensitive)

 

[Guest]

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Could you figure the words out? I guessed "HEOFONES FUGLAS SINGATH ONGEAN" is something to do with "heaven's" birds singing again. But I wasn't sure about the "FUGLAS". What's Swedish for "bird"?

I'm a little confused though. I didn't know they were writing vernacular English back then. How did they do their spelling? What alphabet did they use? Or is this spelling modernized?

I thought Chaucer was the one who really began the process of taking the common language seriously and standardizing the spellings, and Chaucer was like 1400.

---dr.M.

 

[NoJo]

pssst.
I think it was more about the use of "S***"
than fagel.

Oh, FUCK...

 

[NoJo]

I'm a little confused though. I didn't know they were writing vernacular English back then. How did they do their spelling? What alphabet did they use? Or is this spelling modernized?

I thought Chaucer was the one who really began the process of taking the common language seriously and standardizing the spellings, and Chaucer was like 1400.

---dr.M.

I think you're right. It was a quiz in the book, which was written by an English scholar. So maybe it's a "modern" version, maybe based on stuff like church inscriptions.

 

[Guest]

 

[lewdandlicentious]

Yeh Joe,

Join the list of those that dared................

to say "Sven!"

We are, the banished ones.

Or certainly, the ignored!

 

[pixiesjuice]

I ended up pronouncing a lot of the words with the same inflections i would use if i was speaking gaelic... the words i could make sense of that is

 

[Svenskaflicka]

lewd, rhino... you teo have been on probation-off-Ignore for some weeks now.

Don't make me put you back..!

Joe... everyone gets ONE warning.

 

[Guest]

 

[Svenskaflicka]

You sure are. Those weren't warnings, they were lethal threats.

 

[Madame Manga]

I'm a little confused though. I didn't know they were writing vernacular English back then. How did they do their spelling? What alphabet did they use? Or is this spelling modernized?

I thought Chaucer was the one who really began the process of taking the common language seriously and standardizing the spellings, and Chaucer was like 1400.

---dr.M.

Beowulf is written in this vernacular, as are many other surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the early Middle Ages. Most of them are not originals, but were recopied in monasteries at least up to the Norman invasion of 1066. King Alfred the Great carried out a literacy campaign in the late 800s and established a court school to train the children of nobles and some selected commoners to read. Of course, this wasn't exactly the establishment of a public school system. He had a lot of Latin manuscripts translated into English, including parts of the Bible.

Yes, the spelling is modernized. The Old English alphabet has about half a dozen characters we don't use any more, like the "thorn" and the combined AE. Here's a sentence with a lot of special characters in it--Icelandic still makes use of them.

Ða gerad Æðelwald his fædran sunu þone ham æt Winburnan.

Chaucer is Middle English, which has a lot of French words incorporated into it and is much closer to Modern English.

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye--
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for the seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

MM

 

[Guest]

I either posted this once or sent it to someone. Fits here. It came from this site, excellent for an intro to English. - Perdita

The History of the English Language

In the beginning there was an island off the coast of Europe. It had no name, for the natives had no language, only a collection of grunts and gestures that roughly translated to "Hey!", "Gimme!", and "Pardon me, but would you happen to have any woad?"

Then the Romans invaded it and called it Britain, because the natives were "blue, nasty, brutish [British] and short." This was the start of the importance of u (and its mispronounciation) to the language. After building some roads, killing off some of the nasty little blue people and walling up the rest, the Romans left, taking the language instruction manual with them.

The British were bored so they invited the barbarians to come over (under Hengist) and "Horsa" 'round a bit. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought slightly more refined vocal noises.

All of the vocal sounds of this primitive language were onomatapoedic, being derived from the sounds of battle. Consonants were were derived from the sounds of weapons striking a foe. "Sss" and "th" for example are the sounds of a draw cut, "k" is the sound of a solidly landed axe blow, "b", "d", are the sounds of a head dropping onto rock and sod respectively, and "gl" is the sound of a body splashing into a bog. Vowels (which were either gargles in the back of the throat or sharp exhalations) were derived from the sounds the foe himself made when struck.

The barbarians had so much fun that decided to stay for post-revel. The British, finding that they had lost future use of the site, moved into the hills to the west and called themselves Welsh.

The Irish, having heard about language from Patrick, came over to investigate. When they saw the shiny vowels, they pried them loose and took them home. They then raided Wales and stole both their cattle and their vowels, so the poor Welsh had to make do with sheep and consonants. ("Old Ap Ivor hadde a farm, L Y L Y W! And on that farm he hadde somme gees. With a dd dd here and a dd dd there...")

To prevent future raids, the Welsh started calling themselves "Cymry" and gave even longer names to their villages. They figured if no one could pronounce the name of their people or the names of their towns, then no one would visit them. (The success of the tactic is demonstrated still today. How many travel agents have YOU heard suggest a visit to scenic Llyddumlmunnyddthllywddu?)

Meantime, the Irish brought all the shiny new vowels home to Erin. But of course they didn't know that there was once an instruction manual for them, so they scattered the vowels throughout the language purely as ornaments. Most of the new vowels were not pronounced, and those that were were pronounced differently depending on which kind of consonant they were either preceding or following.

The Danes came over and saw the pretty vowels bedecking all the Irish words. "Ooooh!" they said. They raided Ireland and brought the vowels back home with them. But the Vikings couldn't keep track of all the Irish rules so they simply pronounced all the vowels "oouuoo."

In the meantime, the French had invaded Britain, which was populated by descendants of the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. After a generation or two, the people were speaking German with a French accent and calling it English. Then the Danes invaded again, crying "Oouuoo! Oouuoo!," burning abbeys, and trading with the townspeople.

The Britons that the Romans hadn't killed intermarried with visiting Irish and became Scots. Against the advice of their travel agents, they descided to visit Wales. (The Scots couldn't read the signposts that said, "This way to LLyddyllwwyddymmllwylldd," but they could smell sheep a league away.) The Scots took the sheep home with them and made some of them into haggis. What they made with the others we won't say, but Scots are known to this day for having hairy legs.

The former Welsh, being totally bereft, moved down out of the hills and into London. Because they were the only people in the Islands who played flutes instead of bagpipes, they were called Tooters. This made them very popular. In short order, Henry Tooter got elected King and begin popularizing ornate, unflattering clothing.

Soon, everybody was wearing ornate, unflattering clothing, playing the flute, speaking German with a French accent, pronouncing all their vowels "oouuoo" (which was fairly easy given the French accent), and making lots of money in the wool trade. Because they were rich, people smiled more (remember, at this time, "Beowulf" and "Canterbury Tales" were the only tabloids, and gave generally favorable reviews even to Danes). And since it is next to impossible to keep your vowels in the back of your throat (even if you do speak German with a French accent) while smiling and saying "oouuoo" (try it, you'll see what I mean), the Great Vowel Shift came about and transformed the English language.

The very richest had their vowels shifted right out in front of their teeth. They settled in Manchester and later in Boston.

There were a few poor souls who, cut off from the economic prosperity of the wool trade, continued to swallow their vowels. They wandered the countryside in misery and despair until they came to the docks of London, where their dialect devolved into the incomprehensible language known as Cockney. Later, it was taken overseas and further brutalized by merging it with Dutch and Italian to create Brooklynese.

That's what happened, you can check for yourself. But I advise you to just take our word for it.

Copyright (c) 1994 Corrie Bergeron and Ben Tucker all rights reserved

 

[pop_54]

I think you're right. It was a quiz in the book, which was written by an English scholar. So maybe it's a "modern" version, maybe based on stuff like church inscriptions.

If it is genuine it will almost certainly be someone's translation of early church scribblings, or maybe some educated squire's diary.

Hey Doc, we English have always made it up as we go along, Chaucer wasn't the first to pick up a writing implement and try to make a language up from the mix of European tongues in use at the time. English as we know it now, with all the set standards and spellings, only came about very recently with the publication of the OED and such volumes of reference.

PS: Joe, I didn't understand a fucking word, well Ok maybe a fair bit of it.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

In the beginning there was an island off the coast of Europe. It had no name, for the natives had no language, only a collection of grunts and gestures that roughly translated to "Hey!", "Gimme!", and "Pardon me, but would you happen to have any woad?"

Over here, they still speak that ancient dialect in the pubs on Friday nights.

 

[Somme]

Over here, they still speak that ancient dialect in the pubs on Friday nights.

...which is akin to a dialect of Swahili by closing time?

 

[Black Tulip]

Funny how languages can look alike.

The very first written sentence in what would evolve into Dutch:

Hebban ollas vogelas nestas begunan hinase ick enda tu...
hebben alle vogels nesten begonnen behalve ik en jij
have all birds nests began except I and you

I can see the Swedish birds there. Anybody else recognize something?

Perdita,

I loved that.