[HN Gopher] Learn to read Middle English
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Learn to read Middle English
Author : weinzierl
Score : 116 points
Date : 2020-06-09 08:03 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.plover.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.plover.com)
| pfkurtz wrote:
| In a college language seminar we read The Tale of the Wyf of
| Bathe very closely in Middle English. The Canterbury Tales are a
| really great way to learn it, because they are so rich and varied
| and there are great _dual language_ editions with copious notes.
| The big fat Penguin edition is fantastic.
|
| In general, poetry is a great component to any language learning
| (enhanced by the fact they're often published in dual language
| version), but it's essential for dead languages.
| vmchale wrote:
| > Disclaimer: I have never studied Middle English. This is just
| stuff I've picked up on my own. Any factual claims in this
| article might be 100% wrong. Nevertheless I have pretty good
| success reading Middle English, and this is how I do it.
|
| lmao programmers are so arrogant holy shit
| mcguire wrote:
| I never studied bookbinding, but I can produce serviceable
| books. They look like crap, but they work.
|
| I also never studied lawn mower repair. Nonetheless, ... it
| lives!
| stevula wrote:
| To be fair, I recently searched for a Middle English grammar
| and pretty much everyone said to just learn by reading with a
| commentary. It's close enough to Modern English that you can
| approach it more like reading an odd dialect.
| microtherion wrote:
| The discussion of yogh, which can be g or y reminded me that in
| some dialects of German, "g" is pronounced as "j", as in the
| proverbial phrase "Eene jut jebratene Jans ist eene Jabe Jottes"
| (A well grilled goose is a gift from god).
| bklaasen wrote:
| Not a million miles from Flemish, either, which is very similar
| to Dutch, but with softer 'g's.
| akavi wrote:
| To be clear, pronounced as a German "j" or an English "y", ie
| /j/, not an English "j", ie /dZ/.
| microtherion wrote:
| Yes, important point.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| "English started out as German."
|
| Can we not do better than this? This is factually incorrect. I'm
| sure the author knows better, and just thought readers weren't
| "smart" enough to be able to understand "English is part of the
| Germanic language family" or "German and English are related",
| but instead this is just ... no... I don't think I'm being
| pedantic by complaining about this... But this is like saying
| that "Spanish started out as French" or "Romanian started out as
| Italian"
|
| German refers to the language descended from Old High Franconian.
| English is descendended from the Anglo-Saxon dialects, the
| languages of peoples who invaded Britain from the western coast
| of what is now Denmark and the northeast coast of what is now the
| Netherlands. And then modified with a whole bunch of old Norse
| influence from Danish and Norwegian invaders. And then with a
| whole bunch of Old Norman French influence... etc.
|
| If you look for a _modern_ Germanic language that English is most
| closely related to it would be the low Germanic languages, low
| Saxon, Frisian, even Dutch more so than German proper. Low and
| high refers to altitude -- not class or prestige or anything --
| the "high" German languages are those that underwent a
| softening/changing sound shift which came out of the highlands in
| southern Germany. English, like Dutch, never underwent that sound
| shift. Hence we say "School" with a "k" for the sch instead of a
| soft "sch" like in German.
| monadic2 wrote:
| What's the misunderstanding you're trying to avoid with this
| distinction?
| diffrinse wrote:
| Besides presenting the wrong graph of relations in the
| language remarked upon already, the statement gives the sense
| to someone uninformed that modern German is a pretty old
| language.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| Do you descend from your cousin? No. You're related, and thus
| share a common ancestor.
| tetris11 wrote:
| There must be a thousand false friends though. As a guy
| struggling through German, there are too many words that sound
| the same but mean different things, like 'fast', 'bald', and
| others (I cannot immediately think of)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Gift. (anglophones transferring to germanophone chemistry labs
| may think, at first, that the local industry is very generous)
| schoen wrote:
| Interestingly, its meaning in German once matched the meaning
| in English, but later shifted to a _very_ specific kind of
| "giving".
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gift#Etymology
| stevula wrote:
| Via the medicinal sense of "dose"
| kryptiskt wrote:
| In Swedish "gift" means both "poison" and "married".
| dahart wrote:
| I really enjoy finding how some of these cognates are
| connected, it opens up meanings and interpretations of words in
| English that I didn't realize were there. It does make learning
| German a little frustrating though. I get this constant
| expectation that it should be easier because the languages are
| so close together, but the closeness makes a lot of things
| ironically harder. It seemed easier to grasp the word order in
| Japanese, for example, than German.
| twic wrote:
| I get a perhaps similar kick out of reading proto-indo-
| european word lists:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_vocabulary
|
| English "heart" is in French, "coeur", and in Greek,
| "kardia". Unrelated? No! In Proto-Indo-European we think it
| was "kerd"! Soften the leading k, stop voicing the final d,
| jiggle the vowel, and you get "heart". Lose the final d and
| you get "coeur". Jiggle the vowel, add a trailing vowel for
| streamlining, and you get "kardia".
|
| Better yet, soften the leading k and you get "hrd", the
| Sanskrit word. Add a trailing vowel, and you get "hrday", the
| Hindi word in use today (or so wiktionary tells me).
| dahart wrote:
| This is pretty awesome, thanks for the link! Not having
| studied many languages, I was recently surprised to find
| out how many English cognates there are in languages like
| Persian... I had no idea it came from proto-indo-european.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| Nach einem gecanceltem Flug downloadete ein TV Showmaster sich
| eine App und trampte mit seinem Handy durch die City, stieg in
| einen stylischen Youngtimer und drehte sich nen Joint.
| tetris11 wrote:
| ProTip: Do not read German texts in a misguided attempt to
| improve your spoken German. Different beasts altogether.
| yters wrote:
| If I blur my eyes and read fast, it is not so hard to understand,
| i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia.
| robaato wrote:
| Takes me back to my university days and the holiday project I got
| involved in as part of the Middle English Dialect Project lead by
| Dr Michael Benskin.
|
| http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/intros/atlas_preface.html
|
| I helped with programming for processing/typesetting of the
| various texts and the production of "dot maps" and other maps for
| the data of the corpus of some 320 words which were (manually)
| collected from thousands of manuscripts.
|
| E.g. text 1423, (maybe with a known scribe, usually with a
| location), spelled such and such a word in the following N ways
| (scribes often had a preferred spelling, but weren't always
| consistent).
|
| With such maps, among other thints, you could start to place
| unknown texts by doing some simple Venn diagrams for spellings it
| contained.
|
| The original (referenced above) was printed, subsequently, it was
| put online.
|
| http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html
|
| Maybe when I retire I can help them tidy it up :)
| bovermyer wrote:
| I kind of wish we still used thorn, edh, and yogh. But I'm weird
| like that.
| zeveb wrote:
| Dere's no reason dat we can't resume now! I think dat they look
| just fine!
| mc32 wrote:
| Let's also begin pronouncing the silent k's... but write them
| with c's and let the 'ch' version of c be contextual again
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| Nothing stopping you. I do, when I'm writing. As any written
| communication from me is typed, only a few people know this.
|
| Incidentally, thorn and yogh are still occasionally used today:
| thorn (written as y) at the beginning of some pub names, e.g.
| "Ye Olde Mitre Inn", and yogh (written as z) in some Scottish
| surnames: Menzies (traditionally pronounced "mingus"), Dalziel
| (pronounced "dee-el"), Mackenzie (derived from Gaelic
| MacCoinnich, but now with a spelling pronunciation in English).
| Accacin wrote:
| Heh, when I was younger I went through a phrase of writing
| almost everything in Anglo-Saxon runes.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I blame The Hobbit.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| It happened to me, too. I blame Ultima IV!
| dahart wrote:
| You might enjoy learning Icelandic, which I've been told may be
| the closest language to old english that's still in modern use.
| urxvtcd wrote:
| Long s was cool too. Also a bummer that we stopped using past
| perfect in Polish some time ago.
| mcguire wrote:
| As long as it's the long 's' and not the 'f' used as long
| 's'.
| lqet wrote:
| > What's "schuleth" then? Maybe something do to with schools? It
| turns out not. This is a form of "shall, should" but in this
| context it has its old meaning, now lost, of "owe
|
| It's still "schulden" (to owe) in German, and "trybut" is still
| "tribut", and "alle" is still "alle", and "hoppen" (or "hopfen")
| is still used in some German dialects as "jump"/"dance", and
| "alwey" (or "alleweil" / "allweil") is still used in southern
| Germany for "always" - my grandfather still uses it. "Yelde" is
| very close to the modern German "vergelten" (repay) or "abgelten"
| (compensate), and even to "Geld" (money).
|
| The only word that seems strangely out of context is "dettes",
| and as it turns out, this word is French.
|
| As a German, when I read Middle English, I always have the
| strange feeling that someone tried to "correct" or clarify a
| Modern English text, but only partly succeeded.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Hmm, the cognate to schulden jumps right out for me but I
| didn't notice some of the others. Thanks for a great post!
| combatentropy wrote:
| > What's "schuleth" then? . . . This is a form of "shall,
| should" but in this context it has its old meaning, now lost,
| of "owe"
|
| I would not say it is lost. What else does "you should" mean
| but "you owe"? You can exchange "You should..." for "You ought
| to..." ( _ought_ is a past tense of _owe_ ).
| stevula wrote:
| While the sense evolution from owing to obligation is clear,
| it would definitely sound weird now to say "you should a
| tribute".
| asplake wrote:
| "trybut" should be a programming language keyword
| tetris11 wrote:
| demand { <code> } trybut { <code> } now <finalcode> }
| [deleted]
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| If you want to know what (late) Middle English sounded like,
| listen to this recitation of Skelton's Speke Parott:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCckcTHWqKw
|
| The text, with modern orthography, is here:
| http://www.skeltonproject.org/spekeparott/
| [deleted]
| gorkish wrote:
| When I was learning to read Middle English I found that
| learning to pronounce it out loud helped a tremendous amount;
| it made the whole process a lot easier for me, and it helped
| others understand it as well since I could impart some
| contextual meaning that made some of those 'close' words very
| clear.
|
| Being able to recite monologues from Canterbury Tales was also
| a good party trick that apparently piqued the interest of this
| girl who later decided to marry me. So there you go.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > recite monologues from Canterbury Tales was also a good
| party trick
|
| I'm guessing not the Knights Tale
|
| > apparently piqued the interest of this girl who later
| decided to marry me
|
| I waited until after the first date before trying this one
| (Millers Tale). Reader - she married me!
| gorkish wrote:
| I recall at that particular time I just reeled off the
| prologue, but I was always partial to the Monk's tale.
|
| The reason is silly. One of the first times I heard any of
| it read out loud, it was an English prof with an extreme
| Southern drawl reading Monk's Tale. I got a real kick of
| it, and always gave the Monk a little hint of the Blue
| Ridge Mountains in his honor.
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| The difficult word, "schuleth", is actually pretty close to its
| German counterpart, the verb "schulden", which still has the
| original meaning of "to owe".
|
| In German itself, the word apparently transformed from "skulan"
| at around the year 0 over "skuld" at around 700 to "schult"
| around the year 1000.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I have no problem with this:
|
| "to him that ye schuleth tribute, tribute" becoming "to him
| that you should tribute, tribute."
|
| It is a bit odd to modern ears but the second tribute is
| clearly a shortened exhortation for emphasis. Should in English
| often implies an obligation and owe falls out from that. "You
| should apologise for that" -> "You own an apology for that".
| tankenmate wrote:
| the first "tribute" is a gerund (i.e. a verb taking the place
| of a noun) although i'm not sure of the gerund declension in
| middle english. the second "tribute" is an imperative verb
| (with an implied subject and object).
| TheHeretic12 wrote:
| If anyone is interested in something from this time period worth
| reading in its original language, that is not on the reading
| lists, I can recommend the works of Sir Thomas Malory. He
| collected, compiled, and translated from French to English
| everything we call "Arthurian Legend." He did this while in
| prison near the end of his life. I picked up a used copy on a
| whim, knowing nothing about Middle English, and its been
| difficult but priceless. It took me an hour to get through the
| first page, but it puts Game of Thrones to shame. Found it on
| Amazon, they list it as ASIN B011T6UUCQ. Theres other editions,
| but I can vouch for the integrity and readability of this one.
| dws wrote:
| I stumbled on "Le Morte d'Arthur" in college. It was one of the
| few books that having a few beers really helped with.
| Balgair wrote:
| Sir Thomas Malory's life is just nutters, likely because it's a
| bit hard to pin down. Nonetheless, born a lesser noble, he gets
| knighted and then does what any young man in those late
| medieval days does: goes civil warring. Riding about he gets
| married, and has a kid (maybe more?). Somehow he gets elected
| to parliament, while being wanted for some sort of crime.
| Parliament doesn't really seem to mind, maybe they thought him
| a bit roguish for it.
|
| Unfortunately, he then decides to back the wrong (loosing) side
| durng some such part of the War of the Roses. They get at him
| and try to jail him for this. Also a bunch of murdering and
| raping and pillaging for good measure. He gets captured and,
| well, just walks out and swims the moat. Nothing really comes
| of that escape, legally speaking. Everyone was like, good for
| you.
|
| As he is still backing the wrong side, they try and get him
| again. This time they do their jobs and capture him. The jury
| convicts him and he, well, maybe they convict him. No one
| really knows. So they let him go. This pattern repeats itself a
| few times, yes really. Malory finds that cattle rustling on the
| Scottish border is more his cup of tea anyway.
|
| Eventually he gets on the right/winning side of the war.
| Unfortunately, they still don't really like him, all that
| pillaging you know, so the general pardons that come along when
| a new king comes into power, well, those skip him. Finally, he
| gets into a prison that really has some bars behind it. There
| he gets really bored reads a bunch of French and English stuff
| borrowed from a bleeding heart Noble next to the Tower of
| London. It's all about King Arthur so he writes 'Le Mort
| d'Arthur'. He dies in prison.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malory
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| There's a wikipedia incubator site for middle english. It's
| pretty entertaining to read:
|
| _A frogge bith a smol beaste with foure leggys, whyche liueth
| booth in watyre and on londe. It cuoth bee broune or grene or
| yelowe, or be it tropyckal, he may haue dyuers coloures. It hath
| longys and guilles boothe. Eet haccheth from an ey and it than ys
| a tadpolle. It groweth to ben a frogge, if it than ne be noght
| aetoen._
|
| https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/enm/Frogge
| mc32 wrote:
| Wouldn't beaste be "deer" back then? Maybe it depended on
| distance from London?
|
| Edit: I mean wouldn't they have used "deer" rather than
| "beaste" for modern "animal".
| stevula wrote:
| There's probably some semantic overlap between "beaste" and
| "dere" (various spellings) in the Middle English period.
| "dere" could refer to small animals (possibly frogs?) or
| specifically to deer in the modern sense (i.e. Cervidae).
|
| Old English "deor" actually meant "beast/animal" in the
| broader sense (cognates include German "Tier") but began to
| specialize after being pushed out by Norman French "beste"
| (sp?) during the Middle English period.
| jacobush wrote:
| Swedish cognate djur
| gerdesj wrote:
| According to Caxton there was a controversy between egges and
| "eyren".
| stevula wrote:
| egge being derived from Norse, while eye/eai/etc from Anglo-
| Saxon aeg. The final g eventually came to be pronounced like
| a y in that environment, a development that apparently did
| not affect the Old Norse word -- probably due to being
| borrowed after the sound shift had already occurred, though
| the doubled gg could have prevented it anyways (not sure
| about this latter part).
|
| From https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=egg:
|
| """
|
| This Norse-derived northern word vied in Middle English with
| native cognates eye, eai, from Old English aeg, until finally
| displacing the others after c. 1500. Caxton (15c.) writes of
| a merchant (probably a north-country man) in a public house
| on the Thames who asked for eggs:
|
| And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude speke no frenshe.
| And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no
| frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges, and she understode hym
| not.
|
| """
| empath75 wrote:
| Regional differences.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| Very interesting! The Dutch for eggs is "eiren" (plural of
| "ei" pronounced "ey")
| agentwiggles wrote:
| Approximately, following the advice from the article:
|
| _ A frog beeth a small beast with four legs, which liveth both
| in water and on land. It could be brown or green or yellow, or
| be it tropical, it may have diverse colors. It hath lungs and
| gills both. It hatcheth from an egg, and it then is a tadpole.
| It groweth to be a frog, if it then be not eaten._
| stevula wrote:
| There's something very charming about Middle English to me.
| Here's my overly etymological translation to point out the
| vocabulary correspondence to Modern English (minus the archaic
| -th endings):
|
| "A frog is a small beast with four legs, which lives both in
| water and on land. It could be brown or green or yellow, or be
| it tropical, he may have diverse colors. It has lungs and gills
| both. It hatches from an egg and it then is a tadpole. It grows
| to be a frog, if it by then be not eaten."
| rolleiflex wrote:
| If you like this kind of phrasing, try some German. German is
| English that is not molested by the French of the Normans,
| and one of the results of this is that the language is more
| consistent. (This is not exactly correct, but it's a more
| humane way of saying German and English share some roots in
| Proto Indo-European.) That allows for a wide variety of
| phrasings or 'turns of the word' that are all dead in English
| since Norman words do not carry inflections German words do
| about their location in a sentence, which gives German its
| flexibility to jumble almost any combination of words into a
| valid sentence. As a mitigation, English instead calcified a
| few ways to structure a sentence and called it a day - one of
| the things that make it easier to learn, but also much more
| boring.
|
| Here is a free course that only focuses on reading German, I
| found it quite fun to play with.
| https://courses.dcs.wisc.edu/wp/readinggerman/
| philwelch wrote:
| > German is English that is not molested by the French of
| the Normans, and one of the results of this is that the
| language is more consistent.
|
| There's a constructed dialect called "Anglish" that
| attempts to be this more literally.
| diffrinse wrote:
| >As a mitigation, English instead calcified a few ways to
| structure a sentence and called it a day - one of the
| things that make it easier to learn, but also much more
| boring.
|
| Isn't this because the language we're reading in OP and
| speak now is the pidgin that developed between Viking
| settlers and English incumbents? Doesn't that also explain
| why our _pronouns_ are Scandinavian rather than the ones
| found in Old English or old Norman?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| It is worth mentioning that Middle English consisted of dialects
| that significantly differed from one another. Chaucer's English
| is similar enough to modern English that bookish people today can
| quickly get used to it with the help of an annotated edition of
| the Canterbury Tales. But _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ or
| the less popularly known writers of the Middle English period
| like the Pearl-poet or William Langland are more challenging and
| generally only ventured by specialists, and everyone else relies
| on translations.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| The Canterbury Tales is a great preparation for the harder
| stuff!
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