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There are ways of expressing feeling in the Old English kennings that do not exist in the formal English of today. An accusation that might be levied against a
by gerdesj 8y ago
There are ways of expressing feeling in the Old English kennings that do not exist in the formal English of today.
An accusation that might be levied against any language vs another. Funnily enough I found Ms Livingstone's final para a rather good example of the sheer power of modern english to concisely link several concepts when wielded with precision.
That said, I rather like the sound of the freedom that is implied in her description of these kennings constructs. At the moment things like "banhaus" sound more like a slang term to me. Did OE (at some stage) have a separate word word for "body" or was bone-house it?
- Rebelgecko 8y agoI think that many Old English works such as Beowulf had specific meters and patterns in how they used alliteration. I would guess that at least some of the more metaphorical kennings were created to fulfill those constraints in a poetic way.