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Learn to read Middle English
- asplake 6y ago“trybut” should be a programming language keyword
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tetris11 6y agodemand { <code> } trybut { <code> } now <finalcode> }
- jdnier 6y agoSince it's "tribute", it seems like a synonym for return. A function's output is its tribute, or maybe just the thing it returns. def speke_parott(): # many machinations... trybut = "squwak" return trybute
- Lukas_Skywalker 6y agoThe 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 6y agoI 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 6y agothe 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).
- chizhik-pyzhik 6y agoThere's a wikipedia incubator site for middle english. It's pretty entertaining to read: A frogge biþ a smol beaste wiþ foure leggys, whyche liueþ booþ in watyre and on londe. It cuoþ bee broune or grene or yelowe, or be it tropyckal, he may haue dyuers coloures. It haþ longys and guilles booþe. Eet haccheþ from an ey and it þan ys a tadpolle. It groweþ to ben a frogge, if it þan ne be noght aetoen. https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/enm/Frogge https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/enm/Frogge
- gerdesj 6y agoAccording to Caxton there was a controversy between egges and "eyren".
- stevesimmons 6y agoVery interesting! The Dutch for eggs is "eiren" (plural of "ei" pronounced "ey")
- schrijver 6y agoNitpicking, the plural is eieren, with three distinct syllables :) IIRC, there used to both words with -er and -en as plural, but over time the norm became -en so it was tacked onto the -er. Like kind/kinderen. In German Kinder and Eier are still the plural.
- empath75 6y agoRegional differences.
- stevula 6y agoegge being derived from Norse, while eye/eai/etc from Anglo-Saxon æg. 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 https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=egg: """ This Norse-derived northern word vied in Middle English with native cognates eye, eai, from Old English æg, 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. """
- tetris11 6y agoThere 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)
- dahart 6y agoI 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 6y agoI get a perhaps similar kick out of reading proto-indo-european word lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_vocabulary 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 "k̂erd"! 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 "hṛd", the Sanskrit word. Add a trailing vowel, and you get "hŕday", the Hindi word in use today (or so wiktionary tells me).
- dahart 6y agoThis 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.
- 082349872349872 6y agoGift. (anglophones transferring to germanophone chemistry labs may think, at first, that the local industry is very generous)
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoIt 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 6y agoThe Canterbury Tales is a great preparation for the harder stuff!
- microtherion 6y agoThe 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).
- akavi 6y agoTo be clear, pronounced as a German "j" or an English "y", ie /j/, not an English "j", ie /dʒ/.
- microtherion 6y agoYes, important point.
- bklaasen 6y agoNot a million miles from Flemish, either, which is very similar to Dutch, but with softer 'g's.
- bovermyer 6y agoI kind of wish we still used thorn, edh, and yogh. But I'm weird like that.
- urxvtcd 6y agoLong s was cool too. Also a bummer that we stopped using past perfect in Polish some time ago.
- mcguire 6y agoAs long as it's the long 's' and not the 'f' used as long 's'.
- zeveb 6y agoÐere's no reason ðat we can't resume now! I þink ðat þeȝ look just fine!
- DonaldFisk 6y agoNothing 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).
- DonaldFisk 6y agoIf 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCckcTHWqKw The text, with modern orthography, is here: http://www.skeltonproject.org/spekeparott/ http://www.skeltonproject.org/spekeparott/
- gorkish 6y agoWhen 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 6y ago> 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 6y agoI 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- shitgoose 6y agoTo my untrained (Russian) ear it sounds like a mixture of Scandinavian, Italian, and Romanian. Fascinating!
- yters 6y agoIf I blur my eyes and read fast, it is not so hard to understand, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia.
- lqet 6y ago> 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" / "ällweil") is still used in southern Germany for "always" - my grandfather still uses it. "Ȝelde" 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.
- combatentropy 6y ago> 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).
- hodgesrm 6y agoHmm, the cognate to schulden jumps right out for me but I didn't notice some of the others. Thanks for a great post!
- vmchale 6y ago> 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 6y agoI 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 6y agoTo 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.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago"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 6y agoWhat’s the misunderstanding you’re trying to avoid with this distinction?
- _emacsomancer_ 6y agoDo you descend from your cousin? No. You're related, and thus share a common ancestor.
- monadic2 6y agoSure, but who believes english comes from modern german? The OP is laying out a strawman of confusion. The article certainly does not make this claim. It’s being pulled from the OP’s ass with no context for a dopamine hit. Edit: removed accidental condemnation of sodomy.
- pfkurtz 6y agoIn 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.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> poetry is a great component to any language learning (enhanced by the fact they're often published in dual language version) Poetry is actually much worse for learning a language than prose is, because the language used in poetry is usually not typical and not uncommonly fairly strained. Any advantage of poetry comes from how much the student enjoys it. > but it's essential for dead languages. Why would dead languages be any different in this regard from living ones?
- pfkurtz 6y agoFor dead languages the answer is easy: a lot of the most interesting texts are in verse. Including Middle English. I have never had a conversation in any dead language. Prose literature is actually a more recent development, so if you want to read ancient stories in the original, which are awesome, you will be reading poetry. As to poetry in general: Poetic language is challenging, diverse in vocabulary, and because of meter it is memorizable, which I find puts more of the language "in my head". Poetry is also an essential part of most national literatures, and so a big component of really learning a language beyond being conversational. Nothing in my answer disparaged prose, or that poetry is more important than prose; any language learning consists of repeated, effortful exposure to many language sources, as well as speaking and writing the language. I'm just emphasizing that studying poems in other languages can really help learning those languages, so a savvy student should include it. The tone of your response is puzzling to me.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
- TheHeretic12 6y agoIf 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 6y agoI stumbled on "Le Morte d'Arthur" in college. It was one of the few books that having a few beers really helped with.
- Balgair 6y agoSir 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malory
- robaato 6y agoTakes 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 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 http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html Maybe when I retire I can help them tidy it up :)
- shitgoose 6y ago"Yelde ye to alle men youre dettes: to hym that ye schuleth trybut, trybut." Sounds Yiddish:)
- sbierwagen 6y ago>Some words that were common in Middle English are just gone. You'll probably need to consult a dictionary at some point. The Oxford English Dictionary is great if you have a subscription. The University of Michigan has a dictionary of Middle English that you can use for free. >Here are a couple of common words that come to mind: >eke — “also” >wyf — “woman” Wyf shouldn't be that hard to guess: it eventually became "wife".
- mjd 6y ago“Wife” and “woman” don't have the same meaning. I think people learning Middle English are often puzzled when they try to read “wyf” as “wife”, which is why I mentioned it.
- c3534l 6y agoWhen people say things like: > The only strange word is schuleþ itself it makes me think Middle English is not easy at all. Out of the entire sentence I unambiguously recognize "to," "that/þat" and "men", and I can guess but can't be sure that "alle" means "all" by recognizing that "alles" is German for all and supposing that English lost the trailing e recently. None of these words have high semantic meaning and I am unable to make a guess at any of the remaining words in the sentence based on context, since I have no context. I'm not a dumb man, nor do I have a small vocabulary. I probably know more about linguistics and especially historical linguistics than the vast majority of the population due to my interest in conlanging. But the fact that some people think that the meaning of the rest of the words in the sentence is so obvious as to serve as an example for how obvious Middle English is, is probably the reason why I've failed or nearly failed every English class where we've had to read Shakespeare, and never garnered any sympathy from teachers who are so certain that "trybut" is obviously "tribute" as anyone can plainly see.