I just recently posted about Tolkien's poetic composition in Gothic, "Bagme Bloma" ["The Flower of the Trees"]. The translations that I've been able to find in English, while to some extent poetic, focus mostly on sense, so they definitely don't have the meter and alliteration and general flow of the original. Since I am very sensitive to sound and content matching or complementing each other, I set out to do my own translation in full poetic form. I'm indebted to the translation quoted in Shippey's Road to Middle Earth, Indûr's translation (about half-way down), and especially The Annotated Bagme Bloma for making sure I understood the basic sense of the poem. Also, check out this analysis (PDF; auf deutsch).
So following are the Gothic original and the first publication of the new Bitter Scroll Translation(tm). I would love to hear suggestions, critique, etc. I think it's pretty good, but I want to know what other people think, especially if I can improve it.
Gothic
Brunaim bairiþ bairka bogum
laubans liubans liudandei,
gilwagroni, glitmunjandei,
bagme bloma, blauandei,
fagrafahsa, liþulinþi,
fraujinondei fairguni.
Wopjand windos, wagjand lindos,
lutiþ limam laikandei;
slaihta, raihta, hweitarinda,
razda rodeiþ reirandei,
bandwa bairhta, runa goda,
þiuda meina þiuþjandei.
Andanahti milhmam neipiþ,
liuhteiþ liuhmam lauhmuni;
laubos liubai fliugand lausai,
tulgus, triggwa, standandei.
Bairka baza beidiþ blaika
fraujinondei fairguni.
English
On glorious branches, glittering and
Pale green as she grows,
The birch tree bears her lovely leaves,
The flower of flowering trees,
Fair of hair and lithe of limb,
The mistress of the mountain.
The winds now call, soft winds are stirring,
She lowers her limbs in play.
Sleek and straight and white of bark,
She utters a trembling tongue.
Great mystery, bright token is she,
A blessing on my people.
The twilit sky obscured by clouds
Is bright again with lightning.
And standing strong and faithful while
Her lovely leaves take flight,
The birch will wait there, bare and white,
Still mistress of the mountain.
Notes
My goals in translating were as follows. I wanted a poem that came as close as it could to the smooth, flowing beauty of the original. So like the original, the translation has a specific meter (roughly, 3 stanzas each with 3 pairs of lines of 4 and 3 strong beats) and a certain degree of alliteration and internal and external rhyme. Tolkien's original does not quite follow the old Germanic device of one sound alliterating across a whole line (e.g., sometimes the first two beats alliterate with each other, and the second two with each other, as in Fagrafahsa, liþulinþi). So I felt justified in altering the structure slightly myself.
So much for form. As to content, I tried to craft a translation that, if on the surface less literal, is hopefully more accessible. "On the surface" because often ancient languages use one basic word where we have many quasi-synonyms with the same basic sense, but carry also connotations of emphasis or slight variation according to object. E.g., rodeiþ may be listed as "speak" in lexicons, but depending on context and even interpretation, in different circumstances may be better translated with synonyms like talk, declaim, utter, perorate, announce, speak up, speak out, declare, address, communicate, etc. Hence the use of 'great' for goda (good); 'glorious' for brunaim (shining, bright); 'the mistress of' for fraujinondei (ruling). If written in good Gothic, translate into good English. Thus my translation is necessarily a bit more interpretive than the others.
Finally, there are several words in the Gothic that do not exist in any Gothic texts or lexicons. It is very characteristic that Tolkien reconstructed these from words that exist in Old English, Old High German, or Old Norse. See, again, The Annotated Bagme Bloma. My translations differs only in that I interpret lindos as an adjective 'soft' used as a noun (as OHG lindos, 'softly') despite possible problems with form. This has windos and lindos related by both sense and rhyme (as old Germanic poetry often used alliteration to follow sense). I didn't see why Tolkien would, only in that line, talk about any other kind of tree.
For an interpretation of the poem in terms of the Literature-versus-Language (philology) struggle that went on at the U. of Leeds when Tolkien there, see Tom Shippey's The Road to Middle Earth. Literature and Language were labelled respectively Track A and Track B in the English Department, but Tolkien likened them to the corresponding rune-names: A = ác (oak), and B = beorc (birch), or in Gothic, bairka.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Ælfred se cyborg cyning
I found this neat little generator on Speculative Catholic. Heheh. I'm glad that even Alfred's cyborg is about learning.
Mwahahaa!
Mwahahaa!
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Bagme Bloma
"The Flower of the Trees" That's the name of the Gothic poem that Tolkien composed. It's got the alliteration traditional for old Germanic poetry (even though this was composed in 1936), and personally I really do like how it sounds (this page, despite a couple of typos, has .wav files so you can hear it).
To show you a bit of the fun I get from comparative philology, I just wanted to point out how many cognates this poem shares with modern English. Out of 55 words, here are 32 cognates for 34 words (2 appear twice) or 62% of the words in the poem. And this is just what occured to me on first glance (at 1am). The Gothic words below don't all do exactly the same job their English cousins do, but they're in the same field usually. Starring, in order of appearance, are:
bairiþ: bears ("beareth")
bairka: birch
bogum: bough
laubans: leaves
gilwa-groni: pale green ("yellow-green")
glitmunjandei: glittering
bagme: trees ("beam")
bloma: flower ("bloom")
fagra-fahsa: fair-haired ("fair" & "faxen", whence "Fairfax")
fairguni: mountain ("-berg")
Wopjand: calling ("weeping")
windos: winds
wagjand: shaking, moving ("wagging")
limam: limbs
slaihta: smooth ("slight")
raihta: straight ("right")
hweita-rinda: white-barked ("white" & "rind")
bairhta: ("bright")
runa: mystery, secret ("rune")
goda: good
þiuda: people ("Theoden", "Deutsch" [ok so this isn't English])
meina: mine
Anda-nahti: evening ("night")
liuhteiþ: lights ("lighteth")
laubos: leaves
fliugand: flying
lausai: free ("loose")
triggwa: faithful ("true")
standandei: standing
baza: bare
beidiþ: awaits ("bideth")
Some generalities to note in comparison:
In OE, the 'ai' or 'a' of Gothic often became 'æ', as in OE bær (from beran) for Go. bar (from bairan).
After vowels, the 'g' in OE tended to be pronounced like our 'y', so that "fair" was spelled fæger, but pronounced close to our own word. Gothic, however, pronounced the 'g' in fagr.
The OE 'g' also sounded like a 'y' in front of "front vowels" (æ, e, i, y). Hence gear > year; geard > yard; and, above, Go. gilwa- beside OE geolu > yellow ... BUT ... hard 'g' sounds at the front of 'glittering' (Go. glitmunjandei, OE glæteriende) and 'good' (Go. goda, OE gód).
Baza to English bare is an example of s's becoming r's. This is called rhotacization, after the Greek letter.
Finally, isn't it just more fun to pronounce the gutturals in words like slight, right, light, night? My favorite line of the poem, for sheer enjoyment of hearing the sounds, is slaihta, raihta, hweitarinda. Smúúð.
To show you a bit of the fun I get from comparative philology, I just wanted to point out how many cognates this poem shares with modern English. Out of 55 words, here are 32 cognates for 34 words (2 appear twice) or 62% of the words in the poem. And this is just what occured to me on first glance (at 1am). The Gothic words below don't all do exactly the same job their English cousins do, but they're in the same field usually. Starring, in order of appearance, are:
bairiþ: bears ("beareth")
bairka: birch
bogum: bough
laubans: leaves
gilwa-groni: pale green ("yellow-green")
glitmunjandei: glittering
bagme: trees ("beam")
bloma: flower ("bloom")
fagra-fahsa: fair-haired ("fair" & "faxen", whence "Fairfax")
fairguni: mountain ("-berg")
Wopjand: calling ("weeping")
windos: winds
wagjand: shaking, moving ("wagging")
limam: limbs
slaihta: smooth ("slight")
raihta: straight ("right")
hweita-rinda: white-barked ("white" & "rind")
bairhta: ("bright")
runa: mystery, secret ("rune")
goda: good
þiuda: people ("Theoden", "Deutsch" [ok so this isn't English])
meina: mine
Anda-nahti: evening ("night")
liuhteiþ: lights ("lighteth")
laubos: leaves
fliugand: flying
lausai: free ("loose")
triggwa: faithful ("true")
standandei: standing
baza: bare
beidiþ: awaits ("bideth")
Some generalities to note in comparison:
In OE, the 'ai' or 'a' of Gothic often became 'æ', as in OE bær (from beran) for Go. bar (from bairan).
After vowels, the 'g' in OE tended to be pronounced like our 'y', so that "fair" was spelled fæger, but pronounced close to our own word. Gothic, however, pronounced the 'g' in fagr.
The OE 'g' also sounded like a 'y' in front of "front vowels" (æ, e, i, y). Hence gear > year; geard > yard; and, above, Go. gilwa- beside OE geolu > yellow ... BUT ... hard 'g' sounds at the front of 'glittering' (Go. glitmunjandei, OE glæteriende) and 'good' (Go. goda, OE gód).
Baza to English bare is an example of s's becoming r's. This is called rhotacization, after the Greek letter.
Finally, isn't it just more fun to pronounce the gutturals in words like slight, right, light, night? My favorite line of the poem, for sheer enjoyment of hearing the sounds, is slaihta, raihta, hweitarinda. Smúúð.
Saturday, October 8, 2005
Leifing through the Web
In honor of Leif Erickson Day tomorrow, here are a few random tidbits:
The Icelandic Saga Centre
Viking Quest Game - How would you do as a viking?
Northvegr - some language resources.
This looks to be an interesting translation of the Elder Edda. Thanks to Scott Nokes.
The Germanic Lexicon Project - Working to digitize dictionaries for Old Norse and other Germanic tongues.
What went wrong with the Vikings' western colonies?
Here's a little snippet on viking swords.
And, of course, any excuse to post Viking Kittens
The Icelandic Saga Centre
Viking Quest Game - How would you do as a viking?
Northvegr - some language resources.
This looks to be an interesting translation of the Elder Edda. Thanks to Scott Nokes.
The Germanic Lexicon Project - Working to digitize dictionaries for Old Norse and other Germanic tongues.
What went wrong with the Vikings' western colonies?
Here's a little snippet on viking swords.
And, of course, any excuse to post Viking Kittens
Friday, October 7, 2005
Some Tolkien for your Friday
Check it out: The Ring poem in Mercian Old English, and the Siege of Gondor in West Midlands Middle English.
Thursday, October 6, 2005
Helping OE to Feel More Familiar
When I study languages, my mind latches onto similarities, even when they're veiled or indirect, of form or of vocabulary. For example, I will never be able to see the word pecuniary and forget that the first syllable is related (albeit 2000 years distantly) to the English word fee, and that while both mean money now, they both meant cattle 2 millennia ago.
That said, I've begun a little experiment. I contend that there is enough of the "feel" of the Germanic linguistic tradition left in English, that you can usually find something in modern English to make aspects of old Germanic languages feel familiar. For example, last week while I was home with my foot up after surgery, I started writing down how I would explain each of the seven classes of strong verbs if I were writing an "Old English for Dummies" book. For each class there are modern English verbs that exhibit the exact same series of vowels across their principle parts--either directly, or once you account for an Old-to-Modern vowel shift, which also can be shown to be an instinctual, home-grown English thing to do.
Obviously there won't be a familiar ring to some aspects of the language--after all, there are things that make it different from its modern form (though less and less, it seems, the more I study it). For example, OE words that never made it much past the Norman Invasion won't seem familiar, although words that at least made it into Shakespeare have a chance of helping out here. Nevertheless, since we generally gain new knowledge by building on, comparing with, and filtering it through existing knowledge, it might be an easier point of access for the average Joe if different points of OE were introduced in terms of what he already knows. The closest I've seen is that many people introduce the language as a whole with examples of similarity, but then dive into the grammar like any other language, not really stopping to point out convergences along the way.
Some examples are in order.
From Old to Modern English, there was a general tendency for [a] to become [o]. We experience the relation between these sounds today. Listen to the two o's in "October". In some American dialects at least, the first 'o' is more like the a in 'farm', while the second is like the o in 'code'. (I've encountered this relationship everywhere from Russian to Hebrew, though I wouldn't include that in my grammar.)
The variation even occurs with the same letter, across dialects: I grew up pronouncing 'progress' with that short ah-sounding o, while many Americans give it a more closed 'oh' sound. So if you see a modern word like 'no', imagine pronouncing it like 'nah'. This should at least familiar. If you've done any bit of travelling, or met people from around the country, you've encountered people that pronounce words like this.
Now then, what if I tell you to pronounce the following words with that same St. Louis-sounding accent--with that real open 'ah' sound? (Like your father-in-law, gaetanus!)
no
ghost
go
cloth
sore
lore
token
boat
They would probably sound very much like their Old English forms:
na
gast
ga
claþ
sar
lar
tacen
bat
Then once you get used to that, it'll make sense to see how who came from hwa and soul came from sawol. It's just a matter of combining two things you're familiar with but aren't used to thinking about together. Like when two of your friends from different circles meet and start to date. Or like when they first invented Reese's peanut butter cups.
One more example: I could tell you that the OE strong verb Class III is conjugated like bindan: bindan--band--bunden. Or I could just get you to think about the verb drink--drank--drunk, and tell you to go conjugate swindan, sinnan, onginnan, winnan like it. Don't have the feel for this verb group yet? Recall how you instinctively change vowels for verbs like sing, sink, begin, ring, spin, sting, swim. They all have i--a--u, but if you're having trouble memorizing naked vowel sequences, then by all means, associate the verbs you learn with verbal clothing you're already used to putting on.
Is it just me? Has someone already done this and I missed it? I know I like to study from boring grammar books, but don't we want to make it easier for more people to learn this stuff--people unlike me?
That said, I've begun a little experiment. I contend that there is enough of the "feel" of the Germanic linguistic tradition left in English, that you can usually find something in modern English to make aspects of old Germanic languages feel familiar. For example, last week while I was home with my foot up after surgery, I started writing down how I would explain each of the seven classes of strong verbs if I were writing an "Old English for Dummies" book. For each class there are modern English verbs that exhibit the exact same series of vowels across their principle parts--either directly, or once you account for an Old-to-Modern vowel shift, which also can be shown to be an instinctual, home-grown English thing to do.
Obviously there won't be a familiar ring to some aspects of the language--after all, there are things that make it different from its modern form (though less and less, it seems, the more I study it). For example, OE words that never made it much past the Norman Invasion won't seem familiar, although words that at least made it into Shakespeare have a chance of helping out here. Nevertheless, since we generally gain new knowledge by building on, comparing with, and filtering it through existing knowledge, it might be an easier point of access for the average Joe if different points of OE were introduced in terms of what he already knows. The closest I've seen is that many people introduce the language as a whole with examples of similarity, but then dive into the grammar like any other language, not really stopping to point out convergences along the way.
Some examples are in order.
From Old to Modern English, there was a general tendency for [a] to become [o]. We experience the relation between these sounds today. Listen to the two o's in "October". In some American dialects at least, the first 'o' is more like the a in 'farm', while the second is like the o in 'code'. (I've encountered this relationship everywhere from Russian to Hebrew, though I wouldn't include that in my grammar.)
The variation even occurs with the same letter, across dialects: I grew up pronouncing 'progress' with that short ah-sounding o, while many Americans give it a more closed 'oh' sound. So if you see a modern word like 'no', imagine pronouncing it like 'nah'. This should at least familiar. If you've done any bit of travelling, or met people from around the country, you've encountered people that pronounce words like this.
Now then, what if I tell you to pronounce the following words with that same St. Louis-sounding accent--with that real open 'ah' sound? (Like your father-in-law, gaetanus!)
no
ghost
go
cloth
sore
lore
token
boat
They would probably sound very much like their Old English forms:
na
gast
ga
claþ
sar
lar
tacen
bat
Then once you get used to that, it'll make sense to see how who came from hwa and soul came from sawol. It's just a matter of combining two things you're familiar with but aren't used to thinking about together. Like when two of your friends from different circles meet and start to date. Or like when they first invented Reese's peanut butter cups.
One more example: I could tell you that the OE strong verb Class III is conjugated like bindan: bindan--band--bunden. Or I could just get you to think about the verb drink--drank--drunk, and tell you to go conjugate swindan, sinnan, onginnan, winnan like it. Don't have the feel for this verb group yet? Recall how you instinctively change vowels for verbs like sing, sink, begin, ring, spin, sting, swim. They all have i--a--u, but if you're having trouble memorizing naked vowel sequences, then by all means, associate the verbs you learn with verbal clothing you're already used to putting on.
Is it just me? Has someone already done this and I missed it? I know I like to study from boring grammar books, but don't we want to make it easier for more people to learn this stuff--people unlike me?
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Techno-Saxon, or, Not-so-old English
I've known about this page for a while and just thought to share it: Old English Computer Glossary. See, Old English is a practical tool for the modern world!
Ok maybe not. But it is fun to see how these words were formed. True to the Germanic tradition, this page builds words out of much simpler words and concepts which actually turn out to be pretty accurate. Much of the time this merely entails using the corresponding Old English words for the Latin and Greek roots we use now (a fun thing to do anyway). Some of my favorites:
anonymous: uncuðlic 'un-known' (So anonymous people are uncouth!)
external: utweardlic 'outwardly'
frequently asked questions: oftgeacsunge 'oft-aksed' (Yes, even in Old English people used to say 'aks' for 'ask'!)
hexadecimal: sixtynelic 'sixteenly'
kilobyte: þusendbita 'thousand-byte'
manual: larboc 'lorebook'
nerd: oferleornere 'over-learner'
pixel: leohtspecca 'light-speck'
spam: geondspiwan 'far-spewing'
Then there are all the cool tech words that are pretty much straight out of Wessex:
chip: cipp
freeware: freowaru
hardware: heardwaru
network: nettweorc
mouse: mus
thread: ðræd
upload: uphladan
web: webb
But none come close to how much this one just tickled me:
lurker: sceadugenga, 'shadowgoer', used to describe Grendel in Beowulf.
Ok maybe not. But it is fun to see how these words were formed. True to the Germanic tradition, this page builds words out of much simpler words and concepts which actually turn out to be pretty accurate. Much of the time this merely entails using the corresponding Old English words for the Latin and Greek roots we use now (a fun thing to do anyway). Some of my favorites:
anonymous: uncuðlic 'un-known' (So anonymous people are uncouth!)
external: utweardlic 'outwardly'
frequently asked questions: oftgeacsunge 'oft-aksed' (Yes, even in Old English people used to say 'aks' for 'ask'!)
hexadecimal: sixtynelic 'sixteenly'
kilobyte: þusendbita 'thousand-byte'
manual: larboc 'lorebook'
nerd: oferleornere 'over-learner'
pixel: leohtspecca 'light-speck'
spam: geondspiwan 'far-spewing'
Then there are all the cool tech words that are pretty much straight out of Wessex:
chip: cipp
freeware: freowaru
hardware: heardwaru
network: nettweorc
mouse: mus
thread: ðræd
upload: uphladan
web: webb
But none come close to how much this one just tickled me:
lurker: sceadugenga, 'shadowgoer', used to describe Grendel in Beowulf.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Just Another GerManic Monday
Last week I skimmed the surface of the Gothic Language and suggested (in a comment) that all the old Germanic languages had a lot in common. I thought I'd show a little of the similarites (and predictable differences) between Gothic and Old English, which is a little more familiar to my readers.
To start off, let's look at the Lord's Prayer in both languages. First Gothic (in the Latin alphabet, for your sanity):
Atta unsar, þu in himinam,
weihnai namo þein,
qimai þiudinassus þeins,
wairþai wilja þeins,
5 swe in himina jah ana airþai.
hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga,
jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima,
swaswe jah weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim,
jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai,
10 ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin.
Now in Old English:
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
si þin nama gehalgod,
to becume þin rice,
gewurþe ðin willa,
5 on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas,
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum,
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge,
10 ac alys us of yfele. soþlice.
There are a lot of cognates in common (Go./OE): unsar/ure 'our'; þu/þu 'Thou'; in/on 'in'; himinam/heofonum 'heaven'; namo/nama 'name'; þein/þín 'thine'; qimái/becume 'come'; waírþái/gewurþe (from waírþan/weorþan) 'become'; wilja/willa 'will'; swe/swa 'as'; ana/on 'on'; aírþái/eorðan 'earth'; hláif/hláf 'loaf/bread'; daga/todæg 'day/today'; uns/us 'us'; weis/we 'we'; ak/ac 'but'; láusei/alys 'loose/deliver'; af/of 'of/from'; ubilin/yfele 'evil'.
Go. unsar beside OE ure happens because the 's' in Gothic became 'r' in many cases in all the other Germanic languages. This is called rhotacization, and can also be seen in the two languages that preserved a descendant of the Germanic noun ending -az: viz., -s in Gothic but -r in Old Norse. (So whereas OE has deað (death), Gothic has dauðus but ON has dauðr.)
Another predictable difference between Gothic and OE is a "breaking" of vowels. If you're from Manitoba or Wisconsin and travel to the Southern US, you will experience what the Goths must have thought the Angles and Saxons were doing to their vowels: creating diphthongs out of "pure" vowels. Look at the words for "earth" above: aírþái in Gothic beside eorþan in OE; waírþan in Go. beside OE weorþan.
NOTE on 'ai' in Gothic: By Wulfila's time, the letters /ai/ in Gothic were probably universally pronounced with the "short e" sound in ModE "end", however this combination comes from two distinct etymological sources, so that scholars mark /ai/ differently in different situations. The combination /ái/ is pronounced like "eye", whereas /aí/ represents the e sound in "end". (Now in the US, when this short 'e' sound comes before an r, most people turn it into the 'a' sound as in 'air'; whereas growing up in the Northeast, I acquired a very distinct short-e sound even before the letter 'r' (i.e., I have different vowels for 'merry' and 'Mary'). In this, the Northeast is more like Gothic, where as the more standard American accent more approximates the shift that took place in Old English.)
Some more factors of comparison between OE and Go. are as follows:
1. OE, at least in West Saxon, isn't all that fond of the combination a + nasal, so it turns the a into an o. E.g.: mon for 'man'; ond for 'and'.
2. OE and its continental cousin, Old Saxon (=Old Low German), had a tendency to remove nasals before the letters f, þ, and s. E.g.: OE and OS fíf 'five' for Go. fimf; OE and OS us 'us' beside Go. unsis and Old High German uns; OE ure 'our' for Go. unsar (see above); OE cuþ 'known' for Go. kunþs
3. Vowels. OE tended to have e-related vowels where Gothic had a-related ones. The following vowel changes can often be seen from Gothic to OE:
a) Go. áu becomes OE ea (a diphthong with the ae-sound of 'cash' plus the uh-sound of 'pun'). E.g.: Go. dauþus became OE deað
b) Go. ái becomes OE a. E.g. Go. stáins became OE stán 'stone'; Go. hláifs became OE hláf 'loaf/bread'.
c) Go. ê and a sometimes become OE æ. E.g., OE bæron 'bore' (plural) beside Go. bêrun; OE dæg 'day', beside Go. dags and ON dagr.
Hmm. dagr. Arrrrg.
To start off, let's look at the Lord's Prayer in both languages. First Gothic (in the Latin alphabet, for your sanity):
Atta unsar, þu in himinam,
weihnai namo þein,
qimai þiudinassus þeins,
wairþai wilja þeins,
5 swe in himina jah ana airþai.
hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga,
jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima,
swaswe jah weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim,
jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai,
10 ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin.
Now in Old English:
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
si þin nama gehalgod,
to becume þin rice,
gewurþe ðin willa,
5 on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas,
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum,
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge,
10 ac alys us of yfele. soþlice.
There are a lot of cognates in common (Go./OE): unsar/ure 'our'; þu/þu 'Thou'; in/on 'in'; himinam/heofonum 'heaven'; namo/nama 'name'; þein/þín 'thine'; qimái/becume 'come'; waírþái/gewurþe (from waírþan/weorþan) 'become'; wilja/willa 'will'; swe/swa 'as'; ana/on 'on'; aírþái/eorðan 'earth'; hláif/hláf 'loaf/bread'; daga/todæg 'day/today'; uns/us 'us'; weis/we 'we'; ak/ac 'but'; láusei/alys 'loose/deliver'; af/of 'of/from'; ubilin/yfele 'evil'.
Go. unsar beside OE ure happens because the 's' in Gothic became 'r' in many cases in all the other Germanic languages. This is called rhotacization, and can also be seen in the two languages that preserved a descendant of the Germanic noun ending -az: viz., -s in Gothic but -r in Old Norse. (So whereas OE has deað (death), Gothic has dauðus but ON has dauðr.)
Another predictable difference between Gothic and OE is a "breaking" of vowels. If you're from Manitoba or Wisconsin and travel to the Southern US, you will experience what the Goths must have thought the Angles and Saxons were doing to their vowels: creating diphthongs out of "pure" vowels. Look at the words for "earth" above: aírþái in Gothic beside eorþan in OE; waírþan in Go. beside OE weorþan.
NOTE on 'ai' in Gothic: By Wulfila's time, the letters /ai/ in Gothic were probably universally pronounced with the "short e" sound in ModE "end", however this combination comes from two distinct etymological sources, so that scholars mark /ai/ differently in different situations. The combination /ái/ is pronounced like "eye", whereas /aí/ represents the e sound in "end". (Now in the US, when this short 'e' sound comes before an r, most people turn it into the 'a' sound as in 'air'; whereas growing up in the Northeast, I acquired a very distinct short-e sound even before the letter 'r' (i.e., I have different vowels for 'merry' and 'Mary'). In this, the Northeast is more like Gothic, where as the more standard American accent more approximates the shift that took place in Old English.)
Some more factors of comparison between OE and Go. are as follows:
1. OE, at least in West Saxon, isn't all that fond of the combination a + nasal, so it turns the a into an o. E.g.: mon for 'man'; ond for 'and'.
2. OE and its continental cousin, Old Saxon (=Old Low German), had a tendency to remove nasals before the letters f, þ, and s. E.g.: OE and OS fíf 'five' for Go. fimf; OE and OS us 'us' beside Go. unsis and Old High German uns; OE ure 'our' for Go. unsar (see above); OE cuþ 'known' for Go. kunþs
3. Vowels. OE tended to have e-related vowels where Gothic had a-related ones. The following vowel changes can often be seen from Gothic to OE:
a) Go. áu becomes OE ea (a diphthong with the ae-sound of 'cash' plus the uh-sound of 'pun'). E.g.: Go. dauþus became OE deað
b) Go. ái becomes OE a. E.g. Go. stáins became OE stán 'stone'; Go. hláifs became OE hláf 'loaf/bread'.
c) Go. ê and a sometimes become OE æ. E.g., OE bæron 'bore' (plural) beside Go. bêrun; OE dæg 'day', beside Go. dags and ON dagr.
Hmm. dagr. Arrrrg.
That Makes My Parrot Fall Off!
Sweeping the Blogosphere like a Caribbean storm is the fact that today is "Talk Like a Pirate Day". In honor of this great day, if anyone has any files they'd like to share with me....
Seriously (sort of), my interest in this day comes from discovering how to speak like a pirate in German (nod to L.M. Squires). It focuses on vocabulary rather than accent (e.g., it doesn't recommend saying Arrr, ich sprrrrreche deutsch!), and includes some excellent idioms and pretty cool cognates. To show surprise at something, for example, you can say, Da[s] fällt mir doch der Papagei von der Schulter! -- literally, "That makes my parrot fall from my shoulder!" Then there are words like kielholen, to keelhaul; Brise, breeze; Landratte, land rat (landlubber); and the great insult to merchants everywhere, Pfeffersack, bag of pepper!
Arrr.
Seriously (sort of), my interest in this day comes from discovering how to speak like a pirate in German (nod to L.M. Squires). It focuses on vocabulary rather than accent (e.g., it doesn't recommend saying Arrr, ich sprrrrreche deutsch!), and includes some excellent idioms and pretty cool cognates. To show surprise at something, for example, you can say, Da[s] fällt mir doch der Papagei von der Schulter! -- literally, "That makes my parrot fall from my shoulder!" Then there are words like kielholen, to keelhaul; Brise, breeze; Landratte, land rat (landlubber); and the great insult to merchants everywhere, Pfeffersack, bag of pepper!
Arrr.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
A Little Gothic for your Thursday
(Wed. evening edition)
No, not this, or this, or even this. It occured to me that I could periodically post little snippets of the various languages I'm in love with. I mean, why should you be deprived of the little daily delights that come from my linguistic labor? Maybe you'll be interested and want to learn more. If so, future posts may (may) follow popular demand. If not, you probably found this blog by mistake anyway.
The Goths spoke the only East Germanic language that has survived, thanks mostly to Bishop Wulfila. It's the oldest Germanic language, and exhibits the most similarities to what scholars have reconstructed of the original pre-Germanic language, which itself was a tendril of the many-headed Serpentus Indo-Europeanus. One of the things I have enjoyed in studying all the various Germanic languages is finding the many similarities that exist among them, usually in vocabulary, but also in grammar. Here are some (somewhat) randomly selected Gothic words to give you an idea.
drigkan: to drink
qithan: to speak (cf. "quoth")
maúrþr: murder
waúrd: word
þiudans: king (= OE þéoden > JRRT "Theoden")
bindan: bind
kiusan: choose
fram: from, by
frijondi: friend
sáiwala: soul
daúr: entrance
[Note: In Gothic gg is pronounced, as in Greek, like English "ng"; gk is pronounced like "nk"; q is pronounced "kw"; aú is like the o in bore; and ái is pronounced like English "eye".]
Gothic, like English, has two basic ways of changing verb tense: umlaut or a dental suffix (-d, -ed). So you shouldn't feel too out of sorts when I tell you the principle parts of the verb for "to drink" are drigkan, dragk, drugk-, drugkans; and those of "to bring" are briggan, brahta, brahts.
When the Huns swept into Europe, many Goths entered the service of the Hunnish leader, whom they called "little Father" in Gothic (Attila, from Go. atta, 'father'); possibly this was because their king Ermanaric was so bad. When the Huns were finally stopped at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, there were Goths fighting on both sides.
Joining the Goths in the East Germanic Language Club were the Lombards, Vandals, and Burgundians. How many of their descendants are speaking Romance languages today?
No, not this, or this, or even this. It occured to me that I could periodically post little snippets of the various languages I'm in love with. I mean, why should you be deprived of the little daily delights that come from my linguistic labor? Maybe you'll be interested and want to learn more. If so, future posts may (may) follow popular demand. If not, you probably found this blog by mistake anyway.
The Goths spoke the only East Germanic language that has survived, thanks mostly to Bishop Wulfila. It's the oldest Germanic language, and exhibits the most similarities to what scholars have reconstructed of the original pre-Germanic language, which itself was a tendril of the many-headed Serpentus Indo-Europeanus. One of the things I have enjoyed in studying all the various Germanic languages is finding the many similarities that exist among them, usually in vocabulary, but also in grammar. Here are some (somewhat) randomly selected Gothic words to give you an idea.
drigkan: to drink
qithan: to speak (cf. "quoth")
maúrþr: murder
waúrd: word
þiudans: king (= OE þéoden > JRRT "Theoden")
bindan: bind
kiusan: choose
fram: from, by
frijondi: friend
sáiwala: soul
daúr: entrance
[Note: In Gothic gg is pronounced, as in Greek, like English "ng"; gk is pronounced like "nk"; q is pronounced "kw"; aú is like the o in bore; and ái is pronounced like English "eye".]
Gothic, like English, has two basic ways of changing verb tense: umlaut or a dental suffix (-d, -ed). So you shouldn't feel too out of sorts when I tell you the principle parts of the verb for "to drink" are drigkan, dragk, drugk-, drugkans; and those of "to bring" are briggan, brahta, brahts.
When the Huns swept into Europe, many Goths entered the service of the Hunnish leader, whom they called "little Father" in Gothic (Attila, from Go. atta, 'father'); possibly this was because their king Ermanaric was so bad. When the Huns were finally stopped at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, there were Goths fighting on both sides.
Joining the Goths in the East Germanic Language Club were the Lombards, Vandals, and Burgundians. How many of their descendants are speaking Romance languages today?
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