Friday, March 31, 2006
Germanic Genealogy #1: Nice!
As a philological complement to the more literary Cool Quotes feature, the Germanic genealogy feature will occur at odd times to focus on the linguistic family tree of a randomly chosen word. Today's word: nice. And today's method: cheating, because I'm just linking to another page that's already done the work. (It hasn't been in the English language as long as Anglo-Saxon times, so you can't really expect it to keep my interest, can you?)
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Bitter Scroll Podcast
Previously, I tried out Blogger's feature for uploading audio files, which involves recording into a phone. It was ok. But it wasn't enough. My wish for more sound files of Old Germanic languages on the web has led me to experiment with the world of podcasting. I can't say I really know what I'm doing, but I'm learning. Anyway, as a supplement to this blog, I've set up The Bitter Scroll Podcast. The first podcast seeems to be working well enough, so perhaps this will be a good way to offer a way for people to hear what the various languages sound like. Expect mostly Old English at first; there are some passages in Beowulf that I think sound really great when read aloud. If anyone has any requests, I'm open as well. (E.g., I'll probably do the Our Father in Gothic for the guys over at Holy Whapping.)
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Carnival Time!
Beverly over at Em duas línguas hosts today the 2nd Carnival of Blog Translation. A little bit lower attendance than the first one, this one features English, German, Swedish, and Portuguese. Topics range from what is a language, to waking up one's inner parent, to the limits of face-to-face communication, to reflection on a recent loss.
The next carnival will be here at The Bitter Scroll (and not just in my castle, Beverly, but all over Anglo-Saxon Winchester!). I'll post soon to officially open the festivities.
The next carnival will be here at The Bitter Scroll (and not just in my castle, Beverly, but all over Anglo-Saxon Winchester!). I'll post soon to officially open the festivities.
"The Spiraling Shape Will Make You Go Insane..."
First there was the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Now there's the Turning Torso of Malmø. Also more info here.
[Disclaimer: Use of They Might Be Giants titles does not in any way suggest, infer, or imply insanity on the part of the Swedish government, people, or construction industry, or of those who visit or view pictures of buildings therein.]
[Disclaimer: Use of They Might Be Giants titles does not in any way suggest, infer, or imply insanity on the part of the Swedish government, people, or construction industry, or of those who visit or view pictures of buildings therein.]
Monday, March 27, 2006
A Linguistic Manifesto
Update: I've incorporated some of Johan's comments and corrections, but some things simply need explanation. Please see his very informative comments, below.
[In my ongoing attempt to learn Swedish (and every other Germanic language), I’m offering this imperfect translation for the Carnival of Blog Translation. This is a translation from Swedish of Johann Jönsson’s blogpost Ett ideologiskt manifest, from his blog Månskensdans. He makes some interesting points about prescriptivism, the degree to which linguistics is a science, what exactly a language is, and incorporating the inevitability of change into our own approach to language. It’s a perspective that would be useful for English speakers to hear, since we don’t have the experience of encountering speech that’s technically a foreign language, but that’s largely comprehensible to us. I'll add my own thoughts in a subsequent post; for now I’m just getting this translation in under the wire for the Carnival. I’m sure Johan will have corrections, so look out for updates. :-)]
------------------------------------------
The individual language
The only language that’s relatively static is a dead one. The Swedish language, fortunately, doesn't belongs to this group, and won’t yet for a good while, whatever some may say about the anglicization and abandonment of our mother tongue. The idea that language is an absolute unity stems from the myth that there should be one way to express a language, the idea that there’s Swedish, Norwegian, English, etc., all with razor-sharp borders, and that everything within a given language should be the same and uniform. It’s an opinion that blissfully ignores the fact that what makes a language what it is stands on the most arbitrary grounds, more often on political than linguistic grounds. For example, few will dispute the assertion that Swedish and Norwegian are two different languages. Yet the majority of Swedes have a significantly easier time understanding the Norwegian spoken in Oslo than the Swedish of Älvdalen [wiki.]. We have been characterized by the nationalist ideal: one country, one people, one language. Everyone who spoke one language was thought to belong to the same cultural zone and therefore to be grouped together under the same flag -- which by extension meant that those grouped under the same flag ought to speak the same language. Certainly this is how we think: If someone is Swedish, they must speak Swedish. If they’re German, the German language must apply; if they’re from Holland, they must speak Dutch. An exception is made only in the case where a person speaks a language that can be clearly identified as something different from the expected: but whatever does end up on “our” side of the imaginary language border is simply heaped into the bigger language, and all of a sudden a person can be accused of being wrong, and expressing himself incorrectly because he was adopted by a language that wants to constrain him by rules for how his speaking and writing ought to be done.
The point is that language, even within its own dialects, is not something absolute like mathematics, nor does it need the precision of nuclear physics, put into practice lest something should go wrong. Also, in some border areas, some of what serves to determine where one language begins and another ends also works for distinguishing one dialect from the next one; so actually usage is something that distinguishes not only between countries and languages, like Japanese or Catalan, but from person to person as well. Language is something personal, and it is up to each person to decide how to make use of it. I think, personally, that separated compounds [e.g. lastbils chaufför, truck driver, instead of lastbilschaufför, truckdriver] are enormously ugly, but there is nothing to say they’re wrong any more than to say that wearing a screamingly loud yellow jacket is wrong: It simply goes against the majority’s sense of aesthetics. One can admire purists in the same way one can admire King Leonidas of Sparta -– they lead a doomed struggle against superior odds, but deep down they must be aware that all they have to offer is a tiny postponement of what ultimately can’t be stopped. Unlike Leonidas, however, in this case there won't be any greater army to turn the tide of change -- and when you get down to it, language purism in its own way isn’t really much healthier than the ideal Spartan lifestyle. Both aim at lofty goals and an elitism that are in fact of no interest to most people.
“Swedish” must be seen as a generic name for several million individual ways of approaching language that more or less resemble one another. To see it any other way is to deceive oneself. There's naturally a certain standardization, but it’s nothing more than a loose agreement between people to be able to make use of speech and writing in an effective way. These compromises happen through communicative exchange more often than by decree from above: Kalle, a 43-year-old illiterate truck driver, can’t be more right nor wrong than anyone else in this case since there are no definite rules to follow, other than those of self-appointed prophets. But the language isn’t waiting for any messiah; we have it for only one purpose: to be able to understand each other. Will we be understood? This is what lies behind our striving after a norm; this is also why the language doesn't need any absolute rules, since those who deviate too long from that which is normal only punish themselves when they fail in their goal (to be understood). It lies in the nature of communication to make oneself readily understandable. It is this which lies behind a thousand years of change, leading to the language we have today. The [Swedish] language has been controversial before -– our present spelling (where hv, f, and v through reform have all simply become v) and grammar (today we don’t writan -- we write [idag skriva vi icke –- vi skriver; see comments]) were not accepted without protest; nevertheless they're simplifications that most people today are glad happened. When Sten [see comments] a thousand years ago erected a namesake with runes over his fallen brother, there were surely a handful of passersby that shook their heads at the youth’s overly creative take on the grammatical cases (even if ancient Swedish hadn’t yet been enriched with such a concept at the time). Still, many go around with the completely absurd idea that the language reached its highpoint some time in the middle of the twentieth century –- in other words, when they went to school -– and that, with the dubious concession that new occurences should have new words, it should be conserved in that state forever.
People want what they’re used to, and often rebel against change. Language is no different, but it is something that everyone uses and depends on, something so central to our lives that few things engender stronger opinions and feelings. Still, that a language should not develop and become more simple than it already has must be regarded as an image negative enough to challenge the most joyless philosophers, since it would mean that whatever happens, the language can only get worse, never better. Yet all historical development suggests the opposite, and probably many ideas that are prevalent today will be considered with great skepticism in a century or two.
I believe in development. I believe in renewal, and that our will to be understood will create an ever more easily accessible language. For when people begin to mutter about the twilight of culture and the impoverishment of language, there’s one thing that is easy to forget: Language wants to be understood.
[In my ongoing attempt to learn Swedish (and every other Germanic language), I’m offering this imperfect translation for the Carnival of Blog Translation. This is a translation from Swedish of Johann Jönsson’s blogpost Ett ideologiskt manifest, from his blog Månskensdans. He makes some interesting points about prescriptivism, the degree to which linguistics is a science, what exactly a language is, and incorporating the inevitability of change into our own approach to language. It’s a perspective that would be useful for English speakers to hear, since we don’t have the experience of encountering speech that’s technically a foreign language, but that’s largely comprehensible to us. I'll add my own thoughts in a subsequent post; for now I’m just getting this translation in under the wire for the Carnival. I’m sure Johan will have corrections, so look out for updates. :-)]
------------------------------------------
The individual language
The only language that’s relatively static is a dead one. The Swedish language, fortunately, doesn't belongs to this group, and won’t yet for a good while, whatever some may say about the anglicization and abandonment of our mother tongue. The idea that language is an absolute unity stems from the myth that there should be one way to express a language, the idea that there’s Swedish, Norwegian, English, etc., all with razor-sharp borders, and that everything within a given language should be the same and uniform. It’s an opinion that blissfully ignores the fact that what makes a language what it is stands on the most arbitrary grounds, more often on political than linguistic grounds. For example, few will dispute the assertion that Swedish and Norwegian are two different languages. Yet the majority of Swedes have a significantly easier time understanding the Norwegian spoken in Oslo than the Swedish of Älvdalen [wiki.]. We have been characterized by the nationalist ideal: one country, one people, one language. Everyone who spoke one language was thought to belong to the same cultural zone and therefore to be grouped together under the same flag -- which by extension meant that those grouped under the same flag ought to speak the same language. Certainly this is how we think: If someone is Swedish, they must speak Swedish. If they’re German, the German language must apply; if they’re from Holland, they must speak Dutch. An exception is made only in the case where a person speaks a language that can be clearly identified as something different from the expected: but whatever does end up on “our” side of the imaginary language border is simply heaped into the bigger language, and all of a sudden a person can be accused of being wrong, and expressing himself incorrectly because he was adopted by a language that wants to constrain him by rules for how his speaking and writing ought to be done.
The point is that language, even within its own dialects, is not something absolute like mathematics, nor does it need the precision of nuclear physics, put into practice lest something should go wrong. Also, in some border areas, some of what serves to determine where one language begins and another ends also works for distinguishing one dialect from the next one; so actually usage is something that distinguishes not only between countries and languages, like Japanese or Catalan, but from person to person as well. Language is something personal, and it is up to each person to decide how to make use of it. I think, personally, that separated compounds [e.g. lastbils chaufför, truck driver, instead of lastbilschaufför, truckdriver] are enormously ugly, but there is nothing to say they’re wrong any more than to say that wearing a screamingly loud yellow jacket is wrong: It simply goes against the majority’s sense of aesthetics. One can admire purists in the same way one can admire King Leonidas of Sparta -– they lead a doomed struggle against superior odds, but deep down they must be aware that all they have to offer is a tiny postponement of what ultimately can’t be stopped. Unlike Leonidas, however, in this case there won't be any greater army to turn the tide of change -- and when you get down to it, language purism in its own way isn’t really much healthier than the ideal Spartan lifestyle. Both aim at lofty goals and an elitism that are in fact of no interest to most people.
“Swedish” must be seen as a generic name for several million individual ways of approaching language that more or less resemble one another. To see it any other way is to deceive oneself. There's naturally a certain standardization, but it’s nothing more than a loose agreement between people to be able to make use of speech and writing in an effective way. These compromises happen through communicative exchange more often than by decree from above: Kalle, a 43-year-old illiterate truck driver, can’t be more right nor wrong than anyone else in this case since there are no definite rules to follow, other than those of self-appointed prophets. But the language isn’t waiting for any messiah; we have it for only one purpose: to be able to understand each other. Will we be understood? This is what lies behind our striving after a norm; this is also why the language doesn't need any absolute rules, since those who deviate too long from that which is normal only punish themselves when they fail in their goal (to be understood). It lies in the nature of communication to make oneself readily understandable. It is this which lies behind a thousand years of change, leading to the language we have today. The [Swedish] language has been controversial before -– our present spelling (where hv, f, and v through reform have all simply become v) and grammar (today we don’t writan -- we write [idag skriva vi icke –- vi skriver; see comments]) were not accepted without protest; nevertheless they're simplifications that most people today are glad happened. When Sten [see comments] a thousand years ago erected a namesake with runes over his fallen brother, there were surely a handful of passersby that shook their heads at the youth’s overly creative take on the grammatical cases (even if ancient Swedish hadn’t yet been enriched with such a concept at the time). Still, many go around with the completely absurd idea that the language reached its highpoint some time in the middle of the twentieth century –- in other words, when they went to school -– and that, with the dubious concession that new occurences should have new words, it should be conserved in that state forever.
People want what they’re used to, and often rebel against change. Language is no different, but it is something that everyone uses and depends on, something so central to our lives that few things engender stronger opinions and feelings. Still, that a language should not develop and become more simple than it already has must be regarded as an image negative enough to challenge the most joyless philosophers, since it would mean that whatever happens, the language can only get worse, never better. Yet all historical development suggests the opposite, and probably many ideas that are prevalent today will be considered with great skepticism in a century or two.
I believe in development. I believe in renewal, and that our will to be understood will create an ever more easily accessible language. For when people begin to mutter about the twilight of culture and the impoverishment of language, there’s one thing that is easy to forget: Language wants to be understood.
Blogs Who've Cried Beowulf
There've been a couple of posts on Beowulf in recent memory that I meant to blog about when they came out and never got around to. Consider them officially around-to-gotten.
First, and more recent, is Michael Drout's post on Benjamin Bagby's performance of Beowulf. I don't have much to add, except that I'm excited and can't wait to get a copy for myself. I was also interested to see in the comments section that Bagby sang about the Volsung story with Sequentia. I have a CD of theirs of Norse music (as best as can be reconstructed, of course), and I know they've also set both Old English and even Gothic to music. (I wonder if Mikaela knows ... speak Gothic around her and she melts like buttah!)
The second post is Scott Nokes' post Beowulf Hobbyists of the World, Unite!, where he links to a LanguageHat post [2nd item] about Syd Allen's Beowulf site. Syd indeed has an excellent site, with detailed info pages on anything you can think of: various editions and translations, comic books, historical background, maps, a pronunciation guide, alliteration, even a word search. You want to know what the meadhall Heorot might have looked like? Syd's got this picture:
You want to compare the handwritings of the two scribes who copied the only existing manuscript of Beowulf? He's got this page. He's even got a whole page dedicated to the question of whether Beowulf, in his fight with Grendel's mother, pulled her hair (feaxe) or her shoulder (eaxle).
I consider Syd Allan's site, together with Ben Slade's Beowulf on Steorarume ("Beowulf in Cyberspace"), the two headquarters of Beowulf-studies on the web. The latter link also has many cool features, not least of which is a cool url: www.heorot.dk (since, after all, Heorot was in Denmark). Ben has also pimped his site with cool art from fan and Photoshop, a dual-language text which periodically sports audio files (which, oddly, while his, seem to live on Syd Allan's site), helpful lists of characters and monsters, and links to other Old English works like Deor, Waldere, and the Finnsburg fragment (which has a more detailed account of the Frisian kinslaying whose tale the poet ironically tells in Heorot before Hrothgar and his son (and Beowulf).
Finally, I'm in the process of rearranging my own sidebar. You'll see some additional links and resources (including the two I just mentioned). In the future, I'll probably try to categorize my blog links (I wonder if I need to create separate blogrolling accounts for that, or if I should just put them up manually. Any ideas?), and thereby add more to each category, especially medievalist blogs (after the spirit of this post).
First, and more recent, is Michael Drout's post on Benjamin Bagby's performance of Beowulf. I don't have much to add, except that I'm excited and can't wait to get a copy for myself. I was also interested to see in the comments section that Bagby sang about the Volsung story with Sequentia. I have a CD of theirs of Norse music (as best as can be reconstructed, of course), and I know they've also set both Old English and even Gothic to music. (I wonder if Mikaela knows ... speak Gothic around her and she melts like buttah!)
The second post is Scott Nokes' post Beowulf Hobbyists of the World, Unite!, where he links to a LanguageHat post [2nd item] about Syd Allen's Beowulf site. Syd indeed has an excellent site, with detailed info pages on anything you can think of: various editions and translations, comic books, historical background, maps, a pronunciation guide, alliteration, even a word search. You want to know what the meadhall Heorot might have looked like? Syd's got this picture:
You want to compare the handwritings of the two scribes who copied the only existing manuscript of Beowulf? He's got this page. He's even got a whole page dedicated to the question of whether Beowulf, in his fight with Grendel's mother, pulled her hair (feaxe) or her shoulder (eaxle).I consider Syd Allan's site, together with Ben Slade's Beowulf on Steorarume ("Beowulf in Cyberspace"), the two headquarters of Beowulf-studies on the web. The latter link also has many cool features, not least of which is a cool url: www.heorot.dk (since, after all, Heorot was in Denmark). Ben has also pimped his site with cool art from fan and Photoshop, a dual-language text which periodically sports audio files (which, oddly, while his, seem to live on Syd Allan's site), helpful lists of characters and monsters, and links to other Old English works like Deor, Waldere, and the Finnsburg fragment (which has a more detailed account of the Frisian kinslaying whose tale the poet ironically tells in Heorot before Hrothgar and his son (and Beowulf).
Finally, I'm in the process of rearranging my own sidebar. You'll see some additional links and resources (including the two I just mentioned). In the future, I'll probably try to categorize my blog links (I wonder if I need to create separate blogrolling accounts for that, or if I should just put them up manually. Any ideas?), and thereby add more to each category, especially medievalist blogs (after the spirit of this post).
Sunday, March 26, 2006
All-Knowing-IPod Meme
Well, you don't really need an IPod, just any playlist on shuffle. H/t Fr. Tucker.
Instructions: Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.
How does the world see you?
At the Agway (People Are Wrong / TMBG)
Will I have a happy life?
Full Circle (Loreena McKennitt)
What do my friends really think of me?
Rye or the Kaiser (Weird Al Yankovic)
What do people secretly think of me?
The Middle (Jimmy Eat World)
How can I be happy?
Walking on the Sun (Smashmouth)
What should I do with my life?
Hunt for Red Oktober (Soundtrack/Theme Song)
Will I ever have children?
um, Rock You Like a Hurricane (Scorpions)
What is some good advice for me?
You’re Not the Boss of Me (TMBG)
How will I be remembered?
Land Downunder (Men at Work)
What is my signature dancing song?
Stand (REM)
What do I think my current theme song is?
Redundant (Green Day)
What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Dreams (Cranberries)
What song will play at my funeral?
Who’ll Stop the Rain? (CCR)
What type of men/women do you like?
Money for Nothing (Dire Straights)
What is my day going to be like?
[yikes] The Godfather Theme Song
Instructions: Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.
How does the world see you?
At the Agway (People Are Wrong / TMBG)
Will I have a happy life?
Full Circle (Loreena McKennitt)
What do my friends really think of me?
Rye or the Kaiser (Weird Al Yankovic)
What do people secretly think of me?
The Middle (Jimmy Eat World)
How can I be happy?
Walking on the Sun (Smashmouth)
What should I do with my life?
Hunt for Red Oktober (Soundtrack/Theme Song)
Will I ever have children?
um, Rock You Like a Hurricane (Scorpions)
What is some good advice for me?
You’re Not the Boss of Me (TMBG)
How will I be remembered?
Land Downunder (Men at Work)
What is my signature dancing song?
Stand (REM)
What do I think my current theme song is?
Redundant (Green Day)
What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Dreams (Cranberries)
What song will play at my funeral?
Who’ll Stop the Rain? (CCR)
What type of men/women do you like?
Money for Nothing (Dire Straights)
What is my day going to be like?
[yikes] The Godfather Theme Song
Saturday, March 25, 2006
My New Neighbor Geoffrey
A hearty welcome to Geoffrey Chaucer who hath moved his blog to Blogspot. Now you can post a comment on his blog without having to sign up for Friendster. If you haven't seen his blog before, he's moved most of his old posts over as well, for posterity's sake. Now that he's posting more often, you must go visit, it's always a fun read, though his new-fangled French-mixed Anglisc may take some getting used to. ;-)
Þú eart micel welcumen to þæm Blogspote, Godfrið!
Þú eart micel welcumen to þæm Blogspote, Godfrið!
No Rules, Just Write
Lexicon: A Linguistic Game Without Rules
From HeiDeas, try your brain on this maddening little game. Frustratingly, I'm already stumped on Screen 3, and the first two screens were pretty easy. I'm going to dream of pears tonight....
Update: Ok, I've gotten up to level 17 now. Being the word-lover that I am, this puzzle with numbers is killing me. Worse, now I'm going to dream of numbers tonight....
From HeiDeas, try your brain on this maddening little game. Frustratingly, I'm already stumped on Screen 3, and the first two screens were pretty easy. I'm going to dream of pears tonight....
Update: Ok, I've gotten up to level 17 now. Being the word-lover that I am, this puzzle with numbers is killing me. Worse, now I'm going to dream of numbers tonight....
Friday, March 24, 2006
Representing Deutschland
I'm posting the following videos here because I can (thank you, Google), because I simply can never stop laughing no matter how often I've seen them, and because, after all, they're all Germanic and stuff.
VW has had these three commercials airing in the US for a while now, and having just watched The Brothers Grimm, I'm almost positive that the guy who played the Italian Cavaldi in the movie is the same guy "representing Deutschland" in the commercials. Can anyone confirm this?
If so, we have a Swede playing an Italian and a German. I think he overdid the Italian accent just a tad in the movie, but I've been trying to listen for hints of a Swedish accent in his assumed German accent. (Some of my readers are more qualified to assess this than I am.) I especially like the one with the green car, where he purposely tries to make his accent hard to understand. Oh, and his facial expressions are awesome.
VW has had these three commercials airing in the US for a while now, and having just watched The Brothers Grimm, I'm almost positive that the guy who played the Italian Cavaldi in the movie is the same guy "representing Deutschland" in the commercials. Can anyone confirm this?
If so, we have a Swede playing an Italian and a German. I think he overdid the Italian accent just a tad in the movie, but I've been trying to listen for hints of a Swedish accent in his assumed German accent. (Some of my readers are more qualified to assess this than I am.) I especially like the one with the green car, where he purposely tries to make his accent hard to understand. Oh, and his facial expressions are awesome.
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