As if there had been any doubt

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

This actually was a pretty cool quiz: By which I mean I like it b/c it asks mostly about things I tend to listen for on my own. The Mary-marry-merry test is one of the first things I came up with when I moved from Brooklyn to Virginia--as most of my friends know.

Two cheers for the new Tolkien Encyclopedia!

Not three, b/c as Mike Drout relates, plenty of disappointments surround it. Nevertheless, it exists, and there is moderate rejoicing. It sounds like a worthy tome either way, but when you know the great height something could have been, it's adequacy often doesn't seem adequate. Regardless: thank you, Mike, for your hard work on what I'm sure is still an awesome accomplishment.

Internets and Englishes, Preciousss

Lauren over at Polyglot Conspiracy has an interesting post on a NYT Magazine article on the Internet and the Oxford English Dictionary. I'm a little surprised that there are still so few linguists that are internet-savvy; despite the strictness of the current attestation requirements that Lauren points out, still you'd think more people would be studying what must be one of the greatest conduits for language change (in English at least) since the Normans. For example, the article mentions how words extinct in one place (perhaps considered more "standard") may still survive somewhere else--i.e., the internet allows for documentation of the many world "Englishes". An interesting article and post.

Building a Fantasy Language Team

It's the early middle ages, and you and your friends are putting together your Fantasy Language Teams when a three-way deal starts to suggest itself. You're playing Old English, but your word eagðyrl, just hasn't been scoring the usage you'd hoped. You look over to Old Norse and see the word vindauga, who's languishing where he is, but you think, with a little retooling, a little training, he could have a place on your team and really become a household name.

Meanwhile, Team Norse is looking to replace vindauga with something else, but they're not interested in your eagðyrl. They're more interested in the Romance player fenestra. Fenestra's all the rage: he'll end up winning the Vocabulary League's highest prize--the Import Cup--both in France as fenêtre and in Germany as Fenster.

So what can you, Old English, give to Old High German or Old French to persuade them to send fenestra north, thereby allowing Norse to release vindauga? Well, there were many borrowings throughout history, but to pick one, let's go with Sonnabend. (You don't have to trade for the same position, after all.) The day before Sunday has several names among Germanic lands. One of the German words, Samstag comes from sabbath. If you say Samstag with a cold, you'll hear the inherent relationship between b's and m's: hence sabb[ath]'s Day > sab's Tag > Samstag.

In England, the day's dedication to pagan Saturn prevailed in the name Saturday--an irony, since the Christian missionaries to the continent preferred 'Sun-eve', or sunnanæfen, cognate of what would become the other German word for Saturday, Sonnabend. So the English word is Roman-influenced, but the German word is Old English.

<aside>Note that German did already have the Germanic roots for sun and eve. Strictly speaking, this isn't a word borrowing, but a borrowed translation. Case in point: The telephone allows you to hear things far away, hence its name from Greek tele-, far, and phoné, sound. The English word is put together from words borrowed from Greek. But German puts its word together from native Germanic roots: Fernsprecher = fern, far + sprecher, speaker. The same thing applies to Sonnabend: native (German) roots, influenced by Old English construction (sunnan + æfen > Sonn + Abend).</aside>

Anyway, with the contribution of OE sunnanæfen to German Sonnabend we can call our three-way Fantasy trade complete. Fenestra goes to Team Norse where it will become, e.g., Swedish fönster. Norse vindauga, literally 'wind-eye', comes to Old English where it will become window. OE eagðyrl is cut from the team. And Old English sends sunnanæfen to German where it becomes a household name every week as Sonnabend.

Bottom line: no one kept their original word for 'window', except possibly Old French. German and Norse took the Romance root. English has a Germanic root, but not the original Old English one. And while French kept the Romance root, it has plenty of words of Germanic origin as well (matter for another post some day).

There are no A's buried in the cemetery

A little mnemonic device for All Souls' Day.

Speaking of mnemonic, here's a root that spans Indo-European. That odd pair of nasal consonants at the beginning of the word shows up in various forms all over the place. The word's Greek ancestor was mnémōn. It also comes into English (memory) from Latin memoria. Germanic languages had their own version, too. Old English had the verb gemunan 'remember', and its umlauted version gemyndgian, whence modern English mind.

Other relatives in this far-flung family include amnesia, money, monster, (auto-)matic, mandarin, mantra, Muse, and German minnesinger. For more, check out the entry in the Indo-European Roots Index.

Cool Quotes #10: How to Read a Saga

If you've ever been annoyed by a friend who criticizes a book or a movie for not being realistic enough--if the words "Just be quiet and watch the movie" have ever dangled from your tongue--then know this is an age-old problem. The author of Göngu-Hrolf's Saga is right there with you.

Since this tale nor anything else can be made to please everyone, nobody need believe any more of it than he wants to believe. All the same the best and most profitable thing is to listen while a story is being told, to enjoy it and not be gloomy: for the fact is that as long as people are enjoying the entertainment they won't be thinking any evil thoughts. Nor is it a good thing when listeners find fault with a story just because it happens to be uninformative or clumsily told. Nothing so unimportant is ever done perfectly.

And the best line comes at the end:

I'd like to thank those who've listened and enjoyed the story, and since those who don't like it won't ever be satisfied, let them enjoy their own misery. AMEN.

German is Chic!

At least, "chic" is German, apparently. I've been periodically picking up the two volumes I have of Bastian Sick's Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod, a sort of German version of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves I suppose. Since I'm such a sucker for interesting or ironic etymologies, I loved reading about the word chic (that's French for 'chic'), which was borrowed into German with the spelling Schick.

But where did French get the word? From Latin? Nope. Says Sick: "The middle low German word schick stood for likeness, form, custom; schicklich had the meaning 'appropriate, becoming'." So the modern German Schick is a German-French-German loanword. And you thought the French had the monopoly on chic!

English: It's In There!

Looking back at the post I just wrote, my eyes (as always) gravitate toward the foreign words, and my mind (as usual as well) gravitates to any related words in English (or other languages.) I love how all 9 of the Latin, Old English, and Old Norse words in that post have cognates or descendants in modern English:

Villa is English, but so are villain + related forms, the -ville suffix, and nasty. Insula gives us insular of course, but also the 's' in 'island', which otherwise comes from Old English. No really: the 's' was added to iland by people mistaking the word's etymology as coming from French isle, from Latin insula. (Check out the Word Origins section at dictionary.com, s.v. "island".) Domus yields 'domestic' and related words.

The Old English words cot and hám, beget 'cottage', and 'home'. Seld is a tough one, but the same root can be found in familiar proper names like La Salle (one of many Germanic roots that survived in French).

Old Norse hýbýli became Norwegian hybel, and I'd be surprised if it isn't related to English 'hovel'. Hús, of course, is the same word in Old English that yielded 'house' (so that Scottish and Eastern Canadian pronunciation of house is really quite ancient), and garðr's Old English cognate geard had its 'g' pronounced like a 'y', hence the modern form 'yard'.

Postcasts and Podcards

Did I get that right? Anyway, I just got a postcard from Winchester from Agent 9, a friend whom I see too infrequently. It's got a picture of the statue of King Alfred I use as my avatar, as well as Winchester's High Street, and the Butter Cross (no, it's not a monument to Christian dairy farmers). Thanks, Nine! I deeply envy your trapsing around the British Isles while I schlepp around northern Virginia.

I also uploaded a bunch of files to the Bitter Scroll podcast. They're the recordings I made for the Gallery of Germanic Languages at AncientWorlds.net, so they're not new, but at least they're all in one place. (Thanks to Aelfwine Scylding to hosting them for a while.)

Other news at AncientWorlds includes the continued development of "neighborhoods"; they're about to start beta testing the ability to "move in" to places, in any of three types of houses (social levels). So in Rome they'll have insula, domus, and villa. What's more, it sounds like the more multilingual "worlds" like Germania and the Orient will have terms appropriate to each location within it--i.e., that if you move into, say, Winchester in Wessex you'll be able to choose to live in a cot, a hám, or a seld, but if you want your persona to live in Trondheim, he may have a hýbýli, a hús, or a garðr to choose from. More interactivity will be good. There are always interesting things coming down the pipeline at AW.

An Awesome Soccer Side-Effect

[slightly updated/edited]
These two articles, on a side-effect of the World Cup in the homeland I've never seen, heartens me to no end. I remember when the "collective depression" remark was made and was depressed for Germany; now I'm happy for her. Wow, do I wish I could be over there right now!

Feelings of patriotism stifled for decades by the Holocaust came to the fore...

Finally! I've always been patriotic both for the USA and for Germany, but when people around you have knowledge of German history that stops at 1944 ... It's hard to explain to some people how you can be patriotic for what's good about a country that's done something bad, or for what came after the bad. The answer, of course, can be gleaned from statements like this:

Germany was always full of friendly and optimistic people like Klinsmann -- it's just that they were often drowned out by all the complainers and pessimists.

The good was always there. It's just sometimes like trying to explain to a friend why you still love your brother, who hurt your friend deeply long ago, but has since grown better and wiser. Still, I wonder if this German patriotism wasn't still easier here than in Germany sometimes. (How do my German readers feel about this?)

You know something seismic has happened when England fans who came to Germany with inflatable Spitfires singing " 10 German Bombers" suddenly start supporting the German national team.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair pointed out this unprecedented phenomenon in an opinion piece for Sunday's Bild am Sonntag newspaper, and declared: "The old clichés have been replaced by a new, positive and more fair image of Germany."

Again, I'm gladdened to no end, both that Germans are/feel different, and that people are starting to feel differently about them. I don't mind all that much that there are stereotypes of countries out there. Positive stereotypes, if rather useless, can be fun. (E.g., I now know to plan transportation for any outing with my friends, even ones I'm not technically organizing, and I'll just tell Mikaela it's b/c I'm half German.) ;-) Negative stereotypes, however, regardless of how often you think you see them coming true, are not only uncharitable, they're rather pointless and only hinder you from actually knowing someone.

Anyway, I'm glad Germany was able to put such a great showing of hospitality, friendliness, and yes, organization. They've done a lot to get past their somewhat recent history; now maybe everyone else can do the same in their preconceived ideas about them.

Said Britain's Times newspaper,

"Never mind the final, Germans are the real World Cup winners."

And this despite the temptations to despair and depression that preceded the Cup. A great line from the article:

It seems the only people who had any concerns ahead of the World Cup were the hosts themselves. In fact, capital-A "Angst" dominated the run-up to the tournament. Not just the normal jitters any organizer would have, but deep, ponderous Angst. The German kind.

Hm. Speaking of stereotypes, I guess I do get that quite a bit... At least I can also be organized when I need to be. And friendly. (When I need to be.)

Herzlichen Glückwünsche, Deutschland!



Update: The International Herald-Tribune has this article, perhaps a better expression of what has happened, and in context of Germany's "psychological journey" since WWII.