History of English: Difference between revisions
Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9)
m (added Category:Useful Notes/Europe using HotCat) |
(Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9)) |
||
| (7 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{Useful Notes}}{{quote|<poem>
{|class="wikitable"
{{quote|Ye knowe eek<ref>also</ref>, that in forme of speche is chaunge<ref>pronounced <big>''chon-j''</big> </ref>▼
|style="width:400px"|
▲
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden prys<ref>were commonly used</ref>, now wonder<ref>wonderfully, in the sense that you wondered at it</ref> nyce<ref>meant "unusual" at this point; by [[Shakespeare]]'s day would mean "trivial"</ref> and straunge<ref>pronounced <big>''stron-j''</big> </ref>
Line 6 ⟶ 8:
And spedde<ref>got ahead</ref> as wel in love as men now do;
Eek for to winne love in sondry<ref>various (c.f. British English "sundry")</ref> ages,
In sondry londes<ref>lands</ref>, sondry been usages.<ref>''ages'' and ''usages'' rhyme with mod. Am. Eng. "lodges"</ref>
|style="width:400px"|
And you know, the way we talk does change
Over a thousand years, and though they
Would often use words that now seem strange,
Though we wonder at them, they truly spoke that way,
And were as lucky in love as men are today;
And so these words are beloved in many locations,
In many times, for all their connotations.
|-
| —'''[[Geoffrey Chaucer]]''', ''Troilus and Criseyde'', Book II
|}</poem>}}
TV writers often have an odd idea of what "old-fashioned" English sounds like. Generally, they seem to think, it sounds vaguely like [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] or the King James Bible, with plenty of "thee"s and "thou"s and verbs ending in "-est" or "-eth"; this results in the bizarre fake language [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]], a bastardization of modern English grammar and vocabulary, with archaic terms sprinkled throughout.
Line 20 ⟶ 33:
... which, even with "and his" having helpfully survived unchanged, is just about impossible for the modern English speaker to turn into "Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven's kingdom, / The might of the Creator, and his thought..." without having studied Old English. Other words (''nu'' as "now", ''scilun'' as "shall", ''hefen'' as "heaven", ''uard'' as "ward" or "guard") are only obvious in a hyperliteral side-by-side translation, which necessarily ignores the changes in meaning which many of these words have undergone. If provided with a translation following [[Woolseyism|Woolseyist]] principles, these original words would be practically indiscernible.
People who might want to hear what Old English sounds like can watch the DVD of Benjamin Bagby's recitation of ''[[Beowulf]]'';
The Old English alphabet has a few extra letters: þ, thorn<ref>makes a great emoticon, too! :þ</ref>; ð, eth; ȝ, yogh; and ƿ, wynn. The first two represent the "th" sound (as in "thin" and "then" respectively, although they are mostly used interchangeably in manuscript spellings); yogh, hard and soft "g"; and wynn, "w". (Thorn and eth are still used in modern-day [[Iceland|Icelandic]] for more or less the same sounds as in Old English.)
Old English literature makes extensive use of the ''kenning'', a poetic allusion--such as referring to the ocean as the "whale-road"--that was often standardized into cliche<ref>compare, in modern English, the degeneration of the simile "bold as brass" into the adjective "brazen"</ref>; and the ''litotes'', a form of [[Understatement]], which Old English speakers were [[Imperturbable Englishman|not unlikely]] to use.
Line 31 ⟶ 44:
== Middle English ==
{{quote|XXIII. For to make Tartys in Applis. Tak gode Applys and gode Spycis and Figys and reyſons and Perys and wan they are wel ybrayed co-lourd wyth Safron wel and do yt in a cofyn and do yt forth to bake wel.<ref>To make apple tart. Take good apples, and good spices, and figs, and raisins, and pears, [and cook them together] and when they are well cooked, color [the mixture] with saffron, and place it in a covering [of pastry] and bake.</ref>|Master Cooks of King Richard II, ''The Forme of Cury'' (1390)}}
To one island full of Old English speakers, add one Norman invasion, stir thoroughly to mix, and let settle. The resulting mix is Middle English, heavily influenced by the French- and Latin-speaking ruling class that existed after 1066. Middle English, spoken from the [[Middle Ages]] through a few decades before [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]'s day, is more understandable for a speaker of modern English. For example, [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' begins with the lines:
Line 59 ⟶ 71:
[[Self-Demonstrating Article|What you're reading right now]] ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuN6gs0AJls Not the band]).
As a written language, Modern English until only relatively recently (we're talking into the 1700's) did not have standardized spelling rules--the same word might be written differently within even the same sentence. This can be seen in any text of the time that has not been edited to make the spellings consistent. Many of the standards people are familiar with were not set until the first dictionaries were printed, and even a good number of those have morphed over time. This also accounts for various spelling differences between British English and American English (and, to a lesser extent, Canadian English), with the two sides of the Atlantic mostly--apart from Webster's meddling--standardising (or, for Americans and Canadians, standardizing) their orthography around different variant spellings of the same words. [[Separated by a Common Language|Vocabulary differences]] tend to describe inventions or institutions with their origins in the 19th or early 20th centuries; as late as just before [[World War
== Thou, thee, and you ==
Line 77 ⟶ 89:
=== Thee ===
Most languages have pronoun ''cases'', and English is no exception. "Thee" is the ''objective'' case of the second person singular (used when it's the ''object'' of the sentence's action), while "thou" is the ''nominative'' case (used when it's the ''subject''). "Thou":"thee"::"I":"me". "Thy", meanwhile, is the ''genitive'' (possessive) case. "Thou":"thy"::"I":"my". Now go forth, troper, and [[
=== Thine/Mine/etc ===
Line 83 ⟶ 95:
== "Ye Olde Barne Shoppe" and other mutations that make the baby [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]] cry ==
"Ye" is often used in the eponymous [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]] to mean "the", being pronounced "yee"; this is a case of [[Did Not Do the Research]], as this is in fact just a variant spelling of "the", where the thorn (see under Old English above) was gradually worn down into a similar-looking Y. Originally this was abbreviated with the E floating over the thorn, which is how umlauts evolved in European languages:
This incorrect "ye" (=="the") should not be confused with the historical "ye", which is either the long dead subject form of "you" or else an alternate pronunciation of "you". "Ye" has now largely died out except in [[Talk Like a Pirate|fake Piratical]] talk (e.g. "Be ye looking for treasure?").▼
▲This incorrect "ye" (=="the") should not be confused with the historical "ye", which is either the long dead subject form of you or else an alternate pronunciation of "you". "Ye" has now largely died out except in [[Talk Like a Pirate|fake Piratical]] talk (e.g. "Be ye looking for treasure?").
Note that in some areas "ye" is also still informally used in the second person plural (e.g. "How are ye?" when referring to a familiar group).
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Hollywood History]]
[[Category:History of English]]▼
[[Category:Useful Notes/Europe]]
| |||