Re: Ander-Saxon and New Old English (was: RE: [CONLANG] Worldken bard Poul Anderson in deathstead (not a funny)

Interesting surmise, And.

This is a question I raise almost every time
I teach Old English.  What words would you
bring back and what would they have evolved
into?  It would take a philologist to reconstruct
an Alternate Modern English, but I think this
has been attempted, hasn't it?   At least in part?
But not to the degree that you are suggesting?

What about late Latin borrowings?  Would they
be expelled from the AME?  Instead of
"dormitory" we'd have "sleepstowe"? etc.

"Gleed," ("coal") is one of my favorite recon-
structions.  Actually, I think it's used in Yorkshire,
though, isn't it?  Burning gleeds.

"Beership" for "party" is another one I'd bring back.
"Dright" for "lord" or "master."
"Seal" for "occasion"?  "Songseal,"
    "a time for singing"?
"Overmood" for "arrogance"?
"Gale" for "sing"?  gale, gole, galen?
"Thorf" for "need"?  I thorf, he tharf, we thorf?
    I thorfed yesterday?  Or:  he tharfs?
    (would the preterite present verbs lose their
    distinctive third person singular present
    formation?)
"Nay" for "suffice"?  It nay?  It nught?
    (pronounced "newt" /nut/)
It could function as a modal, as do most of the
other pret.pres. verbs:  "It nay be said" (it
suffices to be said, it's enough to say); "It nught
be told," etc.

And then, our lovely Class 4 verb niman, nam,
namon, numen, which got replaced by Scandinavian
"take":  so  "I nam his horse for he hath numen me
wain."  ("I took his horse because he's taken my
wagon.")

In a construction of an alternate modern English,
though, we'd also have to decide if we're going to
leave in other interventions, such as the assimilation
of Scandinavian "th" in the pronouns and possessives:
"they" instead of "hie," and so forth.  What about the
Scandinavian assumption of "-s" in the third person
singular present indicative?  Would it be "hath" or
"has"?

What other assimilations would we allow?  What
other changes or shortenings?  What spellings?

Are you aware of our under-visited ENGLISC
listserv where some of us, in varying degrees of
enthusiasm, attempt to compose or translate into
Old English?  At the moment, several members
are writing a romance in Old English.  We've translated
the Gettysburg Address, the Four Questions of the
Seder, and we attempted to translate some of Isidore's
De Portentis, "On Monsters."

http://www.rochester.edu/englisc


Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net


----- Original Message -----
From: And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 9:53 PM
Subject: Ander-Saxon and New Old English (was: RE: [CONLANG] Worldken bard
Poul Anderson in deathstead (not a funny)


> Has anyone tried to develop an alternate Modern English that
> descends from OE of c. 1000 CE without the influence of
> French and its subsequent repercussions? I'm particularly
> interested in modern reflexes of OE words that Here were
> lost (e.g. _wye_ 'warrior' < _wigan_). I don't have the
> necessary philological knowledge to essay such an exercise
> myself. (I've asked this question before, some years back,
> to no great avail, but I ask it again because the pool of
> competences on this list is ever crescent.)
>
> --And.
>

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