Re: Ander-Saxon and New Old English (was: RE: [CONLANG] Worldken bard Poul Anderson in deathstead (not a funny)
| From: | Sally Caves <scaves@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, August 6, 2001, 13:51 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2001 7:38 PM
Subject: Re: Ander-Saxon and New Old English (was: RE: [CONLANG] Worldken
bard Poul Anderson in deathstead (not a funny)
> Sally:
> > 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?
>
> Next time you teach it, send me the answers to
> your question.
okay, will do!
> > 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?
>
> Point me to where I can find the attempts...
I don't know, And. I have a dim recollection of seeing
references to a "purified English," more like Ander-Saxon.
But what you are asking for is something considerably
more complicated.
> > 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.
>
> What does German do?
Schlafsaal. Schlafstadt. "Sleep room." "Sleep place"
Same thing.
> > "Gleed," ("coal") is one of my favorite recon-
> > structions. Actually, I think it's used in Yorkshire,
> > though, isn't it? Burning gleeds.
>
> _Glede_, it's normally spelt, I think. I thought it
> meant 'a burning coal'.
I didn't know it was in currency. I brought it back
the way I thought it would be spelled today. It could
either be "glede" or "gleed." I was following the
analogy with "seed," which you find in Middle English
sometimes spelled "sede."
> > "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/)
>
> A very good start, this.
>
> > 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.
>
> Could you have "He nay go" -- 'it suffices that he
> go'?
Why not?
> > 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"?
>
> Were I doing the AME, I'd remove from history only the
> Norman conquest.
Okay, that makes it considerably simpler.
> No modern dialects I'm acquainted with use 3sg -th or
> a reflex of "hie", but 5 miles from my place of work
> you can find people who quotidianly use _hoo_ /u:/
> instead of _she_. (Unfortunately I don't get to hear it,
> because such speakers wouldn't speak such broad dialect
> to me, though I do get the odd _thee_ and _thou_.)
Wow! Hoo! Don't they get it mixed up with "who"?
Middle English variants: heo, scheo, scho, ho.
> > 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
>
> I was aware of it, but lack the requisite knowledge and
> competence to participate. Indeed, my anglophilia doesn't
> stretch back beyond Early Modern English; that is, the
> language that I love with all my soul was born around
> five hundred years ago.