Reading Old English as a Scandinavian is always interesting, because if you squint hard enough, you can easily see how the languages are so deeply related. So many modern Scandinavian words have what seem to be lost cognates in Old English, and I suppose vice versa.
That said, I wish translations into contemporary English went further to preserve the etymology of certain words and the grammatical structure of the poem, even if it would make for a much more awkward text. For example, this text translates "middangeard" as "middle-world", which is correct, but it is cognate with "Midgård", which is the Norse mythological name for Earth. (In Scandinavian translations of J.R.R. Tolkien, "Middle Earth" is translated as "Midgård".) I think this lets us understand more about how writers of Old English understood the world, and how it was connected to the broader mythological landscape in North/Western Europe around this time, how Christian and Pagan belief systems were interacting through language as the region was in the process of christianization.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Guide_to_the_Names_in_The_Lo...
that this was in _A Tolkien Compass_ which was one of the first books I purchased w/ my own money (along w/ _A Tolkien Reader_) is arguably a big part of why I chose to study languages early on in my life.
Tolkien's "Middle-Earth" is itself a "folksy mistranslation"
Closer translation-- "Middle-Yard"
Old English word eardgeard =Earth-Yard
/ ˈæ͜ɑrdˌjæ͜ɑrd / "ardyard" /
https://www.theundergroundmap.com/article.html?id=104937
https://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/wanderer/notes/no...
I went straight to metric and Middle Metre approximate and is wrong.
For something completely different, try learning Mandarin.
It is a very great thing that so many peoples now speak languages with clear common roots buried behind the deviations of use; and outmost interesting to recognize the plan and the deep thought in those radixes.
https://muyinteresante.okdiario.com/historia/60526.html
Well, let's see:
Perro, guerra, mes, pagar, ver, fuego, tierra, cima, perro, clero, altar, tribunal, rey... lots more. Tapa, dardo, ganso, ropa, guardia, sala, cama, barro, guijarro, zarza... more than anyone would think. Aspa, espía, brotar... and the -engo suffix. Visicothic and Celtic cultures are more ingrained in the North/Middle of Spain more than anyone would think despite everyone pictured it as a 100% Mediterranean culture.
Rico/rich, fresco/fresh, Blanco/blank, ganar/win... is not a coincidence.
Heck, tons of Medieval lore in the Castilles use a Gothic typeface...
Engo/enco suffix in words, related to -ingos in Gothic.
On names and surnames... Alonso, Alfonso, Guillermo, Fernando, Hernando, Hernández, López, -everything ending with -ez-, Leovigildo, Rodrigo and tons more.
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%B3%DB%8C#Pers...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reborrowing
For example, katsu from cutlet, is borrowed back into English to mean… cutlet.
There are loads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_words_of_Port...
> evidence indicates arigatō has a purely Japanese origin
I remain suspicious, though. Maybe what happened was the popularization of an existing Japanese term under the influence of Portuguese Jesuits, since it sounded similar to obrigado?
(I do not actually speak Manx, but 2026 is the Year of the Manx Language. I should learn some.)
Lithuanian and Celtic had no direct contact with each other AFAIK, although Celtic was in contact with Vasconic, Romance, Germanic and Slavic... And Lithuanian was in contact with Slavic and Germanic, maybe Finno-Ugric...
Obviously numbers...
Sniegas - Sneachd — Snow
In — An(n) — In
Najas — Nuadh — New
Marios — Muir (genitive mara) — Sea
Srūti (to flow) — Sruth (stream)
Mirti (to die) — Murt/mort (murder)
klausytis (to hear) – cluas (ear), cluinntinn (listen)
sekla — sìol — seed
Senas — Sean — Old
Vyras - Fear (plural Fir)- Man (wer(e))
Dantas (tooth) - Deudag (toothache)
Ugnis (fire) — Aigeann (fireplace)
Raudonas — Ruadh — Red
Dienas (day) — Di- (day in day names) – Day
Pilnas — Làn — Full
Kaire — Ceàrr — Left
Dešinė — Deas — Right
It would be a gargantuan effort just alone to devise a language that would unify historic language origins roots in a contemporary time. The objective would be to stop the death and eradication of languages, e.g., Welsh, German, or any of the numerous other smaller languages and dialects that are all under varying states and types of endangerment or extinction risk, but also prevent an ignoble, unstable, and inadequate language like contemporary English from dominating the whole world.
How is German, a langauge natively spoken in two nation states and quite a few neighboring regions, being eradicated?
But these days, Slovio would help me more.
I've tried Slovio on Slavs of about 10 nationalities. None had ever heard of it. All of then, no exceptions, could just understand it perfectly well, to their great surprise.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D54D1C7DAE31B36&si=Kw3J...
or "The History of English" series:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV50II2XzmY-9GLZWAuieOp27...
In the second series, there is a weather report in Frisian that vaguely sounds like English.
This is how the Icelandic sagas were translated into English in the nineteenth century. Translators then almost always chose the English cognate of the Old Norse world, even if that English cognate was obsolete or its meaning had changed. Far from helping immerse readers in the medieval world, the effect (at least for modern sensibilities) is offputting and goofy, and in the twentieth century publishers like Penguin replaced those translations by new ones with a very different approach. More judicious use of the Germanic lexicon in English, à la Tolkien, provides a more appealing atmosphere of olden times.
Oh my. I find the reverse. It's spooky and enchanting because once I know all the cognates I feel like I can magically understand the original.
In the center, humans inhabit Midtgård. The gods in Valhall and the Jotun in Jotunheim.
Then there's also Helheim or Hel - for the dead, Alfheim for the elves, Svartalfheim for the dwarves...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Locations_in_Nor...
- Vanaheim, home of the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility.
- Asgård, home of the Aesir, the big-name gods (Thor, Odin, Freya, etc.).
- Jötunheim, home of the Giants.
- Alfheim, home of the elves.
- Helheim, the underworld ("Hell").
- Svartalfheim / Nidavellir, home of the dwarves.
- Midgård, home of the humans.
- Muspelheim, home of fire elementals.
- Niflheim, world of mists.
(This is the commonly accepted list, but it's always worth mentioning that surviving literary sources of Norse mythology are very scarce. Much of the lore was reconstructed in the 19th century.)
And of course, English develops organically (unlike, say, French), allowing new words to emerge, and for old words to take on new meanings. I love it.
As an Englishman, I always find it interesting that there is this weird defined notion of "Englishness" in language, culture, whatever, when our entire history is one of mashing and remixing ideas over at least 2,000 years, and recent discoveries at Stonehenge push that back potentially by 3,000-5,000 years more.
I particularly like the irony of the far-right going on about English identity on a march in London before going to have a lager and chicken tikka masala before heading home to a bungalow and putting on their pyjamas... :)
I think the Scandinavian roots you talk about trace back to common Germanic roots perhaps, but also the Viking aspect will influence a lot. I think English has been "dipped into" by those roots a few times in history, as has Latin.
On the need to keep the etymology aligned in translation: I think this is a routine challenge of the translator's skill, and why so many people have different views of different translations of the same texts.
The Bible could easily be translated in many different ways, but the "King James" version is considered the standard within the Anglican churches in the UK (and seems to be the common root for US church bibles too), but a more modern translation would be possible, as would one that has a closer etymological meaning to the original sources.
It's all interpretative. If people are building entire belief systems and ways of life (and arguably, laws for society), around a translation, and getting it off in a few places, it's likely we're going to run into the same problems even more when translating Tolkien or an ancient poem...
I don't find this to be true. Even at high mass ('bells & smells' type communion) you get more modern versions. To my recollection NIV would be most common. Obviously not a representative survey. Also, it might be at traditional/formal services you get [N]KJV as I've been to less of those.
Amongst very old people you see strong support for KJV because that's what they learnt 70 years ago. It sounds very archaic to modern ears. I'd say KJV hasn't been favoured this side of the millennium.
Just my impression.
NIV is the preferred translation for the low-church side, the evangelicals, so definitely won't be used by the bells-and-smells high church crowd. KJV is preferred by a niche who also prefers the Book of Common Prayer liturgy over Common Worship. Usually this is either an older population, a certain ethnic subgroup with calcified traditions, or old-school low church folks (so not modern evangelicals) who prefer the old ways and even the Thirty-Nine Articles.
Stewart Lee had a good bit about this:
> [..] > ‘Bloody Beaker folk. Coming over here, rowing up the Tagus Estuary from the Iberian Peninsula in improvised rafts. Coming here with their drinking vessels. What's wrong with just cupping up the water in your hands and licking it up like a cat?’
Racism always tends towards the silly, of course, but British ethnic nationalism particularly so, given the history. What’s ’British’, anyway?
My understanding is that Old English vocabulary mostly predates Viking invasion, but even then the colonizers would have a large shared vocabulary with (non-Celtic) British natives, who would be the descendants of Anglo-Saxon settlers a couple of centuries earlier.
Latin influences English as a learned tongue, used by clerics and academics. Other than that most of it comes via French, when the Normans brought it.
Recent research, namely an article by Lars Nooij & Peter Schrijver [0], suggests that a population speaking Latin/Romance may have remained present in Britain until the late first millennium. Granted, the effect of this local Latin would have been on Welsh more than English.