i'm just guessing, but i would venture to say the pronunciation might have sounded a little softer and less gutteral (with the rolling r's) than michael has rendered here. but because there's no audio or written records of the actual pronunciation, it's hard to say what early saxon, or any germanic language for that matter, really sounded like. i think he's done an outstanding job!
i hate seeing videos like this because how do you know they rolled their Rs? You dont, common German doesn't swedish and Norwegian doesnt...danish doesnt...why roll the rs? I dont understand...
im of mixed saxon and jutish descent being from wessex....the saxons angles and jutes were taller than the british longer limbed fairer of hair. im 6 2 brown haired blue eyed saxon build and look....our ancestors described the welsh as being small dark and swarthy sweorthe. ireland has pure celtic stock with some morse proof theres more blonde fairer haired people in england than other parts of the isles
@InstructaMic LOL, ur descendant from those people. Never in the hundreds of years did anyone mix with anyone? You're dumb...btw, I've seen people taller than you in Austria. Best of luck in your delusional world.
@kdelg001 what you think i guessed that shit lol they found skeletons in my village from the migration period..we aqll got bloodtested in my village...they said the same familys have been living here for up to 1450 years....the originals were of a mixed saxon jutish descent
There are as many carry-overs from the Old English (if not more) than from French; and a handful of Old Norse words (and inflections), not to mention certain Latin inspirations
Just to point out, while English is a Germanic language, much of its vocabulary is descended from Norman French. We're still absorbing French words in the 1000 years since then.
Now, we're at the point where English and French have more shared vocabulary than French and Italian, which when you think about it is quite profound.
Granted, our most common words are Germanic, but French dominates the vocabulary of more complicated concepts like Guarantee/Warranty (same root), Guard/Warden (again)
only about 20-30% of the most common English words are from French. The majority of our words are from Old English. There are also little influences from other languages too.
Also English is changing rapidly and not from French influences.
I understand the point you're trying to make, I just think it's funny you chose the words guard and warden, which came to French from Frankish, and are therefore Germanic.
Actually, English people are not genetically German/Dutch or Southern Danish. Genetically, about 70% of the British genepool descends from the original founding population of prehistoric Britain (long before the arrival of Germanic people). Genetically, the closest relatives to modern Britons are the Basque of Northern Spain.
That said, there is variation. The Scandinavian component varies from ~40% in Yorkshire to only 10% in Ireland. But as a whole, the Germanic component is only about 1/3.
It's always interesting to listen to spoken old english, i can't make heads or tails of it written and i always thought it was more Franco-Latin based on all the romance words we use, but when you listen to OE and can make out a lot of the words, you can really see how english is a germanic language
Old English words Ocean = hwalerad [whale road] river = swanrad [swan road] swin = pig ytterinne = otter bearan = bear wif = woman man = one person or one man geseoh = see beseoh = look underbaec = behind [under your back] hlaford = lord [literally loaf lord - the guy who fed you] fisc = fish yrthling = farmer [literally - earthling] monac = monk cild = child thrall = slave / thrall unfreo = unfree Ic eom Englisch - i am english he sie brittiscum = he is brittish
The amount of Celtic DNA that we retain varies, as "Brit" isn't a very good term anymore. I'd recommend you don't use it in this sense. Perhaps before the Romans came (when we were British tribes), but there's dozens of groups of people living in the UK with varying genetic histories. For example, the Welsh and Cornish may retain more Celtic DNA than the English. Lowland Scots may hold less than Highland Scots, or Orkadians may have more Scandinavian blood than mainland Scots etc.
lol.. wtf . I don't understand this mongrel talk. Do people think every single other nation in the world is somewhat pure?? what nonsense!. Being English is an ethnic connection to our ancestors, like wise with everyone else, drop the mongrel lark. .
@NorthernerMatty123 you forget the Vikings, they gave us words such as crash, call, kill, law, them, then, their, they, will, shall, want, starboard, port, rake, kirk and the -by in towns like Grimsby. Latin would have been incorporated anyway as it was the language of the Roman Catholic church, they already took on words such as incarcerate, words they didnt have in their own language
@CeluiEtSeul if you read it, you will easily be able to tell what they are saying, their pronounciation was very different. If you go into isolated parts of Dorset and Norumberland i'm sure you may have difficulty in understanding some accents.
Isaac tha ascode Abraham his faeder 'faeder min, ic ascie hwaer seo offrung sie, her is wudu and fyr'
means
Isaac then asked Abraham his father 'my father, I ask where the offring is, here is wood and fire'
@NorthernerMatty123 LOL, but then my family were Irish rebels, some of whom were sent out here to Aust - not petty thieves who were transportd for stealing loaves of bread
@Crecybowman LMAO! What a pity then that most Australians are of either British (mostly English) or Irish descent. Given that you're English, are you making a confession as to the antics of your forefathers are you? You know, I always wondered why the Anglo-Saxons would often sleep in the same 1-roomed dwellings as their animals, now I know why! :)
Several genetic studies of the population of Britain shown in Channel 4 documentary "Face of Britain" and done by universities (UCL did a few) have shown that generally the population of Wales, Cornwall and to a lesser extent Devon are mostly indigenous Britons (i.e. similar to Celts and Basques). England is predominantly Anglo-Saxon (in the Y chromosome) with a bit of Celt mixed in and Scotland is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Norwegian but predominantly Celt.
The English are often described as a mongrel race which is essentially true, and before anyone starts insisting I am attempting to insult the english I inform you that I'm a proud Yorkshireman.
This is true of many cultures and languages it was the way of things many years ago that people would invade each other or migrate peacefully integrating and influencing the local population who were also influenced by the native culture themselves.
Any comments welcome, just refrain from being vicious.
@daveg2800 That is correct,but honestly,we can say the same about every human race-I very much there is one and only pure race,or that in fact,it is ever been-it´s just a excuse,for the weak minded,and the insecure to improve their ego =)
Languages that have affected English are primarily Old English (and its evolutions), Norman French, Old Norse, Latin and Celtic Languages but not necessarily in that order (by time or influence).
This is the reason why in modern English there are some words that mean basically the same thing such as big, tall and large.
Regional variations of English still exist to this date that affect pronunciation, to the point that Scots is considered a language in itself that evolved from Old English.
Old English is a relevantly pointless term given that the language we know of as Old English is a mix of slightly different though closely related languages primarily from Jutland (Denmark) Frisian (The Netherlands) Saxony and Angeln (Germany).
Neither language was initially written down the same even by people of the same tribe as spelling wasn't standardised. English has evolved in the same way many languages have by the introduction of loan words from other languages.
Wow, an epic flame war on this subject, what ever happened to respecting another views and presenting a well thought out counter-arguament with no intention of getting another's back up.
Firstly I confess I haven't studied Old English to a great degree and don't wish to give my view as gospel but here goes.
Sorry for the multiple posts but there is a lot to cover on this subject, I'll try to group them around similar theme's.
@Anonie324 Although this is not really confirmed, it does seem quite likely, as for example the Swedish also roll the 'r' on occasion, as do some german dialekts like Francish.
English is a mix. Why are you all so thick skulled and for god knows what reason refuse to understand that what we speak now is an evolved variant of old English. Excitement, constition, anything with an "ent" at the end is a derivative of Latin. Britain was owned by romans, celts, and French. Are you surprised that you can't understand this video by being a native modern English speaker? No, because if you went back 1000 years speaking what you do now, they would think you to be a witch!
A good dramatic reading - but we will never know whether us English (Anglo Saxons) rolled our letter 'R's as much as this. Germans in the north of Germany (which is what we English basically are) don't - they use the backs of their throats to pronounce words beginning with the letter R. I am doubtful the letter R was pronounced with the tongue.
@NewAccountFFS A people can't be older than the people that founded it. Granted, Germany became a country in the 1800s when a group of kingdoms combined but they were basically the same people with the same language but who just chose to have a nationalistic allegiance to an entity called 'a country'. Basically, the Romans left Britain to defend present day Italy (Rome) and the Germans saw there chance at a new land - trust me, English people are German/Dutch and Southern Danish.
@Blabloo72 Actually, the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes were a ruling class and the language filtered down to their Celtic subjects. Genetic studies show that the British people have more connection to Spain than Germany. Only in East Anglia do numbers reach about parity. Same with the Franks/French. The Frankish tribe was only 50,000 strong when they first crossed into Gaul, but they gave their identity to their subjects through language.
@Fadedglory343 Correction: in East Anglia most of the native British were wiped out by the Romans in the time of Boudicca, & Norwich was garrisoned by Saxon foederati who settled there, & apparently peacefully became part of the Anglo-Saxon area in the 5-6th centuries. There was widespread "ethnic cleansing" of native Britons in other areas - as indicated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (eg Sussex & the storming of Anderida (Pevensey), one of the last Roman Saxon Shore Forts holding out). MTF ...
@Fadedglory343 ... Also, blood tests done in the early 1990's showed blood types in England were roughly divided between those that reflected Germanic lineage in the eastern 2/3 and Celtic in the western 1/3 (with pockets of British lineage in certain places in the East, such as at St Albans & part of London). However I do agree that after the power of the Romano-British elite had been smashed in the early 6th century (prob around 537AD), the Saxons began a period of conquest, in which ... MTF
@SlaineOz You do realise 14 million people in England are of part Irish descent, including myself partially and Ireland is the country with the highest frequency of R1b so it shouldn't be a suprise that it shows up when genes are tested.
@NorthernerMatty123 Actually, I thought it was between 6-8 Million Poms were of Irish descent, but no matter. I'm not 100% with racial gene theory, so what's the R1b gene?
@Fadedglory343 ... the British-Welsh culture was destroyed thru a combinatn of enslaving British women & killing many of the men, killing the bearers of culture such as priests, enslaving the artisans useful to the Saxon (as indicated by the early AEnglisc status of smiths being that of slaves or extremely low) - all of which gradually resulted in the absorption and "acculturation" of the remaining conquered British within AEnglisc society. The population of the pre-Saxon British for their MTF
@Fadedglory343 ... for their part had been decimated by plagues that were recorded as having swept thru the late Roman Empire, & prob were adversely affected by the climactic event of Krakatoa early in the 6thC (about 537AD). They were related to both the Gauls and the Iberians - as indicated by both legend & DNA tests ... I hope this helps ...
@Blabloo72 "English people are German/Dutch and Southern Danish". I think the Celts of Britain are more numerous than the invading Germanics. Don't forget them. Also I notice that English people are darker and shorter than the Dutch/Germans/Danes.
@flyonthewall37 I am not understanding what you are saying. Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians tend to be light brown-haird or blonds and tall not darker or shorter. If you went back to the Dark Ages then most Germanics would have been blonds and with the odd red head that the Romans had stolen from Northen England (they didn't venture into Scotland - they built a wall the width of England).
@Blabloo72 What I'm saying is that genetically the English look shorter and tend to have dark hair unlike the Germanics/Nordics. The English are mixed, but more on the Celtic side than Germanics/Nordics. That's why I said the English tend to have a higher population of people who are shorter and have darker hair. Just look at the Dutch and Danes and compare them to the English.
@flyonthewall37 It's not that clear cut. My father is typically Nordic in appearance with platinum blonde hair and blue eyes, and my mother a porcelain skinned, dark haired, short, Celtic 'type'.
I'm 6'2, have my father's face, but am dark-skinned, and with tight, black curly hair, whereas my 4 sisters are all platinum blondes with v.white skin.
English people seem to have the most varied looking people in Europe, with many of the pigeon-holed types turning up within a single family.
@hombrerelents It's not clear cut because English peopel are very mixed. Having blond hair and being tall is part of the prerequisite of the Germanic/Nordic type, but it is overated. There are middle-eastern and Slavic people who have those traits. You also have to take into consideration the facial features, i.e. head shape in the general population as well. You might not be the typical Englishmen. I've met English people, Dutch and Danes and the Danes are the most homogeneous looking.
@Blabloo72 There's Roman in there too, during the Roman occupations of Britain there was a lot of inter-marriage between the Romans and the local Celts. This created a Romano-British hybrid culture. Not all the Romans went back to Italy.
When we want to know how "wæteru" sounds , we compare English "Water" with other spoken cognates of "water". But that isn't the end. After that , we take other similar old English "odd words" and we compare them with their English descendants and their cognates. After obtaining sufficient evidence, we come to the conclusion that Old English uses a different rule when speaking written words.
We then use the rule to find out how words sound.
@alexross8 What the @%#, do you think you're some sort of linguistic genius who can prove all the world wrong? Lol where'd you get this nonsense you're writing? People have been studying OE for 300 years already and they've come to the conclusion that it's read how it's read. What evidence do you have and what conclusions can you possibly make when you don't know what the G.V.Shift is? How the hell is OE a median when the other Germanic languages are contemporary to Modern English? Dude...
@VictorSobakus Honestly, you look utterly retarded. When we want to know how waeteru sounds we look at it and read the letters. I understand that most English speakers don't understand the concept of letter, but then they don't come to the internet denying universal truths. Why the hell would it sounds as "shit" if it's written as "candy"? You don't make any sense whatsoever.
Firstly , NO language (unless constructed or transliterated) will sound the way that it looks. Instead , we have the IPA to help us understand how letters are spoken in other languages. Even English , our language , doesn't sound the way it is written.
The Great vowel Shift was proposed in the late 1800s. With the technology we have today , the research , and the countless resources , I think maybe the GVS has a few inaccuracies at least.
@alexross8 A languages Yeah so the ancient germans loved adding letters to words for fun just so their language wouldn't look ho it sounded? WTF, OE is the median between English and Proto-Germanic. Old High German is the median between High German and the same crap. But a language spoken 1.5 thousand years ago can't be a medium to another modern lanugage dude. You have any brain damage? Btw there's 2 syllables in water,voda,hydor and always been, where'd you taken this "u": from? Taking drugs?
When I said "median" , I meant that it was between Modern English , Old Saxon , and Old Norse , and a few others. But since those languages branch off into modern languages , then I can say that Old English is the median between Modern English and all other Germanic languages.
Yea , I know that there are two syllables in "water".
But in old english , water was spelled "wæteru". Even though it looks like a 3rd syllable , the "u" acts silently and makes the vowel before that sound different than it usually would.
The evidence of course , is the fact that most Germanic languages have 2 syllable cognates of "water". That is just one of many words in Old English that looks different than it sounds.
@alexross8 Links and facts. What sound exactly? You know in my short course of Old English I've never seen a U in waeter and never heard of any letter changing other letter. I have a feeling you are either very retarded, a troll, or a retarded troll.
Show me any source where it says about U changing preceeding vowels(lol) and any dictionary where waeter has an U at the end.
I highly and seriously doubt that you took a short Old English. if you did , then it must have been a poor one. First of all , there is no standard Old English dictionary. the Old English dialects vary .
I had seen the ''u'' in a west saxon version of Genesis from the bible. But it is also apparent in other words. ''sunu'' (son) . Also , when I say ''median'' I am talking about an inbetween language .
@alexross8 You dumb lying twat, I told you to show me THE dictionary and tell me THE sound. You must be a jew or something. Brainless cock that opens his mouth to spread shit he has no idea about, I hate and contempt the likes of you. You've read the first paragraph in the wikipedia OE article and you already think you can talk random rubbish and pretend it's scientific? Sunu, roflmao, has the fucking U because it's another word, retard, LOL. I hope you get seriously sick. Fuck off, cunt.
@alexross8 Fuck you, cocksucker, I can't fucking believe a man can lie so boldly. Do you raise your inferior self-esteem by claiming some random shit with an educated look? Your mom is a whore and your dad fucks you.
@VictorSobakus you have no idea what you're talking about. and, dictionaries are not fact... truly.... I mean, dictionaries are based on the spoken language... or in dead languages, what we know of them. Languages, outside of the dictionary, vary greatly from class, region and time period.... so likewise, dictionaries will vary.... There is often no black and white with language. TWAT.
@AwakeningMessengers You retrarded shithole, you didn't learn even the basics of OE, and I did. You don't know fucking crap about it and I do. You don't fucking write "shit" as "shootaey" if you didn't earlier and have no orthography to preserve. And yes we do know how a written dead language was pronounced you dumb retarded pile of fieces, that's what LINGUISTICS IS FOR. Do you fucking realise that it is a science and not some fucking random speculation you ignorant cunt?
No , we don't know how dead languages are pronounced, which is the reason why they are dead in the first place, because no one that can speak it is still alive. We do know how Old English is written , and we do know that it correlates with it's phonology (As all languages usually do except some hieroglyphic languages) . Also , we do have systems which are inherently similar to it in writing .What we don't know is how it's spoken.
@alexross8 If I said we do, it means we do, tard. What we really don't know is if it's your dog or you using the computer. I'm greatly inclined to think it's the former.
Share with me , how do you know that people know how it's pronounced , when the fact of the matter is that It's an extinct language and you claim that comparative research doesn't work?
@alexross8 Because I learned the fucking thing, you thick-headed brick. And I didn't claim that shit. Your nonsense is not a research and not comparative. I'm tired of conversing with a wall, sorry mate, I wish you long and terrible diarrhea, because you're the most fucking annoying person I've met on the Internet in about 6 years.
@VictorSobakus one letter, vowels to be exact, quite often change another. It's apparent in modern English, in fact... as well as other languages... Portuguese, for one. for instance, in English (Modern), 'plan' and 'plane'.... or 'win' and 'wine'. the silent 'e' changes the proceeding vowel to a long vowel. In Portuguese 'novo' (new masc.) and nova (new fem.) are pronounced differently with the 'o'.... the first, no-vu, the second noa- va... a opens the vowel that proceeds the consonant.
@AwakeningMessengers Now if you retarded douches think that if comparative linguistics seems more comprehensible to you than astrophysics and thus you feel at ease to pop your shithole from some den of yours and start arguing with the people who actually STUDY the thing while you can't do so in case of astrophysics, you'd better go fuck your moms. It's precisely because of people like YOU cunts that humanity couldn't wrap it's head around the fact that Earth is round.THEY DIDN'T FALL DOWN GODDAM
@alexross8 Okay... I didn't know that... I had seen other words, such as 'sonu', for son, and I pondered how perhaps that might be pronounced, and if we dropped the 'u' sound over time. What you're saying makes a lot of since, and I'm newly inspired to go dig deeper in my research. I'm assuming 'sonu' follows the same line of pronunciation. Do you know?
@alexross8 Also, fuck it, OE is the median between PGmc and ME. PGmc IS THE MEDIAN BETWEEN ALL THE GERMANICS. IPGmc the median between OE and ON. How the fuck a language that has a median between it and some other be that same median? Man I just don't get is that so hard to twig by yourself? How come you know how to type???
Old English must make sense as the median between English and other Germanic languages , otherwise Old English wouldn't be Modern English's ancestor.
The only thing we can use to accurately understand how the Anglo Saxons spoke , is the comparison between Spoken Modern English and other Spoken Germanic languages. written , many consonants and vowels can deceive you. For example , someone may mistake the German "w" to sound like English's "W" , but it doesn't.
Also , æ in old english , didn't always make the same sound. "G" didn't always make the "g" sound. Sometimes , "G" made the "Y" consonantal sound. A good example is "dæg" , which means "day".
@alexross8 And there's no written tradition to keep. You wouldn't understand anything up to 16th sentury if English had a sane orthography. Consonants' pronunciation depended on their surroundings, like S is Z between vowels, th is voiced as well, G sounded 3 different ways(one of them like the Greek one). That didn't matter because they were 1 phoneme, only pronounced in different ways, you couldn't confuse words if you mixed them up. But U or naught made a difference in case for example.
@alexross8 All in all I heartily suggest you to refrain from saying shit if you don't know shit about shit, dude. The e changing vowels happend around 16 sent. and is called The Great Vowel Shift, go google it. Pretending to know more than you do only makes you look dumber man. One thing is carefully suggesting that all the globe pronounces shit wrong, but stating it without even knowing some friggin basic facts about your own, retarded as it is, language makes a laughingstock of oneself.
Funny that we have even Anglofied the French words with out "ed" and "ing" endings.... Made latin/French words Germanic sounding. Like constructionum is now "konstructing" or "konstrukt"
People think Old English is this fantastical language that sounds completely different than English of Modern. It's just another west-Germanic language. It's quite similar to German , but it's even more-so to Dutch. And because people think to exaggerate the influence of French into English , they like to pronounce words the way it looks , vowels and all. "nama" is not pronounced "Na-Ma" , it's pronounced "name" (Second vowel changes first one)
@VictorSobakus That's exactly what I am saying. And how does that make me retarded? Take a look at the word "wæteru" (Old English word for "Water") . It sounds exactly like Modern English "Water". I could get into details why it sounds exactly the same , but for now , I will just give you cognates. German-Wasser Dutch-Water Frisian-Wetter (One of the closest languages to Old English) Modern English-Water There is no third Syllable.
@alexross8 Orly? Modern "water" is pronounced as "wote". But what in the damnation makes you think that there's no third syllable in wæteru? Why the hell would they write an 'U' there then? Not to mention that [æ] and [o] are very different sounds, as well as r and no r.
@alexross8 Maybe it's your French or maybe all English speakers don't know the Latin alphabet, but "a" is more or less the vowel in "hard". I've never heard "water pronounced this way.
Next, if you don't know then don't pretend you do, not following this simple rule is exactly what makes you look retarded. There's shit at the end of modern English words because it was pronounced in Middle Ages. The shit at the end of Old English words is pronounced because it's the first form of written English
There are more than 1000 words that English and many other Germanic languages have in common. A great many of those words have cognates of the same amount of syllables. If , for example , I examine a few Old English words , and they neither have the same amount of syllables as distant or descendant cognates , then wouldn't you find it a bit strange? Old English must make sense as a medium between Modern English and other Germanic languages .
@SohoDelights It's possible the Anglo-Saxons sounded very similar to Americans. Some scholoars believe that the English of the past, as far back as Shakespeare, had what we would today call an american accent. (So I've been told, anyways).
Why do you pronounce "eac" first as [‘eak] in "and his brothor eac,", but as [‘eat∫] in "swelce Scyttisc eac" (which I believe would be correct), and eventually without a diphthong as [‘εk] in "swelce seofone eac eorlas Anlafes, unrim herges"?
@bertoletti8912 - What - the Scots from Ireland,or the Scots who were Angles?
As for the Irish- what has Anglo-Saxon England to do with them? Their problems with the English Crown didn't start until AFTER the Norman Conquest.
The only reason the English came to Britain ,in numbers,was because the Britons (Welsh) invited them (to fight the Picts and Scots). Should have fought their own battles and not tried to double- cross their English mercenaries, and "Welsh" on the deal!
@adventussaxonum I meant that welsh,irish and scotts to some extent can claim their celtic descendency.Thus the have some right to the land under anglo-saxon occupation.
@bertoletti8912 - The Irish have no claim over English land,neither have the Scots. The Welsh may have a point,although the Celtic strain in modern Englishmen
would come from those "Celts" who didn't flee to Wales and therefore have every right to be here.
Do the southern Germans of "Celtic" stock ,or the French descendants of ancient Gauls, have "some right" to English land?
BTW, the La Tene "Celts" invaded and occupied areas of Britain inhabited by the original inhabitants-should they go?
No, we understand the consonants and continental vowel sounds because of comparative phonology and internal evidence. Of course, Old English directly evolved into the language we speak today, but nobody 'passed it on' per-se; by the late Middle Ages, 'Old English' as recorded by the Anglo Saxons was effectively a dead language like Latin or Greek.
I once heard a Latin scholar say that the pronunciation of Latin as taught today was nothing more than an "accepted" accent, standardised by the academic world for ease of teaching. I would therefore imagine it's pretty much the same for Anglo-Saxon, the pronunciation of which probably varied across time and region. Certain words have changed in modern English over the last few years alone. To me, "Nephew" is pronounced "Neff-yu", to my mother - "Nev-yu" ...
The French taught in schools today is just "standard" French - many pronunciations being a far cry from the French spoken in rural parts of southern France. English taught to foreign student tends to be of the "BBC" variety. The first time a French colleague met a Geordie colleague at work, he refused to believe he was speaking English at all!
It's not just pronunciation that changes in a very short space of time, either. It's the tone in which it's spoken that changes, too. Example being the classmates of my 12-year-old daughter who insist on using AQI - where statements are made to sound like questions? My name is Fred? I'm feeling fine? I'm sure my daughter would be doing it if it weren't for the fact that I irritate her by constantly saying, "You telling me or asking me?" :-D
This was really cool for someone like me who's studied a little German; I can recognize modern German constructions such as the "ge-" prefix on participles and placing verbs at the end of sentences. As I read and listened, I could recognize Old English words that sound like modern synonyms for words in the text, such as "swarthy" for dark and "ground" for land. I was surprised that "dreary" sounds almost exactly the same as it does today.
Even with all the French words, English still sounds very, very North Germanic. I mean how can it not help sounding northern. every forth word ends with a hard "ing" or "ining" sound, other words have constant endings like "d", "t" "k" and "p". Every second word, starts, ends with "TH", if not it's in the middle of the word.
OnlyEnglish1, great point about Geordie! When I've heard it spoken, I've thought the same thing. But how much influence did the Norman French language have on the English that became the Geordie accent?
"if the Vikings had won we would be speaking a language closer to Danish and Norwegian to this day."
Old English is very close to Old Norse, so I'm not sure it would be that different... the Norman conquest is far more relevant in that area, and they were largely of Norse descent.
English today is more 'basterdized' than Old English, English today is derived from Latin [Italian maybe?], French [Norman French], Old English [Frisian too], and Danish. Frisian however seems to resemble English alot.
Yes, but unfortunately those traitors had turned "French" in the meantime -
typical! :-)
BUt if you shave of all the Normannic French and Latin influences you are left with a basic language that even today is still quite similar to the Scandinavian languages.
They even seem to have undergone similar grammatic simplifications to those that Old English went through during the "clash" with the Norse language that produced Middle English (apart from the French & the Latin!). A lot of Early Middle English sounds like a Scandinavian language - judging from the reconstructed samples I have heard. Many simple words are easily recogniseable, because the Great Vowel Shift hadn't begun yet.
But even so English is still a fairly easy language for us Scandinavians to learn, since we "mysteriuously" seem to know all the basic rules and a lot of the basic vocabulary in advance. Now, if only all languages were like that ... ;-)
And even today English is remarkably similar to Danish, Swedis and Norwegian
( which are really just dialects of a common scand. language ) in many surprising ways - esp with respect to basic vocabulary - nouns, adjectives, verbs and prepositions etc. - and also the basic grammar ( word order, inflections ).
This makes it fairly esay for us in Scandinavia to pick up English, since we "mysteriously" seem to know half of it already - a really good foundation to build upon.
You won't be able to tell, by just hearing these languages, but when you see
them in writing, it not very hard to see. Also the way he reads ths poem
sounds very "Norse" to me.
The grammar of OE / AS was also far more complex and had lots more inflections. In that respect ME seems to have a taken a more Norse course -
ME being the fusion between AS and Norse. Maybe they simply gave up on the old system because it became too difficult. So now the grammars are very parallel.
To be honest it isn't, really. Sure it has a few similarities, but it's basically old German, not Old Norse.
Being both a German and English native speaker, I see more similarities with German than Norse. I initially thought Old Norse was pretty much Old German, but it's really very different. Though obviously Old Norse words would be included in Old English as the Vikings invaded northern Germany - where the Saxons come from - and England.
English, German, Dutch and Yiddish are West Germanic.
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish are North Germanic (just like Old Norse)
Old English was much closer to modern German than Norse. However Modern English has many French words, because of the Normans who invaded and conquered it in 1066.
Reminds me or Grendel from Beowulf (^^)
PaveLowPat01 3 days ago
i'm just guessing, but i would venture to say the pronunciation might have sounded a little softer and less gutteral (with the rolling r's) than michael has rendered here. but because there's no audio or written records of the actual pronunciation, it's hard to say what early saxon, or any germanic language for that matter, really sounded like. i think he's done an outstanding job!
azboomer1950 2 weeks ago
I wish English was still spoken like this! Sounds awesome.
bathysphere1 2 weeks ago in playlist Favorite videos
@kdelg001, don't be jelous now, it's true that the West Saxon (Wessex) blood has hardly changed in over 1400 years.
t1t296 2 weeks ago
i hate seeing videos like this because how do you know they rolled their Rs? You dont, common German doesn't swedish and Norwegian doesnt...danish doesnt...why roll the rs? I dont understand...
kdelg001 2 weeks ago
Some of these individual words are actually understandable, but for some reason when you put them together they become completely incomprehensible.
MrBrendanRizzo 1 month ago
im of mixed saxon and jutish descent being from wessex....the saxons angles and jutes were taller than the british longer limbed fairer of hair. im 6 2 brown haired blue eyed saxon build and look....our ancestors described the welsh as being small dark and swarthy sweorthe. ireland has pure celtic stock with some morse proof theres more blonde fairer haired people in england than other parts of the isles
InstructaMic 2 months ago
@InstructaMic Wow!
Jeansieguy 3 weeks ago
@InstructaMic LOL, ur descendant from those people. Never in the hundreds of years did anyone mix with anyone? You're dumb...btw, I've seen people taller than you in Austria. Best of luck in your delusional world.
kdelg001 2 weeks ago
@kdelg001 what you think i guessed that shit lol they found skeletons in my village from the migration period..we aqll got bloodtested in my village...they said the same familys have been living here for up to 1450 years....the originals were of a mixed saxon jutish descent
InstructaMic 2 weeks ago
Sounds awesome! Perfect for a fantasy!
Check out MY language in the old times /watch?v=__4IvtfssLQ&feature=related Watcha think?
zedasilva3 2 months ago
There are as many carry-overs from the Old English (if not more) than from French; and a handful of Old Norse words (and inflections), not to mention certain Latin inspirations
OdinIsMyGuide 2 months ago in playlist Beowulf-Olde English
HURR THEY TALKED FUNNEH
Effedup 3 months ago
Just to point out, while English is a Germanic language, much of its vocabulary is descended from Norman French. We're still absorbing French words in the 1000 years since then.
Now, we're at the point where English and French have more shared vocabulary than French and Italian, which when you think about it is quite profound.
Granted, our most common words are Germanic, but French dominates the vocabulary of more complicated concepts like Guarantee/Warranty (same root), Guard/Warden (again)
JMKBDXB 3 months ago
@JMKBDXB
only about 20-30% of the most common English words are from French. The majority of our words are from Old English. There are also little influences from other languages too.
Also English is changing rapidly and not from French influences.
csm1025 3 months ago
@JMKBDXB
I understand the point you're trying to make, I just think it's funny you chose the words guard and warden, which came to French from Frankish, and are therefore Germanic.
Anglom87 2 months ago
I AM SO FUCKING WHITE HAHAHAHAHAHA
NotQuiteLucid 3 months ago
Actually, English people are not genetically German/Dutch or Southern Danish. Genetically, about 70% of the British genepool descends from the original founding population of prehistoric Britain (long before the arrival of Germanic people). Genetically, the closest relatives to modern Britons are the Basque of Northern Spain.
That said, there is variation. The Scandinavian component varies from ~40% in Yorkshire to only 10% in Ireland. But as a whole, the Germanic component is only about 1/3.
schadenfreude000 3 months ago
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Ϧƿæτ! Ƿe Gaɼdena ɩn ᵷeaɼdaᵷum, þeadcýnınᵷa, þɼým ᵷeϝɼunon, hu ða æþelɩnᵷas ellen ϝɼemdon. Oϝτ Scýld Sceϝɩnᵷ ſceaþena þɼeaτum, ...moneᵷum mæᵷþum, meodoseτla oϝτeah, eᵷſode eoɼlas. Sýððan æɼeſt ƿeaɼð ϝeaſceaϝτ ϝunden, he þæs ϝɼoϝɼe ᵷebad, ƿeox undeɼ ƿolcnum, ƿeoɼðmýndum þah, oðþæτ him æᵷhƿýlc þaɼa ýmbſɩττendɼa oϝen hɼonɼade hýɼan ſcolde, ᵷomban ᵷýldan.
CeluiEtSeul 3 months ago
It's always interesting to listen to spoken old english, i can't make heads or tails of it written and i always thought it was more Franco-Latin based on all the romance words we use, but when you listen to OE and can make out a lot of the words, you can really see how english is a germanic language
TheRhinehart86 4 months ago
Welsh from OE Waelisc (Pronounced Whaleish) meaning; Foreigner......
Crecybowman 4 months ago
dunka dunka
thatthat2 4 months ago
Got dat kert!
nicklol2 4 months ago
Why do they think that the R's are trilled in Old English?
EmilioCasavegas 6 months ago
2meroyn 7 months ago
THIS IS SO COOL!
megnoggle 8 months ago
3:41 the dark horny? o.O
pukpoq 8 months ago
Actually, tests have shown that us Brits still retain our ancient Celtic DNA in a majoritive sense.
Artognou 8 months ago
@Artognou
The amount of Celtic DNA that we retain varies, as "Brit" isn't a very good term anymore. I'd recommend you don't use it in this sense. Perhaps before the Romans came (when we were British tribes), but there's dozens of groups of people living in the UK with varying genetic histories. For example, the Welsh and Cornish may retain more Celtic DNA than the English. Lowland Scots may hold less than Highland Scots, or Orkadians may have more Scandinavian blood than mainland Scots etc.
MarvellousMuffin 7 months ago
lol.. wtf . I don't understand this mongrel talk. Do people think every single other nation in the world is somewhat pure?? what nonsense!. Being English is an ethnic connection to our ancestors, like wise with everyone else, drop the mongrel lark. .
nuclearblastowns 8 months ago
what the fuck happened to English over the ages?
CeluiEtSeul 8 months ago
@CeluiEtSeul The Normans came and fucked it up into a mix of French, Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
NorthernerMatty123 8 months ago
@NorthernerMatty123 you forget the Vikings, they gave us words such as crash, call, kill, law, them, then, their, they, will, shall, want, starboard, port, rake, kirk and the -by in towns like Grimsby. Latin would have been incorporated anyway as it was the language of the Roman Catholic church, they already took on words such as incarcerate, words they didnt have in their own language
2meroyn 7 months ago
@CeluiEtSeul
latin molested it basically
chaosbringer127 7 months ago
@CeluiEtSeul if you read it, you will easily be able to tell what they are saying, their pronounciation was very different. If you go into isolated parts of Dorset and Norumberland i'm sure you may have difficulty in understanding some accents.
Isaac tha ascode Abraham his faeder 'faeder min, ic ascie hwaer seo offrung sie, her is wudu and fyr'
means
Isaac then asked Abraham his father 'my father, I ask where the offring is, here is wood and fire'
2meroyn 7 months ago
history shows that the english are mongrels, & not just by race alone!!!
SlaineOz 8 months ago
@SlaineOz Well then as a descendant of an English convict you must be one to then mustnt you XD.
NorthernerMatty123 8 months ago
@NorthernerMatty123 LOL, but then my family were Irish rebels, some of whom were sent out here to Aust - not petty thieves who were transportd for stealing loaves of bread
SlaineOz 8 months ago
@SlaineOz And history shows that genetically, Austrailians are what happens when a pig fucks a goat.
Crecybowman 4 months ago
@Crecybowman LMAO! What a pity then that most Australians are of either British (mostly English) or Irish descent. Given that you're English, are you making a confession as to the antics of your forefathers are you? You know, I always wondered why the Anglo-Saxons would often sleep in the same 1-roomed dwellings as their animals, now I know why! :)
Baaaaaa! .... Or should I say "oink, oink"?! LOL
SlaineOz 4 months ago
It sound like modern swedish lol
Francesko263 8 months ago
@Francesko263
Well, almost :D
I could understand quite a bit.
Babek79 7 months ago
Why didnt i live in those times :(
fartsam08 9 months ago
very well done
Elenkhos 9 months ago
@Fadedglory343 @flyonthewall37
Several genetic studies of the population of Britain shown in Channel 4 documentary "Face of Britain" and done by universities (UCL did a few) have shown that generally the population of Wales, Cornwall and to a lesser extent Devon are mostly indigenous Britons (i.e. similar to Celts and Basques). England is predominantly Anglo-Saxon (in the Y chromosome) with a bit of Celt mixed in and Scotland is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Norwegian but predominantly Celt.
AshamanKaine 9 months ago
Old English, sounds like German
TheAwakenedHeretic 9 months ago
IF YOU ARE FED UP OF BEING REFERRED TO AS A MONGREL BECAUSE YOU ARE ENGLISH LIKE THIS COMMENT!!!
JimBell1984 10 months ago
cool !
2ravens2wolves 10 months ago
Thank you so much for posting this beautiful recording.
Mira0Sekelsky 10 months ago
I'm proud to be English and a mongrel
jagdpanther1944 10 months ago 13
this is awesome! love it!
ciaolatina 10 months ago
awesome.
old and middle english >> modern english
x0TheJackal0x 11 months ago
The English are often described as a mongrel race which is essentially true, and before anyone starts insisting I am attempting to insult the english I inform you that I'm a proud Yorkshireman.
This is true of many cultures and languages it was the way of things many years ago that people would invade each other or migrate peacefully integrating and influencing the local population who were also influenced by the native culture themselves.
Any comments welcome, just refrain from being vicious.
daveg2800 11 months ago
@daveg2800 My dog is a mongrel.
Thisbloodypave 11 months ago
@Thisbloodypave as are many :-)
daveg2800 11 months ago
@daveg2800 true but the anglo saxons manily coverd the south of engalnd and a bit of the north so i dont think everyone is a mongrel
stealth1692 10 months ago
@daveg2800 That is correct,but honestly,we can say the same about every human race-I very much there is one and only pure race,or that in fact,it is ever been-it´s just a excuse,for the weak minded,and the insecure to improve their ego =)
sergius666 10 months ago
Languages that have affected English are primarily Old English (and its evolutions), Norman French, Old Norse, Latin and Celtic Languages but not necessarily in that order (by time or influence).
This is the reason why in modern English there are some words that mean basically the same thing such as big, tall and large.
Regional variations of English still exist to this date that affect pronunciation, to the point that Scots is considered a language in itself that evolved from Old English.
daveg2800 11 months ago
Old English is a relevantly pointless term given that the language we know of as Old English is a mix of slightly different though closely related languages primarily from Jutland (Denmark) Frisian (The Netherlands) Saxony and Angeln (Germany).
Neither language was initially written down the same even by people of the same tribe as spelling wasn't standardised. English has evolved in the same way many languages have by the introduction of loan words from other languages.
daveg2800 11 months ago
Wow, an epic flame war on this subject, what ever happened to respecting another views and presenting a well thought out counter-arguament with no intention of getting another's back up.
Firstly I confess I haven't studied Old English to a great degree and don't wish to give my view as gospel but here goes.
Sorry for the multiple posts but there is a lot to cover on this subject, I'll try to group them around similar theme's.
daveg2800 11 months ago
I like it, but are you sure that the Anglo-Saxons rolled their "r"s like that?
Anonie324 1 year ago
@Anonie324 Although this is not really confirmed, it does seem quite likely, as for example the Swedish also roll the 'r' on occasion, as do some german dialekts like Francish.
AjPuj 11 months ago
English is a mix. Why are you all so thick skulled and for god knows what reason refuse to understand that what we speak now is an evolved variant of old English. Excitement, constition, anything with an "ent" at the end is a derivative of Latin. Britain was owned by romans, celts, and French. Are you surprised that you can't understand this video by being a native modern English speaker? No, because if you went back 1000 years speaking what you do now, they would think you to be a witch!
vwbora1point8T 1 year ago
It seems similar to norwegian :D
breizhcatalonia1993 1 year ago
@breizhcatalonia1993 Probably because the Germanic tribes that formed the Anglo-Saxons were from Modern day North Germany & Denmark..
NewAccountFFS 1 year ago
A good dramatic reading - but we will never know whether us English (Anglo Saxons) rolled our letter 'R's as much as this. Germans in the north of Germany (which is what we English basically are) don't - they use the backs of their throats to pronounce words beginning with the letter R. I am doubtful the letter R was pronounced with the tongue.
Blabloo72 1 year ago
@Blabloo72 Except we aren't German though, England is older than Germany as a country.
NewAccountFFS 1 year ago
@NewAccountFFS A people can't be older than the people that founded it. Granted, Germany became a country in the 1800s when a group of kingdoms combined but they were basically the same people with the same language but who just chose to have a nationalistic allegiance to an entity called 'a country'. Basically, the Romans left Britain to defend present day Italy (Rome) and the Germans saw there chance at a new land - trust me, English people are German/Dutch and Southern Danish.
Blabloo72 1 year ago 10
@Blabloo72 Actually, the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes were a ruling class and the language filtered down to their Celtic subjects. Genetic studies show that the British people have more connection to Spain than Germany. Only in East Anglia do numbers reach about parity. Same with the Franks/French. The Frankish tribe was only 50,000 strong when they first crossed into Gaul, but they gave their identity to their subjects through language.
Fadedglory343 9 months ago
@Fadedglory343 Correction: in East Anglia most of the native British were wiped out by the Romans in the time of Boudicca, & Norwich was garrisoned by Saxon foederati who settled there, & apparently peacefully became part of the Anglo-Saxon area in the 5-6th centuries. There was widespread "ethnic cleansing" of native Britons in other areas - as indicated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (eg Sussex & the storming of Anderida (Pevensey), one of the last Roman Saxon Shore Forts holding out). MTF ...
SlaineOz 8 months ago
@Fadedglory343 ... Also, blood tests done in the early 1990's showed blood types in England were roughly divided between those that reflected Germanic lineage in the eastern 2/3 and Celtic in the western 1/3 (with pockets of British lineage in certain places in the East, such as at St Albans & part of London). However I do agree that after the power of the Romano-British elite had been smashed in the early 6th century (prob around 537AD), the Saxons began a period of conquest, in which ... MTF
SlaineOz 8 months ago
@SlaineOz You do realise 14 million people in England are of part Irish descent, including myself partially and Ireland is the country with the highest frequency of R1b so it shouldn't be a suprise that it shows up when genes are tested.
NorthernerMatty123 8 months ago
@NorthernerMatty123 Actually, I thought it was between 6-8 Million Poms were of Irish descent, but no matter. I'm not 100% with racial gene theory, so what's the R1b gene?
SlaineOz 8 months ago
@Fadedglory343 ... the British-Welsh culture was destroyed thru a combinatn of enslaving British women & killing many of the men, killing the bearers of culture such as priests, enslaving the artisans useful to the Saxon (as indicated by the early AEnglisc status of smiths being that of slaves or extremely low) - all of which gradually resulted in the absorption and "acculturation" of the remaining conquered British within AEnglisc society. The population of the pre-Saxon British for their MTF
SlaineOz 8 months ago
@Fadedglory343 ... for their part had been decimated by plagues that were recorded as having swept thru the late Roman Empire, & prob were adversely affected by the climactic event of Krakatoa early in the 6thC (about 537AD). They were related to both the Gauls and the Iberians - as indicated by both legend & DNA tests ... I hope this helps ...
SlaineOz 8 months ago
@Blabloo72 "English people are German/Dutch and Southern Danish". I think the Celts of Britain are more numerous than the invading Germanics. Don't forget them. Also I notice that English people are darker and shorter than the Dutch/Germans/Danes.
flyonthewall37 9 months ago
@flyonthewall37 I am not understanding what you are saying. Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians tend to be light brown-haird or blonds and tall not darker or shorter. If you went back to the Dark Ages then most Germanics would have been blonds and with the odd red head that the Romans had stolen from Northen England (they didn't venture into Scotland - they built a wall the width of England).
Blabloo72 6 months ago
@Blabloo72 What I'm saying is that genetically the English look shorter and tend to have dark hair unlike the Germanics/Nordics. The English are mixed, but more on the Celtic side than Germanics/Nordics. That's why I said the English tend to have a higher population of people who are shorter and have darker hair. Just look at the Dutch and Danes and compare them to the English.
flyonthewall37 6 months ago
@flyonthewall37 It's not that clear cut. My father is typically Nordic in appearance with platinum blonde hair and blue eyes, and my mother a porcelain skinned, dark haired, short, Celtic 'type'.
I'm 6'2, have my father's face, but am dark-skinned, and with tight, black curly hair, whereas my 4 sisters are all platinum blondes with v.white skin.
English people seem to have the most varied looking people in Europe, with many of the pigeon-holed types turning up within a single family.
hombrerelents 6 months ago
@hombrerelents It's not clear cut because English peopel are very mixed. Having blond hair and being tall is part of the prerequisite of the Germanic/Nordic type, but it is overated. There are middle-eastern and Slavic people who have those traits. You also have to take into consideration the facial features, i.e. head shape in the general population as well. You might not be the typical Englishmen. I've met English people, Dutch and Danes and the Danes are the most homogeneous looking.
flyonthewall37 6 months ago
@Blabloo72 that's what flyonthewall37 said, exactly. :P
alexpjp 5 months ago
@Blabloo72 German is from Spear Man. Germany as a country is fairly modern German as a culture predates written history.
Buginout74 8 months ago
@Blabloo72 And Scandinavian (viking invasions) and Spanish (thousands of years BC) :)
Tharpe09 6 months ago
@Blabloo72 There's Roman in there too, during the Roman occupations of Britain there was a lot of inter-marriage between the Romans and the local Celts. This created a Romano-British hybrid culture. Not all the Romans went back to Italy.
agentm83 4 months ago
@Blabloo72 Learn to spell "their" before you correct someone.
SomeGuy9746 2 months ago
When we want to know how "wæteru" sounds , we compare English "Water" with other spoken cognates of "water". But that isn't the end. After that , we take other similar old English "odd words" and we compare them with their English descendants and their cognates. After obtaining sufficient evidence, we come to the conclusion that Old English uses a different rule when speaking written words.
We then use the rule to find out how words sound.
Make sense?
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 What the @%#, do you think you're some sort of linguistic genius who can prove all the world wrong? Lol where'd you get this nonsense you're writing? People have been studying OE for 300 years already and they've come to the conclusion that it's read how it's read. What evidence do you have and what conclusions can you possibly make when you don't know what the G.V.Shift is? How the hell is OE a median when the other Germanic languages are contemporary to Modern English? Dude...
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus Honestly, you look utterly retarded. When we want to know how waeteru sounds we look at it and read the letters. I understand that most English speakers don't understand the concept of letter, but then they don't come to the internet denying universal truths. Why the hell would it sounds as "shit" if it's written as "candy"? You don't make any sense whatsoever.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
Firstly , NO language (unless constructed or transliterated) will sound the way that it looks. Instead , we have the IPA to help us understand how letters are spoken in other languages. Even English , our language , doesn't sound the way it is written.
The Great vowel Shift was proposed in the late 1800s. With the technology we have today , the research , and the countless resources , I think maybe the GVS has a few inaccuracies at least.
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 A languages Yeah so the ancient germans loved adding letters to words for fun just so their language wouldn't look ho it sounded? WTF, OE is the median between English and Proto-Germanic. Old High German is the median between High German and the same crap. But a language spoken 1.5 thousand years ago can't be a medium to another modern lanugage dude. You have any brain damage? Btw there's 2 syllables in water,voda,hydor and always been, where'd you taken this "u": from? Taking drugs?
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
When I said "median" , I meant that it was between Modern English , Old Saxon , and Old Norse , and a few others. But since those languages branch off into modern languages , then I can say that Old English is the median between Modern English and all other Germanic languages.
alexross8 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
Yea , I know that there are two syllables in "water".
But in old english , water was spelled "wæteru". Even though it looks like a 3rd syllable , the "u" acts silently and makes the vowel before that sound different than it usually would.
The evidence of course , is the fact that most Germanic languages have 2 syllable cognates of "water". That is just one of many words in Old English that looks different than it sounds.
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 Links and facts. What sound exactly? You know in my short course of Old English I've never seen a U in waeter and never heard of any letter changing other letter. I have a feeling you are either very retarded, a troll, or a retarded troll.
Show me any source where it says about U changing preceeding vowels(lol) and any dictionary where waeter has an U at the end.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
I highly and seriously doubt that you took a short Old English. if you did , then it must have been a poor one. First of all , there is no standard Old English dictionary. the Old English dialects vary .
I had seen the ''u'' in a west saxon version of Genesis from the bible. But it is also apparent in other words. ''sunu'' (son) . Also , when I say ''median'' I am talking about an inbetween language .
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 You dumb lying twat, I told you to show me THE dictionary and tell me THE sound. You must be a jew or something. Brainless cock that opens his mouth to spread shit he has no idea about, I hate and contempt the likes of you. You've read the first paragraph in the wikipedia OE article and you already think you can talk random rubbish and pretend it's scientific? Sunu, roflmao, has the fucking U because it's another word, retard, LOL. I hope you get seriously sick. Fuck off, cunt.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
I know "sunu" has the "u" , but it's silent.
It makes the first "u" shorter.
If you have read my comments , then you would know why that is.
Also , antisemitism , seriously?
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 Fuck you, cocksucker, I can't fucking believe a man can lie so boldly. Do you raise your inferior self-esteem by claiming some random shit with an educated look? Your mom is a whore and your dad fucks you.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
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@VictorSobakus
How am I lying to you?
alexross8 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@VictorSobakus Have you nothing better to do than to spend all day harassing educated folk with your filth and buggery?
AwakeningMessengers 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus you have no idea what you're talking about. and, dictionaries are not fact... truly.... I mean, dictionaries are based on the spoken language... or in dead languages, what we know of them. Languages, outside of the dictionary, vary greatly from class, region and time period.... so likewise, dictionaries will vary.... There is often no black and white with language. TWAT.
AwakeningMessengers 1 year ago
@AwakeningMessengers You retrarded shithole, you didn't learn even the basics of OE, and I did. You don't know fucking crap about it and I do. You don't fucking write "shit" as "shootaey" if you didn't earlier and have no orthography to preserve. And yes we do know how a written dead language was pronounced you dumb retarded pile of fieces, that's what LINGUISTICS IS FOR. Do you fucking realise that it is a science and not some fucking random speculation you ignorant cunt?
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
No , we don't know how dead languages are pronounced, which is the reason why they are dead in the first place, because no one that can speak it is still alive. We do know how Old English is written , and we do know that it correlates with it's phonology (As all languages usually do except some hieroglyphic languages) . Also , we do have systems which are inherently similar to it in writing .What we don't know is how it's spoken.
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 If I said we do, it means we do, tard. What we really don't know is if it's your dog or you using the computer. I'm greatly inclined to think it's the former.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
Share with me , how do you know that people know how it's pronounced , when the fact of the matter is that It's an extinct language and you claim that comparative research doesn't work?
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 Because I learned the fucking thing, you thick-headed brick. And I didn't claim that shit. Your nonsense is not a research and not comparative. I'm tired of conversing with a wall, sorry mate, I wish you long and terrible diarrhea, because you're the most fucking annoying person I've met on the Internet in about 6 years.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus one letter, vowels to be exact, quite often change another. It's apparent in modern English, in fact... as well as other languages... Portuguese, for one. for instance, in English (Modern), 'plan' and 'plane'.... or 'win' and 'wine'. the silent 'e' changes the proceeding vowel to a long vowel. In Portuguese 'novo' (new masc.) and nova (new fem.) are pronounced differently with the 'o'.... the first, no-vu, the second noa- va... a opens the vowel that proceeds the consonant.
AwakeningMessengers 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus so, letters changing another simply by placement is actually quite common.
AwakeningMessengers 1 year ago
@AwakeningMessengers Now if you retarded douches think that if comparative linguistics seems more comprehensible to you than astrophysics and thus you feel at ease to pop your shithole from some den of yours and start arguing with the people who actually STUDY the thing while you can't do so in case of astrophysics, you'd better go fuck your moms. It's precisely because of people like YOU cunts that humanity couldn't wrap it's head around the fact that Earth is round.THEY DIDN'T FALL DOWN GODDAM
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@alexross8 Okay... I didn't know that... I had seen other words, such as 'sonu', for son, and I pondered how perhaps that might be pronounced, and if we dropped the 'u' sound over time. What you're saying makes a lot of since, and I'm newly inspired to go dig deeper in my research. I'm assuming 'sonu' follows the same line of pronunciation. Do you know?
AwakeningMessengers 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
OE is the median , because it is closer to other Germanic languages.
And no , I am not a genius. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out the obvious.
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 So are you saying everybody in modern linguistics are dumb?
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@alexross8 Also, fuck it, OE is the median between PGmc and ME. PGmc IS THE MEDIAN BETWEEN ALL THE GERMANICS. IPGmc the median between OE and ON. How the fuck a language that has a median between it and some other be that same median? Man I just don't get is that so hard to twig by yourself? How come you know how to type???
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
Old English must make sense as the median between English and other Germanic languages , otherwise Old English wouldn't be Modern English's ancestor.
The only thing we can use to accurately understand how the Anglo Saxons spoke , is the comparison between Spoken Modern English and other Spoken Germanic languages. written , many consonants and vowels can deceive you. For example , someone may mistake the German "w" to sound like English's "W" , but it doesn't.
alexross8 1 year ago
Also , æ in old english , didn't always make the same sound. "G" didn't always make the "g" sound. Sometimes , "G" made the "Y" consonantal sound. A good example is "dæg" , which means "day".
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 And there's no written tradition to keep. You wouldn't understand anything up to 16th sentury if English had a sane orthography. Consonants' pronunciation depended on their surroundings, like S is Z between vowels, th is voiced as well, G sounded 3 different ways(one of them like the Greek one). That didn't matter because they were 1 phoneme, only pronounced in different ways, you couldn't confuse words if you mixed them up. But U or naught made a difference in case for example.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@alexross8 All in all I heartily suggest you to refrain from saying shit if you don't know shit about shit, dude. The e changing vowels happend around 16 sent. and is called The Great Vowel Shift, go google it. Pretending to know more than you do only makes you look dumber man. One thing is carefully suggesting that all the globe pronounces shit wrong, but stating it without even knowing some friggin basic facts about your own, retarded as it is, language makes a laughingstock of oneself.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
We might actually have more in common with German than this stuff.
Campbell1004 1 year ago
so...this is original english language?
KimIsMissing 1 year ago
@KimIsMissing Yes.
KDWorldBrickPix 1 year ago
Funny that we have even Anglofied the French words with out "ed" and "ing" endings.... Made latin/French words Germanic sounding. Like constructionum is now "konstructing" or "konstrukt"
caltrane74 1 year ago
did they roll every single "r"?
DrJuice1 1 year ago
@DrJuice1
No, the 'r' in Germanic languages is usually uvular.
jigoku66 1 year ago
Did they really use that kind of trill?? I have no idea.
beamla 1 year ago
I don't think this is accurate in pronunciation .
People think Old English is this fantastical language that sounds completely different than English of Modern. It's just another west-Germanic language. It's quite similar to German , but it's even more-so to Dutch. And because people think to exaggerate the influence of French into English , they like to pronounce words the way it looks , vowels and all. "nama" is not pronounced "Na-Ma" , it's pronounced "name" (Second vowel changes first one)
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8
I don't think it's good to overexaggerate - I think with nama it'd be like the Modern German.
starrysky94 1 year ago
@alexross8 I didn't quite get your point, but if you mean that OE nama sounds just like name in Modern English (neim), you must be retarded.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 Orly? Modern "water" is pronounced as "wote". But what in the damnation makes you think that there's no third syllable in wæteru? Why the hell would they write an 'U' there then? Not to mention that [æ] and [o] are very different sounds, as well as r and no r.
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
I don't know where you are from , but here in Canada , "water" is pronounced "Wat-er".
Why would they write a "U" there , you ask? I don't know... Why do we write "E" at the end of "name"? Why is there a "E" at the end of "nice"?
It's because those additional vowels help make other vowels sound different.
alexross8 1 year ago
@alexross8 Maybe it's your French or maybe all English speakers don't know the Latin alphabet, but "a" is more or less the vowel in "hard". I've never heard "water pronounced this way.
Next, if you don't know then don't pretend you do, not following this simple rule is exactly what makes you look retarded. There's shit at the end of modern English words because it was pronounced in Middle Ages. The shit at the end of Old English words is pronounced because it's the first form of written English
VictorSobakus 1 year ago
@VictorSobakus
There are more than 1000 words that English and many other Germanic languages have in common. A great many of those words have cognates of the same amount of syllables. If , for example , I examine a few Old English words , and they neither have the same amount of syllables as distant or descendant cognates , then wouldn't you find it a bit strange? Old English must make sense as a medium between Modern English and other Germanic languages .
alexross8 1 year ago
you sound very American when you say "Saxon", lol
SohoDelights 1 year ago
@SohoDelights It's possible the Anglo-Saxons sounded very similar to Americans. Some scholoars believe that the English of the past, as far back as Shakespeare, had what we would today call an american accent. (So I've been told, anyways).
evilmick66 1 year ago
Why do you pronounce "eac" first as [‘eak] in "and his brothor eac,", but as [‘eat∫] in "swelce Scyttisc eac" (which I believe would be correct), and eventually without a diphthong as [‘εk] in "swelce seofone eac eorlas Anlafes, unrim herges"?
vineta1879 1 year ago
anglo-saxons should be exterminated and england repopulated with welsh,irish,scotts
bertoletti8912 1 year ago
@bertoletti8912 You should be exterminated. With immediate effect.
KateFan 1 year ago
@bertoletti8912 - What - the Scots from Ireland,or the Scots who were Angles?
As for the Irish- what has Anglo-Saxon England to do with them? Their problems with the English Crown didn't start until AFTER the Norman Conquest.
The only reason the English came to Britain ,in numbers,was because the Britons (Welsh) invited them (to fight the Picts and Scots). Should have fought their own battles and not tried to double- cross their English mercenaries, and "Welsh" on the deal!
adventussaxonum 1 year ago
@adventussaxonum I meant that welsh,irish and scotts to some extent can claim their celtic descendency.Thus the have some right to the land under anglo-saxon occupation.
bertoletti8912 1 year ago
@bertoletti8912 - The Irish have no claim over English land,neither have the Scots. The Welsh may have a point,although the Celtic strain in modern Englishmen
would come from those "Celts" who didn't flee to Wales and therefore have every right to be here.
Do the southern Germans of "Celtic" stock ,or the French descendants of ancient Gauls, have "some right" to English land?
BTW, the La Tene "Celts" invaded and occupied areas of Britain inhabited by the original inhabitants-should they go?
adventussaxonum 1 year ago
@bertoletti8912
You sound like Adolf Hitler.
Also, the Irish belong in Ireland, as do the Scots who were originally from Ireland. Learn some damn history before making stupid statements.
Gobloreclan 1 year ago
Love this... English for the WIN!
Zeanu 1 year ago
how do ppl know how english was supposed to be pronounced back then? it's not like we have any audio clips from a thousand years ago.
creamyfilling102 1 year ago
@creamyfilling102 Because people passed it on.
Ganges172 1 year ago
@Ganges172
No, we understand the consonants and continental vowel sounds because of comparative phonology and internal evidence. Of course, Old English directly evolved into the language we speak today, but nobody 'passed it on' per-se; by the late Middle Ages, 'Old English' as recorded by the Anglo Saxons was effectively a dead language like Latin or Greek.
resurgam44 1 year ago
@creamyfilling102
I once heard a Latin scholar say that the pronunciation of Latin as taught today was nothing more than an "accepted" accent, standardised by the academic world for ease of teaching. I would therefore imagine it's pretty much the same for Anglo-Saxon, the pronunciation of which probably varied across time and region. Certain words have changed in modern English over the last few years alone. To me, "Nephew" is pronounced "Neff-yu", to my mother - "Nev-yu" ...
nunnsofunky 1 year ago
@creamyfilling102
.... also ...
The French taught in schools today is just "standard" French - many pronunciations being a far cry from the French spoken in rural parts of southern France. English taught to foreign student tends to be of the "BBC" variety. The first time a French colleague met a Geordie colleague at work, he refused to believe he was speaking English at all!
nunnsofunky 1 year ago
@creamyfilling102
It's not just pronunciation that changes in a very short space of time, either. It's the tone in which it's spoken that changes, too. Example being the classmates of my 12-year-old daughter who insist on using AQI - where statements are made to sound like questions? My name is Fred? I'm feeling fine? I'm sure my daughter would be doing it if it weren't for the fact that I irritate her by constantly saying, "You telling me or asking me?" :-D
nunnsofunky 1 year ago
And the Irish, Welsh and Scots complain about England invading their countries should think again they started it by invading England.
Well done to the Saxons for standing there ground.
Also what what England Forever be in Old English thinking about getting a tattoo
mcrudeboi123456789 1 year ago
This was really cool for someone like me who's studied a little German; I can recognize modern German constructions such as the "ge-" prefix on participles and placing verbs at the end of sentences. As I read and listened, I could recognize Old English words that sound like modern synonyms for words in the text, such as "swarthy" for dark and "ground" for land. I was surprised that "dreary" sounds almost exactly the same as it does today.
raleighoak 1 year ago
RRRRR sounds like hebrew xD
LordEizen 1 year ago
Even with all the French words, English still sounds very, very North Germanic. I mean how can it not help sounding northern. every forth word ends with a hard "ing" or "ining" sound, other words have constant endings like "d", "t" "k" and "p". Every second word, starts, ends with "TH", if not it's in the middle of the word.
caltrane74 1 year ago
@caltrane74
Yees.
MaBu888 1 year ago
OnlyEnglish1, great point about Geordie! When I've heard it spoken, I've thought the same thing. But how much influence did the Norman French language have on the English that became the Geordie accent?
nicodagger 1 year ago
This is perfect
StueyLestrange 1 year ago
cool
ThisAlbion 1 year ago
I thought Old English "r's" weren't supposed to be trilled. It sounds better but I wonder why it's still pronounced in this way.
NoirHammer 1 year ago
Great job with this. I have trouble getting my mouth around a lot of the OE phonemes, but this flows perfectly.
Pavel1234 1 year ago
Beautiful.
Seaweedwitch 1 year ago 5
"if the Vikings had won we would be speaking a language closer to Danish and Norwegian to this day."
Old English is very close to Old Norse, so I'm not sure it would be that different... the Norman conquest is far more relevant in that area, and they were largely of Norse descent.
withindarkness 2 years ago 13
English today is more 'basterdized' than Old English, English today is derived from Latin [Italian maybe?], French [Norman French], Old English [Frisian too], and Danish. Frisian however seems to resemble English alot.
seamuspowers 1 year ago
@withindarkness
Yes, but unfortunately those traitors had turned "French" in the meantime -
typical! :-)
BUt if you shave of all the Normannic French and Latin influences you are left with a basic language that even today is still quite similar to the Scandinavian languages.
Bjowolf2 1 year ago
@withindarkness
They even seem to have undergone similar grammatic simplifications to those that Old English went through during the "clash" with the Norse language that produced Middle English (apart from the French & the Latin!). A lot of Early Middle English sounds like a Scandinavian language - judging from the reconstructed samples I have heard. Many simple words are easily recogniseable, because the Great Vowel Shift hadn't begun yet.
Bjowolf2 1 year ago
@withindarkness
But even so English is still a fairly easy language for us Scandinavians to learn, since we "mysteriuously" seem to know all the basic rules and a lot of the basic vocabulary in advance. Now, if only all languages were like that ... ;-)
Bjowolf2 1 year ago
@withindarkness
Vi kan allerede tale engelsk fra start-en - vi haver alting i hoved-et ;-)
( We can already 'talk. English from the start - we have all things in the (our)
head ( = hoved - OE act. had "hufud" for "head" !, Swedish still has "huvud" ! ) ).
Bjowolf2 1 year ago
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@withindarkness
Vi kan allerede tale engelsk fra start-en - vi haver alting i hoved-et ;-)
( We can already 'talk. English from the start - we have all things in the (our)
head ( = hoved - OE act. had "hufud" for "head" !, Swedish still has "huvud" ! ).
Bjowolf2 1 year ago
@withindarkness
And even today English is remarkably similar to Danish, Swedis and Norwegian
( which are really just dialects of a common scand. language ) in many surprising ways - esp with respect to basic vocabulary - nouns, adjectives, verbs and prepositions etc. - and also the basic grammar ( word order, inflections ).
This makes it fairly esay for us in Scandinavia to pick up English, since we "mysteriously" seem to know half of it already - a really good foundation to build upon.
Bjowolf2 1 year ago
@withindarkness
You won't be able to tell, by just hearing these languages, but when you see
them in writing, it not very hard to see. Also the way he reads ths poem
sounds very "Norse" to me.
The grammar of OE / AS was also far more complex and had lots more inflections. In that respect ME seems to have a taken a more Norse course -
ME being the fusion between AS and Norse. Maybe they simply gave up on the old system because it became too difficult. So now the grammars are very parallel.
Bjowolf2 1 year ago
@withindarkness
Even though the Normans were of Norse descent, they adopted the french language of the time.
TheLeminkainen 1 year ago
@withindarkness
To be honest it isn't, really. Sure it has a few similarities, but it's basically old German, not Old Norse.
Being both a German and English native speaker, I see more similarities with German than Norse. I initially thought Old Norse was pretty much Old German, but it's really very different. Though obviously Old Norse words would be included in Old English as the Vikings invaded northern Germany - where the Saxons come from - and England.
starrysky94 1 year ago
@withindarkness the vikings did win, they had settlements everywhere
Kiefty 1 year ago
@withindarkness
English, German, Dutch and Yiddish are West Germanic.
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish are North Germanic (just like Old Norse)
Old English was much closer to modern German than Norse. However Modern English has many French words, because of the Normans who invaded and conquered it in 1066.
MiracleKD18 1 year ago