Old English question
l_n...@istar.ca
here goes. I'm fascinated about the English language and I wanted to
learn more about its history. I was reading a text in Old English from a
website and found it completely unreadable. I couldn't find one word
from it that I could find in today's English, so how does Old English
contribute to the English of today, and by how much. I understand that
most English words are foreign but is it really ALL of them or just a
percentage. Could you name a few English words today that are from Old
English? I'm just curious, please help. Thanks.
dmitri mosier
question.............
Phil Herring
> hi, I'm a newcomer and I don't know if I am asking a stupid question, so
> here goes. I'm fascinated about the English language and I wanted to
> learn more about its history.
A good, popular text is "The Mother Tongue", by Bill Bryson. It covers
much of the history of the language from its Saxon origins onward.
Brian M. Scott
[...]
> I understand that
> most English words are foreign but is it really ALL of them or just a
> percentage. Could you name a few English words today that are from Old
> English?
Many of the most common words have Old English antecedents. Some modern
English words (chosen pretty much at random) with their OE ancestors in
parentheses: sing (singan), high (heah), head (heafod), all (eall), and
(and), oak (ac), willow (welig), tree (treow), rough (ruh). As you can
see, many of them have changed form rather noticeably.
Brian M. Scott
Peter T. Daniels
Inaccurately. Read it if you want to perpetuate a lot of myths for
another generation.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Peter T. Daniels
>
> >hi, I'm a newcomer and I don't know if I am asking a stupid question, so
> >here goes. I'm fascinated about the English language and I wanted to
> >website and found it completely unreadable. I couldn't find one word
> >from it that I could find in today's English, so how does Old English
> >most English words are foreign but is it really ALL of them or just a
> >percentage. Could you name a few English words today that are from Old
> >
> hm.......I bet Peter is going to think this is another homework
> question.............
Can you point to some discourse features suggesting that?
l_nozza, you'll enjoy David Crystal's *Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Language*, and if that doesn't satisfy you, go on to his *Cambridge
Encyclopedia of the English Language*, which contains a vast amount of
information but always clearly presented.
Ras William I
>hi, I'm a newcomer and I don't know if I am asking a stupid question, so
>here goes. I'm fascinated about the English language and I wanted to
>learn more about its history. I was reading a text in Old English from a
>website and found it completely unreadable. I couldn't find one word
>from it that I could find in today's English, so how does Old English
>contribute to the English of today, and by how much. I understand that
>most English words are foreign but is it really ALL of them or just a
>percentage. Could you name a few English words today that are from Old
>English? I'm just curious, please help. Thank
Hi I'm a newcomer and I don't know if asking so here goes
about the English wanted to learn more its
was reading in Old from found
couldn't find one word that today's how does by much
understand most but all them or
name few
help Thanks
Aba Selama
Peter T. Daniels
Not "web"?
Harlan Messinger
That's what I was going to do. Just to explain to L. Nozza, these are
all the words in your own question that reached us from Old English.
Some words are hybrids. In "unreadable", for example, "read" and the
prefix "un" date from Old English, while the suffix "able" is from
Latin. The root "complete" is from French, but the suffix "ly" that
you attached goes back to Old English.
--
Harlan Messinger
There are no Zs in my actual e-mail address.
Neil Coffey
> website and found it completely unreadable. I couldn't find one word
> from it that I could find in today's English, so how does Old English
> contribute to the English of today, and by how much. I understand that
> most English words are foreign but is it really ALL of them or just a
> percentage. Could you name a few English words today that are from Old
> English? I'm just curious, please help. Thanks.
As a very general rule, many short words (esp. monosyllabics) with what
one might consider to be a 'fundamental' meaning either stem from Old
English or come from a closely-related variety.
A couple of complications to consider are (a) early loans from varieties
such as Old Norse (cf. 'sky') and later loans from or via various Germanic
and non-Germanic varieties (cf. 'sketch') which, due to processes
such as apocope, can ressemble OE words; (b) words which, although
they have cognates in other Germanic varieties, actually came into English
via Romance. For example, although German 'Titte' and English 'teat' might
be considered cognates, the latter arrives in English via French 'tet(t)e'
(for which the etymological dictionary I have to hand postulates early
Germanic '*titta').
Sometimes the social distribution of words can hide a number of words
which linger on from Old English. For example, Germanic 'dale' has all
but given way to Romance 'valley'.
Neil
Christian Weisgerber
> such as apocope, can ressemble OE words; (b) words which, although
> they have cognates in other Germanic varieties, actually came into English
> via Romance. For example, although German 'Titte' and English 'teat' might
> be considered cognates, the latter arrives in English via French 'tet(t)e'
Actually, the obvious German cognate is "Zitze". And, if my Random
House webster is trustworthy, it is cognate with English "tit",
which indeed derives from OE.
German "Titte" must be a later re-import from some place that didn't
suffer the High German sound shift. Unfortunately, it isn't listed
in any of my dictionaries that give an etymology.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.rhein-neckar.de
Paul Davidson
English language from its roots as West Saxon (Old English) through Middle
English and Early Modern English to Present Day English. It also teaches
you invaluable linguistics knowledge in the process.
--
Paul Davidson
<l_n...@istar.ca> wrote in message news:379155FD...@istar.ca...
> hi, I'm a newcomer and I don't know if I am asking a stupid question, so
> here goes. I'm fascinated about the English language and I wanted to
> learn more about its history. I was reading a text in Old English from a
Neil Coffey
> Actually, the obvious German cognate is "Zitze".
Fair enough, though you'd presumably agree that 'Titte' is also
a cognate provided it is also derived from '*titta'.
> And, if my Random
> House webster is trustworthy, it is cognate with English "tit",
> which indeed derives from OE.
Hmm... perhaps somebody with an OED to hand might see if an OE
precursor to 'tit' is mentioned. The refs I have to hand do point
to OF 'tete'. I wonder if the OE form mentioned in RH might be
a loan from Fr?
Travis Bemann
> hi, I'm a newcomer and I don't know if I am asking a stupid question, so
> here goes. I'm fascinated about the English language and I wanted to
> learn more about its history. I was reading a text in Old English from a
> website and found it completely unreadable. I couldn't find one word
> from it that I could find in today's English, so how does Old English
> contribute to the English of today, and by how much. I understand that
> most English words are foreign but is it really ALL of them or just a
> percentage. Could you name a few English words today that are from Old
> English? I'm just curious, please help. Thanks.
Many words in modern English dialects which are also present in Old English
changed greatly between Old English and modern English dialects. Also, words in
modern English dialects which are Germanic (c.f. sky) aren't necessarily found
in Old English because there are a large number of loanwords from Old Norse
which are found in modern English dialects. The fact that these words are from
Old Norse is not apparent to most people. The easiest clue that a word of
Germanic origin in modern English dialects is a loanword from Old Norse is an
initial 'sk'. Initial 'sk' was lost in Old English and in Old High German, and
turned into an initial 'sh' (or 'sch' in the case of Old High German). Initial
'sk' was preserved in Dutch (not exactly, the 'k' -> Dutch 'ch'). Loanwords
from Old Norse and (probably much later) Dutch reintroduced the initial 'sk'
('sch' in the case of Dutch) into English dialects. Also, a good number of
words found in Old English were replaced by loanwords from French and Latin.
--
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Psix South Africa SDI Marxist nuclear Nazi supercomputer Mossad
Ben
> here goes. I'm fascinated about the English language and I wanted to
> learn more about its history. I was reading a text in Old English from a
> website and found it completely unreadable. I couldn't find one word
> from it that I could find in today's English, so how does Old English
> contribute to the English of today, and by how much. I understand that
> most English words are foreign but is it really ALL of them or just a
> percentage. Could you name a few English words today that are from Old
> English? I'm just curious, please help. Thanks.
you have finally hit upon the one useful aspect of the english spelling
system. every word with a silent 'gh' is of Germanic origin, as are most
words with a 'k' or a consonental 'y' or the combinations 'ay', 'ow' or
'kn', any double vowels (e.g. "ee") and pretty much any really illogical
spelling (the one exception that spring to mind is "debt" which I believe is
Romance) in addition to every irregular verb and every noun with an
irregular plural. there are other spelling clues which you can find for
yourself (that's the fun of linguistics).
Peter T. Daniels
> you have finally hit upon the one useful aspect of the english spelling
> system. every word with a silent 'gh' is of Germanic origin, as are most
> words with a 'k' or a consonental 'y' or the combinations 'ay', 'ow' or
> 'kn', any double vowels (e.g. "ee") and pretty much any really illogical
> spelling (the one exception that spring to mind is "debt" which I believe is
> Romance) in addition to every irregular verb and every noun with an
> irregular plural. there are other spelling clues which you can find for
> yourself (that's the fun of linguistics).
<Debt> isn't an inherited spelling; the <b> got put in in the 18th c.
(should be <dette> or some such, because it's borrowed from French) by
some lexicographer who thought it ought to look like Latin <debitus>.
The one "reform" I'd advocate is the reversal of such pedantic
pseudo-etymological mistakes.
Ras William I
>The one "reform" I'd advocate is the reversal of such pedantic
>pseudo-etymological mistakes.
I agree completely. These pedants have changed the fisnamy of English too
much!
Aba Selama
Mark Rosenfelder
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
><Debt> isn't an inherited spelling; the <b> got put in in the 18th c.
>(should be <dette> or some such, because it's borrowed from French) by
>some lexicographer who thought it ought to look like Latin <debitus>.
>
>pseudo-etymological mistakes.
Well, why not be the first autor to repudiate the dette placed on us
by those dammed pedants-- be an iland of sanity?
Peter T. Daniels
An excellent start: have you found a complete list of the offenders?
(Probably right there in Crystal, eh?)
Katie Schwarz
>> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> ><Debt> isn't an inherited spelling; the <b> got put in in the 18th c.
>> >(should be <dette> or some such, because it's borrowed from French) by
>> >some lexicographer who thought it ought to look like Latin <debitus>.
>> >
>> >The one "reform" I'd advocate is the reversal of such pedantic
>> >pseudo-etymological mistakes.
>>
>> Well, why not be the first autor to repudiate the dette placed on us
>> by those dammed pedants-- be an iland of sanity?
I'll join that revolution! However, you mean "damned" pedants -- you
have to keep the n because it represents an underlying sound that is
not pronounced at the end of a word after m because of a phonological
rule, but reappears in "damnation". Same with hymn, hymnal.
>An excellent start: have you found a complete list of the offenders?
>(Probably right there in Crystal, eh?)
"Doubt" should be "dout", same reason as "debt". And why is there an
i in "friend"?
--
Katie Schwarz
"There's no need to look for a Chimera, or a cat with three legs."
-- Jorge Luis Borges, "Death and the Compass"
Katie Schwarz
>i in "friend"?
Oops, I forgot: why is there a g in foreign, an o in people, and a p
in ptarmigan?
Mark Rosenfelder
Katie Schwarz <k...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>> Well, why not be the first autor to repudiate the dette placed on us
>>> by those dammed pedants-- be an iland of sanity?
>
>I'll join that revolution! However, you mean "damned" pedants -- you
>have to keep the n because it represents an underlying sound that is
>not pronounced at the end of a word after m because of a phonological
>rule, but reappears in "damnation". Same with hymn, hymnal.
You can say that you'd like to keep the two words related in appearance;
but I don't accept that the n is there in an underlying representation.
Verbs and their -tion nominalizations sometimes have different histories
and irregular quirks: assume/assumption, conceive/conception, conjoin/
conjunction, destroy/destruction, reveal/revelation, pronounce/
pronunciation, crown/coronation, etc. You can't always assump that
these have the same underlying formate.
Christian Weisgerber
> German "Titte" must be a later re-import from some place that didn't
> suffer the High German sound shift.
From what people tell me on de.etc.sprache.deutsch, the word is from Low
German.
Kim Bastin
>
> you have finally hit upon the one useful aspect of the english spelling
> system. every word with a silent 'gh' is of Germanic origin,
exception: _delight_ via Old French from Lat. _delectare_
> as are most
> words with a 'k' or a consonental 'y' or the combinations 'ay', 'ow' or
> 'kn', any double vowels (e.g. "ee")
_proceed_, _succeed_ are from Latin, _beef_ and the _-ee_ suffix from
French, _zoo_ (abbreviated from _zoological garden_) from Greek...
> and pretty much any really illogical
> spelling (the one exception that spring to mind is "debt" which I
> believe is Romance) in addition to every irregular verb
_quit_ and _spend_ are ultimately from Latin (though _spend_ was already
in Old English).
> and every noun with an irregular plural.
Other than the numerous foreign nouns borrowed with their plurals:
_formula/formulae_, _cactus/cacti_, _index/indices_, _genus/genera_,
_species/species_, _basis/bases_, _bureau/bureaux_ etc. etc.
> there are other spelling clues which you can find for
> yourself (that's the fun of linguistics).
These spelling and other clues are certainly useful for making
intelligent guesses, but each specific case has to be checked.
Kim Bastin
Bill Vaughan
wrote:
Wrt "damn" there may be another bit of evidence. Modern
reconstructions of Elizabethan English tend to pronounce the word in
two syllables, e.g. "Out, out, damnčd spot!"
Here I have always heard the "n" pronounced. However, I don't know if
this truly reflects the antique usage, or is only a stage affectation.
Ben
Bill Vaughan <bi...@osisoft.com> wrote in message
news:3797cfa6....@news.newsguy.com...
That two syllable thing has more to do with iambic pentameter than
Elizabethan speech
Peter T. Daniels
> Wrt "damn" there may be another bit of evidence. Modern
> reconstructions of Elizabethan English tend to pronounce the word in
> two syllables, e.g. "Out, out, damnèd spot!"
>
> Here I have always heard the "n" pronounced. However, I don't know if
> this truly reflects the antique usage, or is only a stage affectation.
Considering that when you put in the extra syllable it doesn't scan,
it's not likely it was pronounced in Early Modern English, either!
Mark Rosenfelder
Bill Vaughan <no.spa...@no.spam.osisoft.com> wrote:
>On 22 Jul 1999 16:56:57 GMT, mark...@enteract.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
>wrote:
>>but I don't accept that the n is there in an underlying representation.
>>Verbs and their -tion nominalizations sometimes have different histories
>>and irregular quirks: assume/assumption, conceive/conception, conjoin/
>>conjunction, destroy/destruction, reveal/revelation, pronounce/
>>pronunciation, crown/coronation, etc. You can't always assump that
>>these have the same underlying formate.
>
>reconstructions of Elizabethan English tend to pronounce the word in
>
>Here I have always heard the "n" pronounced. However, I don't know if
>this truly reflects the antique usage, or is only a stage affectation.
Go back far enough and you'll find an n... and a p; the word was first
<dampne>, from Old French <dampner>. Forms with a p hang on until the
mid-1500s.
The OED has some citations from 1340 to 1619 with just an m (dam, dame),
including an interesting past tense form <dambd> (1611).
<damn> appears in the 1500s, and is universal by the mid-1600s.
Note that this is about the same time that Latinizing forms like 'debt'
were also appearing.
I can't say how <damned> was pronounced (though that <dambd> is suggestive).
Still, none of this is evidence that there's an /n/ hanging around today.
Ras William I
>Peter wrote:
>
>>The one "reform" I'd advocate is the reversal of such pedantic
>>pseudo-etymological mistakes.
>I agree completely. These pedants have changed the fisnamy of English too
>much!
>
>Aba Selama
In case anyone was wondering about 'fisnamy' - it was once a common word in the
15th Century (also spelt visnomy), meaning what you can read in someone's
facial expression... Then the 17th Century pedants traced it to its Greek
roots and made it into 'physiognomy'... in doing so they practically killed
the word, because hardly anyone nowadays says 'physiognomy'...
Aba Selama
Colin Fine
<mark...@enteract.com> writes
>The OED has some citations from 1340 to 1619 with just an m (dam, dame),
>including an interesting past tense form <dambd> (1611).
>
><damn> appears in the 1500s, and is universal by the mid-1600s.
>Note that this is about the same time that Latinizing forms like 'debt'
>were also appearing.
>
>I can't say how <damned> was pronounced (though that <dambd> is suggestive).
>Still, none of this is evidence that there's an /n/ hanging around today.
Though it is definitely there in 'damnation'.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Colin Fine 66 High Ash, Shipley, W Yorks. BD18 1NE, UK |
| Tel: 01274 592696/0976 635354 e-mail: co...@kindness.demon.co.uk |
| "Don't just do something! Stand there!" |
| - from 'Behold the Spirit' (workshop) |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Katie Schwarz
>Katie Schwarz <k...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>
>>I'll join that revolution! However, you mean "damned" pedants -- you
>>have to keep the n because it represents an underlying sound that is
>>not pronounced at the end of a word after m because of a phonological
>>rule, but reappears in "damnation". Same with hymn, hymnal.
>
>but I don't accept that the n is there in an underlying representation.
Don't blame me, it wasn't my idea :-) -- I got it from _English
Grammar: Principles and Facts_ (1989) by Jeffrey Kaplan, SDSU Dept.
of Linguistics. He says there's a phonological rule that [n] is
deleted at the end of a word after [m]; I don't think there are any
counterexamples to that. The other examples are hymn - hymnal,
solemn - solemnity, autumn - autumnal, and (sometimes) limn - limner.
>Verbs and their -tion nominalizations sometimes have different histories
>and irregular quirks: assume/assumption, conceive/conception, conjoin/
>conjunction, destroy/destruction, reveal/revelation, pronounce/
>pronunciation, crown/coronation, etc. You can't always assump that
>these have the same underlying formate.
If the verb damnation isn't enough evidence for you, consider the
adjectives damnable and damnatory. Also, the n is in the etymology,
going back to the Old French dampner and Latin damnum; it's not a case
of a letter being inserted for the sake of a *false* etymology, like
island, anchor, delight, scissors and scythe. I don't think we need
to eradicate silent etymological fossils, as long as the pronunciation
is predictable.
mith...@indiana.edu
Katie Schwarz wrote:
> Mark Rosenfelder <mark...@enteract.com> wrote:
>
> >Verbs and their -tion nominalizations sometimes have different histories
> >and irregular quirks: assume/assumption, conceive/conception, conjoin/
> >conjunction, destroy/destruction, reveal/revelation, pronounce/
> >pronunciation, crown/coronation, etc. You can't always assump that
> >these have the same underlying formate.
>
> ...Also, the n is in the etymology,
> going back to the Old French dampner and Latin damnum; it's not a case
> of a letter being inserted for the sake of a *false* etymology, like
> island, anchor, delight, scissors and scythe. I don't think we need
> to eradicate silent etymological fossils, as long as the pronunciation
> is predictable.
I agree, but then again it raises the question (important to a stereotypical
purist anyway) whether an English spelling should reflect the etymology of a
loanword from before the time it entered English. Was it ever pronounced
"damn" at any time it was an English word? Similarly, was the b in "debt"
ever pronounced in English before the spelling reflected it? MAT
Mark Rosenfelder
>>but I don't accept that the n is there in an underlying representation.
>
>Don't blame me, it wasn't my idea :-) -- I got it from _English
>Grammar: Principles and Facts_ (1989) by Jeffrey Kaplan, SDSU Dept.
>of Linguistics. He says there's a phonological rule that [n] is
>deleted at the end of a word after [m]; I don't think there are any
>counterexamples to that. The other examples are hymn - hymnal,
>solemn - solemnity, autumn - autumnal, and (sometimes) limn - limner.
Oh, I'm not blaming you. :) But the synchronic evidence all comes from
derivational morphology, and I think that's weak evidence, for the reason
I went on to say:
>>Verbs and their -tion nominalizations sometimes have different histories
>>and irregular quirks: assume/assumption, conceive/conception, conjoin/
>>conjunction, destroy/destruction, reveal/revelation, pronounce/
>>pronunciation, crown/coronation, etc. You can't always assump that
>>these have the same underlying formate.
>
>If the verb damnation isn't enough evidence for you, consider the
>adjectives damnable and damnatory. Also, the n is in the etymology,
>going back to the Old French dampner and Latin damnum; it's not a case
>of a letter being inserted for the sake of a *false* etymology, like
>island, anchor, delight, scissors and scythe. I don't think we need
>to eradicate silent etymological fossils, as long as the pronunciation
>is predictable.
It's not a risibly false etymology, like 'island'; but it's false in that
it implies the word was borrowed from Latin rather than French. 'Debt'
is in the same category.
My favorite etymological horror-spelling is French _sc,apvoir_ (with
c-circumflex), which for some reason didn't catch on.
J. A. Rea
mark...@enteract.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>
>My favorite etymological horror-spelling is French _sc,apvoir_ (with
>c-circumflex), which for some reason didn't catch on.
notion of a c-circumflex in French promotes nausea! Then there is
that nice masculine looking French c with the little thingy dangling
underneath: a gorilla, or some such, I think.
Peter T. Daniels
And then there are those hypermasculine e's with their thingies stiff
and erect!
Dave Timpe
Colin Fine <co...@kindness.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:XZKNkVAu...@kindness.demon.co.uk...
| In article <7n9446$ijo$1...@eve.enteract.com>, Mark Rosenfelder
| <mark...@enteract.com> writes
| >The OED has some citations from 1340 to 1619 with just an m (dam, dame),
| >including an interesting past tense form <dambd> (1611).
| >
| ><damn> appears in the 1500s, and is universal by the mid-1600s.
| >Note that this is about the same time that Latinizing forms like 'debt'
| >were also appearing.
| >
| >I can't say how <damned> was pronounced (though that <dambd> is
suggestive).
| >Still, none of this is evidence that there's an /n/ hanging around today.
|
| Though it is definitely there in 'damnation'.
A spelling pronunciation? Dambd if I know.
--
Dave Timpe
davetimpe at cybrzn dot com