When in the USA, don't ever ask someone if you can borrow a rubber.
My mother, newly married and not long arrived from the States, started a teaching job in a huge Scottish comprehensive in the 70s. Like most new teachers she was worried about impressing her authority on a crowd of teenagers. In one of her first classes a boy put up his hand and asked her for a rubber. She tore such a strip off him that the word quickly got out NOT to mess with the new English teacher if that was how she reacted to someone forgetting to bring an eraser with them!
I had a neighbour called Welch. And she did.
And I had an insight into the double-dutch expression once on Dover Priory railway station. We used, on occasion, to have parties of travellers heading for the harbour, all from one background, and it gave the whole station a "foreign" sound, quite disorientating. So a party of Americans might make me feel as if I were on the set of Oklahoma, or waiting for the Aichison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. Or French might recall Paris.
One day I got off the train and there was a waiting party busily chatting away, and sounding English. Until I got among them, and found, definitely disorientatingly, that I could not understand a word. They were not speaking English, but were speaking Dutch, with an intonation that matched English. And I decided that that discombobulation of expecting to understand and then not doing so might have led to that expression.
We were one catching the train back from Canterbury to London. There were two couples (a couple of couples) travelling in the same section and we could not understand them. We thought they may have been Dutch or German but when they asked for guidance from the ticket inspector it turned out that they were from Yorkshire. Pronunciation very different to ours or much of the English we were used hearing from others. No doubt this foursome thought much the same of ours in return.
(And I hope this is in line with the hostly admonition)
In Australia, at least in the context of sports news, I often hear "ay-leet" (emphasis on first syllable) and have eventually worked out that what is meant is élite. How is that pronouncd in America?
There is, I understand, a passage in a book from the first printing in this country by Caxton about choosing versions of words. He tells a story of someone wanting a dish of eggs at a tavern in Kent, and being unable to get through to the serving girl, who called them a word like "eyren" (things found in an eyrie). One or other of the characters accused the other of being Dutch. It is a very old confusion.
In Australia, at least in the context of sports news, I often hear "ay-leet" (emphasis on first syllable) and have eventually worked out that what is meant is élite. How is that pronouncd in America?
I have never heard any other pronunciation here, save that the emphasis is on the second syllable. Then again, I don't often listen to sports news.
There is, I understand, a passage in a book from the first printing in this country by Caxton about choosing versions of words. He tells a story of someone wanting a dish of eggs at a tavern in Kent, and being unable to get through to the serving girl, who called them a word like "eyren" (things found in an eyrie). One or other of the characters accused the other of being Dutch. It is a very old confusion.
Which is odd, because the Old English and Dutch words for egg both lack the G. It's Old Norse which gives us Modern English Egg, which is why it was originally a Northern form; we got it from the Vikings.
Eyrie comes from Old French 'Aire' from Latin 'Area' and etymologically has nothing to do with eggs.
Is "American" or "Yankee" or equiv. ever used as an insulting verb in other countries? If so what does it mean?
I didn't think so. I can't remember where this came from, but I once found it useful in a wedding speech in Vermont (we now have four Yankee grandchildren):
“To an Englishman, a Yankee is an American; To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner; To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner; To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander; To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter, and to a Vermonter, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.”
There is, I understand, a passage in a book from the first printing in this country by Caxton about choosing versions of words. He tells a story of someone wanting a dish of eggs at a tavern in Kent, and being unable to get through to the serving girl, who called them a word like "eyren" (things found in an eyrie). One or other of the characters accused the other of being Dutch. It is a very old confusion.
Egg(e)s comes to English from Old Norse, and was the northern word for eggs in early middle English (due to the Norse influence). Ey (eyren is plural) comes from the old English for egg. (As I recall the story, it was French, rather than Dutch).
I didn't read the story - I heard it, so it has probably suffered from Chinese whispers. My mind is placing it in a particular lecture room at what was once an excellent place for adult education, and I suspect it was from the guy from the English Place Name Society - nothing else fits. And I've learned something.
I have gone back to the source - a bit hard to decipher the typeface - and indeed it was French. But I didn't imagine the Dutch, as these Northern merchants were heading for Zelande.
Re Dutch. Spent a couple weeks in Amsterdam. I've got some receptive German (understand what's said). After about 3 days I was understanding Dutch when people spoke it.
I think it’s another name for the game that here is called “Telephone”—one person whispers something into the ear of person next to them, who in turn does the same, and so on down the line. At the end, everyone laughs at how what was first said changed as it was passed along.
Re Dutch. Spent a couple weeks in Amsterdam. I've got some receptive German (understand what's said). After about 3 days I was understanding Dutch when people spoke it.
Some years ago, the comedian Eddie Izzard learned how to speak the English of Chaucer (I think he is a gifted linguist - he certainly speaks french fluently). He then went to Holland and spoke to a farmer about purchasing a cow. He found that there was enough similarity for both him and the farmer to make themselves understood.
Re Dutch. Spent a couple weeks in Amsterdam. I've got some receptive German (understand what's said). After about 3 days I was understanding Dutch when people spoke it.
Some years ago, the comedian Eddie Izzard learned how to speak the English of Chaucer (I think he is a gifted linguist - he certainly speaks french fluently). He then went to Holland and spoke to a farmer about purchasing a cow. He found that there was enough similarity for both him and the farmer to make themselves understood.
Frisian. My Rhineland cousins live close to Netherlands. It's quite interesting to see the closeness to English; it is said to be closest dialect and I think it is true. (my transliteration: "unser fater, let yo nām hilige vurd, lit yo wil been vurd, an here'd like good as in himel" - start of Lord's prayer, pronounce everything, e.g., hilige = hīll-i-guh -- holy)
i before e is rubbish, because there just as many words that are the other way around. I think someone just liked rhyming.
"I before E
Except after C
When it says 'Ee'"
Generally holds.
I learned it as:
I before E,
Except after C,
Or when it says A
As in “neighbor” or “weigh.”
That's the version I learned as well. The problem with "when it says ee" is that many words that don't say "ee" in Blighty do say "ee" in North America, such as "leisure".
Considerable variation in North American English for "leisure" - I was taught (small town northern Canada) that it had a short e.
Re Dutch. Spent a couple weeks in Amsterdam. I've got some receptive German (understand what's said). After about 3 days I was understanding Dutch when people spoke it.
Some years ago, the comedian Eddie Izzard learned how to speak the English of Chaucer (I think he is a gifted linguist - he certainly speaks french fluently). He then went to Holland and spoke to a farmer about purchasing a cow. He found that there was enough similarity for both him and the farmer to make themselves understood.
Frisian. My Rhineland cousins live close to Netherlands. It's quite interesting to see the closeness to English; it is said to be closest dialect and I think it is true. (my transliteration: "unser fater, let yo nām hilige vurd, lit yo wil been vurd, an here'd like good as in himel" - start of Lord's prayer, pronounce everything, e.g., hilige = hīll-i-guh -- holy)
That's it! Thank you - I had slightly misremembered it.
The place name guy told us that before the war, students of Old English could travel across the continent - the Germanic bits from the Netherlands to Austria, and make themselves understood - not in his own experience, he was too young.
I imagine they were keeping to simple ideas and words such as bread and bed. A random word from my dictionary (can't do the crossed d for voiced th) "innothtydernes" might well have been useful, but I have my doubts about its being well known. (Weakness of the bowels.)
My parents used to live along the road from a Kentish settlement called Freezingham, a placename speaking of the first settlers being Frisians.
He then went to Holland and spoke to a farmer about purchasing a cow. He found that there was enough similarity for both him and the farmer to make themselves understood.
(Although I have yet to meet a Dutch person who doesn't speak at least good English, so for a fair comparison, Mr. Izzard should have brought a friend who hadn't been studying Chaucer, to try and buy a cow from the neighbouring farmer.)
It sounds like Middle English - which I found harder than either Beowulf or Chaucer. It's just on the edge of what you think ought to be comprehensible.
I think it’s another name for the game that here is called “Telephone”—one person whispers something into the ear of person next to them, who in turn does the same, and so on down the line. At the end, everyone laughs at how what was first said changed as it was passed along.
Not just the name of a game. It is a term used to describe how a story/message etc changes as it's passed from one to another. Obviously based on the game.
Some years ago, the comedian Eddie Izzard learned how to speak the English of Chaucer (I think he is a gifted linguist - he certainly speaks french fluently). He then went to Holland and spoke to a farmer about purchasing a cow. He found that there was enough similarity for both him and the farmer to make themselves understood.
I've had a similar experience trying to get by not with Chaucer's English but with ordinary English and a Flemish speaker in Ostend. He didn't speak English but as it's a Channel port had probably heard other people speaking it.
Nobody really knows what languages the peasants spoke in Roman Britain. It wasn't something the Romans bothered much about. Everyone has always assumed they all spoke some sort of ancestor of Welsh. There is at least one academic - but I can't remember who they are - who has argued in the last few years that at least some of the natives in south eastern Roman Britain might have already been speaking a language that was more like Anglo-Saxon than Welsh. Apparently, for all the similarities between English and Flemish/Dutch/Frisian, there are some differences that suggest English has been evolving separately since further back than c400-500 AD.
It sounds like Middle English - which I found harder than either Beowulf or Chaucer.
I’m confused. Chaucer is Middle English.
Nah, he's early modern. Middle is Pearl and Gawain and Ancrene Wisse.
The AB texts (such as those you list here) are a heavily-inflected, Anglo-Saxon influenced version of middle English. Chaucer, although a contemporary of the Gawain poet, wrote Canterbury Tales in a much less inflected, London dialect of Middle English.
And this London dialect basically became Chancery English, which basically became Early Modern, so there's some truth in calling Chaucer "early modern", but I think you go a little far. I'd be inclined to put the dividing line between Chaucer and Malory.
The general point (that Chaucer can be read in the original language by schoolchildren with a little glossing, but not much else in the way of assistance, whereas the AB texts are almost as opaque as Beowulf) is reasonable.
No, when I took a course in Middle English in college we used The Canterbury Tales as our text.
Yes, I was always taught that Chaucer is Middle English, and that early Modern English dates from the mid- to late-15th Century. That what the OED says:
“The chronological boundaries of the Middle English period are not easy to define, and scholarly opinions vary. The dates that OED3 has settled on are 1150-1500. (Before 1150 being the Old English period, and after 1500 being the early modern English period.) In terms of ‘external’ history, Middle English is framed at its beginning by the after-effects of the Norman Conquest of 1066, and at its end by the arrival in Britain of printing (in 1476) and by the important social and cultural impacts of the English Reformation (from the 1530s onwards) and of the ideas of the continental Renaissance.”
It sounds like Middle English - which I found harder than either Beowulf or Chaucer.
I’m confused. Chaucer is Middle English.
Nah, he's early modern. Middle is Pearl and Gawain and Ancrene Wisse.
Out of interest, when you studied your degree in English, was there a separate module for Early Modern? We had a compulsory Middle English module, and an optional Old English module, but no Early Modern, and I don't think I heard that term. The next one up, in time frame (as we looked chronologically at the stages of literature) was Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean) - Marlowe, Jonson, etc. Shakespeare had a whole module to himself. I see from Wikipedia these are considered as Early Modern, but I don't remember this term being used.
We studied Chaucer in Middle English, along with Pearl and Gawain. We knew they were earlier than Chaucer, and we looked at the language differences, but they all came under the same module of Middle English. Even when we looked at the Scottish guys, Henryson and Dunbar, and specifically at how their language differed from English poets, it was all within the module of Middle English. (This was in the early 1990s, at University of London, in case teaching methods/categories have changed over time). I see Wikipedia refers to early Middle English and late Middle English, and that sounds familiar in terms of how we were taught, looking at the earlier and later poets within the Middle English category.
It's amazing how hard it is to find a translation online.
Regarding Chaucer: My program placed him firmly in Middle English as well, with Shakespeare as the exemplar for Early Modern. Beowulf was, of course, Old...
It's amazing how hard it is to find a translation online.
Regarding Chaucer: My program placed him firmly in Middle English as well, with Shakespeare as the exemplar for Early Modern. Beowulf was, of course, Old...
Ah, thank you - I hadn't found a translation, just the original, which seemed a bit daunting!
We studied Chaucer in Middle English, along with Pearl and Gawain. We knew they were earlier than Chaucer,
Ah, but they're not. The Gawain poet and Chaucer were contemporaries. The language is logically older, sure, with more Old English structures and so on, but what you're really seeing are regional differences in the development of English.
I've been reading multiple biographies of Tolkien and Ancrene Wisse comes up repeatedly.
Our Middle English lecturer mentioned Tolkien quite a bit, and how various Middle English texts had influenced his novels. I'm thinking now that she may well have mentioned Ancrene Wisse, but it wasn't one of the texts we studied, so I guess if she mentioned it, I didn't take it in.
I've been reading multiple biographies of Tolkien and Ancrene Wisse comes up repeatedly.
Our Middle English lecturer mentioned Tolkien quite a bit, and how various Middle English texts had influenced his novels. I'm thinking now that she may well have mentioned Ancrene Wisse, but it wasn't one of the texts we studied, so I guess if she mentioned it, I didn't take it in.
It could certainly be argued that you can find the best of Tolkien's scholarship in his essay on Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad. Here's a link for anyone that's interested.
We studied Chaucer in Middle English, along with Pearl and Gawain. We knew they were earlier than Chaucer,
Ah, but they're not. The Gawain poet and Chaucer were contemporaries. The language is logically older, sure, with more Old English structures and so on, but what you're really seeing are regional differences in the development of English.
I think this is the crux of the issue here - whether we're talking about a stage of language development, or a period in history. I don't remember this distinction being made when I was studying Middle English. It is hazy in my memory now, as this was nearly 30 years ago, and I haven't read or studied Middle English stuff since. I know the main structure of the degree was chronological- modules covered literature within certain periods in history, to show how literature (not language) developed over time. I know in the Middle English module, some works were described as earlier and some as later. I don't remember all the authors we looked at - only the ones I wrote essays/exams on. I actually don't remember finding Pearl or Gawain more difficult than Chaucer - I enjoyed them far more, and the texts I used were annotated, so I remember them being relatively straightforward to read, and I also read a translation by Tolkien of Gawain, as well as the original, and also went to see an opera of it, which was great fun! We also had a very lively lecturer, who brought these texts to life. She talked about the differences in the language from Chaucer. But each author we looked at had differences in their language. But all were within the Middle English module.
No, when I took a course in Middle English in college we used The Canterbury Tales as our text.
Somewhere or other, I have a little book called the Cantbeworried Tales, set in the Sydney of the late 60s/early 70s and written in mock-Chaucerian by an English humorist resident here. I can remember a couplet from a description of the petty criminal court :
Importuning ladies, fresh from beds
Who paid their fines as business overheads
Sir Simon Armitage has translated Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was also staged (at the Sam Wanamaker playhouse at the Globe, which is how I know) with knights falling in and out of the audience saucily.
These mutual intelligibility stories need a pinch of salt. A lot depends on the complexity of the conversation, the natural language ability (accuracy of hearing sounds and identifying phonemes, ability to guess unknown words from context), how fast the speakers are speaking, and so on.
Comments
My mother, newly married and not long arrived from the States, started a teaching job in a huge Scottish comprehensive in the 70s. Like most new teachers she was worried about impressing her authority on a crowd of teenagers. In one of her first classes a boy put up his hand and asked her for a rubber. She tore such a strip off him that the word quickly got out NOT to mess with the new English teacher if that was how she reacted to someone forgetting to bring an eraser with them!
We were one catching the train back from Canterbury to London. There were two couples (a couple of couples) travelling in the same section and we could not understand them. We thought they may have been Dutch or German but when they asked for guidance from the ticket inspector it turned out that they were from Yorkshire. Pronunciation very different to ours or much of the English we were used hearing from others. No doubt this foursome thought much the same of ours in return.
(And I hope this is in line with the hostly admonition)
I have never heard any other pronunciation here, save that the emphasis is on the second syllable. Then again, I don't often listen to sports news.
Which is odd, because the Old English and Dutch words for egg both lack the G. It's Old Norse which gives us Modern English Egg, which is why it was originally a Northern form; we got it from the Vikings.
Eyrie comes from Old French 'Aire' from Latin 'Area' and etymologically has nothing to do with eggs.
I didn't think so. I can't remember where this came from, but I once found it useful in a wedding speech in Vermont (we now have four Yankee grandchildren):
“To an Englishman, a Yankee is an American; To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner; To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner; To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander; To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter, and to a Vermonter, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.”
Egg(e)s comes to English from Old Norse, and was the northern word for eggs in early middle English (due to the Norse influence). Ey (eyren is plural) comes from the old English for egg. (As I recall the story, it was French, rather than Dutch).
Re Dutch. Spent a couple weeks in Amsterdam. I've got some receptive German (understand what's said). After about 3 days I was understanding Dutch when people spoke it.
Some years ago, the comedian Eddie Izzard learned how to speak the English of Chaucer (I think he is a gifted linguist - he certainly speaks french fluently). He then went to Holland and spoke to a farmer about purchasing a cow. He found that there was enough similarity for both him and the farmer to make themselves understood.
Frisian. My Rhineland cousins live close to Netherlands. It's quite interesting to see the closeness to English; it is said to be closest dialect and I think it is true. (my transliteration: "unser fater, let yo nām hilige vurd, lit yo wil been vurd, an here'd like good as in himel" - start of Lord's prayer, pronounce everything, e.g., hilige = hīll-i-guh -- holy)
My local lists "streak frites" on its not especially French menu.
Considerable variation in North American English for "leisure" - I was taught (small town northern Canada) that it had a short e.
That's it! Thank you - I had slightly misremembered it.
I imagine they were keeping to simple ideas and words such as bread and bed. A random word from my dictionary (can't do the crossed d for voiced th) "innothtydernes" might well have been useful, but I have my doubts about its being well known. (Weakness of the bowels.)
My parents used to live along the road from a Kentish settlement called Freezingham, a placename speaking of the first settlers being Frisians.
(Although I have yet to meet a Dutch person who doesn't speak at least good English, so for a fair comparison, Mr. Izzard should have brought a friend who hadn't been studying Chaucer, to try and buy a cow from the neighbouring farmer.)
Not just the name of a game. It is a term used to describe how a story/message etc changes as it's passed from one to another. Obviously based on the game.
Nobody really knows what languages the peasants spoke in Roman Britain. It wasn't something the Romans bothered much about. Everyone has always assumed they all spoke some sort of ancestor of Welsh. There is at least one academic - but I can't remember who they are - who has argued in the last few years that at least some of the natives in south eastern Roman Britain might have already been speaking a language that was more like Anglo-Saxon than Welsh. Apparently, for all the similarities between English and Flemish/Dutch/Frisian, there are some differences that suggest English has been evolving separately since further back than c400-500 AD.
Nah, he's early modern. Middle is Pearl and Gawain and Ancrene Wisse.
The AB texts (such as those you list here) are a heavily-inflected, Anglo-Saxon influenced version of middle English. Chaucer, although a contemporary of the Gawain poet, wrote Canterbury Tales in a much less inflected, London dialect of Middle English.
And this London dialect basically became Chancery English, which basically became Early Modern, so there's some truth in calling Chaucer "early modern", but I think you go a little far. I'd be inclined to put the dividing line between Chaucer and Malory.
The general point (that Chaucer can be read in the original language by schoolchildren with a little glossing, but not much else in the way of assistance, whereas the AB texts are almost as opaque as Beowulf) is reasonable.
“The chronological boundaries of the Middle English period are not easy to define, and scholarly opinions vary. The dates that OED3 has settled on are 1150-1500. (Before 1150 being the Old English period, and after 1500 being the early modern English period.) In terms of ‘external’ history, Middle English is framed at its beginning by the after-effects of the Norman Conquest of 1066, and at its end by the arrival in Britain of printing (in 1476) and by the important social and cultural impacts of the English Reformation (from the 1530s onwards) and of the ideas of the continental Renaissance.”
Now see what you did. Instead of cleaning the house like a good LC, I have spent an hour or more down the rabbit hole of reading Ancrene Wisse!
Out of interest, when you studied your degree in English, was there a separate module for Early Modern? We had a compulsory Middle English module, and an optional Old English module, but no Early Modern, and I don't think I heard that term. The next one up, in time frame (as we looked chronologically at the stages of literature) was Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean) - Marlowe, Jonson, etc. Shakespeare had a whole module to himself. I see from Wikipedia these are considered as Early Modern, but I don't remember this term being used.
We studied Chaucer in Middle English, along with Pearl and Gawain. We knew they were earlier than Chaucer, and we looked at the language differences, but they all came under the same module of Middle English. Even when we looked at the Scottish guys, Henryson and Dunbar, and specifically at how their language differed from English poets, it was all within the module of Middle English. (This was in the early 1990s, at University of London, in case teaching methods/categories have changed over time). I see Wikipedia refers to early Middle English and late Middle English, and that sounds familiar in terms of how we were taught, looking at the earlier and later poets within the Middle English category.
I'll be doing this too - this was not part of my English degree and now I'm curious!
Though where did you find it? I saw it on Amazon, but that copy is £45! Is it available online to read?
Edited a third time to say never mind, I found it!
http://www.bsswebsite.me.uk/History/AncreneRiwle/AnchoressesRule.pdf
It's amazing how hard it is to find a translation online.
Regarding Chaucer: My program placed him firmly in Middle English as well, with Shakespeare as the exemplar for Early Modern. Beowulf was, of course, Old...
Ah, thank you - I hadn't found a translation, just the original, which seemed a bit daunting!
Ah, but they're not. The Gawain poet and Chaucer were contemporaries. The language is logically older, sure, with more Old English structures and so on, but what you're really seeing are regional differences in the development of English.
Our Middle English lecturer mentioned Tolkien quite a bit, and how various Middle English texts had influenced his novels. I'm thinking now that she may well have mentioned Ancrene Wisse, but it wasn't one of the texts we studied, so I guess if she mentioned it, I didn't take it in.
It could certainly be argued that you can find the best of Tolkien's scholarship in his essay on Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad. Here's a link for anyone that's interested.
I think this is the crux of the issue here - whether we're talking about a stage of language development, or a period in history. I don't remember this distinction being made when I was studying Middle English. It is hazy in my memory now, as this was nearly 30 years ago, and I haven't read or studied Middle English stuff since. I know the main structure of the degree was chronological- modules covered literature within certain periods in history, to show how literature (not language) developed over time. I know in the Middle English module, some works were described as earlier and some as later. I don't remember all the authors we looked at - only the ones I wrote essays/exams on. I actually don't remember finding Pearl or Gawain more difficult than Chaucer - I enjoyed them far more, and the texts I used were annotated, so I remember them being relatively straightforward to read, and I also read a translation by Tolkien of Gawain, as well as the original, and also went to see an opera of it, which was great fun! We also had a very lively lecturer, who brought these texts to life. She talked about the differences in the language from Chaucer. But each author we looked at had differences in their language. But all were within the Middle English module.
Somewhere or other, I have a little book called the Cantbeworried Tales, set in the Sydney of the late 60s/early 70s and written in mock-Chaucerian by an English humorist resident here. I can remember a couplet from a description of the petty criminal court :
Importuning ladies, fresh from beds
Who paid their fines as business overheads