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Latin:Romance::???:Germanic | ||
Tags: Germanic Languages | History | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4308 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 9 of 20 01 July 2015 at 3:11am | IP Logged | |||||
I can't think of anything other than Beowulf I would want to read in Old English. Any other suggestions (be it in modern translation or not)? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4494 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 10 of 20 01 July 2015 at 3:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Sanskrit? Classical Arabic? Classical Chinese? Old Tibetan? Ancient Egyptian? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4676 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 11 of 20 01 July 2015 at 4:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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The other European language ancestors didn't have a written literature, so there's not
much for an amateur to study. Even Beowulf is relative recent compared to Greek and Roman literature - it was written down in the Christian era, even though the poem itself is probably much older. A friend from Iceland says Old English is close enough to Icelandic that he can read Beowulf without a dictionary. If this works in reverse (if he's even telling the truth), maybe you could jump into the Norse sagas. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4425 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 12 of 20 01 July 2015 at 4:51am | IP Logged | |||||
The Seafarer (Pound's translation is brilliant), The Wanderer, the poems of Cynewulf, lots of people seem interested in the riddles though I don't really get it. There's a good book of verse translations called The Oldest English Poems by Michael Alexander, here's an excerpt of his "The Battle of Maldon": Courage shall grow keener, clearer the will, The heart fiercer, as our force faileth. Here our lord lies levelled in the dust, the man all marred: he shall mourn to the end who thinks to wend off from his war-play now. Though I am white with winters I will not away, for I think to lodge me alongside my dear one, lay me down by my lord's white hand. Edited by AlexTG on 01 July 2015 at 4:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4846 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 13 of 20 01 July 2015 at 5:27am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't read any of those languages, but you can see for yourself, when the same text has been translated into Old English / Icelandic, they come out quite similar, maybe roughly on the level of German and Dutch: http://www.pagef30.com/2009/03/similarities-between-old-engl ish-anglo.html Gothic, an extinct East Germanic language, though, is rather different. At a glance of a Gothic text, you can see that it would not likely have been readily comprehensible to a speaker of Old Norse or Old English. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5095 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 14 of 20 01 July 2015 at 8:58am | IP Logged | |||||
In Hong Kong we study a little bit of classical Chinese, but not as a separate subject like how western countries study Latin, and it's not taught as a language. The whole secondary school Chinese syllabus is really a Chinese literature syllabus, and consists of excerpts from famous books and authors, some modern, some classical. So, we understand the ones we did learn and can often recite them, but with others we're probably just at 30%-50% comprehension. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4494 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 15 of 20 01 July 2015 at 9:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are many people in western countries that have never studied Latin or Ancient Greek
either, so... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6490 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 20 01 July 2015 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Before Old Norse there was a language stage commonly named as Proto-Norse ('urnordisk' in Danish), but contrary to most protos this one is attested in inscriptions on runic stones, tools and other objects back to 160 AD. This was even before Gothic, and the two are clearly distinct so the split between Eastern Germanic and Northern and Western Germanic must have occured even earlier. But there is nothing in Proto-Norse that equals Wulfila's Bible translation from the 4. century A.C. (and even less the avalanche of Latin or Greek writings from the same period). However for language buffs it is interesting to compare Proto-Norse with the later Old Norse language ('oldnordisk' in Danish), which is amply illustrated by literature and other writings from around the 8. century and up to somewhere around 1500 AD (where it already had been superseded by the older forms of Danish, Swedish etc.).
The Proto-Norse inscriptions were written in the socalled Elder Futhark, which had more letters than the later Futhark. And the language itself was also much more long-winded than Old Norse. Furthermore it seems that even the scholars have difficulty interpreting some words and formaulations in this language. The most famous inscription by far in Proto-Nordic was written on a golden horn made around 400 AD (later stolen and melted down): ek HlewagastiR holtijaR* horna tawidō. in Old Norse, Modern Icelandic and Danish it would be Ek Hlégestr Hyltir* táða hornit. Ég Hlégestur Hyltir* gerði hornið. Jeg Lægæst fra Holte* gjorde hornet * this genitive form could indicate the home (place name or 'from the wood(s)) or maybe the name of the father of mister HlewagastiR - nobody knows for sure. Many of the irregularities of Old Norse and the later Nordic languages become understandable when you know the forms of the preceding stage. But you wouldn't want to sit down to relax with the extant inscriptions, and even if you can read Old Norse you may have problems reading Proto-Nordic. Just as you will have problems reading Gothic,and at about the same level. As for the later step, I have studied Modern Icelandic for some time and also to some extent Old Norse, and I can read most things I see in both languages, including poetry (though with the caveat that the poems are full of obscure references to other poems, including lost ones). When I first saw Beowulf I was baffled, but now I have learned to more or less understand the beast, though I still use bilingual printouts for the purpose. However I have also studied some chronicles in Anglosaxon prose, and they are easier. I have also read prose writings from 800-1000 in Old Saxon (the 'continental' parallel to Anglosaxon and predecessor of Low German, Platt), and it is not much harder to deal with than Anglosaxon. But equally boring. PS: The Battle of Maldon in Old English has made it to the hallowed halls of Youtube Edited by Iversen on 01 July 2015 at 1:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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