Adventures in historical linguistics!
Oct. 13th, 2010 02:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
transemacabreSo I love history, and I love languages, and naturally I love the history of language. Languages mutate, adapt, absorb vocabulary, and sadly, go extinct. I love thinking about how someone a thousand years or more ago scribbled something on a piece of birch bark or engraved a few words into a belt buckle, and that is now the oldest evidence in existence for that language. Doesn't that blow your fucking mind?
For example, here's a snippet from The Battle of Maldon, an Old English poem written about 1000 A.D. or so:
Gehyrst þu, sælida, hwæt þis folc segeð?|Hear you, viking, what these folk say?
Hi willað eow to gafole garas syllan|They desire to you a tribute of spears to pay
ættrynne ord and ealde swurd|Deadly spears and old swords
þa heregeatu þe eow æt hilde ne deah|The arms of war from which you in battle will not profit
There's a bit of a pun here -- the Vikings demanded garræs, or tribute (as in the infamous Danegeld), but it can also mean 'armor', which is the meaning Brithnoth is using here -- basically he's saying, "Tribute? We'll give ya tribute! We'll give ya our spears, pointy-end first, bitches!"
With the translation side-by-side, you can kinda see something familiar in the text, but without the translation its completely indecipherable to me and, I think, most any native English speaker. Even knowing how the strange characters, such as Thorn, are pronounced doesn't really help.
From about 830-840 A.D. comes Old English's cousin, Old High German, the language of Das Hildebrandslied:
1.Ik gıhorta dat ſeggen|Ich hörte das sagen|I've heard it said
2.dat ſih urhettun ænon muotın|dass sich als Herausforderer einzeln mühten|That warriors met in single combat
3.hıltıbrant entı hadubrant untar herıun tuem|Hildebrand und Hadubrand zwischen zwei Heeren|Hildebrant and Hadubrand, between two armies
Makes me wonder how difficult it might've been for an Old English speaker to communicate with an Old High German speaker.
I like the Sequence of St. Eulalia, composed c. 881 A.D. (roughly contemporary with the Old English and Old High German examples above) as an example of Old French:
Buona pulcella fut Eulalia,|Eulalie était bonne fille|A good girl was Eulalia,
Bel auret corps, bellezour anima.|Elle avait beau corps, l'âme plus belle encore|She had a beautiful body, a soul more beautiful still
Voldrent la veintre li Deo inimi,|Les ennemis de Dieu voulurent la vaincre|The enemies of God wanted to overcome her
Voldrent la faire diaule servir.|Ils voulurent lui faire servir le diable.|They wanted to make her serve the devil.
You can really see how Latin-esque the language still is, but it's recognizably French.
In faraway Russia, we find the Novgorod birch-bark letters, a treasure trove of scribblings on daily life, thousand-year-old politics, and family dramas. Here's Letter no. 109, dated late 10th century to about 1110 A.D.:
грамота:отъ жизномира:къ микоуле:коупилъ еси:робоу:плъскове:а ныне мя: въ томъ:яла кънягыни:а ныне ся дроужина:по мя пороучила:а ныне ка: посъли къ томоу:моужеви:грамотоу:е ли оу него роба:а се ти хочоу:коне коупивъ:и къняжъ моужъ въсадивъ:та на съводы:а ты атче еси не възялъ коунъ:техъ:а не емли:ничъто же оу него:
Modern Russian:
`Грамота от Жизномира к Микуле. Ты купил рабыню во Пскове, и вот меня за это схватила (подразумевается: уличая в краже) княгиня. А потом за меня поручилась дружина. Так что пошли-ка к тому мужу грамоту, если рабыня у него. А я вот хочу, коней купив и посадив [на коня] княжеского мужа, [идти] на очные ставки. А ты, если [еще] не взял тех денег, не бери у него ничего'
English:
Letter from Zhiznomir to Mikula: You have bought a female slave in Pskov. And now the princess has arrested me for it. But now my family has guaranteed for me. And now send a letter to that man and ask him whether he has another female slave. And I want to buy a horse and have the magistrate sit on it and initiate a svod. And if you have not taken the money, do not take anything from him.
From these birch bark writings we also have the oldest evidence of any Finnic language, namely Karelian, from Letter no. 292 along with what I think is the best transliteration and translation:
Cyrillic | Latin transliteration | Modern Finnish
юмолануолиїнимижи|jumolanuoli ï nimizi|Jumalannuoli, kymmenen nimesi
ноулисѣханолиомобоу|nouli se han oli omo bou|Tämä nuoli on Jumalan oma
юмоласоудьнииохови|jumola soud'ni iohovi|Tuomion-Jumala johtaa.
English:
God's arrow, ten [is] your name
This arrow is God's own
The Doom-God leads.
For example, here's a snippet from The Battle of Maldon, an Old English poem written about 1000 A.D. or so:
Gehyrst þu, sælida, hwæt þis folc segeð?|Hear you, viking, what these folk say?
Hi willað eow to gafole garas syllan|They desire to you a tribute of spears to pay
ættrynne ord and ealde swurd|Deadly spears and old swords
þa heregeatu þe eow æt hilde ne deah|The arms of war from which you in battle will not profit
There's a bit of a pun here -- the Vikings demanded garræs, or tribute (as in the infamous Danegeld), but it can also mean 'armor', which is the meaning Brithnoth is using here -- basically he's saying, "Tribute? We'll give ya tribute! We'll give ya our spears, pointy-end first, bitches!"
With the translation side-by-side, you can kinda see something familiar in the text, but without the translation its completely indecipherable to me and, I think, most any native English speaker. Even knowing how the strange characters, such as Thorn, are pronounced doesn't really help.
From about 830-840 A.D. comes Old English's cousin, Old High German, the language of Das Hildebrandslied:
1.Ik gıhorta dat ſeggen|Ich hörte das sagen|I've heard it said
2.dat ſih urhettun ænon muotın|dass sich als Herausforderer einzeln mühten|That warriors met in single combat
3.hıltıbrant entı hadubrant untar herıun tuem|Hildebrand und Hadubrand zwischen zwei Heeren|Hildebrant and Hadubrand, between two armies
Makes me wonder how difficult it might've been for an Old English speaker to communicate with an Old High German speaker.
I like the Sequence of St. Eulalia, composed c. 881 A.D. (roughly contemporary with the Old English and Old High German examples above) as an example of Old French:
Buona pulcella fut Eulalia,|Eulalie était bonne fille|A good girl was Eulalia,
Bel auret corps, bellezour anima.|Elle avait beau corps, l'âme plus belle encore|She had a beautiful body, a soul more beautiful still
Voldrent la veintre li Deo inimi,|Les ennemis de Dieu voulurent la vaincre|The enemies of God wanted to overcome her
Voldrent la faire diaule servir.|Ils voulurent lui faire servir le diable.|They wanted to make her serve the devil.
You can really see how Latin-esque the language still is, but it's recognizably French.
In faraway Russia, we find the Novgorod birch-bark letters, a treasure trove of scribblings on daily life, thousand-year-old politics, and family dramas. Here's Letter no. 109, dated late 10th century to about 1110 A.D.:
грамота:отъ жизномира:къ микоуле:коупилъ еси:робоу:плъскове:а ныне мя: въ томъ:яла кънягыни:а ныне ся дроужина:по мя пороучила:а ныне ка: посъли къ томоу:моужеви:грамотоу:е ли оу него роба:а се ти хочоу:коне коупивъ:и къняжъ моужъ въсадивъ:та на съводы:а ты атче еси не възялъ коунъ:техъ:а не емли:ничъто же оу него:
Modern Russian:
`Грамота от Жизномира к Микуле. Ты купил рабыню во Пскове, и вот меня за это схватила (подразумевается: уличая в краже) княгиня. А потом за меня поручилась дружина. Так что пошли-ка к тому мужу грамоту, если рабыня у него. А я вот хочу, коней купив и посадив [на коня] княжеского мужа, [идти] на очные ставки. А ты, если [еще] не взял тех денег, не бери у него ничего'
English:
Letter from Zhiznomir to Mikula: You have bought a female slave in Pskov. And now the princess has arrested me for it. But now my family has guaranteed for me. And now send a letter to that man and ask him whether he has another female slave. And I want to buy a horse and have the magistrate sit on it and initiate a svod. And if you have not taken the money, do not take anything from him.
From these birch bark writings we also have the oldest evidence of any Finnic language, namely Karelian, from Letter no. 292 along with what I think is the best transliteration and translation:
Cyrillic | Latin transliteration | Modern Finnish
юмолануолиїнимижи|jumolanuoli ï nimizi|Jumalannuoli, kymmenen nimesi
ноулисѣханолиомобоу|nouli se han oli omo bou|Tämä nuoli on Jumalan oma
юмоласоудьнииохови|jumola soud'ni iohovi|Tuomion-Jumala johtaa.
English:
God's arrow, ten [is] your name
This arrow is God's own
The Doom-God leads.
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Date: 2010-10-13 08:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-13 05:33 pm (UTC)Have you come across the Sermoni Subalpini, 12C sermons in Piemontèis, in the days when it was closer to Occitan than it is now?