Ah! I'd seen "Englisc" but not "Anglisc" before. Google likes "Anglisc" ... (off to read more)
Without having been told that's OE, I would've guessed ME. Then again, there's that one verse in ME that jumped out at me as sounding almost like Modern English, so the occasional reminder that the three are related shouldn't surprise me that much.
Thanks.
To make sure I've got the HTML right: "Dæst ðu spækest Anglisc?"
OE is very understandable to anyone with a solid ME background, especially if it's read by someone with something approaching the right accent. (Thank my prof Dr. Green for that one!) Many of the more basic words haven't changed all that much. Then again, I don't remember the OE component of the course as well as perhaps I ought, so maybe I'm talking out of my ass.
On the other hand, if you asked someone from there-and-then that question, the response might be something along the lines of "Yea, Ich spæke Anglisc, ðu torde, whæt madnes spækest ðu?!" ;-)
Well until now it's pretty much looked like German (and thus unintelligible since I don't speak German) to me. Suddenly I'm seeing recognizeable bits in it.
Was there more than one vowel shift? I found an intro-to-OE web site, and it said 'u' was pronounced as in 'dumb' ... but in the ME I've heard, 'u' sounds like 'oo'.
I think the jury's still out as to whether there's been more than one vowel shift in English, or whether the vowel shift just never stopped happening. Certainly it "stopped" (for all practical purposes) later in some places than others (see Paikeday's comments about Canadian English and vowel shifting, for instance -- Google search "Canadian Raising" for starters!). So it's not impossible that the same word could have the "u" sound as in "dumb" in 900 and then the "u" sound as in "zucchini" by 1200 or 1300. (Tell me that people sounded the same in 1700 as they do now!)
We're already seeing a split between more and less highly-shifted variants of MdnE, some of them severe enough to require "dialect" classification. Ask me about that guy who answered the phone "Haamaa Payp Cupneh," sometime. He was trying to say "Hyman Paper Company," but between his consonant loss and (lack of) vowel shift, neither of us could understand practically Word One of what the other said.
I don't read German, either, but then again, I think German looks enough like English that I can figure out the simple words. German and English are sort of cousin languages, which means that English belongs to a family full of dotty relatives (on both sides) -- English is one of the dottiest.
Re: That might be something like...
Without having been told that's OE, I would've guessed ME. Then again, there's that one verse in ME that jumped out at me as sounding almost like Modern English, so the occasional reminder that the three are related shouldn't surprise me that much.
Thanks.
To make sure I've got the HTML right:
"Dæst ðu spækest Anglisc?"
(æ and ð, BTW.)
I knew you'd know that HTML!
On the other hand, if you asked someone from there-and-then that question, the response might be something along the lines of "Yea, Ich spæke Anglisc, ðu torde, whæt madnes spækest ðu?!" ;-)
Re: I knew you'd know that HTML!
Was there more than one vowel shift? I found an intro-to-OE web site, and it said 'u' was pronounced as in 'dumb' ... but in the ME I've heard, 'u' sounds like 'oo'.
The Great Vowel Shift and Friends
We're already seeing a split between more and less highly-shifted variants of MdnE, some of them severe enough to require "dialect" classification. Ask me about that guy who answered the phone "Haamaa Payp Cupneh," sometime. He was trying to say "Hyman Paper Company," but between his consonant loss and (lack of) vowel shift, neither of us could understand practically Word One of what the other said.
I don't read German, either, but then again, I think German looks enough like English that I can figure out the simple words. German and English are sort of cousin languages, which means that English belongs to a family full of dotty relatives (on both sides) -- English is one of the dottiest.