Talk:Old English/Archive 2

message: How many people speak or otherwise understand this language today? Including academics. Angrynight 00:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I doubt if statistics are kept on that sort of thing, but I imagine the number of people who can read it with little difficulty is far higher than the number of people who could carry on a conversation in it. User:Angr 07:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The highly variable word order combined with a complex grammar makes it seem like this would be very difficult language to learn.Cameron Nedland 16:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I don't know. Apart from the absence of native speakers with whom to speak it, I don't think it's any harder than German. User:Angr 17:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Youre the pro linguist, im just a kid who likes the subject.  Heck, I havent even graduated high school yet...Cameron Nedland 02:06, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I can read selected passages with little difficulty merely because of German, but I am far from fluent, whatever that means in this context. Aren't Frisian speakers supposedly able to comprehend it with little difficulty? 68.219.39.159 21:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

text: See :Category:User ang-N for Wikipedians who are apparently O.E. speakers. -- the GREAT Gavini 16:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many? 

message: ¿Didnt Old English use this letter?Cameron Nedland 16:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure. West Saxon didn't have the vowel [ø] anyway; other dialects did, but grammar books usually indicate it as the digraph oe rather than the ligature œ, but it's entirely possible the ligature is used in at least some manuscripts. User:Angr 17:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for clearing that up Angr.Cameron Nedland 02:07, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, Old English did use this vowel, called eðel. It developed from a ligature in Latin of oe, which had developed from Greek οι, and appeared in words like onomatopœia. Its development was similar to that of ash's, æ, derivig from Latin ae and in turn Greek αι. It never did, however, become as widespread or enduring as æ, and did fall out of use by Middle English. Gnome Ninja 17:42, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I like to know where you found that information, my sources seem to indicate otherwise. According to my etymological dictionary onomatopoeia did not exist (or was not recorded) until 1577, and thus nearly 5 centuries after the proposed end date of Old English.Deman7001 04:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

text: This is what you mean  as wynn. Gnome Ninja 18:05, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Œ 

message: At tbe risk of asking a silly question does anyone here know Old English?  If so is balsall the Old English for heath?  I'd like to know to clarify an issue on the Talk:Balsall Heath page.  Thanks.  Aynuk N. Ayli 15:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so. I can't find a word that looks anything like that in my Old English dictionary. AFAIK Old English for "heath" is hǣð. User:Angr 15:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Strongly doubt it.  Like many place names, it probably consists of two elements.  This name, being a place in the West Midlands, is probably made up of two Anglo-Saxon words: the latter possibly from heall ("hall").  -- the GREAT Gavini 16:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks - I'll remove the sentence from the article. Aynuk N. Ayli 07:53, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I see someone has already done it.  While we're on the subject is 'avon' the Old English for 'river', or is that just another myth? Aynuk N. Ayli 08:24, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Avon" is Welsh (and more generally, Brythonic) for "river". (The modern Welsh spelling is afon, but f is pronounced [v] in Welsh.) —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 08:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The English word "heath" actually comes from the Old Norse hæð.  This word is still used in modern Icelandic and means the same thing.  "Heath" did not come from two Anglo-Saxon words, its simply a loan word. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.79.148.82 (talk) 21:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, mod. english "heath" comes from old enlish "hæð" which comes from old saxon "hetha". The old norse cognate was "heiðr".--Jr mints 03:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Does anyone here know Old English?

message: Will add reference later today for Bright's / Hulbert's.  --VKokielov 12:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  reference added later 

message: Wow! We really need a facsimile of a typical Anglo-Saxon manuscript. I'll see if I can photograph something in the manuscript archives library tomorrow -- not sure what their rules are, but I suspect they'll take more kindly to my no-flash tripod setup than to cramming something into a xerox machine. —ptk✰fgs 04:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Facsimile needed 

message: I just changed the translation of Beowulf again.  While I can see the value of a word for word translation into  Modern English, there really is no way to accurately render it without really making it complex.  Since my OE is only OK, I would like someone else to proofread my changes. GulDan 01:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples and Translations 

message: The sentence "The most important force in shaping Old English was its Germanic heritage in its vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar which it shared with poop" has clearly been vandalised and needs cleanup.
:Thanks for noticing that! You can fix vandalism yourself by opening the page history, opening the version preceding the vandalism, and saving it. —Angr 05:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism

message: Okay, we all know that OE <hw> represents  (or ) and we know that such words are cognate with those in a number of Modern English dialects represented with <wh> and pronounced with .  We also know, because of the article on Grimm's law, that this sound goes back to Proto-Germanic , which goes back to Indo-European .  What I want to know is this: why isn't  in the table of OE phonemes? I would think strange to have something that is a phoneme in IE, a phoneme in PG, not a phoneme in OE, and a phoneme again in ME.  Unless someone opposes, I think we ought to include this sound in the article's consonant chart.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 07:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it makes sense to consider it a monosegmental phoneme in Proto-Germanic, Old English, or Modern English. In Proto-Germanic it was a cluster /xw/, in Old English and Modern English (dialects that retain it) a cluster /hw/.  is just the phonetic realization of the cluster. —Angr 08:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh but the table also incorporates allophones. We could put it in (parentheses) right?  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm... an allophone of a cluster? That's a novel idea... —Angr 05:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Works for me.  That's how it is for Russian phonology.Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 07:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: HW

message: This section seems quite inadequate to me.  Couldn't we have a list of major works of Old English literature, like Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as well as a list of known authors/hypothesized authors (Bede,  etc.), rather than a touching anecdote about childhood?  Just a thought.  Hlemonick 09:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Made some changes myself.  Thoughts?  Hlemonick 09:42, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Corpus of literature

message: Do we really need to list all the allophones?  I mean, we have (ŋ) listed as an allophone of (n) before velar consonants.  Well duh, but then we would have to list (ɱ) as an allophone of (m) before (f).  All I'm saying is that we shouldn't list all allophones simply because we can.Cameron Nedland 15:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, as the absence of  shows, we don't list all allophones simply because we can. We list the major allophones, the ones that differ significantly in place and/or manner of articulation from the phoneme's primary allophone. Bilabial -> labiodental is a pretty minor shift (and do we know it happened in OE? Are there even any words with mf in OE?), but alveolar -> velar is a pretty major shift (and it's significant because of the subsequent history of ng). —Angr 16:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In addition, while the place assimilation from an alveolar nasal to a velar one is very common, it is not universal.  It's always good to clarify such things.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 03:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I'm sorry.  I didn't realize it was just the historically important ones, I thought it was just a random set.  Sorry.Cameron Nedland 06:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allophones 

message: I've read that Old English "g" is similar to Icelandic "g" in the fact that it can sometimes become "y".  I've read that Old English "g" becomes "y" before an "e" or macroned vowel, hence the Old English word "geolu" evolving into "yellow".  Is this true?  Can someone confirm this and add information about it into the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.68.40.111 (talk • contribs) 22:46, 2 March 2007  (UTC)
:It's already there under Old English#Standardised orthography, with more info at Old English phonology#The distribution of velars and palatals. —Angr 06:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The rules are pretty damn complex, look at the article Angr pointed out.Cameron Nedland 02:57, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Old English "G"

message: The line "Old English was one of the first vernacular languages to be written down" seems a little eurocentric.  I'm not a linguist, so I don't know exactly what identifies a vernacular language, but it seems like old Norse, Egyptian, and any number of Asian languages would qualify.  Surely it wasn't the first, ever, anywhere.  The sentence should have some kind of qualifier. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aubri (talk • contribs) 14:58, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Vernacular" means a common language of the people, not a prestige language/dialect.  Under these criteria, Old English does qualify.Cameron Nedland 18:07, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm... at this stage we don't know how vernacular or otherwise written Egyptian, Sumerian, etc., were. I agree the sentence needs to be rephrased. I think the point trying to be made is that it was one of the first vernaculars to be written down in Western Europe, as opposed to Latin. (Although even then, Old Irish was first written down considerably earlier than Old English was. Maybe the claim needs to be removed completely.) —Angr 18:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah true, if it is still there I'll rephrase it.Cameron Nedland 13:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "One of the first"? 

message: I think phonic pronunciation needs to be added with a lot of Old English figures names at their article pages; many readers may not know how to pronounce names like Heorogar, Hygelac, Ecgþeow, Modþryð. We have nonstandard notes to pronunciation at articles like Wealhþeow that need to be changed as well. Someone with a good working knowledge of OE pronunciation needs to get on this. Nagelfar 06:33, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  pronunciation of Old English names at their respective articles.