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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The most common complaint about gypsies and their ilk seems to be litter; there's a BBC report on two police officers in south London being attacked by a gang for having asked a teenage girl to pick up a wrapper. No mention of 'gypsy' or 'black' so it's to be assumed the attackers were white; if they had been gypsies (or another minority), imagine the furore, which leads to the conclusion that in situations where the community's wider public image, or honour, needs to be defended it polices itself and the repercussions from one's brethren are more to be feared, and therefore more efficacious, than any 'foreign' authority figure.
As for tut-tutting over 'corruption', if anyone knows how to outwit the Inland Revenue please email me forthwith; 'white-collar' crime, if committed by, er, whites, doesn't generally elicit the same degree of reprobation as other crimes, being non-violent, whereas pick-pockets are feared as a personal invasion. Both are instances of thieving.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Most "white collar" crime has nothing to do with theft. White collar crimes typically require only the violation of this or that regulatory rule -- often itself an attempt at state market manipulation.
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Is there a standardized spelling version of this?
Þiiss boc iss nennned Orrmulum.
forrþi þatt Orrm itt wrohhte.
Icc hafe wennd inntill
Ennglissh. Goddspelles hall.he
lare. Affterr þatt little witt
þatt me. Min Drrihhtin hafeþþ
lenedd.
Annd wha-se wilenn shall þiss
boc. Efft oþerr siþe writenn.
Himm bidde icc þat he't write
rihht. Swa-summ þiss bov himm
tæcheþþ. All þwerrt-ut affterr
þatt itt iss. Uppo þiss firrste
bisne. Wiþþall swillc rime
alls her iss sett. Wiþþall þe
fele wordess. Annd tatt he loke
wel þatt he. An bocstaff write
twi..ess. EÈÈwhær þær itt uppo
þiss boc. Iss writenn o þatt
wise. Loke he wel þatt he't
wrote swa. Forr he ne ma..
nohht elless. Onn Ennglissh
writenn rihht te word. þatt
wite he wel to soþe.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| þiss boc iss nennned Orrmulum. |
This book is named Orrmulum
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Is there a standardized spelling version of this? |
Almost certainly not, so let's come up with one. The punctuation is weird and some of it might be for abbreviation or gaps in the manuscript, but at first glance it looks like:
þiss boc iss nennned Orrmulum.
This book is named Orrmulum.
Forrþi þatt Orrm itt wrohhte.
Forthy that Orrm it wrote/wrought.
Icc hafe wennd inntill
I have wend/t until
Ennglissh. Goddspelles hall.he
English. Gospels hall/all he/here
lare. Affterr þatt little witt
lare/lair. After that little wit
þatt me. Min Drrihhtin hafeþþ
that me. Mine Drighten haveth
lenedd.
lent.
Annd wha-se wilenn shall þiss
And who-so wile shall this
boc. Efft oþerr siþe writenn.
book. After other sith written.
Himm bidde icc þat heþt write
Him bid I that he'd write
rihht. Swa-summ þiss bov himm
right. So-sum/some this above him
tæcheþþ. All þwerrt-ut affterr
teacheth/toucheth. All thwarted after
þatt itt iss. Uppo þiss firrste
that it is. Upon this first
bisne. Wiþþall swillc rime
business. Withal such rhyme
alls her iss sett. Wiþþall þe
als/as here is set. Withal the
fele wordess. Annd tatt he loke
fiel words. And that he look
wel þatt he. An bocstaff write
well that he. A bookstaff write
twi..ess. EÈÈwhær þærr itt uppo
?..?. (Every?)where there is upon
þiss boc. Iss writenn o þatt
this book. Is written of that
wise. Loke he wel þatt heþt
wise. Look he well that he'd
wrote swa. Forr he ne ma..
wrote so. For he nie (made?)
nohht elless. Onn Ennglissh
nought else. On English
writenn rihht te word. þatt
written right the word. That
wite he wel to soþe.
wite he well to sooth.
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| DPCrisp wrote: | þatt itt iss. Uppo þiss firrste
that it is. Upon this first
bisne. Wiþþall swillc rime
business. Withal such rhyme |
"Upon this first business" was my guess for these lines. I found this example in a 4th year university assignment. It's found here:
http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/engl400/assignment7.pdf
The assignment's interpretation of "upon this first business" is "according to this first exemplar".
It says this about the monk who wrote it:
| The Ormulum is an East Midlands text which shows how its author, a monk named Orm, grappled with the same difficulties as the Peterborough Chronicle scribe. Notice that his spelling is consistent and that he attempts to reform English orthography and relate eeach sound to a symbol. His innovative use of double consonants is particularly remarkable. Other examples are his introduction of three symbols for <g> to differentiate the three sounds that it represented in OE, his use of <wh> for OE <hw>, and his use of <sh> for OE <sc>. The last two are familiar in MnE. Orm alone was not responsible for the adoption of these spellings, but the Ormulum represents new trends in which were taking place, if less systematically, amongst other English writers. | |
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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And to think I used to be interested in linguistics...
| In entries after 1132 the language demonstrates particularly well the transition from OE to ME. |
Alarm bells should be ringing already, but this level of precision clearly comes from academic analysis and not from any first principles about what actually happens when people speak, read and write.
| Definite Articles: se, þone, and þa, rather than invariable þe |
Alarm bells should be ringing already: þe (the) is not invariable: "thee" and "thuh" and whatever dialectical variations and whatever overlaps with se and þa (including 'they'?) are disguised by a newly standardised spelling.
| retention of dative inflexion on nouns after prepositions (e.g. ofer eal Englalande) |
I presume this means they infer "over all England" was pronounced "...Englalanda", but as we know very well, pronunciation rules are inferred from the text and then treated as being implied by it. (I used to pronounce England with two Ls myself, by the way.)
| Word Order: Verb-Subject... Subject-Object-Verb... |
There is a real problem here with whether or not the vernacular is even represented by the kind of highfalutin documents that survive from the earliest times. How do we know how formal (even legal), pretentious, learned, poetic, archaic or 'worthy' they are? What's poetry if not the art of writing? And what was writing in the early days if not an art? We can spot poetry a mile away, in stark relief against a background of vernacular writing, but these old texts are mere fragments, not enough to draw a distinction.
| Reduction of -a, -o, -u to -e (/É™/) in unstressed syllables (e.g. sona > sone) |
I don't geddit: sone could be pronounced exactly the same as sona... and sona was no doubt pronounced in a variety of ways.
There's a zillion names in French ending in -E that are elsewhere written with an -A. And now their pronunciations are distinct because, as in English, -IE is "ee" and -E is silent, right? But with a German "uh" for -E, the French name is pronounced exactly the same as the alternative.
Amélie, Anastasie, Anne, Aurélie, Claudie, Cornélie, Diane, Félicie, Julie, Lydie, Olivie, Marie, Virginie, Zacharie...
I dunno that we can say whether -E or -A pronunciations came first, but we can certainly say that, even though it's pretty well systematic, the difference in spelling can not reliably connote a difference in pronunciation.
On the pronunciation of trailing -As: consider the difference between pronouncing or enunciating a word on its own and using it normally in a sentence. Things run together differently, even within words with different prefixes and suffixes. Imagine making up a suitable spelling for 'soon' in the absence of a well established standard. "Soo-nuh" you might say (we still do this, even knowing that nothing follows the N) and sona you might write, even while pronouncing it "soon" when speaking and reading normally. (You'll often find -R tacked onto the end of Norse words, which I'll wager is a vowel sound you can gloss over in the same way.)
| Subject-Verb (SV) order occurred regularly in OE, but the feature that is 'newer' is the increased proportion of its use, at the expense of VS, SOV, and S...V. |
[voice=JeremyPaxman] Yyeess [/voice]
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| In entries after 1132 the language demonstrates particularly well the transition from OE to ME. |
But the exercise is on the entry from 1123 and is plainly just English: a bit quaint and tricky, that's all. (The Plain English Campaign could not exist if modern English weren't tricky sometimes, too.) Is there a typo in the dates?
Again, at almost first glance, with a couple of dubious bits and one Anglo-Saxon technical term:
Ãa sone þæræfter sende se kyng hise
Then soon thereafter sent the king his
write ofer eal Englalande and bed
writ over all England and bade
hise biscopes and hise abbates and
his bishops and his abbots and
hise þeignes ealle þet hi scolden
his thegns/thanes all that they should
cumen to his gewitenemot on Candelmesse
come to his gewitenemot (witenagemot) on Candlemass
deig to Gleawceastre him togeanes; and
Day to Gloucester him to-gain; and
hi swa diden. Ãa hi wæran þær
they so did. Then they were there
gegaderod, þa bed se kyng heom þæt
a-gathered, then bade the king them that
hi scoldon cesen hem ærcebiscop to
they should choose them archbishop to
Cantawarabyrig swa hwam swa swa hi
Canterbury so whom say so they
woldon and he hem hit wolde tyþian.
would and he them it would tithe/tie?
Ãa spræcon ða biscopas hem betwenan
Then sprechen/spoke the bishops them between
and sæden þæt hi næfre mare ne wolden
and said that they never more would
haven munechades man to ercebiscop ofer
have monkhood's man to archbishop over
hem, ac iedon ealle samodlice to þone
them, as yeden all samedly to their
kyng and ieornden þet hi mosten cesen
king and yearned that they must choose
of clerchades man swa hwam sea swa hi
of clerkhood's man so whom say so they
wolden to ercebiscop; and se kyng hit
would to archbishop; and the king it
hem tidde.
them tied.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Goddspelles hallyhe lare... twiyyess... Eyywhær... mayy... |
Oh, OK: Gospel's holy lore... twice... aye-where/everywhere... may...
| Swa-summ þiss bov himm tæcheþþ. |
"Sosome this book him teacheth." Bov is a typo, right where he says "himm bid I that he it write right"? Or is there something above to teach a future copyist?
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I found another document on the Ormulum. The author of the pdf talks about the personal pronouns: http://www2.english.su.se/nlj/ormproj/info/heore97_rev.pdf
| In the Ormulum, two sets of personal pronouns are used in the third person plural, one of Old English origin (the OE set) and one of Old Norse origin (the ON set). The Ormulum, written in the second half of the 12th century, is the earliest Middle English (ME) text to make use of the ON set. This paper will explore the distribution of the forms in the two sets and suggest a reason for the dominance of the ON set in the Ormulum. |
| Chart: | OE Orm
Nominative hie, heo
Dative heom hemm
Genitive heora heore, here
Table 1. The OE pronoun set. |
| Chart: | ON Orm
Nominative �eir �e33
Dative �eim �e33m
Genitive �eira �e33re
Table 2. The ON pronoun set. |
| The explanation for Orm's unique pronoun usage that thus suggests itself is thus of a sociolinguistic kind: we will have to assume that Henry II's England was not just characterized by a bilingual situation involving (Norman) French and English and by the presence of regional dialects of English, but also, in the wake of the Norse settlements in earlier centuries, by the presence of clearly marked sociolects of English. The Ormulum would thus be written in a more basilectal form than was customary to use in literary texts. By the time of the Paston Letters, the previously basilectal pronoun forms had percolated up to the gentry who could then use them without hesitation in their correspondence. |
A couple of questions:
1) I remember reading in a short book about the English language once that 'they' is from ON and 'he' is from OE and that our 3rd person pronouns are 'bizarre'. Did authors like Orm look at ON and OE scripts for a guess at how to spell the 3rd person pronouns? That's how "they" and "he" got their etymologies?
2) How is '33' pronounced?
Something else I learned today:
| Basilect = The variety of speech that is most remote from the prestige variety, especially in an area where a creole is spoken. For example, in Jamaica, Jamaican Creole is the basilect whereas Standard Jamaican English is the acrolect or prestige language. |
| Acrolect = The variety of speech that is closest to a standard prestige language, especially in an area in which a creole is spoken. For example, Standard Jamaican English is the acrolect where Jamaican Creole is spoken. |
So then the language of Orm is a basilect that the gentry adopted (as mentioned in the 3rd quote from the top). But I thought things didn't percolate up to the gentry because they want to separate themselves from the lowly.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| By the time of the Paston Letters, the previously basilectal pronoun forms had percolated up to the gentry who could then use them without hesitation in their correspondence. |
The Paston Letters were written about 300 years later and they are still using the 'Old English' forms? That means that OE stuck around long after 'Anglo-Saxon' had fallen into disuse. It seems those people who'd formerly been part of the peasantry in Norman times and who subsequently obtained property and joined the professional classes had no other language with which to replace the native one.
It's clearly denoting a plural; a rendering of the'z' sound perhaps (double 's' rather than a single hiss as in single 's')?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| The Paston Letters were written about 300 years later and they are still using the 'Old English' forms? That means that OE stuck around long after 'Anglo-Saxon' had fallen into disuse. |
It's just the pronouns they're talking about there. Don't forget: they think English came from Anglo-Saxon and Danish et al from Old Norse in a similarly clear and tight timeframe and "explain" things with glib appeals to influence and percolation, all of which is bollocks. English, Friesian, Danish and the rest evolved over who-knows-how-long.
Don't forget either that there is a big muddle between thorn and wynn and I don't know whether the distinction between these H/Y and TH forms only crystallised out on standardisation of these vernacular and artificial languages.
It's clearly denoting a plural; a rendering of the 'z' sound perhaps (double 's' rather than a single hiss as in single 's')? |
I'd say this is yogh (one player in the farce of G): looks like a Z, works like a Y. It's noticeably preserved as a Z, looking like a Z, in Scotland: Menzies "Ming" Campbell, Dalziel "D-L" and Pascoe... It'd be interesting to find some hiding in plain sight elsewhere.
�e33, �e33m, �e33re = theyy, theyym, theyyre.
(Orm doubled them, but it didn't catch on.)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One is simply amazed! We have a text that is written in English (though not using all the same orthographical conventions we do) which academics think is Anglo-Saxon! And in order to square this circle they have had to come up with the theory that Anglo-Saxon changed into English in...about twenty years! I know academics are cretinous dogs by the nature of their calling but even so....
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| EndlesslyRocking wrote: | | But I thought things didn't percolate up to the gentry because they want to separate themselves from the lowly. |
I guess things can trickle up, as is the case with Sheng:
| It has moved upwards in the social structure of Kenyan society where speaking Sheng has become a mark of cosmopolitan "coolness."Educated men and women, secondary school students, and an increasing number of city residents are speaking Sheng in the marketplace, in the streets, and even at home. | |
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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A bit like Lily Allen singing with an Estuarine twang, innit!!
_________________
Question everything!
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