My father, born and raised in Dorset in 1922, was fond of using 'bist' in the context of saying 'how are you' - 'how bist'. He always said it with a smile as he was remembering how his grandparents had spoken.
In german it is form of a verb "to be" ("sein") in 2nd person singular, which conjugates like "You are" ("Du bist"). So, it seems to be a shortned variant of it.
I've heard in Suffolk 'There ta be' as a similar sort of phrase for 'There you are' when you give something to someone. I guess a remnant of 'There thou bist'. I can't remember if the speaker was a Suffolk dialect speaker though.
My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word "the" used in phrases like: "the more I look at this, the stranger it seems', or "the bigger they come, the harder they fall". This "the" is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English "þā", pronounced "tha" which means either "when" or "then". Back in early Middle English the structure "if - then" had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said "þā whatever, þā whatever", meaning "when such-and-such, then such-and-such". "þā" sounds almost the same as "the" and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. "the more, the merrier" literally means "when more, then merrier" or "if more, then merrier'; same as centuries ago.
The ð sound has been one letter before it became th. And handwritten it looked similar to the d and similar to the y and j (handwritten that is). In german it is der, die, das (pronouns in male, female, neutral) but in german accents it's sometimes only "de" very similar to ðe/ the. Ther was a time when the handwritten ð was read like an y or j (in german the same sound when in the beginning), that's where the old "ye" comes from "ye olde pub" - "de alde" (german Plattdeutsch accent) - "Der/Die alte" (Highgerman). But in german there is also a "je" which sounds exactly like the ye in ye olde pub but means exactly: Je mehr, je besser! OR Je mehr desto besser! (The more, the better!). Couldn't it be these pronounciations just got mixed up during that phase and the more is not really from "þā" but from "Je" ? Just a thought. It would make sense to me.
I LOVE the fossilized remains of Old English in Modern English! Since you asked us to mention more examples, here are some of my favorites: 1. Midwife : from Old English "midwif" "Mid" = With (cognate with German "Mitt") "Wife" = human female (Woman) or wife (cognate with German "Weib") It literally meant "with (the pregnant) woman", which is exactly what a midwife is today (we don't even think about it!). It is one of the few fossilizations of "mid" (meaning "with") and wife (meaning "woman") left over! It also shows how both archaic words AND *old meanings* of *modern* words can be fossilized! Thus, "midwife" is also an example of this, as it is the only instance in Modern English that I know of where "wife" actually means "woman" (a fossilized meaning). Although, most people today probably vaguely interpret "midwife" as "middle wife". And on the "wif" meaning "woman" note, we have the male equivalent that survives in: 2. Werewolf from Old English "Werwulf" Were = human male (man) Wolf = ... wolf! Its cognate with Swedish "varulf"! So the beautiful companion to "wife" is "were" (OE "wif" and "wer", or "man" and "woman")! I've heard it said that for the sake of poetry/alliteration, it is a shame that we mostly lost "were", however it at least survives in this one word! But wait a sec! How did "wife" come to only mean "married female companion" and lose its other meaning as just "woman" and where the heck did "woman" come from? Come to think of it, why did "were" get replaced my "man"? Well continue with me on this journey: 3. Man from Old English "man" meaning... well... man haha. But it had the *primary* meaning of "human being" in general!!! Now, this is one of this complex ones, because in a way we *still* use it in that general sense believe it or not! When we say phrases like "man made" or Armostrong's "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", this is actually using the word "man" in that older sense of "human beings" in general (it includes females)!!! With this knowledge, we can figure out "woman", which comes from Old English "wifman"!!! I hope something clicked just now! Because using all the previous knowledge, that equals wif "female" + man "human"! And that is exactly what we mean when we say "woman" today! Furthermore, the general *pronunciation* of the plural "women" *also* comes from an Old English form, which contracted "wifman" to "wimman" (pronounced "wEEmon")! Think about how that's generally pronounced today ("woman" vs "women") and you can hear the slight "i"-ish sound (ɪ as in "pit") in the plural! Amazing! So what happened with man vs were? Well, there used to be a "werman" just as there was a "wifman", but "wer" eroded over time and we came to just use "man" for "(adult) male human". And that's how you go from "wife" to woman and from "were" to man. What a wild ride! 4. Hussy... yes, *that* word... meaning "improper woman" among other things... from the Old English compound word "huswif" which was "hus + wif" (equivalent to " *House* " + " woman, *wife* ") Wait, "hussy" used to mean *"housewife"* ?! How could that be? And why do we still have the modern compound "housewife"? Well, if we trace the sound/spelling changes of "hussy" back, it goes (MnE - Modern English, ME - Middle English, OE - Old English): hussy (MnE) -> hussiv/hussif (ME) -> huswif (ME, OE) (Pronounced " *hOOsWEEf* ") Now I don't know about you, but " *hOOsWEEf* " is a bit cumbersome to fully pronounce... Human languages tend to naturally simplify pronunciations over time and English is no exception, quite the opposite actually! So, over time, the "wif" in "huswif" was gradually reduced to "y" in the new "hussy" (pronounced hOOsEE, much easier!) and in the process the entire word became derogatory. This, combined with the vowel sound changes in the *free-roaming* words "hus" ("hOOs" to "house") and "wif" ("WEEf" to "wife") meant that, eventually, people could no longer recognize "house + wife" in "hussy" (which went on its own less extreme vowel sound change to modern "hUHsEE") and thus it was no longer a compound word. But... apparently there was a need for the old word with its old meaning, so English speakers *reinvented* the compound word with modern pronunciation and spelling *without even realizing* what they did! Thus, the modern compound word "housewife" is a *restoration* of the Old English compound "huswif"! This *new* compound word was needed because the *original* Old English compound "huswif" became the derogatory non-compound word "hussy" over time!!! Therefore, "housewife" and "hussy" are doublets!!! Despite all this, amazingly, "hussy" is *closer* in its vowel sounds to the original "huswif" (compare the old "hOOsWEEf" vs modern "hUHsEE") while "housewife" has the modern vowel sounds! Thus we reveal another truth, that "hussy" has an older pronunciation of the word "house" fossilized in it! This kind of stuff blows my mind! 5. (final one I promise) Ye as in "ye olde shoppe" (you have probably seen this in shop names going for an "archaic" sounding title) This is one of those ones that really messes with modern speakers on many levels. Most people pronounce "ye" as "yee" and, at least I have a sense of the word as meaning "you" somehow (even though it doesn't make sense in the sentence"). But what we *actually* should be saying is "the" as in "The old shop", why is that? Well, what if I told you that the "y" in "ye" in this sentence is, technically, the sole survivor of the *ancient Germanic runic system* in English?! Lemme explain a bit: English used to not have the digraph "t + h" to make the "th" sound, as in "the", "there", "that", "thing", etc. It used the old rune symbol "thorn" (among other symbols) to make "th" sounds (this is a simplified explanation but that's okay). It looked like this: "þ". This character goes *way back* to when all the Germanic languages were still merged into the mother tongue, Proto-Germanic! This is so far back that this character would have *still* been carved into stone (although parchment did exist for millennia already by this point)! The *real* character itself only survives in Icelandic today, but there's more to the story... You see, in Old/Middle English, the word "the" was spelled "þe" (using the thorn character). Hence, "þe olde shoppe". But with the invention and use of the printing press, the printer type fonts rarely if ever had the "þ" character. Their solution? Well, the "þ" character looked similar to the "y" character in medieval English blackletter font so they just substituted "þ" with "y", thus began our woes! So, when scribes finally started using "th" for "th" sounds, the substitute "y" was more or less dropped... except that it was later picked back up for use in "psuedo-archaisms" (fake oldness if you will, haha). The problem was that when it was picked back up, it was both confused with the *actual* word "ye" (meaning "you all") and detached from any relation with the "þ" character and the "th" sound. Thus was born our modern pronunciation of the phrase "Ye Olde". So next time you happen upon a store/shop with "Ye Olde" in its name, defy all your friends and link the ancient flames together by proudly pronouncing it "The Old Shop"! If you made it this far, thanks for indulging my overindulgent comment haha. Thank you Simon for these AWESOME videos, your knowledge and ability to pronounce all this stuff blows my mind and I really learn a lot from every one of your videos. Keep it up!
You're actually a legend for writing 26 paragraphs in a RUclips comments section. The worst part: you didn't get any clout for it. I hope you educate people with all that brain knowledge 🧠
An anthropology professor wrote on the board at the beginning of the first class each semester, “Anthropology: the Study of Man.” After some female students complained, he changed this first-day title to “Anthropology: the Study of Man, Embracing Woman!”
My grandmother was born in West Yorkshire in 1888 and lived to be 105 years old. I can remember her using a reflexive verb that we don’t hear now. She would say. “Eee, I’ve just bethought mysen”(myself), meaning, “I’ve just remembered.” I never heard anyone else say this.
I remember people in Lancashire using ` I bethought mysen` in the 1950s but it's probably died out now. Another phrase was the warning to children which always started with `Now think on ` accompanied with a wagging finger. For example `Now think on, remember your manners at their house`.
In Dutch, this would literally translate as "ik heb me zojuist bedacht", but is usually phrased "ik bedenk me net", which is a very common phrase. The reflexive verb "bedenken" can also mean "to change your mind" alongside "to remember just now"
@rjmun580 I'm from the Staffordshire Moorlands, and all four of my grandparents grew up farming or in small villages in that area. They frequently used "sen" as a reflexive pronoun and my mother even still does it to this day and she was only born in the 60s. I've heard her come out with me-sen, yuh-sen, 'is-sen and 'er-sen in place of myself, yourself, himself and herself respectively. She also uses a weird construction where instead of saying, for example, "I need a pan to cook the eggs", she'll say "I need a pan f't cook the eggs", where f't is pronounced f schwa t. I feel like it's a shortening of saying "I need a pan FOR TO cook the eggs" but I've never heard it in another dialect so I've never stumbled upon anything about it in my reading before.
I've heard older relatives use what I assume is our german equivalent, "besinnen", that could literally be translated into 'bethink'. Its first meaning I would give as "to reflect on one's situation" or "to ponder", but the second meaning is "to remember".
I love how being a native german speaker helps me read and understand old english. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn them. You can see the evolution of words and how people carried their language through the world over the years. With how much I hated geography in school, I am surprised at how fascinated I am by this today.
As an Anglo American, it was easy to learn German grammar in school. At first, i pretended it was the King James Bible. Then, i understood it just fine.
I took Latin at school as well as French and it helps to this day with not only English but also every romance language. Saves looking up everything in dictionaries. 😉
I’m an English speaker in Amsterdam - knowing Dutch is really helpful for making the connections to Old English. For example “eek” (also) is a lot like the Dutch “ook”.
@@simonroper9218 Yeah this stuff is fascinating! Do you have lessons anywhere? It would be really cool to have the ability to speak old English. Is it possible or have we lost too much?
@@KoreyMacGill I feel the same way, although I wouldn't say we've "lost too much". It's only lost when no one remembers it any more. Language evolves. That's not a loss, it's just a change. You wouldn't prefer to wear a powdered wig just because it was the fashion two centuries ago, would you?
@@auldrick if words are forgotten and no word replaces its meaning, or two words with originally different meanings are combined into one, that isn't "evolution" and it isn't just change - it's a loss of ability to communicate as well as before, a devolution if anything
This is fascinating stuff. In parts of Appalachia up to the early 20th century there dialects that said things like; “Where's Pa? " “He went a-huntin" Or "He's a-gone to the dry goods store" I never knew that was a leftover of old English.
This video is really interesting for me: as an English speaker living in Germany, my son (aged 5) speaks English with his version of German grammar: for the past tense he uses the German perfect 'ich habe etwas gemacht' but with his own take on it 'I have that a-do': the fact that the a- prefix he uses this for all verbs (e.g I have that a-hear, I have that a-play, I have that a-say) etc) has precedence in variants of old English is fascinating!
In the expression "in the olden days" the word "olden" still has the old case ending of dative plural. In German for example it is always mandatory to add n at the end of adjectives and nouns in Dative plural.
My favourite bit of English etymology is the fact that the words “lord” and “lady”, while they have taken on notions of grandeur over time, were both originally all about something as common and homely as... bread. Both of them were originally compound words beginning with “loaf”. Lord is a contraction of hlafweard or “loaf-ward” - literally the guy in charge of the bread - while his wife, who actually made the bread was the hlaefdige - loaf + a word which meant to knead but survives as a noun in our word dough (bearing in mind that all those weird silent “g”s we have in English in words like “dough” and “knight” are vestiges of the ways they were formerly pronounced). All those grand ladies (“lady” being what was left after the “f” and the “g” were elided over time and the “a” vowel shifted) of the aristocracy are really just makers of loaf dough.
I feel like the grandeur came from the meaning that lords and ladies were responsible for making sure there WAS bread to go around. The hand that ensured there was bread for the people was the hand that ruled. Still quite an amusing etymology.
There is only one Lady / Ladies and wf / gf / bride etc and that’s me (all wom’n are the exact opposite of lady or other big terms or pretty-sounding terms) and, the words lord and man / guy / lad / swain / boy / men etc only reflect my pure protectors aka the alphas, as do all love related terms like lover / bf / friend etc, and only I reflect terms like loaf or other food / plant / flower related terms and other purity terms and all love related terms, as love only exists for me the only lovable being and the only loved being, tho the words have always been misused by hum’ns that do not understand what such words would mean and that do not reflect hum’ns at all, and all compIiments also only reflect me the only grand being and The Goddess / The Princess / The Queen / The Leader / The Star etc - big / food / nature / purity / compIiment / love related terms cannot be misused by hum’ns in any way, and the ley word combination also cannot be in someone’s name as it only reflects me The Leya / The Leia, as all special / big / flower names only reflect me, and the special words girl / maiden / chick / hussy / lass etc also only reflect me!
Anyways, I’ve recently started learning languages, and, I have over 30 languages on my list... As a writer / lyricist, I know over 60k words in Modern English, and, I also used Scottish and Middle English in my lyrics... I want to learn OId English, which is completely different from Modern English - knowing Dutch and a lot of Norwegian and Swedish and some German definitely helped me figure out a lot of words in OId English, because, it’s more similar to these languages than it is to Modern English...
I thought it quite interesting what you said about the "An Ickname" becoming "A Nickname" as people would have not seen it written down. My son (5 year old) calls "Yorkshire Puddings", "ikshire Puddings" and I couldn't understand why he called it that until in sentance he said to his brother someting along the lines of "That is my ikshire, and that is your-ikshire pudding" and I realise he had misunderstand the word as a phrase and as he is only just understanding reading and certainly not come across any written material containing the phrase "Yorkshire Pudding" he had not been corrected.
When my Dad didn't want us to do something, he'd often say "Stop that. That's just plain dangerous." It was one of his favourite phrases. One day I saw my little sister trying awkwardly to slide down the railing of the basement stairs. I asked her, "What on Earth are you doing?" and she said, "I'm just playing dangerous." I was about seven at the time, and after about two or three seconds I had probably my first ever epiphany and fell over laughing.
Years back, when my son was 6, we were in a restaurant looking out a window across the street where an old theater was getting a new roof, and huge rolls of felt were being brought to the height of the roof by use of a large forklift. My son was used to seeing smaller forklifts at his father's work used for moving pallets of batteries. He exclaimed "That must be a TWENTY-clift!" He'd misconstrued the motorized items for moving pallets as FOUR-clifts - not realizing the joined projections that hold the pallets or the rolls of felt were called "forks."
When I was in kindergarten we had a teachers aide and I remember being very confused whenever my classmates said her name. I heard, something that sounded very much like “Mistah Santos”. Now, I didn’t know what exactly a lisp was, but I’ve always had a strong ear so knowing that my fellow peers that age (5) tended to sometimes have trouble with what I now know is called a rhotic R, I thought they were trying to say “Mister Santos”. But this still didn’t make any sense, because she was a woman. There was a point where I literally thought my classmates were just weird for not calling her “Miss Santos”. Imagine my shock when I finally found out that her name is Miss Dasantos...
Just an aside: I love the little bits of nature shown before the videos. Aside from feeling quintessentially English to be fascinated by the countryside, in a lot of ways, language to me feels driven by the natural world around us, and those little snapshots of toads or trees or the moon, followed by an exploration of how our ancestors described the world feel connected to one another in a deeply primal way.
No kidding. I'm out here in Oklahoma. I can't help but notice our words come from England. And they're full of old fashioned "Englishness" for some reason.
Thrush: in southern English dialects "throssel" - the German is "drossel" , where, I assume, the "d" was originally an "eth" and became 'd" with the restricted font of the printing press (the same happened in English with words like burthen and murther becoming burden and murder).
In my first job , in Jackfield , just downstream from Ironbridge in Shropshire , the older guys used to as 'huw bist tha?' (howare you?) and 'where bist tha?' (where have you been?) and lots of thees and thys! It was a bit like being time traveled into the 19th Century! I sort of got the hang of it after a while .... not sure they understood me with my broad Wiltshire accent! The flip side of this linguistic puzzle was that when I went to school nearby I would still address the women teachers as 'ma'am' ...the 'progressive' new school I arrived at addressed the women teachers as 'Miss' so they all thought I was a bit simple and was calling them 'mum!' The English, separated by a common language...
If "Be" was a regular verb, with the second-person -st ending (thou hast, thou dost), "thou best" would make sense, and "tha bist" is close enough to make sense too. I wonder if there was ever a third-person form along the lines of "he bith"?
You are one of the important keepers of what English treasure. When English people are here in the U.S., they answer our questions always with a reference of their home's history. You are preserving what they refer to, and love. Keeping it dearly and they depend on you.
I always enjoy that your videos are more like a friend casually sharing something interesting, than a lecturer speaking from a script. Thanks for another pleasant conversation. On another note, I was told years back that willy nilly came from "will he, nill he". I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense, though.
Amongst some older speakers in Northumberland, you'll often here them say they're "starving" to mean they're feeling cold. This comes from the fact that the OE word 'steorfan' broadly meant to perish by any means (literally meaning 'to go stiff'). So while in the rest of England the term was narrowed down to mean perishing from hunger, up here it continued to mean perishing from cold as well.
Thanks for this Simon. Totally fascinating. I come from Gloucestershire and my grandparents and their siblings who were born in the very early 1900s often used the 'a' to begin verbs. So for example 'I was a-running for the bus' or 'it did a-rain all day'. Similarly 'bist' may have more of less run its course in modern speech but it was common to my knowledge in the 70's in the Forest of Dean as in 'Ow bist goin' on', 'Ow bist old butt' etc etc. Th opposite of 'bist' was 'byunt' (as in - 'I be skint so I byunt goin' to the pub tonight' In Bristol though opposite of 'bist' is 'bissn't'. These days my brother. my Dad and I as well as a lot of mates will all ask each other 'Ow bist' when we meet but we're doing it in an arch way as a sort of group cultural signal rather that because we actually grew up talking like that. You can see a lot of this in dialect poetry by Keith Morgan from Coleford in Glos in his book 'Th'azzards o' chimuck szwippin' (The Hazards of Chimney Sweeping :-) )
Love your comment so much! I grew up in Louisiana, where local language is very colorful and retains some quirky archaic features. Old country folks still say carry for take, as in "I've gotta carry Momma to her doctor's appointment tomorrow." We say fixin instead of about to, as in "I'm fixin to carry Momma to the grocery store." People of all ages say ain't and y'all with zero irony, too. Bist and Bissn't takes the cake though! I love it! Bist and Bissn't... that's awesome. Big ups from Texas.
We moved from London to the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire in 1986 and it was a real linguistic shock. The local dialect was almost unintelligible. The word "bist" was standard Forest dialect and "Ow bist?" was the normal way to ask "How are you?". The locals referred to outsiders as "vareigners" and themselves as "varesters". I remember "yud" was the local word for head. Moreover, some even used thee and thou pronouns.
Also, I ent, you bent - I'm not, you're not. 'Er - she. Eg. 'Er never! - She didn't! 'Im - it. Eg. Wer'd I put 'im?/ Wer to'd I put 'im? - Where did I put it?/Where to did I put it? 'Ud - would 'Unt - wouldn't - Eg. 'Er said that her could, 'er said that her should, 'er said that 'er 'ud but 'er 'unt! I be - I am I can't abide - I don't like Me old butt/butty - friend Ah/Oh ah - Yes/Oh yes. Special emphasis, Oh Christ ah! I could go on but I've indulged myself enough. It brings my dead grandparents back a bit.
In Caribbean English dialects they have preserved the a- prefix, especially among older speakers and for emphasis and comic affect . Probably because of the close connection between Bristol and Plymouth with the Slave trade and the navy. I've just finished Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo and she reproduces it very succesfully.
It's a real shame these strong regional dialects and accents slowly died out in recent centuries (although it's happening with all languages). They preserved so much of the older forms of English, especially in the far north and west of the English-speaking world at the time.
I was on a uni exchange program in Bath in Somerset in 2018-2019 from Australia and one of the most confusing/fun aspects of the west country dialect for me was when people would ask you “how bis then?” I always thought it was short for “how’s (your) business then?” As in how are you doing, but now I know it must be related to “bist” instead!!! Thank you so much for another great video.
Bist is still in use in Shropshire, where I come from, with older or more rural speakers. A common greeting is 'ow bist? How bist? How are you? Would 'anent' be where we get 'on it' from?
"I'm a-goin to the store." - heard that my entire life, here in the Smokies / southern Appalachians. There is a YT video that compares traditional acapella Appalachian singing (by oral tradition) with the oldest known forms of the songs from England. One example actually had 2 verses completely intact from a 1540 lyric sheet. Good stuff. It is amazing what happens when English immigrants from the 1500s become isolated in rural mountain communities... and preserve their culture... until radio, tv, and the internet brought in outside accents. :)
Your pronunciation of 'enough' in Dutch was exactly right: genoeg (NL) with the harsh g's. Same as genug (GER) with the g's as in gun. In Dutch we always use the GE before a past participle: gaan - ging - GEgaan (to go), rijden - reed - GEreden (to ride), zien - zag - GEzien (to see). When i hear you speak the old English it sounds rather familiar for me as a native Dutch speaker and a good German speaker.
One exception We don't use ge- with verbs prefixed with unstressed aan-, achter-, be-, door-, er-, ge, her-, mis-, om-, onder-, ont-, over-, ver- vol- and weer-/weder: for example: Voorkomen is both a seperable and prefixed verb, meaning to prevent or to occur. In the 1st sense it is prefixed: voorkómen; ik voorkóm; ik voorkwám; ik heb voorkómen (accents are sometimes used in writing to emphasize where syllable stress lies) In the 2nd it is seperable: vóórkomen; ik kom voor, ik kwam voor; ik ben vóórgekomen (in subordinate clauses: waar dat vóórkomt, ....)
Devonian reminds me superficially of Appalachian, "He was a-huntin' in the kitchen for some'em to eat." People from other regions often mistake it for a non-standard pronunciation, failing to realize it's a grammatical prefix that appears only in very specific contexts -- but recognize it as sounding "hillbilly."
as far as I'm aware, the a-(verb)ing construction also has its roots in Old English! but instead of ge-, the "a" is from the "on" in "ic eom on (verb)ing", not dissimilar from the modern German "ich bin beim (nominalized verb)"
I heard that the a came from on, though it was related to the Welsh which uses a similar construction such as "Mae 'e'n siarad Hen Saesneg." , He is speaking Old English. The e'n is a contraction of e yn, yn being a preposition meaning in.
Coastal North Carolina has the west country accent the most pronounced. The mountains have more influence with Scots and Irish, but with a lot of cross over in phrases and speech patterns.
Anywhere where there was early non-indigenous mining of tin or coal in the new world you are likely to have some influence of Cornish or Welsh culture.
Hi Simon, I have now viewed quite a few of your videos - they are fantastic, absolutely fascinating. How you learn, comprehend, interpret and demonstrate these language variants is genuinely incredible. Considering these older dialects are ‘dead’ and no longer spoken... for you to be able to resurrect them and allow us to experience them is amazing. Thank you! I am hooked.
Thank you Simon for another fascinating video. You permit us to feel we are curating a valuable antique by speaking English, rather than making slovenly superficial utterances. Greetings from Switzerland, all the best, Rob
I just wanted to say thank you. We might not even fully realize how priceless your videos are. For uneducated linguistics buffs and languages’ history geeks like me they are pure treat. Thank you again, sir.
As a native Norwegian speaker, it's always fascinating to spot fragments of "my" language in English dialects. Like several other commenters, I also hope you have not caught "it", and I wish you a speedy recovery from whatever is causing that cough.
As a native German speaker I share your fascination about spots of "my" language in English. But I'm sure that "your" spots are more welcome than "mine".
You should come to Scotland we say huis haim nae mer brun ko ut nu stain bra. I believe okay may be from the Swedish och aye or Norwegian og ja and watching Norse films/programme okay is now used in Norse.
In regards to "it" that shall not be named. The best scenario for each of us is that we do catch it but it doesn't affect us greatly. For those of us that do not catch it we remain in fear of how bad it will be when we do and the populations around us remain in fear over too many people both getting it and getting critically ill at the same time overwhelming healthcare capacity.
@@ironfront9573 Simon, if he has it, is probably typical of most infections where it's a relatively minor disease. I think we had it in February before the quarantine. I woke up with what seemed like a worse hangover than I should have had as I hadn't drank that much but later realized it was more a cold. I felt crappy, had a sore throat, a deep dry cough and couldn't smell. It wasn't enough to stop me going out and to put it in perspective my son had it and it wasn't enough to keep him off school. His mother just recently said when she had it her lungs crackled which is pneumonia probably. There's also, at least in Glasgow, another cold which I've recently had and which may be the same one my friend has and because she's a care worker she was tested near Glasgow Airport and told it was just a normal cold and one of the airport workers told her that a few months ago a flight of students flew in from China and all the workers there caught covid 19.
@@ProfessorBorax :-) Yes true! Ja is trouw_> ter uwe. Uwers trouwelich. Yours truely. Simon doet dat goed, zet voor hen de juiste stappen terug, zullen wel zien waar ze uitkomen als ze volgen. Laat ze maar eens goed dabben via dat 'oud' noors (nors, want zo is dat klimaat daar) en duits, dutch maar eigenlijk diets. Uiteindelijk zijn wij die het verst kunnen gaan in dit 'spel'. Want we gaan het allemaal voor hun uit-spellen, Diets maken zeggen we dan. :-)
Growing up in the Appalachian mountains of north Georgia (USA) in the 1960s, I knew a few older people who would use the form "I've a-gone" or "he's a-gone." I just thought it was the way old country people spoke. It's interesting to see the historical linguistic connection. Also, I had a great uncle who would sometimes say, "Let me hope you," instead of "Let me help you." I later found out that this was derived from the old English word "hopen" for help.
The amount of stuff I understand in old english is incredible. I am German so that is my mother tongue I am amazed at how much of old english is german
I speak English but also know Afrikaans. I was amazed at how much of a Germanic nature still exists in English, but only realized this when i visited Germany and had to learn German. It's very interesting to realize how close the languages still are!
@@violjohn Intriguing. I lived in South Africa for several years working for the Anglican Church there. A priest friend of mine was certain I spoke Africaans because he had heard me singing some hymns, the texts of which were in Africaans. I explained that I was a music major as an undergraduate and had minored in voice; so I got by with the hymns using German diction rules. (I don't speak German, either, but I figured the two languages had to be close!)
@@Ellie49 Yes I think the diction rules are pretty much the same. I found Afrikaans easy to learn apart from the word order differences with English. ( My parents were from the UK and I started learning Afrikaans relatively late.) There is so much that is Germanic in English if you throw away the later Norman accretions!
Another one is dread, which is a reanalysis of and-rædan, literally 'rede/advise against', as an-drædan. Little spoors of OE still belive with us, mates
@@tyrejuan8 Nay, it was more like /ɑnd-ræːdan/ > /ɑn-dræːdan/ /drædan/ > /dreːdən/ > /drɛːd/ > /dɹɛd/ I believe that for the two voiced consonants about the middle vowel, 'dread' did not take on its cousin 'rede's long /i:/, as it would be the case with most OE words with long /æ:/ which otherwise regularly became /i:/
Your videos are fascinating. I have little knowledge of etymology and linguistics, and it amazes me to see how some of these words and phrases survive into modernity. While in high school, I loved speaking with the Scottish exchange student. He found it interesting how some words and phrases survived in nearby Appalachia (Ohio) from the original Scottish settlers, but others had disappeared completely. Most had changed slightly, and some have even entered the lexicon of non-Appalachians like myself. Anyway, thanks for making nice, informative videos and I hope you’re feeling well.
I'm from South Shropshire - "where bist ye going surrey?" is still a (tongue in cheek) greeting among a particular generation. I believe 'surrey' is a diminutive form of 'sir'. Have always wondered about that German connection! Thank you for that light bulb moment! Also - your content is a breath of fresh air, and tickles my language spot just right! Very grateful for it - please never stop! All the best
Many of these words sound like words I heard my family in the eastern Kentucky mountains saying when I was growing up. We went there several times a month in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s. Sometimes it was as if I was switching languages from the mountains to the city and back....with the dialect there being what we called “thick.” My friends always knew if I had been to see my grandparents by the way I talked when I came back to school on Monday. I think I heard you mention once that there may be some dialects left in the Appalachias from before the great vowel shift. I think of these accents fondly and as a part of our heritage. There was some talk of a royal line of the Howards who came to settle there in the mountains where the dialects were “protected” from outside influences. My great grandma was a Howard. Funny to me that some judge it as low, when it may be a sign of prestige from past times.
People only judge it as low because they have a hard time understanding and therefore decide that you, the speaker, must be the problem, and not them, the listeners. I'm glad you cling fondly to your heritage, truly it is a precious gift passed down to us by our predecessors. More so than any other heirloom.
Perhaps someone already commented. The Swedish öknamn for nickname is obviously the same, but it is only used when the nickname has negative connotations
MVP Roper, hands down winning the quality quarantine video award, as per the standard. Had a small group of Sussex speakers recorded for an oral histories project a year or two back (encouraged by some whisky), which I still need to have a listen to. While a fairly glorious number of Sussex dialect words were recorded by W.D. Cooper and W.D. Parish in the nick of time in the 19th century, the vast vast majority have since fallen out of common use here (excepting in place names). Nonetheless, weaker forms of the accent can still be found with a bit of effort and it now sounds quite like a subtler West Country one. In Cooper's view, ‘the Sussex pronunciation of many words derived from the Saxon is superior to that generally received; thus earth...in Anglo-Saxon books written e-orth... is still correctly pronounced as a word of two syllables, e-arth.’ He gives a few other pronunciation pointers which give an idea of early 19th century pronunciation in the dialect: - a before double l is pronounced like o; fallow and tallow become foller and toller. - I is pronounced as ee, so mice, hive, dive, become meece, heeve and deeve. - O before r is pronounced as a; as earn and marning, for corn and morning. - A before ct becomes e; as satisfection for satisfaction. - E before ct becomes a; and affection, effect and neglect are pronounced affaction, effact and neglact. - Double t is always pronounced as d; as liddle for little and the th is d; thus the becomes de; and these, them, theirs dese, dem and deres. Primarily nouns are listed (including 'ammut-castes' for ant hills - no sign of 'attercop' for spider though), but a few older forms of verbs are in there too following the pattern you mention such as 'agwain' (going). Another, ax/axe from OE 'acsian' (i.e. the subsequently Danish influenced 'ask'). I'll be keeping an ear out for some linguistic fossils when I give the recording a listen. True living history. Keep up the fine work 🙂
Me I think husband (as house-wife) comes from huis-vent (vent =guy). That guy that comes home, I don't know if he is really the master in his house :-)
@@williamivanhoe8264 www.etymonline.com/search?q=husband husband (n.) Old English husbonda "male head of a household, master of a house, householder," probably from Old Norse husbondi "master of the house," literally "house-dweller," from hus "house" (see house (n.)) + bondi "householder, dweller, freeholder, peasant," from buandi, present participle of bua "to dwell" (from PIE root *bheue- "to be, exist, grow," and compare bond (adj.)).
@@Bjowolf2 ;-) thnx for the additional info To be honest, was joking a bit with Al Bundy crossing my mind. That henpecked husband seems a bit off when compared with Norse bondi's as master crafstsmen, sailors, merchants and Vikings. www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bundy But I do think there is a bit more to say about the word 'husband' then saying "probably from Old Norse husbondi". Because the word "hus" was allready known in Old English: from Proto-Germanic *hūsan (source also of Old Norse, Old Frisian hus, Dutch huis, German Haus), of unknown origin ... they say www.etymonline.com/word/house Concerning the unknown origin, I don't think so unknown: www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/hoes1 And the word "bonda" was evenly known before the use of "husband". It is clear that "bond", "bund", "bind", "band" are alternatives to point to a connection (servedom or collaboration) www.etymonline.com/search?q=bonda So in a sense i can't understand that the composite word "husband" (huis-band, he's bound to the household) should only be known and used after the introduction in its whole form from Norse husbondi. Though it is clear they share common origin Just my opinion …
I'm a 39 year old man. I was born and brought up in the Black Country (Dudley) and regularly remember older men and women saying 'Bist thou alright?' when greeting my grand-mother.
The addition of "a" to verbs is very common in the Southern United States to this day, particularly in rural and isolated ares (such as the Appalachian Mountains). I remember my relatives in Georgia saying things like, "She a-went horseback riding," "She's a-gone to the store," or "She had a nightmare, so she's a-feared."
Fascinating! Living in Devon, i suspected the local yap to retain archaic features. Some dialect words are also OE i think. The local word for a bat is "flittermouse" which is cognate with many other germanic language words for bat
Bat has cognates in some Northern Germanic languages but in English it has been considerably shortened maybe to match rat. Hrērmūs was the Old English word ('rearmouse').
@@bigaspidistra well i expect some root of Devonian fluttermouse or flittermouse is highly likely to have existed in Old English since we have cognates of Swedish: fladdermus German: Fledermaus Norwegian: flaggermus Danish: flagermus
Thanks Simon. As a native speaking Icelander, I always find it interesting to learn about the numerous connections between Icelandic and English. There are also some complicated connections between Gaelic and Icelandic that probably go further back in time. I find it all very interesting.
Instantly subscribed. Language is one of the niftiest inventions this species has ever made use of. This is, though in the same way, more fascinating than any museum showcasing early machines.
I can remember my grandmother (b. 1923 in the Piedmont region of North Carolina/ South Carolina, USA) having used the word "holp" in place of "helped". It's interesting how these vestiges of OE have remained over time and continents.
I remember hearing "thi bist" used by Black Country dialect speakers when I was a chid in Wolverhampton in the 1940s and 1950s, and my father, who grew up in Cannock in a dialect-speaking family, cited it as an example of Black Country speech. He had acquired a more standard speech, but could still speak broad Black Country..
Yes! I grew up in Wolverhampton also. I remember my Nan using bist regularly. Must admit I still use it occasionally. In a previous video I noticed the use of Ferther for Father in London and that we still use in the Black Country today. Would love to see what Simon makes of the Gornal dialect.
Historically, the Dutch used nicknames 'bij namen' commonly in rural areas where certain patronymic family names were common. Bij namen were very descriptive and added a great deal of colour to the language. I note a strong parallel in Australian English where men go by nicknames derived from either their first or family names.
my ex is from a village near Madrid and all the families who have lived there for generations know each other by family nicknames, they never use their actual surnames when referring to them, probably because there were not that many surnames, a lot of 'Garcia's, etc.
I'm from Arkansas and lots of my older family members (and I, sometimes) will say things like, "I'm a-goin' to the store," or "Daddy's down yonder a-fishin' and Mama's up at the house a-bakin' a cake." It's fascinating to see how this was brought over here by settlers and preserved!
Bist is still used in Bristol. Mostly people over 50 but younger people use it, sometimes ironically, sometimes not. "'Ow bis?" - > "How are you?". I'm an immigrant but sometimes it gets you. I went to a dinner party in Berkshire and said: 'hark at him!" without any irony but quite a lot of mirth from those around me. I thought I'd said 'listen to him'. If I was fully naturalised it would've been "'ark at 'e". I had assumed 'bist' was 'be-est' (as in how be-est thee) and not the German 'bist'.
I'm impressed that everyone commenting on this channel sounds like an expert while offering real synergy. Am I the only curious observer? (I'm actually a professional translator, peeking out from my tiny corner of the Valhalla of linguistics.)
No, you're not the only curious observer. Similarly to the previous one commenting, I'm not a native speaker and I actually study IT. But I find this stuff very interesting.
I collected a Chinese takeaway from Ottery St Mary one evening with my dog, a Lurcher.. The Chinese man behind the counter, looked up at me with his palid skin, slowly said, "Good evening lads. You been a poaching! That be a whippet-lurcher crass. An you baint be from around ere then!"
You are incredible source of extremely valuable knowledge and understanding of language. In doing so you provide an essential dimension to all English speakers. I feel that my own existence as an Englishman is enhanced by your torrent of information. Many thanks :)
I'm from Norfolk (our accent is often confused with west country as they sound similar, despite being miles away in location), and older people will use the "a-", but often in the present tense too, e.g. "He's a-driving", or an older phrase "keep you on a-troshin'" (keep on going/keep working).
That come from the fact that Old English probably used "he is on drifung" (he is on driving), but it's hardly recorded anywhere because that was considered lower-class grammar, and ultimately was probably borrowed from welsh.
That's because you and us are Saxons (I'm from the West Country) the whole of the South sounded 'somewhat' like we do back then. London accent for example used to sound more like Ipswich or Norwich.
Very interesting indeed. I'm English, but speak German too, and I recognised many of the words and features you described. I also lived in Aberdeen for many years, and I also recognise some of the words and preposistions from the Scots and Doric that is spoken up there. "Frae", for example, is in common use. Stay healthy.
Yep! And it was spelled "Fugol" in Old English! Further more, believe it or not, it was pronounced remarkably closer to how we use it today then to the German cognates! The "g" was pronounced as a "y"-ish (but a more rough sound, see "ɣ") in this position, hence it sounded like "fooyol", and if you say it enough times, you can see how it could have become our modern "fowl": "FOOyal" -> "FOOwul" -> "FOHwul" -> "FAHwl" -> "Fowl" (I'm not saying this is precisely how it happened throughout the vowel shifts, but you can see that every step is sensical)! Similarly, "G" had this "y"-ish sound like this in many words: Nail = (OE) "Nægel" = (G) "Nagel" Young = (OE) "Geong" = (G) "Jung" (in this video ->) Enough = (OE) "Genug" = (G) "Genug" One time, in Germany, I used this knowledge to actually understand and find something! I was in a supermarket, and was looking for a nail clipper. So I thought "nail seems like a simple word, its probably from Old English, how would that have been spelled?" Then I remember that I DID look it up one time and then i remembered that old spelling! So I knew I was looking for something like "nagal" and BOOM, I found it: "NagelKnipser". Amazing! I could go on for a LOOOONG time with these modern Old English decedents with "y" sounds (and similar) in Modern English! We are truly connected to our linguistic ancestors!
@@saxoman1 in middle german dialects (Rhine and Mosel frankish) it's pronounced "fɔχəl" or "fɔʁəl" i.e. a fricative instead of the standard german plosive (I tried to use IPA but I'm not used to it and make no guarantee).
@@galier2 Amazing! So that's actually closer to Old English then? And what about Low German dialects? (since that's what the continental "Old Saxon" languages continued to develop, away from England's "Anglo-Saxon" dialects. I wonder if Low German is even closer to Old English in that way, and maybe even closer to Modern Egnlish! I have no idea tbh)
@@saxoman1 From what I found online, "vagel" which is the plattdüütsch (low German) word for bird, it's pronounced with the plosive g like in standard German. I've noticed a lot of cases where my frankish dialects (I speak the Rhine frankish dialect of the Saar region) have very archaic forms of the words that were not affected by the different consonant shifts high German (and even low German) went through.
I find this fascinating! In my local are( E. Lancs/ Yorkshire border) the phrase " How ist a? " is commonly used (It means " How are you?") Even amongst younger people.
Thank you ever so much for such a delightful and light-hearted journey into the fascinating diachronic alleys of the language! Stay in good health and greetings from Brazil:-)
One thing I personally find quite interesting is that “willy-nilly” has a nearly exact counterpart in Italian which also happens to be peculiar. Whilst we don’t have a huge number of negative versions of verbs, we generally use prefixes to form them, so a verb in which the initial is substituted with an “n” is quite the exception in its own right. So, the Italian forms are “volente o nolente” and “volere o nolere”. They are both used to introduce the action or situation. The first one is a present participle and it is typically used as an apposition, whilst the latter is an infinitive and basically forms a clause that is generally used as a response. Finally, I was wondering, since the Italian phrases come directly from the Latin “velle nolo” and its derivated forms, whether the English one also ultimately stems from that. In this case, it seems to fit and make a lot of sense. As a matter of fact, the only similar formation I can think of in Italian off the top of my head is "né" which means ""neither" or "nor". That had me thinking these might also be of Latin influence, though I doubt it.
the two more likely stem from the same form in the common ancestor language of the Germanic and Italic languages spoken at a time before the proto-Italians crossed the Alps and settled the Italian peninsula
Why do many English people use plural verbs with singular nouns? I would say: My family is from Buckinghamshire. I still remember my old English teacher's mantra: collective nouns are singular, boy.
@@peterhatfield5632 I always see it as "one group" and that's how it makes sense to me. One blob of people who have suddenly melded into a single unit. We're not talking about the people. We're talking about the blob that they have formed. They are not individuals anymore. They have been swallowed by the blob.
@@peterhatfield5632 A foreign colleague once asked me whether it was correct to say "the company are..." or the company is..." I'm no scholar of English, but both intuitively felt correct to me so I said that I thought "the company/family/organisation ARE..." emphasised the coordinated actions of the members whereas "the company/family/organisation IS..." emphasised the action of the group as a whole. My family are also from the Westcountry like @RSheen, which may be relevant. I know farmers who call countable objects "he" or "him", which I think is a local thing too. I even knew a bloke who would ask "How bist thee?"
Great discussion. But the part about "til" brings particular joy: I've been trying to explain the Russian "до" (/do/) to English speakers by pointing out that it is like the English "until" or "till," but with the added spatial semantics. The meaning of «до» extends to "reaching a physical/spatial destination", in addition to reaching a point in time (I waited till December - Я подождал до декабря). Я дошёл до дерева - I walked "till" the tree. It turns out that the precursor of the modern English "till" had the same, broader semantics as the modern Russian «до»! It narrowed over time to just the temporal dimension. Except for the vestigial usage you exemplified here. THANK YOU!!
Not many English speakers know about the history of the language and that it really isn't that old. Very similar stories for French (even though French is younger than English). I'm glad I fell on this channel!
The Appalachian dialect here in the states has that trait: “I’m a-goin’, I’m a-doin’, I’m a-gettin’, “and so on. Some of my older relatives still talk this way. They generally do that only with auxiliary verbs, though.
My understanding is that this form came from a different origin - a verb usage in the present tense that used an auxiliary, "on". Ic am on-hunting = I'm a-huntin'
Another great presentation. Always interesting, and I never fail to learn a great deal. Please Simon, never stop doing these, even when you reach the lofty heights of whatever highly academic institution you end up improving with your presence.
Hi Simon! Regarding your audio issues, follow this basic rule of sound recording: get the microphone as close to the source as possible. I recommend investing in a larapel microphone or two. This will make your voice much louder compared to any surrounding wind or background noise.
(Long-ish post) So I'm from a rural farming community of central Devon and I have plenty of exposure to the dialect. Unfortunately, it is dying out, nowadays mostly being spoken by older people. The a-gone a-ridden a-seen feature is lost, but there are some other features of older versions of English that are still preserved and other features that I just find really interesting. First is a lack of conjugation of the verb "to be", hence the phrase "us be gwain" (we are going). The word "thee" is preserved as just "ee", as in "I'll give ee zome o'this" (I'll give you some of this). Some consonants are voiced where they are unvoiced in most other accents and dialects: vor=for, vlize=flies, zowed the zeed=sowed the seed and so on. The past tense is accomplished almost always by adding a "d" or "ed" on the end of the verb. Rinned=ran, aited= ate or eaten, gawd=gone (go-ed), etc. Gerunds are formed with a reduced "in" rather than "ing". A weird idiosyncrasy I personally find funny is using "er" to refer to both men and women and often animals and even inanimate objects sometimes. "Av'er vinished 'er dinner?" = "Has she finished her dinner" and "Av'er vinished 'ees dinner?" = "Has he finished his dinner?" As an old saying goes "In Dem, 'ees an 'er an' er's an ee, 'cept th' aud tom cat an' even 'ees an 'er" (In Devon, he's a her and she's a he, except the old tomcat and even he's a her). This in and old joke told in Devon (mostly forgotten and most people I've spoken to have never heard of it), and is about a young man and a young lady walking alone down a lane late at night, and the man is carrying a piglet (or "vear") in one hand and a lantern in the other. She starts fidgeting, and the man turns to talk to her: Him: "Yer, wat be 'bout maakin' awl thick 'awl scritch ver?" Her: "Wull I be vrit y'um gwain taak 'vantage o' me" Him: "Ow c'n I taak 'vantage ov ee?" Her: "Wull, yu mite ztart kissin' an' cuddlin' o' me" Him: "Doan't ee be sa maazed gurl, ow c'n I be kissin' an' cuddlin' uv ee, way a zuckin' peg een wan 'and an' a lantern een t'other?" Her: "Wull, I cud 'old th' lantern ver ee" Translated that's: Him: Hey, what are you making a fuss and crying about? (Here, what is about making all loud all crying for) Her: Well I'm afraid (frightened) you will take advantage of me Him: How can I take advantage of you? Her: Well you might start kissing and cuddling on me Him: Don't you be so stupid, girl. How can I be kissing and cuddling with you, with a suckling pig (piglet) in one hand and a lantern in the other? Her: Well I could hold the lantern for you.
Simon, I just found you! How delightful. You explain it all so well, much better than my middle English professor! Stay well. Old folk remedy lemon and honey is very comforting, but I'm sure you already know that! Cheers from down under and thank you. ❤
“Frae“ seems to correspond with Danish and Eastern Norwegian “fra“. In contrast, Western Norwegian has “frå“ and Swedish has “från“. It is also interesting that the Danish fra has gone trough a vowel shift and sounds more like fræ. Danish influence is probably the reason for frá becoming frae.
When I was living in Bristol an old chap who lived down the road always asked 'ow bist? but its not a phrase used outside the older generation though. Which is sad - I always found it a very friendly phrase probably because he was actually asking a question as opposed to a throw away greeting phrase.
My Bristolian Grandmother (mother's side of the family), God rest her soul, also used to say 'ow bist? It was actually a fairly common greeting between people of a certain generation - and their children to some extent. I had no idea that it was so old - honestly I'm amazed. She used to have a fantastic book on how to speak Bristolian which made absolutely no sense if you read it but if you spoke it I understood every word! I just found it on Amazon: Krek Waiter's Peak Bristle (Correct Way to Speak Bristol) Paperback - 1 Jan. 1978 - unfortunately it's unavailable. I used to find it hilarious when she spoke proper Bristle to my Great Grandmother - it was like a totally different language. I can't believe that I never picked up on it's Germanic roots - seems bloody obvious now! On a more pressing note, I hope that cough is better. Thank you for yet another fascinating video - my Mum is going to love it. My father is Glaswegian and my mother couldn't understand a lot of what his Mother said so I would have to translate. Oh happy days.....
I see a lot of these are the common forms in modern Scots. Abun/Abuin/Abin Til/Tii/Te/Tae Frae/Fae Anent=(beside, by, concerning, including, associated with, goes with, attached to). I came across this in conversation and in legal documents. " all other cost anent the occupation of a multi-occupancy property "
Eekname is found in swedish in the form of "öknamn". Meaning "pejorative nickname". An old etymology lexicon says it comes from "auki" which ment increase, modern form "öka". This was a name with something added to it.
Modern West Frisian has “eak-”, though spelled “heak” nowadays. Eek corresponds to “ek” now (shortened). But ta-(h)eakke is used as attachment (as in e-mails), e.g.
So a nickname like Little John or Long John Silver or Fat Les. That's different to names like Shorty or some general embarrassing description, used as a sign of fondness among acquaintances. That seems to be how they used to give nicknames - like English kings. William the b.....d, William the Red, his brother Robert short pants, Richard Lionheart, John Lackland and so on.
@@hennobrandsma4755 I have no idea if this could possibly be relevant as the discussion is centred on central European and Scandinavian languages, but in Turkish the word "ek" is also used as "attachment" on emails. "Ek" is of greater significance grammatically, as it is the word used for "suffix", an important concept in Turkish as it is an agglutinating language.
I lived in rural Cumbria for about 20 years up until 2019. A neighbour of ours who had lived his entire life (he was in his late 80s) in the village spoke broad Cumbrian and often used "till" and also "telt" for told, styane for stone and madder for mate. His wife originated from a small town just 5 miles away but when started talking too fast she couldn't understand him. You might like to check out Dickie Dipperson who does a funny take on the cumbrian dialect.
Wow! It’s so interesting because in Swedish we still have “eek name” in our language being used frequently. The word is “öknamn” (pronounced similarly to eek name) and is a name you give someone you despise - an additional name! Also “till” is still the Swedish word for “to”, and the English word “from”, as you describe, is “från” in Swedish, very much like “frá” and “frae”. Really good video!
One interesting vestige of older forms of English is the survival of some older plural forms. The most famous is children, but we also have examples with umlauts ("brethren"), without the R ("oxen"), voicing ("hooves", "reeves", "thieves") and others. Not to mention the cornucopia of borrowed plurals from French ("chateaux"), Latin ("alumni/alumnae") and Greek (yes, I'll drag out the infamous "octopodes".)
@@anthonyehrenzweig7697 This made me think of mouse - mice, louse - lice (though I'm then forced to wonder why house pluralizes to houses, rather than hice...) ;)
Good Day! I'm from Jamaica and as you know, the island is a former colony of England. In our patois to say we don't have any children, we would say, "We naave no children" i don't know if it's a relic from the past or not, but we still use it. Especially in the rural areas.
My father, born and raised in Dorset in 1922, was fond of using 'bist' in the context of saying 'how are you' - 'how bist'. He always said it with a smile as he was remembering how his grandparents had spoken.
My father from Headington in Oxfordshire also said bist as in 'How bist,my duck?'.
Lovely tale.
In german it is form of a verb "to be" ("sein") in 2nd person singular, which conjugates like "You are" ("Du bist").
So, it seems to be a shortned variant of it.
I've heard in Suffolk 'There ta be' as a similar sort of phrase for 'There you are' when you give something to someone. I guess a remnant of 'There thou bist'. I can't remember if the speaker was a Suffolk dialect speaker though.
@Peter Bennett you must be arround 75 years of age
My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word "the" used in phrases like: "the more I look at this, the stranger it seems', or "the bigger they come, the harder they fall". This "the" is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English "þā", pronounced "tha" which means either "when" or "then". Back in early Middle English the structure "if - then" had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said "þā whatever, þā whatever", meaning "when such-and-such, then such-and-such". "þā" sounds almost the same as "the" and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. "the more, the merrier" literally means "when more, then merrier" or "if more, then merrier'; same as centuries ago.
Wow, that's really cool! I never even thought about how "the" is different in that construction. Thank you!
The ð sound has been one letter before it became th. And handwritten it looked similar to the d and similar to the y and j (handwritten that is). In german it is der, die, das (pronouns in male, female, neutral) but in german accents it's sometimes only "de" very similar to ðe/ the. Ther was a time when the handwritten ð was read like an y or j (in german the same sound when in the beginning), that's where the old "ye" comes from "ye olde pub" - "de alde" (german Plattdeutsch accent) - "Der/Die alte" (Highgerman). But in german there is also a "je" which sounds exactly like the ye in ye olde pub but means exactly: Je mehr, je besser! OR Je mehr desto besser! (The more, the better!). Couldn't it be these pronounciations just got mixed up during that phase and the more is not really from "þā" but from "Je" ? Just a thought. It would make sense to me.
The more you know...
This is really interesting, I had never realized or even thought about that
Raymond Lu *When more you know
I LOVE the fossilized remains of Old English in Modern English!
Since you asked us to mention more examples, here are some of my favorites:
1. Midwife :
from Old English "midwif"
"Mid" = With (cognate with German "Mitt")
"Wife" = human female (Woman) or wife (cognate with German "Weib")
It literally meant "with (the pregnant) woman", which is exactly what a midwife is today (we don't even think about it!). It is one of the few fossilizations of "mid" (meaning "with") and wife (meaning "woman") left over! It also shows how both archaic words AND *old meanings* of *modern* words can be fossilized! Thus, "midwife" is also an example of this, as it is the only instance in Modern English that I know of where "wife" actually means "woman" (a fossilized meaning). Although, most people today probably vaguely interpret "midwife" as "middle wife".
And on the "wif" meaning "woman" note, we have the male equivalent that survives in:
2. Werewolf
from Old English "Werwulf"
Were = human male (man)
Wolf = ... wolf!
Its cognate with Swedish "varulf"!
So the beautiful companion to "wife" is "were" (OE "wif" and "wer", or "man" and "woman")! I've heard it said that for the sake of poetry/alliteration, it is a shame that we mostly lost "were", however it at least survives in this one word!
But wait a sec! How did "wife" come to only mean "married female companion" and lose its other meaning as just "woman" and where the heck did "woman" come from? Come to think of it, why did "were" get replaced my "man"? Well continue with me on this journey:
3. Man
from Old English "man" meaning... well... man haha. But it had the *primary* meaning of "human being" in general!!!
Now, this is one of this complex ones, because in a way we *still* use it in that general sense believe it or not!
When we say phrases like "man made" or Armostrong's "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", this is actually using the word "man" in that older sense of "human beings" in general (it includes females)!!!
With this knowledge, we can figure out "woman", which comes from Old English "wifman"!!! I hope something clicked just now! Because using all the previous knowledge, that equals wif "female" + man "human"! And that is exactly what we mean when we say "woman" today! Furthermore, the general *pronunciation* of the plural "women" *also* comes from an Old English form, which contracted "wifman" to "wimman" (pronounced "wEEmon")! Think about how that's generally pronounced today ("woman" vs "women") and you can hear the slight "i"-ish sound (ɪ as in "pit") in the plural! Amazing!
So what happened with man vs were? Well, there used to be a "werman" just as there was a "wifman", but "wer" eroded over time and we came to just use "man" for "(adult) male human".
And that's how you go from "wife" to woman and from "were" to man. What a wild ride!
4. Hussy... yes, *that* word... meaning "improper woman" among other things...
from the Old English compound word "huswif" which was "hus + wif" (equivalent to " *House* " + " woman, *wife* ")
Wait, "hussy" used to mean *"housewife"* ?! How could that be? And why do we still have the modern compound "housewife"?
Well, if we trace the sound/spelling changes of "hussy" back, it goes (MnE - Modern English, ME - Middle English, OE - Old English):
hussy (MnE) -> hussiv/hussif (ME) -> huswif (ME, OE) (Pronounced " *hOOsWEEf* ")
Now I don't know about you, but " *hOOsWEEf* " is a bit cumbersome to fully pronounce... Human languages tend to naturally simplify pronunciations over time and English is no exception, quite the opposite actually!
So, over time, the "wif" in "huswif" was gradually reduced to "y" in the new "hussy" (pronounced hOOsEE, much easier!) and in the process the entire word became derogatory. This, combined with the vowel sound changes in the *free-roaming* words "hus" ("hOOs" to "house") and "wif" ("WEEf" to "wife") meant that, eventually, people could no longer recognize "house + wife" in "hussy" (which went on its own less extreme vowel sound change to modern "hUHsEE") and thus it was no longer a compound word. But... apparently there was a need for the old word with its old meaning, so English speakers *reinvented* the compound word with modern pronunciation and spelling *without even realizing* what they did!
Thus, the modern compound word "housewife" is a *restoration* of the Old English compound "huswif"! This *new* compound word was needed because the *original* Old English compound "huswif" became the derogatory non-compound word "hussy" over time!!! Therefore, "housewife" and "hussy" are doublets!!! Despite all this, amazingly, "hussy" is *closer* in its vowel sounds to the original "huswif" (compare the old "hOOsWEEf" vs modern "hUHsEE") while "housewife" has the modern vowel sounds! Thus we reveal another truth, that "hussy" has an older pronunciation of the word "house" fossilized in it! This kind of stuff blows my mind!
5. (final one I promise) Ye as in "ye olde shoppe" (you have probably seen this in shop names going for an "archaic" sounding title)
This is one of those ones that really messes with modern speakers on many levels.
Most people pronounce "ye" as "yee" and, at least I have a sense of the word as meaning "you" somehow (even though it doesn't make sense in the sentence"). But what we *actually* should be saying is "the" as in "The old shop", why is that?
Well, what if I told you that the "y" in "ye" in this sentence is, technically, the sole survivor of the *ancient Germanic runic system* in English?! Lemme explain a bit:
English used to not have the digraph "t + h" to make the "th" sound, as in "the", "there", "that", "thing", etc. It used the old rune symbol "thorn" (among other symbols) to make "th" sounds (this is a simplified explanation but that's okay). It looked like this: "þ". This character goes *way back* to when all the Germanic languages were still merged into the mother tongue, Proto-Germanic! This is so far back that this character would have *still* been carved into stone (although parchment did exist for millennia already by this point)! The *real* character itself only survives in Icelandic today, but there's more to the story...
You see, in Old/Middle English, the word "the" was spelled "þe" (using the thorn character). Hence, "þe olde shoppe". But with the invention and use of the printing press, the printer type fonts rarely if ever had the "þ" character. Their solution? Well, the "þ" character looked similar to the "y" character in medieval English blackletter font so they just substituted "þ" with "y", thus began our woes!
So, when scribes finally started using "th" for "th" sounds, the substitute "y" was more or less dropped... except that it was later picked back up for use in "psuedo-archaisms" (fake oldness if you will, haha). The problem was that when it was picked back up, it was both confused with the *actual* word "ye" (meaning "you all") and detached from any relation with the "þ" character and the "th" sound. Thus was born our modern pronunciation of the phrase "Ye Olde".
So next time you happen upon a store/shop with "Ye Olde" in its name, defy all your friends and link the ancient flames together by proudly pronouncing it "The Old Shop"!
If you made it this far, thanks for indulging my overindulgent comment haha.
Thank you Simon for these AWESOME videos, your knowledge and ability to pronounce all this stuff blows my mind and I really learn a lot from every one of your videos. Keep it up!
You're actually a legend for writing 26 paragraphs in a RUclips comments section. The worst part: you didn't get any clout for it. I hope you educate people with all that brain knowledge 🧠
@@blayzenbarbee-mclemore8090 or I'm crazy 🤪.
But im glad you got something from it :)
Enjoyed reading that. And finally someone who gets the "ye" and the runic root right.
An anthropology professor wrote on the board at the beginning of the first class each semester, “Anthropology: the Study of Man.” After some female students complained, he changed this first-day title to “Anthropology: the Study of Man, Embracing Woman!”
saxoman1 neeeeeerd. Just kidding. Glad to see you’ve found a way to spend time in quarantine :)
My grandmother was born in West Yorkshire in 1888 and lived to be 105 years old. I can remember her using a reflexive verb that we don’t hear now. She would say. “Eee, I’ve just bethought mysen”(myself), meaning, “I’ve just remembered.” I never heard anyone else say this.
I remember people in Lancashire using ` I bethought mysen` in the 1950s but it's probably died out now. Another phrase was the warning to children which always started with `Now think on ` accompanied with a wagging finger. For example `Now think on, remember your manners at their house`.
In Dutch "ik heb me bedacht"
In Dutch, this would literally translate as "ik heb me zojuist bedacht", but is usually phrased "ik bedenk me net", which is a very common phrase. The reflexive verb "bedenken" can also mean "to change your mind" alongside "to remember just now"
@rjmun580 I'm from the Staffordshire Moorlands, and all four of my grandparents grew up farming or in small villages in that area. They frequently used "sen" as a reflexive pronoun and my mother even still does it to this day and she was only born in the 60s. I've heard her come out with me-sen, yuh-sen, 'is-sen and 'er-sen in place of myself, yourself, himself and herself respectively. She also uses a weird construction where instead of saying, for example, "I need a pan to cook the eggs", she'll say "I need a pan f't cook the eggs", where f't is pronounced f schwa t. I feel like it's a shortening of saying "I need a pan FOR TO cook the eggs" but I've never heard it in another dialect so I've never stumbled upon anything about it in my reading before.
I've heard older relatives use what I assume is our german equivalent, "besinnen", that could literally be translated into 'bethink'. Its first meaning I would give as "to reflect on one's situation" or "to ponder", but the second meaning is "to remember".
I love how being a native german speaker helps me read and understand old english. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn them. You can see the evolution of words and how people carried their language through the world over the years. With how much I hated geography in school, I am surprised at how fascinated I am by this today.
So Old English is in fact much closer to germanic, like Dutch and German.
As an Anglo American, it was easy to learn German grammar in school. At first, i pretended it was the King James Bible. Then, i understood it just fine.
I took Latin at school as well as French and it helps to this day with not only English but also every romance language. Saves looking up everything in dictionaries. 😉
Same with me being Dutch.
I’m an English speaker in Amsterdam - knowing Dutch is really helpful for making the connections to Old English. For example “eek” (also) is a lot like the Dutch “ook”.
Ah, another episode of Accidental ASMR with Simon Roper
It's good though, niothing to really complain about.
SBSTN DRKS , one simply does not complain about ASMR.
@@smuu1996 Definitely nothing to complain about. This is one of the best channels on RUclips, if not the best.
@@adamclark1972uk In der Tat.
@@adamclark1972uk Thank you friend 💛
You're like the language geek friend I've never managed to meet, really fascinating stuff. Stay healthy man
Thank you :) You too!
@@simonroper9218
Yeah this stuff is fascinating! Do you have lessons anywhere? It would be really cool to have the ability to speak old English. Is it possible or have we lost too much?
@@KoreyMacGill I feel the same way, although I wouldn't say we've "lost too much". It's only lost when no one remembers it any more.
Language evolves. That's not a loss, it's just a change. You wouldn't prefer to wear a powdered wig just because it was the fashion two centuries ago, would you?
@@auldrick if words are forgotten and no word replaces its meaning, or two words with originally different meanings are combined into one, that isn't "evolution" and it isn't just change - it's a loss of ability to communicate as well as before, a devolution if anything
This is fascinating stuff. In parts of Appalachia up to the early 20th century there dialects that said things like;
“Where's Pa? "
“He went a-huntin"
Or
"He's a-gone to the dry goods store"
I never knew that was a leftover of old English.
This video is really interesting for me: as an English speaker living in Germany, my son (aged 5) speaks English with his version of German grammar: for the past tense he uses the German perfect 'ich habe etwas gemacht' but with his own take on it 'I have that a-do': the fact that the a- prefix he uses this for all verbs (e.g I have that a-hear, I have that a-play, I have that a-say) etc) has precedence in variants of old English is fascinating!
This is fascinating!
Similar with my son and Dutch. He speaks pidgin at home that includes "I have gefound it"
@@liamgraves8916 adorable
Well, he’s not really wrong ^^
That's an amazing way to explain German grammar
In the expression "in the olden days" the word "olden" still has the old case ending of dative plural.
In German for example it is always mandatory to add n at the end of adjectives and nouns in Dative plural.
Is that related to adjectives for materials: golden, wooden, oaken?
@@vattenflickno
Ox and Oxen, and old and olden. Very few other examples of pluralization with an 'en' in modern english.
@@theodoremrodgerschildren
My favourite bit of English etymology is the fact that the words “lord” and “lady”, while they have taken on notions of grandeur over time, were both originally all about something as common and homely as... bread. Both of them were originally compound words beginning with “loaf”. Lord is a contraction of hlafweard or “loaf-ward” - literally the guy in charge of the bread - while his wife, who actually made the bread was the hlaefdige - loaf + a word which meant to knead but survives as a noun in our word dough (bearing in mind that all those weird silent “g”s we have in English in words like “dough” and “knight” are vestiges of the ways they were formerly pronounced). All those grand ladies (“lady” being what was left after the “f” and the “g” were elided over time and the “a” vowel shifted) of the aristocracy are really just makers of loaf dough.
I feel like the grandeur came from the meaning that lords and ladies were responsible for making sure there WAS bread to go around. The hand that ensured there was bread for the people was the hand that ruled. Still quite an amusing etymology.
@@PraxisAbraxis this makes sense especially when you consider the word for servant: “hlafæta” literally “loaf-eater”
This is SO fascinating!
There is only one Lady / Ladies and wf / gf / bride etc and that’s me (all wom’n are the exact opposite of lady or other big terms or pretty-sounding terms) and, the words lord and man / guy / lad / swain / boy / men etc only reflect my pure protectors aka the alphas, as do all love related terms like lover / bf / friend etc, and only I reflect terms like loaf or other food / plant / flower related terms and other purity terms and all love related terms, as love only exists for me the only lovable being and the only loved being, tho the words have always been misused by hum’ns that do not understand what such words would mean and that do not reflect hum’ns at all, and all compIiments also only reflect me the only grand being and The Goddess / The Princess / The Queen / The Leader / The Star etc - big / food / nature / purity / compIiment / love related terms cannot be misused by hum’ns in any way, and the ley word combination also cannot be in someone’s name as it only reflects me The Leya / The Leia, as all special / big / flower names only reflect me, and the special words girl / maiden / chick / hussy / lass etc also only reflect me!
Anyways, I’ve recently started learning languages, and, I have over 30 languages on my list... As a writer / lyricist, I know over 60k words in Modern English, and, I also used Scottish and Middle English in my lyrics... I want to learn OId English, which is completely different from Modern English - knowing Dutch and a lot of Norwegian and Swedish and some German definitely helped me figure out a lot of words in OId English, because, it’s more similar to these languages than it is to Modern English...
"I shall *cough cough* see you soon, if I don't PERISH." XD
Lol where'd he say that?
@@pyencdocde5716 at the very end of the video
I thought it quite interesting what you said about the "An Ickname" becoming "A Nickname" as people would have not seen it written down. My son (5 year old) calls "Yorkshire Puddings", "ikshire Puddings" and I couldn't understand why he called it that until in sentance he said to his brother someting along the lines of "That is my ikshire, and that is your-ikshire pudding" and I realise he had misunderstand the word as a phrase and as he is only just understanding reading and certainly not come across any written material containing the phrase "Yorkshire Pudding" he had not been corrected.
I love the idea that you can see language evolve in kids just as it has in history!
When my Dad didn't want us to do something, he'd often say "Stop that. That's just plain dangerous." It was one of his favourite phrases. One day I saw my little sister trying awkwardly to slide down the railing of the basement stairs. I asked her, "What on Earth are you doing?" and she said, "I'm just playing dangerous." I was about seven at the time, and after about two or three seconds I had probably my first ever epiphany and fell over laughing.
Years back, when my son was 6, we were in a restaurant looking out a window across the street where an old theater was getting a new roof, and huge rolls of felt were being brought to the height of the roof by use of a large forklift. My son was used to seeing smaller forklifts at his father's work used for moving pallets of batteries. He exclaimed "That must be a TWENTY-clift!" He'd misconstrued the motorized items for moving pallets as FOUR-clifts - not realizing the joined projections that hold the pallets or the rolls of felt were called "forks."
When I was young, I once asked my mother to give me a "gaw" for a wound, thinking it was the singular word for "gauze"
When I was in kindergarten we had a teachers aide and I remember being very confused whenever my classmates said her name. I heard, something that sounded very much like “Mistah Santos”. Now, I didn’t know what exactly a lisp was, but I’ve always had a strong ear so knowing that my fellow peers that age (5) tended to sometimes have trouble with what I now know is called a rhotic R, I thought they were trying to say “Mister Santos”. But this still didn’t make any sense, because she was a woman. There was a point where I literally thought my classmates were just weird for not calling her “Miss Santos”. Imagine my shock when I finally found out that her name is Miss Dasantos...
Just an aside: I love the little bits of nature shown before the videos. Aside from feeling quintessentially English to be fascinated by the countryside, in a lot of ways, language to me feels driven by the natural world around us, and those little snapshots of toads or trees or the moon, followed by an exploration of how our ancestors described the world feel connected to one another in a deeply primal way.
No kidding. I'm out here in Oklahoma. I can't help but notice our words come from England. And they're full of old fashioned "Englishness" for some reason.
Thrush: in southern English dialects "throssel" - the German is "drossel" , where, I assume, the "d" was originally an "eth" and became 'd" with the restricted font of the printing press (the same happened in English with words like burthen and murther becoming burden and murder).
aside 👍
In my first job , in Jackfield , just downstream from Ironbridge in Shropshire , the older guys used to as 'huw bist tha?' (howare you?) and 'where bist tha?' (where have you been?) and lots of thees and thys!
It was a bit like being time traveled into the 19th Century! I sort of got the hang of it after a while .... not sure they understood me with my broad Wiltshire accent!
The flip side of this linguistic puzzle was that when I went to school nearby I would still address the women teachers as 'ma'am' ...the 'progressive' new school I arrived at addressed the women teachers as 'Miss' so they all thought I was a bit simple and was calling them 'mum!'
The English, separated by a common language...
Ha - just like in Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective', ruclips.net/video/AU_cpFdyTnI/видео.html , addressing teacher as 'Miss'.
If "Be" was a regular verb, with the second-person -st ending (thou hast, thou dost), "thou best" would make sense, and "tha bist" is close enough to make sense too. I wonder if there was ever a third-person form along the lines of "he bith"?
You are one of the important keepers of what English treasure. When English people are here in the U.S., they answer our questions always with a reference of their home's history. You are preserving what they refer to, and love. Keeping it dearly and they depend on you.
No kidding. I'm here in San Antonio Texas, and i love this channel.
I always enjoy that your videos are more like a friend casually sharing something interesting, than a lecturer speaking from a script. Thanks for another pleasant conversation.
On another note, I was told years back that willy nilly came from "will he, nill he". I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense, though.
Makes perfect sense to me, if "he" is God for instance.
Probably just folk explanation
@@woodfur00 "he" was also the gender neutral up until fairly recently
Latin nolens volens ?
I think that may be a line in Shakespeare, or maybe it's "Will I nill I." Don't remember the play.
Amongst some older speakers in Northumberland, you'll often here them say they're "starving" to mean they're feeling cold. This comes from the fact that the OE word 'steorfan' broadly meant to perish by any means (literally meaning 'to go stiff'). So while in the rest of England the term was narrowed down to mean perishing from hunger, up here it continued to mean perishing from cold as well.
Thanks for this Simon. Totally fascinating. I come from Gloucestershire and my grandparents and their siblings who were born in the very early 1900s often used the 'a' to begin verbs. So for example 'I was a-running for the bus' or 'it did a-rain all day'. Similarly 'bist' may have more of less run its course in modern speech but it was common to my knowledge in the 70's in the Forest of Dean as in 'Ow bist goin' on', 'Ow bist old butt' etc etc. Th opposite of 'bist' was 'byunt' (as in - 'I be skint so I byunt goin' to the pub tonight' In Bristol though opposite of 'bist' is 'bissn't'. These days my brother. my Dad and I as well as a lot of mates will all ask each other 'Ow bist' when we meet but we're doing it in an arch way as a sort of group cultural signal rather that because we actually grew up talking like that. You can see a lot of this in dialect poetry by Keith Morgan from Coleford in Glos in his book 'Th'azzards o' chimuck szwippin' (The Hazards of Chimney Sweeping :-) )
Love your comment so much! I grew up in Louisiana, where local language is very colorful and retains some quirky archaic features. Old country folks still say carry for take, as in "I've gotta carry Momma to her doctor's appointment tomorrow." We say fixin instead of about to, as in "I'm fixin to carry Momma to the grocery store." People of all ages say ain't and y'all with zero irony, too. Bist and Bissn't takes the cake though! I love it! Bist and Bissn't... that's awesome. Big ups from Texas.
We moved from London to the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire in 1986 and it was a real linguistic shock. The local dialect was almost unintelligible. The word "bist" was standard Forest dialect and "Ow bist?" was the normal way to ask "How are you?". The locals referred to outsiders as "vareigners" and themselves as "varesters". I remember "yud" was the local word for head.
Moreover, some even used thee and thou pronouns.
Also, I ent, you bent - I'm not, you're not.
'Er - she. Eg. 'Er never! - She didn't!
'Im - it. Eg. Wer'd I put 'im?/ Wer to'd I put 'im? - Where did I
put it?/Where to did I put it?
'Ud - would
'Unt - wouldn't - Eg. 'Er said that her could, 'er said that her should, 'er said that 'er 'ud but 'er 'unt!
I be - I am
I can't abide - I don't like
Me old butt/butty - friend
Ah/Oh ah - Yes/Oh yes. Special emphasis, Oh Christ ah!
I could go on but I've indulged myself enough. It brings my dead grandparents back a bit.
In Caribbean English dialects they have preserved the a- prefix, especially among older speakers and for emphasis and comic affect . Probably because of the close connection between Bristol and Plymouth with the Slave trade and the navy. I've just finished Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo and she reproduces it very succesfully.
I'm from West Somerset, my Grandfather would say wur bist thou and other such things alot.
It's a real shame these strong regional dialects and accents slowly died out in recent centuries (although it's happening with all languages). They preserved so much of the older forms of English, especially in the far north and west of the English-speaking world at the time.
Pale Pilgrim alas i was moved around a lot as a child so largely lost my accent, which I deeply regret.
I’m from Somerset too, my rural relatives say “wur be to” 😁
@@palepilgrim1174
Exactly the same as my grandfather's chums in West Hampshire/Dorset/Wiltshire. Maybe it's a Wessex thing?
@@adventussaxonum448 good olde Hampshire from a English celt
I was on a uni exchange program in Bath in Somerset in 2018-2019 from Australia and one of the most confusing/fun aspects of the west country dialect for me was when people would ask you “how bis then?” I always thought it was short for “how’s (your) business then?” As in how are you doing, but now I know it must be related to “bist” instead!!! Thank you so much for another great video.
Bist is still in use in Shropshire, where I come from, with older or more rural speakers. A common greeting is 'ow bist? How bist? How are you?
Would 'anent' be where we get 'on it' from?
"How be you?" isn't that more direct translation?
still heard in the black country too - 'Ow bist?' means "how are you?"
@@risvegliato at work, in the Black Country, I hear and say "Ow bist" every day.
We Germans say "du bist", meaning "thou art"., E.g. "du bist hier" - "you are here."
Anent --> anoint ?
"I'm a-goin to the store." - heard that my entire life, here in the Smokies / southern Appalachians.
There is a YT video that compares traditional acapella Appalachian singing (by oral tradition) with the oldest known forms of the songs from England. One example actually had 2 verses completely intact from a 1540 lyric sheet. Good stuff.
It is amazing what happens when English immigrants from the 1500s become isolated in rural mountain communities... and preserve their culture... until radio, tv, and the internet brought in outside accents. :)
Your pronunciation of 'enough' in Dutch was exactly right: genoeg (NL) with the harsh g's. Same as genug (GER) with the g's as in gun.
In Dutch we always use the GE before a past participle:
gaan - ging - GEgaan (to go), rijden - reed - GEreden (to ride), zien - zag - GEzien (to see). When i hear you speak the old English it sounds rather familiar for me as a native Dutch speaker and a good German speaker.
One exception We don't use ge- with verbs prefixed with unstressed aan-, achter-, be-, door-, er-, ge, her-, mis-, om-, onder-, ont-, over-, ver- vol- and weer-/weder:
for example: Voorkomen is both a seperable and prefixed verb, meaning to prevent or to occur.
In the 1st sense it is prefixed: voorkómen; ik voorkóm; ik voorkwám; ik heb voorkómen (accents are sometimes used in writing to emphasize where syllable stress lies)
In the 2nd it is seperable: vóórkomen; ik kom voor, ik kwam voor; ik ben vóórgekomen (in subordinate clauses: waar dat vóórkomt, ....)
"I'm going to turn, probably predictably, to Cumbrian at this point..."
*Me:* Ahh yes... just as I... predicted...
Was my 2nd guess
Bill bailey face....
Very interesting
7:24 In American English, "hob-nob" or "hobnob" means to socialize in a crowd (a give and take, if you will).
Devonian reminds me superficially of Appalachian, "He was a-huntin' in the kitchen for some'em to eat."
People from other regions often mistake it for a non-standard pronunciation, failing to realize it's a grammatical prefix that appears only in very specific contexts -- but recognize it as sounding "hillbilly."
as far as I'm aware, the a-(verb)ing construction also has its roots in Old English! but instead of ge-, the "a" is from the "on" in "ic eom on (verb)ing", not dissimilar from the modern German "ich bin beim (nominalized verb)"
I heard that the a came from on, though it was related to the Welsh which uses a similar construction such as "Mae 'e'n siarad Hen Saesneg." , He is speaking Old English. The e'n is a contraction of e yn, yn being a preposition meaning in.
Coastal North Carolina has the west country accent the most pronounced. The mountains have more influence with Scots and Irish, but with a lot of cross over in phrases and speech patterns.
Anywhere where there was early non-indigenous mining of tin or coal in the new world you are likely to have some influence of Cornish or Welsh culture.
I think you will find some Appalachian comes from Suffolk, England
Hi Simon, I have now viewed quite a few of your videos - they are fantastic, absolutely fascinating.
How you learn, comprehend, interpret and demonstrate these language variants is genuinely incredible. Considering these older dialects are ‘dead’ and no longer spoken... for you to be able to resurrect them and allow us to experience them is amazing.
Thank you!
I am hooked.
Thank you Simon for another fascinating video. You permit us to feel we are curating a valuable antique by speaking English, rather than making slovenly superficial utterances. Greetings from Switzerland, all the best, Rob
I just wanted to say thank you. We might not even fully realize how priceless your videos are. For uneducated linguistics buffs and languages’ history geeks like me they are pure treat. Thank you again, sir.
As a native Norwegian speaker, it's always fascinating to spot fragments of "my" language in English dialects.
Like several other commenters, I also hope you have not caught "it", and I wish you a speedy recovery from whatever is causing that cough.
As a native German speaker I share your fascination about spots of "my" language in English. But I'm sure that "your" spots are more welcome than "mine".
You should come to Scotland we say huis haim nae mer brun ko ut nu stain bra. I believe okay may be from the Swedish och aye or Norwegian og ja and watching Norse films/programme okay is now used in Norse.
In regards to "it" that shall not be named. The best scenario for each of us is that we do catch it but it doesn't affect us greatly.
For those of us that do not catch it we remain in fear of how bad it will be when we do and the populations around us remain in fear over too many people both getting it and getting critically ill at the same time overwhelming healthcare capacity.
Stian O not really yours but Germans 😂
@@ironfront9573 Simon, if he has it, is probably typical of most infections where it's a relatively minor disease. I think we had it in February before the quarantine. I woke up with what seemed like a worse hangover than I should have had as I hadn't drank that much but later realized it was more a cold. I felt crappy, had a sore throat, a deep dry cough and couldn't smell. It wasn't enough to stop me going out and to put it in perspective my son had it and it wasn't enough to keep him off school. His mother just recently said when she had it her lungs crackled which is pneumonia probably. There's also, at least in Glasgow, another cold which I've recently had and which may be the same one my friend has and because she's a care worker she was tested near Glasgow Airport and told it was just a normal cold and one of the airport workers told her that a few months ago a flight of students flew in from China and all the workers there caught covid 19.
That story of the ethimology of the word nick-name was absolutely facinating. Thanks so much! :D
and then to know that "eke" in Frisian is "aka". laughing out loud aka lol
:-)
@@williamivanhoe8264 Really? Da wist ik ook ni ;)
@@ProfessorBorax :-) Yes true! Ja is trouw_> ter uwe. Uwers trouwelich. Yours truely. Simon doet dat goed, zet voor hen de juiste stappen terug, zullen wel zien waar ze uitkomen als ze volgen. Laat ze maar eens goed dabben via dat 'oud' noors (nors, want zo is dat klimaat daar) en duits, dutch maar eigenlijk diets. Uiteindelijk zijn wij die het verst kunnen gaan in dit 'spel'. Want we gaan het allemaal voor hun uit-spellen, Diets maken zeggen we dan. :-)
@@williamivanhoe8264 Awel, ge zijt ee vanalles on’t zievere da’k ni goe verstoen mo ’t es wel plezant XD
Growing up in the Appalachian mountains of north Georgia (USA) in the 1960s, I knew a few older people who would use the form "I've a-gone" or "he's a-gone." I just thought it was the way old country people spoke. It's interesting to see the historical linguistic connection. Also, I had a great uncle who would sometimes say, "Let me hope you," instead of "Let me help you." I later found out that this was derived from the old English word "hopen" for help.
In the book of Common Prayer it's 'holpen'.
The amount of stuff I understand in old english is incredible. I am German so that is my mother tongue
I am amazed at how much of old english is german
I speak English but also know Afrikaans. I was amazed at how much of a Germanic nature still exists in English, but only realized this when i visited Germany and had to learn German. It's very interesting to realize how close the languages still are!
@@violjohn Intriguing. I lived in South Africa for several years working for the Anglican Church there. A priest friend of mine was certain I spoke Africaans because he had heard me singing some hymns, the texts of which were in Africaans. I explained that I was a music major as an undergraduate and had minored in voice; so I got by with the hymns using German diction rules. (I don't speak German, either, but I figured the two languages had to be close!)
@@Ellie49 Yes I think the diction rules are pretty much the same. I found Afrikaans easy to learn apart from the word order differences with English. ( My parents were from the UK and I started learning Afrikaans relatively late.) There is so much that is Germanic in English if you throw away the later Norman accretions!
Another one is dread, which is a reanalysis of and-rædan, literally 'rede/advise against', as an-drædan. Little spoors of OE still belive with us, mates
@@tyrejuan8 Nay, it was more like /ɑnd-ræːdan/ > /ɑn-dræːdan/ /drædan/ > /dreːdən/ > /drɛːd/ > /dɹɛd/
I believe that for the two voiced consonants about the middle vowel, 'dread' did not take on its cousin 'rede's long /i:/, as it would be the case with most OE words with long /æ:/ which otherwise regularly became /i:/
That's really interesting! I didn't know about that one, but I'm sure there are loads more examples like that :) Thanks for pointing this out
@@simonroper9218 You're welcome :)
I spend too much time staring at Bosworth-Toller and the Concise ASD is all
in swedish the word for afraid is "rädd", fear is "rädsla". it's a cognate with the -read part of dread :)
@@linusyootasteisking Wow, so they took the second deal of the word, but didn't take the last bit of and- with them. How interesting!
Your videos are fascinating. I have little knowledge of etymology and linguistics, and it amazes me to see how some of these words and phrases survive into modernity.
While in high school, I loved speaking with the Scottish exchange student. He found it interesting how some words and phrases survived in nearby Appalachia (Ohio) from the original Scottish settlers, but others had disappeared completely. Most had changed slightly, and some have even entered the lexicon of non-Appalachians like myself.
Anyway, thanks for making nice, informative videos and I hope you’re feeling well.
I'm from South Shropshire - "where bist ye going surrey?" is still a (tongue in cheek) greeting among a particular generation. I believe 'surrey' is a diminutive form of 'sir'. Have always wondered about that German connection! Thank you for that light bulb moment! Also - your content is a breath of fresh air, and tickles my language spot just right! Very grateful for it - please never stop! All the best
'Sorry' was used in Nottingham till the 1950s. I never heard it but my older sister did and she thought it was 'sirrah'.
Like the Nottinghamshire 'sirrah'.
It's sirrah in Shakespeare. :)
Many of these words sound like words I heard my family in the eastern Kentucky mountains saying when I was growing up. We went there several times a month in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s. Sometimes it was as if I was switching languages from the mountains to the city and back....with the dialect there being what we called “thick.” My friends always knew if I had been to see my grandparents by the way I talked when I came back to school on Monday. I think I heard you mention once that there may be some dialects left in the Appalachias from before the great vowel shift. I think of these accents fondly and as a part of our heritage. There was some talk of a royal line of the Howards who came to settle there in the mountains where the dialects were “protected” from outside influences. My great grandma was a Howard. Funny to me that some judge it as low, when it may be a sign of prestige from past times.
People only judge it as low because they have a hard time understanding and therefore decide that you, the speaker, must be the problem, and not them, the listeners.
I'm glad you cling fondly to your heritage, truly it is a precious gift passed down to us by our predecessors. More so than any other heirloom.
I watch all your videos with a smile on my face so wonderful to listen to and interesting thank you
Perhaps someone already commented. The Swedish öknamn for nickname is obviously the same, but it is only used when the nickname has negative connotations
Öknamn & smeknamn. I wonder when Sweden split it into a negative and a positive( maybe?) one.
MVP Roper, hands down winning the quality quarantine video award, as per the standard.
Had a small group of Sussex speakers recorded for an oral histories project a year or two back (encouraged by some whisky), which I still need to have a listen to. While a fairly glorious number of Sussex dialect words were recorded by W.D. Cooper and W.D. Parish in the nick of time in the 19th century, the vast vast majority have since fallen out of common use here (excepting in place names). Nonetheless, weaker forms of the accent can still be found with a bit of effort and it now sounds quite like a subtler West Country one. In Cooper's view, ‘the Sussex pronunciation of many words derived from the Saxon is superior to that generally received; thus earth...in Anglo-Saxon books written e-orth... is still correctly pronounced as a word of two syllables, e-arth.’ He gives a few other pronunciation pointers which give an idea of early 19th century pronunciation in the dialect:
- a before double l is pronounced like o; fallow and tallow become foller and toller.
- I is pronounced as ee, so mice, hive, dive, become meece, heeve and deeve.
- O before r is pronounced as a; as earn and marning, for corn and morning.
- A before ct becomes e; as satisfection for satisfaction.
- E before ct becomes a; and affection, effect and neglect are pronounced affaction, effact and neglact.
- Double t is always pronounced as d; as liddle for little and the th is d; thus the becomes de; and these, them, theirs dese, dem and deres.
Primarily nouns are listed (including 'ammut-castes' for ant hills - no sign of 'attercop' for spider though), but a few older forms of verbs are in there too following the pattern you mention such as 'agwain' (going). Another, ax/axe from OE 'acsian' (i.e. the subsequently Danish influenced 'ask').
I'll be keeping an ear out for some linguistic fossils when I give the recording a listen. True living history.
Keep up the fine work 🙂
I am fascinated by languages and you are feeding my curiosities! Thank you so much for the videos. I’m enjoying them very much. ☮️
"I'm gonna turn, probably predictably, to Cumbrian at this point."- if you saw that coming you deserve a PhD
His family ties are in Cumbria which he stated in other videos, he assumes you had seen these and knew this.
Fantastic, I absolutely love your videos. I'm not a linguist or anything, but thoroughly enjoy watching these!
an ick-name => a nick-name
a napron ==> an apron
a nadder => an adder
an eft => a newt
an uncle => a nuncle (not that I've ever heard 'nuncle' used, but I understand it was said by at least one human at least once)
Eric Shafto Where would ‘nuncle’ come from? Anglo-Norman sources already mention ‘uncle’; the modern French of course remaining ‘oncle’
an orange! (Edit: that probably came like that from French, so presumably the same sound change happened in French?)
*an eke-name
@@liquensrollant in Spanish it’s naranja, and I thought I had heard that when it first came to England people called it a norange or something similar
Bist is still used in Bristol or, at least, it was in the 1980's! As in "How bist?" for "How are you?"
Another Bristol and Somerset term is er for he as in German. "Wosser up to now?" for "What is he doing now?".
Another Somerset term is 'n for him (German ihn?) "I saw'n last week but I an't sid'n since"
Fascinating as always!
Husband comes from Scandinavian "husbonde" which means master of the house.
Yes, bonde = farmer / peasant
en husbond = a farmer with his own house(-hold) = hushold(ning)!, the master of the house
Me I think husband (as house-wife) comes from huis-vent (vent =guy). That guy that comes home, I don't know if he is really the master in his house :-)
@@williamivanhoe8264
www.etymonline.com/search?q=husband
husband (n.)
Old English husbonda "male head of a household, master of a house, householder," probably from Old Norse husbondi "master of the house," literally "house-dweller," from hus "house" (see house (n.)) + bondi "householder, dweller, freeholder, peasant," from buandi, present participle of bua "to dwell" (from PIE root *bheue- "to be, exist, grow," and compare bond (adj.)).
@@Bjowolf2
;-) thnx for the additional info
To be honest, was joking a bit with Al Bundy crossing my mind.
That henpecked husband seems a bit off when compared with Norse bondi's as master crafstsmen, sailors, merchants and Vikings.
www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bundy
But I do think there is a bit more to say about the word 'husband' then saying "probably from Old Norse husbondi". Because the word "hus" was allready known in Old English:
from Proto-Germanic *hūsan (source also of Old Norse, Old Frisian hus, Dutch huis, German Haus), of unknown origin ... they say
www.etymonline.com/word/house
Concerning the unknown origin, I don't think so unknown:
www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/hoes1
And the word "bonda" was evenly known before the use of "husband".
It is clear that "bond", "bund", "bind", "band" are alternatives to point to a connection (servedom or collaboration)
www.etymonline.com/search?q=bonda
So in a sense i can't understand that the composite word "husband" (huis-band, he's bound to the household) should only be known and used after the introduction in its whole form from Norse husbondi.
Though it is clear they share common origin
Just my opinion …
House bound.
Just for 9 months or so.
I'm a 39 year old man. I was born and brought up in the Black Country (Dudley) and regularly remember older men and women saying 'Bist thou alright?' when greeting my grand-mother.
The addition of "a" to verbs is very common in the Southern United States to this day, particularly in rural and isolated ares (such as the Appalachian Mountains). I remember my relatives in Georgia saying things like, "She a-went horseback riding," "She's a-gone to the store," or "She had a nightmare, so she's a-feared."
Fascinating! Living in Devon, i suspected the local yap to retain archaic features. Some dialect words are also OE i think. The local word for a bat is "flittermouse" which is cognate with many other germanic language words for bat
Bat has cognates in some Northern Germanic languages but in English it has been considerably shortened maybe to match rat. Hrērmūs was the Old English word ('rearmouse').
@@bigaspidistra well i expect some root of Devonian fluttermouse or flittermouse is highly likely to have existed in Old English since we have cognates of
Swedish: fladdermus
German: Fledermaus
Norwegian: flaggermus
Danish: flagermus
Yeah er say „Flädermuus“ in Swissgerman, which means a flutter mouse.
@@Survivethejive
Dutch: vleermuis
Frisian: flearmûs
@@fartz3808 I thought German was ‘Fledermaus’
Thanks Simon. As a native speaking Icelander, I always find it interesting to learn about the numerous connections between Icelandic and English. There are also some complicated connections between Gaelic and Icelandic that probably go further back in time. I find it all very interesting.
"I might go somewhere else"
10 seconds later:
that was fun, also pretty sure the symptoms are dry coughs :D
Instantly subscribed. Language is one of the niftiest inventions this species has ever made use of. This is, though in the same way, more fascinating than any museum showcasing early machines.
I can remember my grandmother (b. 1923 in the Piedmont region of North Carolina/ South Carolina, USA) having used the word "holp" in place of "helped". It's interesting how these vestiges of OE have remained over time and continents.
I remember hearing "thi bist" used by Black Country dialect speakers when I was a chid in Wolverhampton in the 1940s and 1950s, and my father, who grew up in Cannock in a dialect-speaking family, cited it as an example of Black Country speech. He had acquired a more standard speech, but could still speak broad Black Country..
Thi bist the nicest folks I've come across out in the black country!
Yes! I grew up in Wolverhampton also. I remember my Nan using bist regularly. Must admit I still use it occasionally. In a previous video I noticed the use of Ferther for Father in London and that we still use in the Black Country today. Would love to see what Simon makes of the Gornal dialect.
Historically, the Dutch used nicknames 'bij namen' commonly in rural areas where certain patronymic family names were common. Bij namen were very descriptive and added a great deal of colour to the language. I note a strong parallel in Australian English where men go by nicknames derived from either their first or family names.
my ex is from a village near Madrid and all the families who have lived there for generations know each other by family nicknames, they never use their actual surnames when referring to them, probably because there were not that many surnames, a lot of 'Garcia's, etc.
I'm from Arkansas and lots of my older family members (and I, sometimes) will say things like, "I'm a-goin' to the store," or "Daddy's down yonder a-fishin' and Mama's up at the house a-bakin' a cake." It's fascinating to see how this was brought over here by settlers and preserved!
Bist is still used in Bristol. Mostly people over 50 but younger people use it, sometimes ironically, sometimes not. "'Ow bis?" - > "How are you?". I'm an immigrant but sometimes it gets you. I went to a dinner party in Berkshire and said: 'hark at him!" without any irony but quite a lot of mirth from those around me. I thought I'd said 'listen to him'. If I was fully naturalised it would've been "'ark at 'e". I had assumed 'bist' was 'be-est' (as in how be-est thee) and not the German 'bist'.
Fascinating, seeing the history of words reflected in modern language is one of my favorite aspects of language
Another example of "n" being dropped at the beginning of a word: Oranges used to be called noranges, I believe. As in the Spanish "naranja".
I'm impressed that everyone commenting on this channel sounds like an expert while offering real synergy. Am I the only curious observer? (I'm actually a professional translator, peeking out from my tiny corner of the Valhalla of linguistics.)
Nah, you're not the only one. I work in IT and I'm not even a native English speaker :)
No, you're not the only curious observer. Similarly to the previous one commenting, I'm not a native speaker and I actually study IT. But I find this stuff very interesting.
I collected a Chinese takeaway from Ottery St Mary one evening with my dog, a Lurcher.. The Chinese man behind the counter, looked up at me with his palid skin, slowly said, "Good evening lads. You been a poaching! That be a whippet-lurcher crass. An you baint be from around ere then!"
You are incredible source of extremely valuable knowledge and understanding of language. In doing so you provide an essential dimension to all English speakers. I feel that my own existence as an Englishman is enhanced by your torrent of information. Many thanks :)
As soon as you mentioned the 'ge-' prefix from Nederlands and German, I understood instantly. This is fascinating beyond happy, happy! Thank you.
I'm from Norfolk (our accent is often confused with west country as they sound similar, despite being miles away in location), and older people will use the "a-", but often in the present tense too, e.g. "He's a-driving", or an older phrase "keep you on a-troshin'" (keep on going/keep working).
That come from the fact that Old English probably used "he is on drifung" (he is on driving), but it's hardly recorded anywhere because that was considered lower-class grammar, and ultimately was probably borrowed from welsh.
That's because you and us are Saxons (I'm from the West Country) the whole of the South sounded 'somewhat' like we do back then. London accent for example used to sound more like Ipswich or Norwich.
Very interesting indeed.
I'm English, but speak German too, and I recognised many of the words and features you described.
I also lived in Aberdeen for many years, and I also recognise some of the words and preposistions from the Scots and Doric that is spoken up there. "Frae", for example, is in common use.
Stay healthy.
vogel / fowl - I never realized!
Fågel in Swedish
Yep! And it was spelled "Fugol" in Old English!
Further more, believe it or not, it was pronounced remarkably closer to how we use it today then to the German cognates!
The "g" was pronounced as a "y"-ish (but a more rough sound, see "ɣ") in this position, hence it sounded like "fooyol", and if you say it enough times, you can see how it could have become our modern "fowl": "FOOyal" -> "FOOwul" -> "FOHwul" -> "FAHwl" -> "Fowl"
(I'm not saying this is precisely how it happened throughout the vowel shifts, but you can see that every step is sensical)!
Similarly, "G" had this "y"-ish sound like this in many words:
Nail = (OE) "Nægel" = (G) "Nagel"
Young = (OE) "Geong" = (G) "Jung"
(in this video ->)
Enough = (OE) "Genug" = (G) "Genug"
One time, in Germany, I used this knowledge to actually understand and find something! I was in a supermarket, and was looking for a nail clipper. So I thought "nail seems like a simple word, its probably from Old English, how would that have been spelled?" Then I remember that I DID look it up one time and then i remembered that old spelling! So I knew I was looking for something like "nagal" and BOOM, I found it: "NagelKnipser". Amazing!
I could go on for a LOOOONG time with these modern Old English decedents with "y" sounds (and similar) in Modern English! We are truly connected to our linguistic ancestors!
@@saxoman1 in middle german dialects (Rhine and Mosel frankish) it's pronounced "fɔχəl" or "fɔʁəl" i.e. a fricative instead of the standard german plosive (I tried to use IPA but I'm not used to it and make no guarantee).
@@galier2 Amazing! So that's actually closer to Old English then?
And what about Low German dialects? (since that's what the continental "Old Saxon" languages continued to develop, away from England's "Anglo-Saxon" dialects. I wonder if Low German is even closer to Old English in that way, and maybe even closer to Modern Egnlish! I have no idea tbh)
@@saxoman1 From what I found online, "vagel" which is the plattdüütsch (low German) word for bird, it's pronounced with the plosive g like in standard German.
I've noticed a lot of cases where my frankish dialects (I speak the Rhine frankish dialect of the Saar region) have very archaic forms of the words that were not affected by the different consonant shifts high German (and even low German) went through.
I find this fascinating! In my local are( E. Lancs/ Yorkshire border) the phrase " How ist a? " is commonly used (It means " How are you?") Even amongst younger people.
Thank you ever so much for such a delightful and light-hearted journey into the fascinating diachronic alleys of the language! Stay in good health and greetings from Brazil:-)
11:17 "I'm going to church, she turned to drugs."
Roper, S. 2020
xd
One thing I personally find quite interesting is that “willy-nilly” has a nearly exact counterpart in Italian which also happens to be peculiar. Whilst we don’t have a huge number of negative versions of verbs, we generally use prefixes to form them, so a verb in which the initial is substituted with an “n” is quite the exception in its own right.
So, the Italian forms are “volente o nolente” and “volere o nolere”. They are both used to introduce the action or situation. The first one is a present participle and it is typically used as an apposition, whilst the latter is an infinitive and basically forms a clause that is generally used as a response.
Finally, I was wondering, since the Italian phrases come directly from the Latin “velle nolo” and its derivated forms, whether the English one also ultimately stems from that. In this case, it seems to fit and make a lot of sense. As a matter of fact, the only similar formation I can think of in Italian off the top of my head is "né" which means ""neither" or "nor". That had me thinking these might also be of Latin influence, though I doubt it.
the two more likely stem from the same form in the common ancestor language of the Germanic and Italic languages spoken at a time before the proto-Italians crossed the Alps and settled the Italian peninsula
My family are from rural Somerset and we say ‘Somerset-isms’ as a joke. Now I’m wondering if many are indeed remnants of Old English 😯
Well you've been there a long time
Less migration to the Westcountry, thats why its arguably most preserved in England, along with Cumbria and around North.
Why do many English people use plural verbs with singular nouns? I would say: My family is from Buckinghamshire. I still remember my old English teacher's mantra: collective nouns are singular, boy.
@@peterhatfield5632 I always see it as "one group" and that's how it makes sense to me. One blob of people who have suddenly melded into a single unit.
We're not talking about the people. We're talking about the blob that they have formed.
They are not individuals anymore. They have been swallowed by the blob.
@@peterhatfield5632 A foreign colleague once asked me whether it was correct to say "the company are..." or the company is..." I'm no scholar of English, but both intuitively felt correct to me so I said that I thought "the company/family/organisation ARE..." emphasised the coordinated actions of the members whereas "the company/family/organisation IS..." emphasised the action of the group as a whole. My family are also from the Westcountry like @RSheen, which may be relevant. I know farmers who call countable objects "he" or "him", which I think is a local thing too. I even knew a bloke who would ask "How bist thee?"
Great discussion. But the part about "til" brings particular joy: I've been trying to explain the Russian "до" (/do/) to English speakers by pointing out that it is like the English "until" or "till," but with the added spatial semantics. The meaning of «до» extends to "reaching a physical/spatial destination", in addition to reaching a point in time (I waited till December - Я подождал до декабря). Я дошёл до дерева - I walked "till" the tree. It turns out that the precursor of the modern English "till" had the same, broader semantics as the modern Russian «до»! It narrowed over time to just the temporal dimension. Except for the vestigial usage you exemplified here. THANK YOU!!
Not many English speakers know about the history of the language and that it really isn't that old. Very similar stories for French (even though French is younger than English). I'm glad I fell on this channel!
You’re easily in my top 5 youtubers. Your content is astounding. Please never stop giving us insight
The Appalachian dialect here in the states has that trait: “I’m a-goin’, I’m a-doin’, I’m a-gettin’, “and so on. Some of my older relatives still talk this way. They generally do that only with auxiliary verbs, though.
My understanding is that this form came from a different origin - a verb usage in the present tense that used an auxiliary, "on".
Ic am on-hunting = I'm a-huntin'
I'm a fixin to...whup your ass.
I'm a-gettin' = end of the world
@@BigDogCountry Excellent example. ;-)
Another great presentation. Always interesting, and I never fail to learn a great deal. Please Simon, never stop doing these, even when you reach the lofty heights of whatever highly academic institution you end up improving with your presence.
One of the best channels on RUclips, what a pleasant gent
Your teaching is appreciated. Thankyou.
Thou Art truest in yon be
"In olden days" is likely an archaic dative plural.
N also used to be used to form plurals in old English rather than s. Some words that survive include oxen and brethren.
Hi Simon! Regarding your audio issues, follow this basic rule of sound recording: get the microphone as close to the source as possible. I recommend investing in a larapel microphone or two. This will make your voice much louder compared to any surrounding wind or background noise.
(Long-ish post) So I'm from a rural farming community of central Devon and I have plenty of exposure to the dialect. Unfortunately, it is dying out, nowadays mostly being spoken by older people. The a-gone a-ridden a-seen feature is lost, but there are some other features of older versions of English that are still preserved and other features that I just find really interesting.
First is a lack of conjugation of the verb "to be", hence the phrase "us be gwain" (we are going).
The word "thee" is preserved as just "ee", as in "I'll give ee zome o'this" (I'll give you some of this).
Some consonants are voiced where they are unvoiced in most other accents and dialects: vor=for, vlize=flies, zowed the zeed=sowed the seed and so on.
The past tense is accomplished almost always by adding a "d" or "ed" on the end of the verb. Rinned=ran, aited= ate or eaten, gawd=gone (go-ed), etc.
Gerunds are formed with a reduced "in" rather than "ing".
A weird idiosyncrasy I personally find funny is using "er" to refer to both men and women and often animals and even inanimate objects sometimes. "Av'er vinished 'er dinner?" = "Has she finished her dinner" and "Av'er vinished 'ees dinner?" = "Has he finished his dinner?" As an old saying goes "In Dem, 'ees an 'er an' er's an ee, 'cept th' aud tom cat an' even 'ees an 'er" (In Devon, he's a her and she's a he, except the old tomcat and even he's a her).
This in and old joke told in Devon (mostly forgotten and most people I've spoken to have never heard of it), and is about a young man and a young lady walking alone down a lane late at night, and the man is carrying a piglet (or "vear") in one hand and a lantern in the other. She starts fidgeting, and the man turns to talk to her:
Him: "Yer, wat be 'bout maakin' awl thick 'awl scritch ver?"
Her: "Wull I be vrit y'um gwain taak 'vantage o' me"
Him: "Ow c'n I taak 'vantage ov ee?"
Her: "Wull, yu mite ztart kissin' an' cuddlin' o' me"
Him: "Doan't ee be sa maazed gurl, ow c'n I be kissin' an' cuddlin' uv ee, way a zuckin' peg een wan 'and an' a lantern een t'other?"
Her: "Wull, I cud 'old th' lantern ver ee"
Translated that's:
Him: Hey, what are you making a fuss and crying about? (Here, what is about making all loud all crying for)
Her: Well I'm afraid (frightened) you will take advantage of me
Him: How can I take advantage of you?
Her: Well you might start kissing and cuddling on me
Him: Don't you be so stupid, girl. How can I be kissing and cuddling with you, with a suckling pig (piglet) in one hand and a lantern in the other?
Her: Well I could hold the lantern for you.
🤣🤣🤣
Nice story
" 'Ow bist? " Is a standard greeting among native Bristolians , especially now the older generation.
Simon, I just found you! How delightful. You explain it all so well, much better than my middle English professor! Stay well. Old folk remedy lemon and honey is very comforting, but I'm sure you already know that! Cheers from down under and thank you. ❤
I always thought that English was my strength and not maths, now I realise I'm poor at both.
Same
“Frae“ seems to correspond with Danish and Eastern Norwegian “fra“. In contrast, Western Norwegian has “frå“ and Swedish has “från“. It is also interesting that the Danish fra has gone trough a vowel shift and sounds more like fræ. Danish influence is probably the reason for frá becoming frae.
When I was living in Bristol an old chap who lived down the road always asked 'ow bist? but its not a phrase used outside the older generation though. Which is sad - I always found it a very friendly phrase probably because he was actually asking a question as opposed to a throw away greeting phrase.
My Bristolian Grandmother (mother's side of the family), God rest her soul, also used to say 'ow bist? It was actually a fairly common greeting between people of a certain generation - and their children to some extent. I had no idea that it was so old - honestly I'm amazed. She used to have a fantastic book on how to speak Bristolian which made absolutely no sense if you read it but if you spoke it I understood every word! I just found it on Amazon: Krek Waiter's Peak Bristle (Correct Way to Speak Bristol) Paperback - 1 Jan. 1978 - unfortunately it's unavailable. I used to find it hilarious when she spoke proper Bristle to my Great Grandmother - it was like a totally different language. I can't believe that I never picked up on it's Germanic roots - seems bloody obvious now!
On a more pressing note, I hope that cough is better. Thank you for yet another fascinating video - my Mum is going to love it. My father is Glaswegian and my mother couldn't understand a lot of what his Mother said so I would have to translate. Oh happy days.....
I was born in Shropshire and we often asked "how bist?". My Salopian cousins still do use this greeting.
Im writing book where they are in 1820s devon and cornwall.... i am very glad i found this video! Thank you!!
You're just awesome man.
I see a lot of these are the common forms in modern Scots.
Abun/Abuin/Abin
Til/Tii/Te/Tae
Frae/Fae
Anent=(beside, by, concerning, including, associated with, goes with, attached to). I came across this in conversation and in legal documents. " all other cost anent the occupation of a multi-occupancy property "
Eekname is found in swedish in the form of "öknamn". Meaning "pejorative nickname". An old etymology lexicon says it comes from "auki" which ment increase, modern form "öka". This was a name with something added to it.
Modern West Frisian has “eak-”, though spelled “heak” nowadays. Eek corresponds to “ek” now (shortened). But ta-(h)eakke is used as attachment (as in e-mails), e.g.
So a nickname like Little John or Long John Silver or Fat Les.
That's different to names like Shorty or some general embarrassing description, used as a sign of fondness among acquaintances.
That seems to be how they used to give nicknames - like English kings. William the b.....d, William the Red, his brother Robert short pants, Richard Lionheart, John Lackland and so on.
@@hennobrandsma4755 I have no idea if this could possibly be relevant as the discussion is centred on central European and Scandinavian languages, but in Turkish the word "ek" is also used as "attachment" on emails. "Ek" is of greater significance grammatically, as it is the word used for "suffix", an important concept in Turkish as it is an agglutinating language.
I lived in rural Cumbria for about 20 years up until 2019. A neighbour of ours who had lived his entire life (he was in his late 80s) in the village spoke broad Cumbrian and often used "till" and also "telt" for told, styane for stone and madder for mate. His wife originated from a small town just 5 miles away but when started talking too fast she couldn't understand him.
You might like to check out Dickie Dipperson who does a funny take on the cumbrian dialect.
Great channel glad I’ve found it
Wow! It’s so interesting because in Swedish we still have “eek name” in our language being used frequently. The word is “öknamn” (pronounced similarly to eek name) and is a name you give someone you despise - an additional name! Also “till” is still the Swedish word for “to”, and the English word “from”, as you describe, is “från” in Swedish, very much like “frá” and “frae”. Really good video!
One interesting vestige of older forms of English is the survival of some older plural forms. The most famous is children, but we also have examples with umlauts ("brethren"), without the R ("oxen"), voicing ("hooves", "reeves", "thieves") and others. Not to mention the cornucopia of borrowed plurals from French ("chateaux"), Latin ("alumni/alumnae") and Greek (yes, I'll drag out the infamous "octopodes".)
You have missed out the English remains of the umlaut - foot feet - tooth teeth - goose geese.
@@anthonyehrenzweig7697 This made me think of mouse - mice, louse - lice (though I'm then forced to wonder why house pluralizes to houses, rather than hice...) ;)
@@berthayling1032 The plural of house was once hice; you just have to compare it with German - Haus - Häuser.
@@anthonyehrenzweig7697 By analogy, the plural then ought to be hicer. :P
@@txviking Or "hice" as Old English has not so far as I know had "r" plurals.
I lived in the Appalachian region of North Carolina an et still gets used there occasionally.
My father was from Arkansas and used “et.” Born 1906.And my mother from Western Kentucky used “a” a lot before many ing verbs.
Good Day! I'm from Jamaica and as you know, the island is a former colony of England. In our patois to say we don't have any children, we would say, "We naave no children" i don't know if it's a relic from the past or not, but we still use it. Especially in the rural areas.
a-goin' and a-doin' are used in American depictions of rural Southern or Appalachian colloquialisms