Old English vs German | Can they understand spoken Old English? | Part 1
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- Опубликовано: 27 май 2024
- Can German speakers understand Old English? Here comes another language challenge dedicated to Germanic languages comparison. Big thanks to @simonroper9218 for coming back to the channel and sharing his Old English expertise with us all. This time we decided to focus on understanding the spoken language. The participants need to guess words described to them in Old English based on English and German similarities.
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🕰 Time Stamps:
0:00 - Introduction
1:07 - Language challenge
18:46 - Norbert's announcement
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#languagechallenge
It's crazy that modern germans can make more sense of old english than modern english speakers
We have many german dialects. They are like a continuum and link to each other, not only in Germany, our germanspeaking neighbours are included. In the past the dutch language was part of this continuum as well but they had a high language long before we germans had. They evolved away.
The germatic people came from Northgermany/Southdenmark (nowadays) to England. I guess germans from northern part who can speak their native dialect not only modern high german have an advantage.
It helps to understand that standard modern English is descended from a dialect from around a region that extended from Leicester to London. Not the Old English variety of English that was the form that Alfred the Great had made the written standard for his Kingdom of Wessex and the territories he would go on to add to it. The aformentioned more central part of England was much more exposed to the Norse/Danish influence found in the Danelaw area of old England that the Danes had conquered.
The dialect of English that was the standard prior to the Norman conquest was that of Wessex, which was the southwestern Kingdom that ultimately reconquered Northern and Eastern England from the Danes. It was the English least influenced by Nordic forms and grammar.
Though English remained the mother tongue of about three quarters of the population after the conquest, Anglo Norman French was the language of the educated classes and English was little used in formal/written situations. So the use of local dialects flourished, as an accepted formal standard fell out of use for the language until English began to once again move up the social ladder and be used increasingly by the literate classes and replace Anglo French and Latin in business and government by the middle of the 14th century. When this started happening on a large scale the centre of cultural gravity had shifted to London and the southern midlands. Spoken English had already begun to shed many of the inflections and grammatical forms under pressure from the mixing of Old English and Danish before the Norman conquest, but as the language came back into widespread written usage it did so in the areas that were now dominant in the Kingdom, especially London, where this more mixed dialect held sway. By this time in this different dialect much had changed and altered and henceforth it would be this dialect upon which the standard English of today would be built and develop. That makes modern English seem even more distant from the Frisian, and High German that seems closer to the southwestern Wessex dialect being used in these videos. Still, they are all considered by most modern linguists to be in the West Germanic branch of the linguistic family, even though modern English reflects more an amalgam of West Germanic and North Germanic influences, not to mention the impact of Norman French.
modern english has too much imported from Latin languages, and if you read Shakespeare in original, you will realize how many old english words have been dropped or forgotten.
@@alexrafe2590 And, basically, Middle English is a creole of Old English, adopted by a population for political reasons, i.e. the growing rift between France and England beginning in the 12th century. As the Anglo-French elite in England soured on the continental French and began adopting English as a matter of national pride, they learned it not from infancy or from books but by picking it up from the English-speaking segment of the population, who were of a different (lower) social status.
In the process the English adopters vastly simplified its morphology and syntax and assimilated it to the grammar of their native Norman French; they also transferred into it vast numbers of words for items related to the aristocratic French-speaking culture in which they had been brought up.
But that doesn’t describe the development of a creole language @@gretchenpritchard4778. Creoles usually form when two languages come together for extended periods with one politically dominant and a substrate language with the two unintelligible between them. A simple pidgin language develops to enable the two groups to communicate. When the substrate group has children they learn the language as native speakers and generally create a systematised grammar that isn’t the same as either of the grammars of the original languages being pidginised. The language of the children is the Creole and it’s grammar tends to be not just simpler than those of the mother tongues but much more regular, with far fewer exceptions to grammatical rules. That doesn’t describe what happened with English at all, and it certainly did very little borrowing of French grammar or pronunciation. Yes the syntax simplified and became more rigid, but any structural similarities with French are more apparent than real, with commonalities more likely to have come from the intermingling of English and Danish. Because you begin to see the syntactic changes before the mass adoption of French vocabulary in the 13th century.
And while Middle English grammar is much simpler than Old English, it’s loaded with irregular verbs, and countless other exceptions to the rules. And they are almost all of Germanic origin. If any pidginisation was going on it was between the different dialects of Old English and the Norse spoken by the Danes who increasingly spread and occupied what became known as the Danelaw in Northern and Eastern England (but not displacing English neighbours). That’s where linguists attribute most of the simplifying that became evident in the Middle English period as English once again began to increasingly displace French in all areas of society. The root and base of English remained Germanic in vocabulary, and syntax. It’s system of phonetics remains closer to that of other Germanic languages to the present day, which is one reason why people from Germanic countries have an easier time learning to speak English with lighter accents than their Spanish, Italian and French counterparts.
And in pre Conquest England there was a myriad of dialects spread across England. The Old English of Wessex was the main one to undergo standardisation. But the use of it in education, and government disappeared until English once more began to spread increasingly among the population. It was a dialect of English spoken mainly in London and the Midlands. Not the previous Standardised English from the southwest, which was little affected by Norse. But the root and base of both of these dialects were still regional variations of Old English. That’s why most scholars of linguistics place English with its West Germanic siblings, Dutch, Frisian and German.
I wouldn’t agree with the characterisation of the two language groups, Anglo Norman French and Middle English, as largely separated in post Conquest England. Below the highest strata of Medieval society, there was social mixing and interaction at all levels, so even among the many people who used Anglo Norman as their first language (a dialect that increasingly became influenced by English over time), Francophone families employed English speaking nurse maids, and other general English speaking household staff. The English who interacted heavily with French speaking masters would have also learned French. And a notable exception to the widespread displacement of the native Anglo Saxon aristocracy with Normans and Bretons at the time of the Conquest was the merchant class of the towns, particularly London, who remained mainly Anglo Saxon. These were no peasants, but often wealthier than Norman knights and even some lords. And there was hundreds of years of widepread social mixing in a country that was never less than overwhelmingly English speaking in the greater population.
Not gonna lie, I think the speakers of "obscure" German dialects would actually have an easier time than those used to Hochdeutsch. I'd love to see people from the Pfalz, Köln, Baden, Hessen and or some Swiss Germans give it a shot.
I think those in the north would understand old english better than those in the south, because of the consonant shifts that happened in the south. That make low german dialects nearer to old english than high german dialects.
Speaking of "obscure":
Ever heard of Eastphalian? The - now practically extinct - Low German dialect around Hannover and Brunswik.
The same phrases would be this in Eastphalian:
Hei wonet in Wole. Hei het Klauen an sine Föten. Hei raret lue. Dei Bär
Sei is swart or rod. Sei is soite. Sei is ut mannig Bällen emaked. Dei Brombäre
Dei künnt seien. Dat givt twai. Dei künnt brun, grön or blag wesen. Dei Ogen
northern german dialects are more close to the old german
No, all dialects in Southern Germany have undergone a sound shift and are father removed from English than northern dialects, or Frisian, which is a separate language and most closely related to English.
I think he did have a guy on who spoke low-German. Actually, the guy from Hamburg here must speak (or at least understand a little) some dialect of Niederdeutsch. I know that's not an "obscure" dialect though. Would be cool if he has another Dutch speaker on. I think he did before.
As a Japanese with intermediate level English skill (I believe😅), I’m completely mind blown. I couldn’t recognize any single word and got shocked seeing German people having clues. It’s literally “alien” to me, but I appreciate I got the chance to learn this. Love from Saitama (to the north of Tokyo)!
The two from Northern Germany (especially the frisian speaker) had a bit of advantage because of the similarity between Frisian/Low German and Old English (which is a version of Low German).
Dutch and Danish speakers would be similar because their languages also have low germanic roots.
Don't mind not understanding something. I'm from south germany and grew up with several local dialects and understood only 1 or 2 words. North german dialects are pretty hard to figure out because of their closeness to old english and norse languages.
As an English speaker who studied German is sort of freaks me out when I understand random bits of Old English because I can't figure out if it's misspoken English or misspoke in German or even just dutch.
@@Crunchifyable2 I’m an American from Cincinnati Ohio - in my sister’s genealogical research into our northwest German, Low German-speaking ancestors arrival to Cincinnati, many of those arriving here were confused at hearing “badly spoken Low German” - English !
Since Cincinnati had a large North/Northwest German immigrant population, there were Low German newspapers being printed and sold on the same newsstands with English-language newspapers.
And German isn't even the closest relative to the english language. That would be Frisian.
Also, Saitama sounds like an interesting place. It seems more fun than Germany.
I've heard that it contains lots of these things, whatever they are ---> ( °∀° )
Languages are so fascinating! In Germany we had the famous animal chiropractor Tamme Hanken (RIP) from East Frisia who also travelled a lot around the world to treat mainly horses. Once he was in South Africa on a ranch to look after a horse but since his English was not the best he started to talk to the rancher in Frisian, who understood everything and responded in Africaans. Both had no problems to communicate.
Animal chiropractor is a great concept, quacks for things that quack
Die Sache is, Platt is näher verwandt mit Altenglisch als Friesisch
Plattysk er sgudda JYSK!? 😛
@@dallesamllhals9161 wat willst me da fertelln? Eck fersteh kaan Wort.
@@jarlnils435
Hvad vil du da fortælle mig? Jeg forstår intet/ingen ord.
What will you tell/learn me, then? I don't understand a single word...?
Og NEJ! Jeg anvender IKKE Google...og så videre = etc.
Bad/good enough?
Edit: No you/du ..below direct tran':
Hvad vil jeg da fortælles? Jeg forstår ingen ord.
YUP! We're pretty close love it or hate it - West coast boi ♥ & ☮
I am Dutch, also a germanic language. I noticed that the pronunciation makes it slightly more difficult to understand, however once it is written it becomes easier to comprehend.
That plus Simon's audio quality isn't that great. I don't know if they contestants could hear him better, but on my headphones he comes across compressed and a bit muddy.
I am German and i can understand a lot of written Dutch, But do not understand anything that's spoken. Same with Dansk, Norsk and Svenska. :D
As a german, this is how I feel about understanding dutch. When I hear dutch people speak, it's harder to understand than when I read it, because pronunciation is different from high german. When I read dutch it's in comparison easy to understand. As I speak german and english, I always get a clue from words. Not saying dutch is a mix of both languages, but is has obviously similarities to both and to me it seems (I'm no expert) even more to german. Anyway, it's always fun to try to figure out old languages or similar languages.
@@tubybubi Geht mir ähnlich. Man kann gelegentlich Worte "raushören", aber es ist schwer einer Unterhaltung zu folgen und alles zu verstehen.
100 - the second I read the part about the blackberry I understood every word. it's wild
I'm a native English speaker who took a class in Old English in grad school. All the students who had studied German (even if just a couple semesters) had a MUCH easier time with Old English than those who hadn't.
ive noticed that from studying old english for fun, since im also learning german even though my german is very basic it seems to make it easier for me to understand old english than my friend who speaks high german as his first language and english as his second. something about going from english to german rather than german to english seems to help with the understanding of old english though i have no idea why that could be
As a kid (of West Frisian immigrants) we delved into Shakespeare in grade school. I took to it much better than my Anglo compatriots for some reason - it puzzled me then...not now.
@@ducdashot1239😊
The Lower Saxon language might help:
Lower Saxon = English
he, se, mie, yi = he, she, me, you
wat, dat = what, that
de = the (no "der, die, das")
us = us
water = water
school = school
broken = broken
soster = sister
modder, vadder = mother, father "dd = th"
klock tein = ten o'clock
The ancient Saxons were calling all those tribes which were living to the west of their territory (todays England) "de Welschen/ the Welsh ", the meaning of that is "the other ones, the ones from abroad, the strangers ".
Until today, when one is moving into another town/village in Lower Saxony one is called "de Welschen".
The origin territory of the ancient Saxons are todays Federal States of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg and partly Saxony-Anhalt (only the "Saxony" part).
Add on: about 4ish million Germans living in the North of Germany are talking Lower Saxon language/ Nedderdüütsch.
Edit typo/autocorrect
Given that the majority of words in Old English were Germanic in Origin while most Modern English words are actually not Germanic in origin (they are predominantly French, Latin and Greek in origin), I'd expect it to be easier for German speakers to understand Old English than for English speakers to understand Old English.
As a German and English speaker, I loved this video! My favourite nerd moment was when Simon acknowledged something as a “believable semantic drift”. Great!
An example of such drift is how "dog" is now the general term and "hound" is more specific, but it used to be the other way around. And "fowl" moved from very general to less general, while "bird" moved from nonexistence, to specificity, to generality.
@@b43xoit Great examples! Thank you!
@@b43xoit can meat be said to have the same shift?
As meat was once used to describe food in general in he past where vegetables for instance would be described as green meat and meat from an animal would be called flesh meat whereas now meat is specifically used to describe what comes from animals.
Is this an example of this shift?
sorry I only just heard of this term today.
@@iainfraser7588 Yes, it is - we also have D&N mad / S mat meaning food in general here in Scandinavia. ( and D&N "føde" = "food" / "nutrition" , "føde-varer" = 'food ware (stuff)' ).
And we have "flæsk" meaning pork etc., OE flæsc (!) = pork / meat - cognate with "flesh" in modern E.
D, N & S hund = dog
D&N fugl [fooghl] / S fågel [foa-gel] =
bird ( ~ fowl ) / OE fugol (!!!)
Me too. İt was really incredible
Loved this! Fernando is 100% correct, without the text this is so, so much harder. I can't imagine being put on the spot with it either, knowing that it's going to wind up on RUclips and ton of people will be watching me fail.
English came from German dialogue idiots American English is also Germanic as will Latin.
Fernando!
It was a great conversation
I agree. Also, and this may sound weird, but I believe that the spoken the could probably have been better received (by this German crowd) if read by someone from e.g. the Netherlands. Because U have this feeling that probably it would also have sounded more authentic.
think the best explanation of what it sounds like was from a frisian who said it sounds like the person you're speaking to is drunk and slurring their words. like its understandable to a degree but the pronunciation is so different from modern languages that the words can kinda mix together where as in writing you can read it as if its being spoken in modern frisian or like high german and all of a sudden it makes so much more sense. though i am a native english speaker who only has basic knowledge of german an a few other languages so i may be completely wrong.
Difficulty when you see it: 2
Difficulty when you hear it: 8
It blows my mind how understandable Old English is to me. As a native Dutch speaker who also speaks Swiss German, Standard German and Low Saxon, I got almost everything. Thanks guys, keep up the good work!
As a native Swiss German speaker who also speaks Standard German, French, English, some Italian (not useful here xD) and a bit of dutch, I second that.
That makes perfect sense…Due to migration patterns of the original Saxonii and Angle tribes into what would become England, Dutch is actually closer to English than English is to German.
Frisian is the English language’s closest living linguistic relative.
Old English would have been essentially the same as old Dutch/German, and geographic closeness to England of the Netherlands even more so than Germany is not unimportant
so basically you speak german? 😂
dialects dont count
yes, but it is even easier if you speak Flemish (Ypres, Bruges, Kortrijk) dialect
As a native speaker of a very old high alemannic dialect in western Austria, „Montafonerisch“ (Unesco world cultural heritage), I was more than pleased to actually understand quite a lot! It would be fun to make a video with you challenging me :) Look up the dialect, it‘s amazing! It mixed with old „rätoromanisch“, therefore relict words more than a thousand years old.
I am actually kind of an ambassador from this dialect (kind of a local project).
As a student of the english language and literature, I was so amazed on how it came to be and how it split from german/germanic
Keep up the good work!
That sounds awesome dude! Is that language commonly spoken in your community? Or is it a niche thing? Sounds amazing!
That's so cool, do you have any resources on this dialect you can share with us?
This sounds awesome. I hope you write as much as possible in this dialect! Vær svo vel, skrifið frekar í þessu tungumáli! Keep it up!
You should consider contributing sentences to the Tatoeba project. It's a website/database of millions of sentences in hundreds of languages.
@@sebastiangudino9377 Austrians and Swiss use their dialects a lot. Germans mostly dropped their dialects and use standard German.
there is a german accent word for "two" -> "zwo", it's still used sometimes when talking over radio because the modern "zwei" is too close to "drei". "zwo" is easier to distinguish.
In southern Germany we often say "zwo" or "zwoi" when ordering or counting something. :)
In low german "two" is "twee", which is pretty close to the old english "twa"
Its used all the time in the military, my drill instructor in the austrian army held up two tshirts and asked us how many he was holding. If we said "zwei" instead of "zwo" he acted as though he couldnt understand us and just asked again until we got it.
It's still very common everywhere, when saying numbers on the phone. That way it's easier for people to distinguish the words for two and three.
@@TrueCyprien It's also "twee" in Dutch.
Old English is so fascinating. It is basically an entirely different language to us modern English native speakers. We can understand stuff back into maybe the 1500s but not really Old English.
I'd rather it be called Anglo-Saxon than Old English since it os so different from Modern English.
I think like what Fernando said, with the transcript, you can still at least 50/50 guess the verbs in any Old English sentences.
@Prof. Spudd Somehow Italian and Spanish seem closer to Latin than modern English being closer to Old English, I think mainly because English had so many outside influences such as Celtic, Latin, French, and Norse.
@@Caine61 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@Caine61 Another factor is because Romance languages borrowed a substantial number of words of Latin. Many words are not inherited from Vulgar Latin varieties but instead taken from Biblical Latin.
In modern Dutch, blackberry = braam. I love these vids about Old English. Such a beautiful language and so much like Frisian, Dutch and Low German, its amazing. Could understand almost everything without even written down, except for the last sentence in the first example.
I believe it's also where English gets the word "bramble" which is a general word for a a tangly, prickly shrub.
@@ElectroNeutrino "Bramble" can be used in that sense of any generic prickly, tangly bush, but it is also very specifically the name of the plant that blackberries grow on!
Not only that, but it can also be an alternative word for the berries themselves. "Blackberry" is much more common for the fruit, almost universal, and "bramble" is really kind of archaic and evokes a kind of old-fashioned vibe, but you do still occasionally find it used, especially in certain contexts such as "bramble jam".
@@zak3744 Brombeere in German ;-)
I wonder if the le ending on bramble denotes a diminutive like in German. "Little Brams".
In Danish it is Brombaer so Danish also kept the braam or braemel cognate.
Loved this. As a native English speaker it’s baffling how far apart Old English/Anglo-Saxon is from Modern English (I know why: Vikings/Norman-French, etc.). I can read Middle English fairly well, but Old English might as well have been written on the Moon.
Wished we had stayed with Old English though as well as German/Dutch/Scandinavian languages stayed like their forebears…
I agree about wishing we remained more Old-y English - thanks Norman-French!! I also think the major factor in the striking difference between late Middle English compared to Old English is the Great English Vowel Shift. This changing vowel sound just makes modern English speakers go: "eh?!" when they hear Old English spoken. With a bit of knowledge, you can actually pick out a lot of the Old English bits that still exist in modern English. The 'thorn' and 'eth', ð þ, characters in OE throw a lot of people too but it just means 'th'.
The reintroduction of Latin/French thanks to the Normans is what change it away from being so germanic.
It’s a really bizarre thing to wish. All language is great and the evolution of a language is what makes it unique
@@morganetches3749 The reason I wished for it is the languages were mutually intelligible or very nearly so, 1500 years ago or thereabouts.
@@MrTangent absolutely and some languages still are. It is funny because I’m swedish and my half of family is German. But I learned English before I learned German, and once I learned English, I could understand bits and pieces of German from the common cognates between swedish-English.
I am German and I had a hard time learning Old English which was mandatory at that time (the 1990s) for studying English at university. It might have been easier if we had a teacher who actually spoke to us in this language, but we just had to read and translate old texts.
That’s so weird they teach old English to you guys. I’m a native English speaker and I couldn’t understand any old English. Which is weird because in the north of England in my dialect we still say “thee” and “thar” for you haha. But maybe that’s not thinking far back enough of course. I’m no professional linguist I’m just here for fun. Also I’m trying to teach myself German and it’s funny to me that I understood MORE of what the German speakers said than the old English! 😂
@@undeadwerewolves9463 That was some 30 years ago and things most likely have changed since then. At that time every university in Germany had their own curricula and the requirements also differed depending on in which ferderal state you studied. At my university we had to learn and pass written exams in Old and Middle English. Actually (and much to be deplorared as I see now) it was just learning to the test and probably a way to see how much stamina we had and sort out those unwilling to learn. In fact they probably could as well have required us to memorize the phone book. It was the same with Philosophy where I had to learn Latin and Old Greek, however I gained a deeper understanding of grammar from that.
@@larswesterhausen7262 the well-known grammar-translation method. Do you remember anything now? And have you made use of this knowledge?
@banana ghost I only remember the fiirst sentence of my exam.
"Ða wæs se hælend gelæd fram gaste on westen: þæt he wære fram deofle costud" (Matt 4)
English (New International)
"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil"
German (Einhaitsübersetzung)
"Dann wurde Jesus vom Geist in die Wüste geführt; dort sollte er vom Teufel in Versuchung geführt werden."
OE = Hælend
Ger = the Heiland
Eng = the Redeemer
OE = gelæd
Ger = geleitet/geführt
Eng = led
OE = gaste
Ger = Geist
Eng = ghost
OE = westen
Ger = Wüste
Engl desert
OE = deofle
Ger = Teufel
Engl devil
There are obviously connections.
@@larswesterhausen7262 As I know, here in Russia philology students study Old Slavic, Old Greek, Latin and at postgraduate colleges even Polish due to common roots.
I am a Frisian from the Dutch province of "Friesland" and speak Frysk on a daily basis as I've been brought up with it. I had very little to almost no difficulty guessing the 1st and 3rd test. Especially the colors and the word "twa". And for the first test, basically every word was close to the same as it would be in Frysk, or at least if someone had drank a whole barrel of Vodka. It would make sense since Frysk is the closest related language to English and old English. Very interesting, very fun!!! Be aware, there are as many non-recognized dialects in Frysk as there are ticks on a stray dog. Every county, town, and I'd almost say every person has their own little way of saying certain Fryske words. Mine would be "Wald Frysk" which means, Forest Frisian. Or Bush Frisian.
Way back you guys did a video with Simon seeing if an American, Australian, and a non-native English speaker could understand Old English. I had just started learning German at the time, and I remember actually being able to work out what all the sentences meant. Very cool to see Old English and German compared in this way!
I am also a German native, but this time felt harder than the last one, maybe I felt more pressure on understaning it this time around, though. Anyways, we probably would enjoy some more with dutch, flamish, danish etc. ;) I'd fathom dutch people to ease through that, applying some needless pressure, hehe
@@smallwisdom8819 Last time the words were also written on the screen, which helped a lot I think
@@mtchllBarrett Most definitly.
@@smallwisdom8819 ^and when no wriiten+ around then what? Hva'så? Ti-hi/Tee-hee from South Jutland 😛
🥰❤️🥰❤️
As a Dutch speaking person who know some German and is quite fluent in English, I am astounded how Old English really sounds like a mix of all these languages with some own "flavor". It is truly a common ancestor of our cultures I think. The way you pronounce "he is" in Old English is almost 99% literally how you say "He is" (Hij is) in Dutch.
Lol
Hi there, Dane here. I live very close to the German border and speak - other than Danish, English and German - our local dialect, that is more a language in its own, and very closely related to Frisian and Plattdeutsch. So when he started speaking Frisian, I understood quite a bit of that too. I actually don’t think that I’ve ever heard Frisian before, so thank you for this. And a big Moin back! (We also use moin here, although we spell it “mojn”)
In Groningen (NL) we use Moi too.
Yeah, I understood everything he said in frisian and I am from northern germany. Didn't even know frisian sounded that different from high german, but it clicked immediately.
Can I ask as a dane have you ever heard Yorkshire dialect and can you understand it if you have ?
@@lightfootpathfinder8218 Well, I understand those, I’ve seen on tv, but I’m not sure, if I’ve ever heard the dialect in full. My own English speaking personal contacts are from Wales, southern England and Ireland (Cork). But there’s many words in the northern part of UK, that’s exactly as in Danish. A word like “kirk” for instance (pronounced kierk, like in Kierkegaard). In “proper” Danish you would pronounce it “kirk-e” but in all of the dialects in Jutland (including our dialect), we leave the last “e” out and just say “kirk”.
@@Sonderborg75 oh right nice one. We use the term "laiking" which iv been told is of Danish origin. For example we would say "stop laiking abaat(about)" it basically means "stop messing/playing around"
Love when Simon is on speaking Old English
The Old English Videos are my favorite. Cause it's just fascinating how different it is to Modern English.
Influences by north germanic languages was immense, when the norse and danish people invaded Britanny.
The cause of the difference is the Anglo Scandinavian dialect that replaced standard Old English which was based on the dialect of Wessex or West Saxon. wessex never survived the Norman conquest and when the ban on the use of English was lifted 200 years later most people in london spoke thr Anglo Scandinavian hybrid language that immigrant speakers from the midlands brought with them. london was also in the Danelaw, so it’s speech would have been significantly influenced by Old Norse. That is why todays English sounds very different from old English. The words and how they are spoken have been heavily modified by the Norse influence . Word like ‘they’, ‘their’, ‘them’ and ‘are’ are entirely north germanic in origin and used by Anglo-Norse settlers from the Scandinavian parts of England in the Anglo
@@prospektarty1513 I know this already. Y'all don't need to explain this.
In Old English 'rarian' meant "to roar" but also "to wail, cry loudly, lament", especially for humans. There are so many synonyms for "roar" in Old English (bellan, bremman, hweorðerian, and about 12 others), I find it interesting that you chose this word out of all the more common ones.
Interesting. Bellan reminds me of "bellen" which means "to bark" in German.
And in Austrian "rearn/röhren" means also crying if I am not mistaken
@@Santeria78 yes I was thinking about that word as well
12 others! Old languages were very rich in vocabulary, the only language that has this much for a single thing that I know of is Classical Arabic, which is as old as old English.
English had alot of words for "Fear/Terror" as well, Gryre, Dreade, Broga, and sometimes mixed them together as "Gryrebroga"
for all those words not to be mentioned in dictionaries, kinda of a shame.
If I think back I can still see and hear my father saying "stop roaring" when one of us was in tears. So 'roar' was certainly used to mean 'cry' in the 1960s in West Yorkshire.
Interesting. Scots and Doric Scots use similar words to old English words from what I made out in this. We use Brummel for blackberry, twa for two, broon and blae = brown and blue and micht is maybe or might be.
Dialects of Scots/ Danish: broon/brun(brown), kirk/kirke(church), kam/kam(comb), bairn/barn(child), bink/bænk(bench), keek/kig(look), steid/sted(place), loope/løbe(run), kist/kiste(chest), flit/flyt(moving an object), flittin/flytte(moving house), frae/fra (from), moos/mus (mouse), hoose/hus (house), tang/tang (seaweed), reek/røg (smoke), stur/stor (big), loos/lus (lice), smittle/smitte (infection), quini/kvinde (quinn is used in Jutish dialects and as slang for woman in standard Danish) Sma/Smaw (small) “små” in standard Danish “smaw” in jutish dialects. Oot/ud (out), blaw/blaw (blow) in jutish dialects, cloot/klud (cloth), gae/ gå (going), gang/gang (walking), bairndom/barndom (childhood), fowl/fugl (bird), grice/gris (pig), quey/kvie (young cow), lang/lang ( long), efter/efter (after) etc.
The Frisian accent sounds super close to Danish, makes sense of course, just really neat.
I did a PhD in Middle English and took one semester of Old English -- both almost 50 years ago, and not reinforced since then (academic job market in 1976 was a washout).
I didn't get the answer to the middle riddle but I did manage to decode almost all the Old English even before Simon put up the written version.
Written old English is slightly easier to decipher in comparison to spoken old English. Both are tough though.
In German there's "röhren" which is "to roar" but is now mainly used for the sounds that stags make during mating season. Low Saxon/ Plattdeutsch also has "mannig", it uses "twee" for "two" and it has a cognate for Old Saxon/ Old English "oððe" which is "of".
I’ve been waiting yeah babyyyyyy!!!!!!!!
Woo, been looking forward to this :)
Some of the other Old English videos, I had a much easier time picking out the words...I had a LOT of trouble with these 😅 The colors of course were easy, and once Simon talked about that one word being cognate with German "oder" (or), and the possibility of another word being German "möchten", suddenly it became so obvious...
say what you want but his German pronounciation is tight. Probably the best I EVER heard from a native English speaker. Kudos to him honestly. Also as a native German I could follow the train of thought of the other three often. Its crazy how much trickled down to German, especially when you see it written out
Thanks to you, Simon, and all your friends for digging into this language history. This is so much fun!
I was totally lost when hearing these sentences, but when i could read the words on screen it made a lot more sense. Had a similar feeling traveling through Norway, it's like reading very drunken german with a dash of english.
"Twa" - in Slavic languages "two" is /dva/ so even mire similar than modern English, let alone German.
2 Twee (sounds like tway in dutch) was well enough pronounced and is still in use in the Netherlands.
@@pmvdmeulen Similar to Low German where "two" translates to "twee". The "ee" sounds nearly like the "ay" in may, however.
Regarding the last example I understood the "twa" as "zwo", which is the old female version of the modern german "zwei". We use that more or less often to make it easier to understand it as a two, for example when quoting a telephone number number by number.
I immediately thought of the low german "twee" I was surprised none of the two north germans made that connection...
When reading the sentences, I can make sens of almost everything with the knowledge of Dutch I have. Something that was not mentionned is that the "-on" suffix for infinitives has been replaced by "-en" in Dutch and German (seon->zien/zehen). Nice video! Cannot wait to see how Dutch speakers would fare.
I can make sense of the written form about as much as I can make sense of written dutch, and I speak neither. But being from northwestern germany helps a lot. Colloquial speech here is quite similar in many ways.
It wasn't an -on ending getting replaced in German. the -on being in Old English doesn't mean that German used to have it. High German had an -an ending generally. So sehen would be 'sëhan.' I also think it was probably pretty obvious to them which is why it wasn't mentioned
@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 I mean that current day German and Dutch have most of their verbs ending with "-en". Now that you mention it, I did saw "-an" used as well in Old English actually : "habban" (to have).
i'm assuming seon is "to see" then, as german is "sehen"
exactly, I wonder how well dutch people would do since their (our 😉) language may have even more similarities to other german languages. Especially people who understand Frisian or Gronings should do well (?)
Simon hosted very well & well done to the panel for some clever deductions
Im so surprised at your german pronunciation! Its really good, I'm very impressed, this high accuracy level of pronunciation is really uncommon for native english speakers !
I would love to know what my accent sounds like to native German speakers, haha, I'm British but learned German in university, I lived in Hessen for a year so maybe I picked up some dialect too :)
I mean, he's a linguist specialised in a more "classical" Germanic language
Bub tell me about it.
I'm native English speaking American, and I can't grasp the basic German "R".
@@rustyshackleford1465 maybe it’s comforting to know that this goes both ways. The English pronounciation of r is killing me. Had to say the brand name “True Fruits” in class a while back, I still get flashbacks of the moment I realised I can’t do it. I just sat there, contemplating my existence (and more than a decade of learning English) 😂
lets find out what we have in common instead of seeing the differences, inspirational
As a native English speaker with some knowledge of other Germanic languages, I was happy to get the third one right! The others were tough. Fun exercise!
our language has been through a lot
@@christophercolumbus8944 Forsooth
I got the third one right too. To be fair though, once you hear the colours 'brown, green and blue', eyes is the obvious association, then for me at least it was just confirming that. Feels good to get one though
For me, I'm a Geordie living just inside Northumberland. My accent is very strong and I can understand Northumbrian and Pitmatic dialects. For me, I've never been taught German but strangely I kinda half understand what's being said in German.
Some English dialects are still heavy on germanic vocabulary and speech pattern, which makes it closer to other Germanic languages in construction. Basically the father away from London the more "German" the dialect.
don't some folks in areas in Scotland say "I ken him" for "I know him" ? In German it would be "Ich kenne ihn" or colloquial "Ich kenn ihn". Weird.
I'm from a working-class family in Lancashire (I'm now 62) - I'd say my Dad & grand-parents almost spoke Old English/German - the local dialect. My Dad was recorded speaking by researchers at one time in the 70s because they were fascinated by his dialect. I have passive memories of this dialect (my family all died fairly young). I can particularly remember that verbs tended to end in "en" - eg. "What have you got (meaning - in your hands) there..?" would have phonetically been, "Vas getten theer.?" or just, "Vast getten..?". My understanding was that this was an abbreviation of "Was hast thou getten..?". My Dad only ever used *thou, thine, thee* - never "you". I remember this example particularly because I always had a frog, caterpillar or some such in my hands in childhood (I went on to study ecology). (Dot)
@@reverendbeckerI believe Scots and dialects in North East England are cliser to Old English than Middle English in most of the rest of the country. Would be interesting to understand similarities between Old English and West Country
Weel kent in Scots. Well known👍
People like to talk about how conservative German is compared to English because of loanwords but English has Germanic features that German lost such as dental fricatives and the w sound. Not to mention the fact that it didn't go through the consonant shift. Both beautiful languages, thank you for this video!
Modern High German is incredibly different to Old High German and also has a ton of Latin influence. All languages change and corrupt over thousands of years. Same with modern Scandinavian languages and Old Norse, they can't understand a thing from it.
Also, I've noticed in a lot of cases Modern High German has a Latin loanword for words which English has retained a Germanic word for.
Overall, English probably is considerably more influenced by Latin than German, but I don't think the difference is nearly as vast as people often tend to think.
Dutch is even more influenced by Latin.
@@palepilgrim1174 So does that make Icelandic the most conservative of all Germanic languages?
@@lissandrafreljord7913 Oh by far, not sure it’s even a contest. Icelandic is in a league of its own.
@@palepilgrim1174 I would raise issue with the idea of it being "corrupt", "evolve" might be more apt or better yet "drift".
Finally! Now that's what we've been waiting for! 🤩
How about Old Norse and Old English next time?
How about you watch the damn video first, lol.
Jackson Crawford already made one full-length video detailing Old Norse influence in English, plus a collab with Simon Roper, so that would kinda feel redundant...
@@pcenero Thanks! I'll go and look for it.
Old Norse would fit with Middle English perhaps
@@pcenero Yes and moreover, there is a dialog between Dr. Crawford and our friend here in those languages.
I was waiting for this a long time. I'd love to listen to more old English from Simon, it sounds so cool.
Check out his collaboration with Jackson Crawford where they discussed similarities in old English and old Norse.
@@JSBHP2017 This sounds reallly interesting, I think I watched this before. After watching this old ENglish vs. German fully I'm really interested in Frisian vs Danish or vs Dutch in comparison to old ENglish, but with full sentences.
I’m a unilingual English speaker who took a Chaucer course over 40 years ago and I am absolutely thrilled that I guessed correctly on all three of the riddles. You’ve made me me feel so much better about my aging brain. Thanks!
Back in the '80's , we studied Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales as one of our texts in high school... fascinating!
Very interesting. As a Dutch (Flemish) speaker, I found there were many words similar in Dutch.
I like that Simon isn't making this too easy and the three dudes are left scratching their heads most of the time but always go oh it all makes sense after the explanations. Looking forward to part 2!
Ur such a bragger.
As someone who speaks German and Swedish. Yes it’s easier with text, pronunciation and tone changes things much more
Simon, your persona and skills are admirable. I love how you interact with each other. Loving the Old English and Old Norse content, especially with German and Norwegian collaboraters. Greetings and much love to you.
i would like to point out that Jackson Crawford does the Old Norse stuff, on their collabs Simon offers Old English knowledge as a basis to talk about linguistics
As an Afrikaans speaker I did pick up on quite a few words and sentence construction. Really interesting and didn't think I was going to enjoy this video as much as I did. Great work!
Mind:blown! I'm German and speak English very well, yet how I got some of the words (in the clues) correct was only from them sounding like German words! I got the wolf too since the first two sentences were almost today's German haha. For the others, I could not figure what it was but recognize certain words. The word for black (schwarz), for example, and odde = oder which is very close to today's German word. Blown away to see how old English was kind of way closer to today's German than today's English! What I find also intriguing is the way "he" was pronounced almost exactly sounds like today's German er. Cheers!
I would like to have seen the Old English text and English translations displayed on the screen while he was speaking the clues. It is a fascinating challenge!!
What I heard as a Norwegian native who also speaks fluent English and a very little German:
2:15 "Han wohnt i wald, har klør på foten og rører seg lydløst"
They live in the forest, has claws on his feet and moves silently. I think?
A lynx?
717: "Han er svart eller raud, han er søt (svær? / svett? ) , han er med mange baum (ett eller annet)"
"They are black or red, they are sweet (big? / sweaty?), they are many tree (something)"
No idea what
12:50
"Hyu mauthon seeom, hyu beoth twa, hyu mauthton brun, grene oder blau beon"
"His? mouth? is seom, His beoth two, his mouth is brun grøn oder blau beon."
"His? mouth? is ??, two something, his? mouth? is brown, green or blue something"
No idea
Its not a walk in the park for speakers of modern German. BUT...they all did a lot better than I ( a speaker of American English) can do ...understanding Old "English".
I actually guessed the 3rd one thanks to the colors in the last sentence. So when he repeated all 3 I caught the number in the second sentence which convinced me even more of it. When I saw it written down even the 1st sentence fell in line.
Hi Simon, I am a subscriber to your channel since about 3 years now. And I am never disappointed. I am also very impressed of how good your German actually is. I love your dedication, keep it up mate. Greetings from the black forest.
... for nearly 3 years now ... (sounds better, don't you think?)
As a Dane this made me want to know more about north Frisian. Good job all!!!
It is just fascinating to see how regional dialect can give you some clues. I am German, speaking German, English, Dutch and the Franconian dialect and managed to guess the second sentence relating to the eyes as far as in Dutch, two is "twee" and in Frankish "zwa". If it wasn't for that, I'd also not have guessed the sentence.
I thought it’s zwo in franconian.
In low german it's also "twee"
I went to Rendsburg, Schleswig-Holstein on a school exchange in 1983. One afternoon one of the girls took us to see her grandmother.
The grandmother started talking to us in Low German (or so I was told). I understood most of what was said. My mind was blown. Especially when I was told that if it was written down I wouldn't understand any of it.
Well, I speak English and German with some knowledge of Old English, Middle English, Icelandic and Norwegian, so could understand many of the words spoken, although I only got #3 100% correct. I could spend hours watching things like this.
I find it MUCH easier to read than to hear because of the pronunciation drift. I'm also used to seeing the thorn character, and to early modern English with a thorn sound on the end of verbs, so things like "He hath claws on his feet" was obvious or "They be-eth two" seemed like a perfectly reasonable substitution for "They are two" (once I was straight up told the original plural pronoun.) So cool!
I'm a little surprised that my fellow german native speakers didn't recognise "twa/two" as "zwa/zwo" of some german dialects. In high german the word "two" is now known as "zwei". Another clue could have been "zwie" as it is used today in the modern word "Zwiespalt" for the english word "conflict" (specifically as an argument between two sides within the self/a hard choice between two alternatives).
I'm German and I barely got anything from the spoken old english, but once I saw it written down it was obvious. Really interesting!
These videos are so informative yet so entertaining. Keep up the good work brother 👍
I’m loving these translations and their similarities.Its a great critical thinking exercise which makes these lessons very fascinating.Thank You
If Eric ever does an audiobook to teach German, by telling stories, I've got to get that one. I love his voice. I'd listen whether I know what he's saying or not.
That's interesting, because as a native German speaker myself, his way of speaking drives me nuts. He's constantly second-guessing himself with interjections and filler phrases, which makes him appear way more insecure than he needs to be.
Glorious! Glad to see Simon again
Awesome video Norbert as always!!!
Funnily enough they didn't do anywhere near as well as Internet Experts always seem to think German-speakers would do with Old English. Same with the Scandinavians who recently tried to understand Old Norse with Jackson Crawford.
They did about as well as I did, maybe even a little worse, and I only speak English.
They would have, if his pronunciation was better. Old English would have sounded more Frysian/Dutch/German. Now it's like trying to understand an Italian in English, it's already difficult.. his knowledge is good, but pronunciation makes it almost impossible.
@@pmvdmeulen Cope.
@@pmvdmeulen You do also know that Frisian,Dutch and German accents have all also changed significantly since the days of Old Frisian, Old Dutch and Old High German, right?
I don’t know why I’m even responding to your ridiculous comment seriously.
You wouldn’t even understand Old Dutch spoken by a Dutch-speaker and expert in the language.
@@palepilgrim1174 why so serious
@@palepilgrim1174 and i would understand old dutch pretty well, id guess
I live in a small village near Cuxhaven in Germany and they all have different versions of "Plattdeutsch". A coworker of mine often says "He is aff" when a screw becomes loose. Which means "Er ist ab" in English "He is off" like not connected anymore. The fact that this old German dialect is so close to English is fascinating
This was really cool. Interesting how sometimes the pronounciation helped more, sometimes seeing it spelled out helped more.
Love this channel. Just brilliant stuff, Norbert.
As a Swede i found the Friisk easy to understand, but the old English was really hard.
the modern German word manch(e) is a cognate to many/manigum. In modern German it is mostly used with the meaning "some", but in slightly oldfashioned German it can also mean "many" depending on Kontext, e.g. "An diesem Problem sind schon so manche klugen Leute gescheitert." = "Many clever people have failed to solve this problem." The old g is still preserved in the oldfashioned word "mannigfaltig" (manyfold, diverse).
It's amazing that you do such a video!! Thank you!! I got 2 of 3 words and had much fun hearing an OE speaker!!
YES! He finally did the video everyone wanted!!
My prayers have been answered. I've been waiting for this episode since the 1st one with old English came out
'Braemel' is still in use in modern English as blackberries grow on bramble.
So they old word has only changed slightly in it's transition to the modern.
My grandparents used to call blackberries, brambles or brambleberries, living in the est mids (notts/derby border) we still use lots of old words and phrases that are out of phrase in the south of the country.
I have no other languages apart from English.
One thing, when listening to the OE being spoken by Simon it feels in my head as though I can sort of understand what is being said but I'm just not quite getting it. Seeing the words written and hearing it again then some of the words just jump out and are so obvious. The first one I could only pluck out a few words but reading and listening I got 'he runs in the forest(I presumed on the german wald-forest), he has claws on his feet, he roars loudly' it jumped out when hearing and reading together, and it was a tossup between wolf or bear.
the second, 'he is black or red, he is sweet, He is made of many balls. I got the clues but just couldn't put it together to get blackberry.
The last I didn't get.
Oh that was fun, now I'm waiting for part 2!
Absolutely love this demonstration of the merged history of our two languages. Fantastic stuff.
In some areas of Germany we also say Zwo instead of Zwei, which I believe is not that far away from two. Obviously they are pronounced totally different today.
I believe, German does still retain a cognate of "might". It is rarely used though. "Das mag stimmen." ("that might be true"). It is almost the same as "kann" but with a slightly different connotation.
We also have the word "zwo" for "two" in German, but it is used mainly by military to avoid confusion in communication between "zwei" and "drei".
In some noisy environments, e. g. communication between spaceships and the ground, Americans will say "nine" as "niner" (a made-up word) to avoid it sounding too much like "five". For similar reasons, submariners choose "shut" over "closed", because "closed" sounds too much like "open".
Fabian Pfeiffer: Do we have the word "zu" for two also in german?
My grandpa had a "Zuber" (at least TWO persons BEAR) for collecting water in one of his wine yards.
@@franz-helmuthorhauser9398
Yes, I didn't know the origin of "Zuber". Although, "Zu" is probably a differently spelled and then changed derivate of "zwo". Imagine pronouncing the "w" the English way.
Simon is a chill dude. Have more please?
This was fun! I was able to pick up on a lot more words that I expected I would!
Yes North Frisian is very under represented in literature. And it has delightful similarities to English. You guys should compare English to the low German in the original Angeln peninsula near Flensburg. It sounds eerily similar to English! It’s from the area where the original Angles came who gave the name England its name.
As for twâ: the Dutch cognate is "twee", and West Frisian (spoken in one Dutch province) has "twa". In standard German, the usual change t -> ts has taken place, which explains "zwei". The dropping of -w- in North Frisian matches Danish (to), but not Swedish (två). The English cognate "two" is fascinating, as it kept the -w- in the spelling but not in the pronunciation.
there's also twain (OE: twegen), which is actually cognate of "zwei" that came out of masculine for two in old english.
(also probably why its twenty and not twoty :D)
@@Banom7a There is also zwo in German, Mostly used on the telephone to avoid confusion between zwei and drei.
Originally zwo was the feminine for zwei and zwee the neuter.
Twa in Scots.
Das war super interessant und macht neugierig auf weitere Videos zu diesem Thema.
Interessant wäre, herauszufinden, ob tatsächlich die Schrift besser zu "verstehen" ist, als das gesprochene Wort. Oder ob jmd ältefes ebenso gut oder besser versteht, als jemand jüngeres.
Auf jedenfall klasse, dass sich junge Leute mit diesem Thema befassen. 👏👌👍
Language enthusiast here!
It's 11pm right now here, there goes me sleeping 😂
I learned OE and ME in Uni, I speak German, Italian, Spanish, English of course, and most Slavic languages.
I LOVE this channel!!!! ❤❤❤
I would love to see Simon talking to West Frisians -- if you look elsewhere on youtube, you can see a video of Eddie Izzard trying to buy a cow from a farmer in Frisia, and while he was able to mostly get his point across, Simon's Old English is much better than Izzard's.
@sysjkb Oh, I'm going to look for that video, it must be not only interesting but first and foremost comic. Thanks.
Good idea, West Frisian is even closer to (Old) English. And Simon is talented and passionate, so we hope to see more videos.
When I saw that, I immediately thought of Simon.
Amazing video, and the comments are also a language nerd's dream to read :D this is all making me want to pick up a Germanic language again, it's like I'm homesick haha! I'm British but I speak German as a second language, studied Old English for one semester too, and I've flirted with Dutch/Norwegian/Swedish. I'm currently learning Finnish and it's so much tougher because it's not even an IE language, even the loanwords are tough because they're "finnicised"!
Lastly, I'm pretty proud of myself for guessing "bear" during the first Old English sentence, even the guests didn't get it hehe
FalP, I live in Finland: the loaned words are actually not finnicized, the only have remained in that form they have been when they were loaned, because Finnish did not change for a very long time; that is like linguistic archaeology, you are digging out old words and can see how they were e.g. 1000 years ago. As a typical case: a female person (woman) is "rouva" in Finnish; that was "frouwe" in one of the old germanic languages, but as the Finns do not have two consonants at the beginning of words they had to drop off the f letter. There are numerous examples like that.
This is so fun to watch! Written old English is not that hard to understand at least 50% of but spoken is much harder. The first sentence was the easiest but it was fun to see that the colors is almost as in Swedish: brun, grön, blå...and the "or"-word which is eller and twa/two is två. Love to watch this videos, please keep them coming!
First video from this channel I saw - instant follow. this is so cool and interesting! I really often think "wow there are so many similarities between english and german" and here it is, a video which helps me to understand some of the origins of this feeling.
English speaker here, I understood much more than I expected. I understood pretty much all of the first one, but I guessed lion not bear. For the 2nd I only understood "sweet" and "ball" so I guessed candy. For the third I understood "might see" (though I thought it was "sea" at first), "It's two", and "brown green" and I eventually realized it was eyes.
yooo Simon's back
Love your videos. You guys do a great job.
What a great idea, thank you!
Actually there are german cognates with old english "manig" / modern english "many", but to the best of my knowledge only composite forms are still in use. An example would be mannigfaltig ( ~ manyfold ) or mannigfach ( ~ multiple, numerous )
"manifold" too are still in use in English but not as often and nowadays people remember it as mechanical manifold in a car.
The word "manche" (some) is the direct decendent of that word in High German with a final consonantism of a soft g as we often have with "-ig".
In Afrikaans we use Menige, Menigmaal, Menigvuldig etc.
That "hīe" might not have a cognate in modern english, but it has one in modern german: "sie", which is used in the same way as english "they" in 3rd person plural, but also for "she" in 2nd person singluar and even as formal "you"
Great video, Simon.
Norbert, making dreams come true!