I watched 11 minutes of this video because I thought it would be fun to call my cat what cat was in Old English only to find that cat in Old English is cat.
The English word fee derives from feoh, so has a parallel with Icelandic. In olden times, cattle were often used as the payment on larger transactions and so the animal used as the medium of exchange became the word for money itself.
*More Norwegian trivia:* In Norwegian _bear_ means 'bjørn'. For a female bear you could say 'binne', but it would only be used by really knowledgeable woodsmen... The Norwegian word is not possible to mistake for _beer_ or _beard,_ like in English, however, as it's called 'øl' and 'skjegg' over here, respectively. We kept using 'esel' for donkey, however. Funny how that goes. The Swedes use a word that's very similar to _assa,_ which it is 'arsle' - but it does not mean donkey... Then there is of course 'hare', and we often call dogs of both sexes for 'bikkje'. Didn't think of the etymological connection there before seeing this video, so thanks! In Scandinavian it would be 'katten', for the particular singular for _the_ cat. In fact most of these old words translate directly to Scandinavian words for the same animals. In Norwegian 'ċealf' means 'kalv', for instance, which isn't far from calf either. It's pretty simple to see the connection. Instead of sheep, or 'scēap', we say 'sau' in Norwegian, which seems to be a slight deviation. Though it's not hard to see a connection if you use a little imagination, and take away the 'p'. However in both Danish and Swedish, it's more common to say 'får', which is also used in Norwegian in the context of sheep cattle. For young goats we still use the word 'kje', which could come from 'scēap', although they are of course different animals. In any case, the Norwegian pronounciation of goat would be like 'yeyt', though written 'geit'. In Norwegian the sentence 'Hwilċes dēor oþþe feoh līcaþ þē?' can be translated to 'Hvilke dyr eller fe liker De?' The word that deviates most from the Old English ones is the word for _or,_ which is 'eller' in Norwegian. Here the German word 'oder' is much closer to 'oþþe'. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the origin of 'other'. Most Norwegians know the word 'De' today, but no one will ever use it, perhaps except when addressing the King, or when speaking in an incredibly sarcastic tone. Even then most would avoid it. Instead modern Norwegians would simply say 'du', which means _you,_ however it does not translate as well in the current context. The fact is, Norwegians were considered rather rude in the way they adressed superiors, but it all stems from the resentment against foreign rule endured for so many hundreds of years. Since most of the Norwegian nobility had died out, there simply were no pride in swooning to class. After 1905, when Norway became independent, most Norwegians found that they could do completely without a word like 'De' in their daily lives, though it was in regular business use well into the 70's. Another way to explain this, is how the leftist post-war governments successfully made Norway into a very economically homogenous country. Anyway, fun to see how similar the langauges are / used to be.
It's fascinating to see how many languages came from a common ancestor, and how they shifted and changed over time depending on how far the language traveled and what adventures it got into along the way!
No native English speaker would ever mistake "bear" for "beer" or "beard": these three words all sound distinctively different. If they sound similar enough to _you_ that you might confuse them, you need to expose yourself to more spoken English.
In Old English, "other" meant simply "second" (the ordinal number, as in "first, second, third"). "Second' comes from French. The word that sounds like "bear" in Modern English is "bare," meaning naked or unadorned.
I have no idea why I'm watching this, but it's so interesting how similar it is to the nordic languages! You can really tell we shared a lot of words with each other back then.
Scandinavian languages ARE "Germanic in origin" so I'm not sure your comment makes any sense. (In fact, probably the strongest theory for the location where Germanic evolved is somewhere in southern Scandinavia.)
Being able to spreak English, German and Dutch makes this really easy to follow. I feel like Dutch is kind of a transition fase, a mixture of (Old) English and German
*Trivia:* Interestingly in Norwegian, we still have 'dēor' and 'feoh' in the language, but simplified to 'dyr' and 'fe', where 'dyr' means animals, and 'fe' means cattle. Take the word for roedeer, for instance, which in Norwegian is 'rådyr'. It's basically the same word, but with a few different letters, and a slightly different pronunciation. (Also, a daddy-humour pun on the word is that 'rådyr' also means 'really expensive' in Norwegian.) The word 'fe' on its own is not as popular as it used to be in Norway, though it is still used by older people. However it's not used for _tame_ animals, as in cats and dogs, but instead it's used for _domesticated_ cattle like cows and sheep. Today most Norwegians will just say 'dyr' for any animal, domesticated or wild, though most people will still use expressions like 'Folk og fe', which means 'people and cattle' - for instance when speaking about the whole population of a country, or some godly blessing that benefits both 'folk' and 'fe'. Then there is the word so commonly used for beef by most Norwegian cooks, which will forever remain 'storfe' (large feoh), though it's often shortened to 'storf' because of limited stamp lenghts - again the source of yet more puns...
Cats, dogs, cattle and sheep are all domesticated. Domesticated animals are ones which have been shaped away from their wild shape or temperament (or both) by selective breeding to be working animals, pets or otherwise "useful" to humans. A "tame" animal is a wild animal which has been captured and trained to accept humans. Like a bear on the end of a chain or the lion at the behest of the whip in a circus. It is incorrect to call a pet cat or dog "tame", as "tame" does not mean "pet which loves humans".
Very interesting lesson. I was told that the term "beowulf" can also be used for bear, as it can be translated into "bee-wolf" which can then become "bee hunter" which then can become "bear". I'd love to know if this is true or not, honestly. Any response would be appreciated, and thank you in advance.
Watching this as someone who knows Dutch, which sets you up to read Chaucer in its original form without even a hint of confusion: most of these words survive to this day with only marginal modification in modern Dutch.
My personal guess for the plural of “catt“ is “catta”, since the Proto-Germanic reconstruction of it is a u-stem noun, and the u-stem declension comes down to OE with an -a nominative plural. However I know approximately nothing about linguistics, so you may very well be right too.
Looking at the English word "kitten" and the German plural word for cat ("Katzen") though, I'll give your comment some grains of salt. I really don't know anything about linguistics though either. ._.
Obviously there simply wasn't more than one male cat at the time. They had to wait for more of them to show up before they could bother having a word for it.
I'm Italian, and we don't have two different words for ape and monkey (and as far as I know, most European languages don't distinguish either). They're both "scimmia". Unless you need to be specific, there's no reason to differentiate between the two.
Most words are still very recognizable for Dutch speakers (like me). The plural form '-an' is still very common as '-en' and it is pronounced almost the same as '-an'. There are some interesting things to note though: A horse is called a 'paard' in Dutch. Doesn't sound anything like it. A male horse is a 'hengst', a female horse is a 'merrie' and a young horse is a 'veulen'. 'Paard' has evolved from the middle latin 'paraverêdus'. 'Horse' comes from the proto-germanic '*hrussa', which is also still recognizable in the archaic Dutch word 'Ros' for a horse. A hare is a 'haas' in Dutch. Same word from the same origin. For the old English word 'da' I could not think of a Dutch equivalent. A male cat in Dutch is still called a 'Kat' or a 'kater'. The entire species is called 'Kat'. A female housecat is called a 'poes' (puss). However we don't call non-domestic female felines 'poes'. A 'swin' would be a 'zwijn' in Dutch. Same word again. Although the domestic one is usually a called a 'varken', a word which is probably derived from the Germanic '*farχaz', which has a Latin equivalent in 'porcus'. The circle is round, because both a 'zwijn' and a 'varken' end up being pork usually. Another word for swine or pig, in my local dialect (Brabants) is 'Kuus', which also seems derived from 'porcus'.
Gooikes there is some myth that the first two Saxon leaders to land in Britain in the 400s were brothers called Hengist and Horsa-the stallion and the horse. Veulen=foal.
Mē līcaþ þæt fīfclawu. Fun fact: "Cat" is actually of not Indo-European origin at all but rather Afroasiatic origin. The fully Germanic Old English "kenning" I constructed for it is "fīfclawu" (five-claw).
Jasmine Ubah the Romans conquered Britain all the way to southern Scotland. Actually they gave the island its current name because before anybody really knew anything about Britain people called it Albion the Romans decided to rename it Britannia.
A little funny how Old English has words for tigers and lions, when neither of these animals were around in that region. But maybe, as seafarers, they had seen some strange animals in other lands.
I kind of understand that they have some rests of the Roman Empire (who know a lot the lions, and as the old english were christians and a lot of early saints were eaten by the lions... they have to said it, no? ^^), but tigers? I have no explanation at all XD
English used to be much more similar to german. I even see that when i read shakespeare... It simply evolved in a different direction. But i guess german was also more similar to english back then.
It's quite fascinating how some of this animal names are nearly identical or very similar to the ones used in swiss german today. For example: mus -> muus (singular form sounds identical in St. Gallerdeutsch) gat -> gäes (singular form sounds simliar in Appenzellerdeutsch) swin -> schwii (singular form sounds similar in St. Gallerdeutsch)
Feoh= fä an old Swedish word for cattle. My mother’s grandmother used this in the beginning of the 20 th century. Apa = apa in modern Swedish. We don’t have anything else. Stag is hjort in modern Swedish. Hund = hund in modern Swedish with the same pronounciation. The pronounciation of cat, mouse, cow= katt och mus and ko is also very similair. The get with a soft g is how we pronounce it. Svin is the same. So all in all modern and older Swedish has a lot of similairities
Nope we never used the word "dog" a great mystery for grammarians! seems the word dog appears in the 13th century! from where nobody knows, and not related to any language, prior to this,we used the germanic hund and in some cases still do.
I suggest the word dog comes from Old English "dogan", a verb meaning "to be useful, to be of service", suggesting that dogs were thought to be serviceable animals. Removing "-an" changes it from a verb to a noun. Thats just my theory.
The video already mentions that there are a lot of similarities between Old English and modern German. I noticed something quite interesting about that: Not only are there words that are still pronounced almost the same in both languages (cū and the German Kuh, cȳ and Kühe) but pretty much all the articles still are used with the corresponding Genus in both languages apparently (at least regarding the words in this video). This is especially fascinating if you consider that different languages use different genders for the same word quite commonly.
I really like Old English, the current English is nice too but this just sounds like a bad ass viking or so. Also the rolling 'R' sound is nice. For me it's easy to understand as a Dutchmen. It also looks like German, I can speak that for a little too so this isn't hard to learn I guess. Anyway Leornende Eald Englisc I like to see more vids! I subscribed to your channel :)
Sawrattan And before the Norman-French,a strong influence from old Danish/Norse ,thanks to the Danelaw.Quite a lot of Old English words were replaced by words derived from Norse.Sometimes the Old English and Norse words coexisted in English e.g. Shirt and Skirt.In English, words beginning with "Sk" are often Norse derived.To my ill informed eye(or ear),English is like a creole or "trade language" that developed ,over several hundred years ,between people originally speaking different languages in Britain,hence much of the grammar of old English was discarded.Danish(especially in North-East England and later Norman-French ,in the country as a whole, would have had undue influence as they were languages of ruling elites.Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek)as the clerical and scientific language also had massive input to English.This continued right through the 17th & 18th centuries, as new scientific terms were needed,Latin was turned to for new word coinings-a process that continues somewhat to the present day.Also in that period ,perhaps to look more "learned",some words had their spellings " Latinized"-e.g. the letter "b" being introduced into the word "debt".Later the heyday of the British Empire introduced many foreign borrowings into English, notably from the Indian subcontinent-words such as shampoo,bungalow,bangle, thug,chutney etc. Part of the strength of English,I have always felt ,is its simplified grammar and its willingness to adopt foreign words without much fuss(perhaps understandable given the language's origin).
1:32 Just in case you're interested: since you have already made a comparison to the German "Tier" (deor -> deer): There is also the German "Vieh". Farmers usually refer to their animals as "Vieh", so I guess they are indeed tame animals. There is also the word "Viech", which is more close to the old English pronunciation and is nowadays strangely used as a pejorative for an animal. Also I find it interesting how the pronunciation of Old English seems so much more close to German than the one of English now.
For those asking, I think it's mē līcaþ instead of ic līcaþ as it's literally "It pleases me" or "is pleasing to me" rather than "I like". In any case: Mē līciaþ þā foxas, þā swīn, þā wulfas and þā cý :)
Le Daverix Similar in Swabian dialect. maus = mouse, meis = mice, spelling is different but pronunciation basically the same as in English, whereas in standard German it is maus, mäuse.
"Dat" is not a lidwoord/article but an aanwijzend voornaamwoord/Demonstrative. It's comparing Apples and Windows. In German "das" is more similar and it indeed is an article. (In some cases).
Mē līcaþ se fox. It's interesting that the German word for “dēor” (animal) is “Tier”. In Dutch, it’s “dier”. In Danish and Norwegian, it’s “dyr”. In Icelandic and Faroese, it’s “dýr”. In Swedish, it’s “djur”. In Frisian, they have the word “bist”, which is of course akin to our English word “beast”, although this derives from the Latin “bēstia”. (I’m not sure if Frisian has or still uses a cognate for dēor.)
Yes - it meant wealth/valuable possessions more generally, and both cattle and coins are forms of wealth, are they not? Interestingly enough, the word "cattle" itself originally also had a similarly general meaning - it's closely related to the word "chattel".
interesting, in swedish the word for monkeys and apes is also "apa". the word for dogs and hounds is also "hund". the word for mouse is "mus" and the word for cow is "ko" which is pronounced the same way as "cū"
In "Platt" there is the word Väi. Platt is a the common name for the language that linguists call Lower Saxon. This language is an official language both in Germany and The Netherlands in the regions where it's used. As the name "Saxon" says, it has the same origin as most of old English. Englishmen who are used to the coastal dialects have no problems to adapt in about 6 weeks.
hahaha I can't believe you denoted a lioness with a picture of a male lion -- with a mane! -- with a pink ribbon! How ever else could you possibly differentiate a male from a female lion I wonder! haha ;) I've only seen a few of your videos but I love them all! Thank you for making them!
The notation of * in my experiences as a linguist is to show forms which are ungrammatical or infelicitous. What we've used so far to show hypothetical forms is a superscript question mark. I know the * is used, but I feel like people are now not using it for hypotheticals as much as they used to and it is perhaps now being more associated with ungrammaticality.
How did they know the words for apes, tigers and elephants when there were no apes, tigers and elephants in England at the time? Please answer me that one!
Does kind of English come after or before the Vikings, Normans and Romans invaded Britain? I thought the Romans brought cats? Did they bring lions over too?
Old English is pretty recognisable for a Dutchman. Like þeor which is in Dutch 'dier' (animal). Assel is 'ezel' (donkey), feog 'vee' (cattle), mūs 'muis' (mouse), gāt 'geit' (goat).
Shimano makes a family of bike components called 'Deore'. The earliest version had a picture of a stag's head on it so most people assume it's a mistranslation of 'deer', but it's probably taken from that old English 'dēor'.
We also say Viech[ Feoh] in Austria never thought of the idea that it could be tammed. And than you guys kicked it out and now you use the Latin word animalis. Crazy English language craze anglish speech
I watched 11 minutes of this video because I thought it would be fun to call my cat what cat was in Old English only to find that cat in Old English is cat.
Aurora Night 🤯😂
Hahahaha
It appears, having a good understanding of both German and English, I'll be able to understand a slow-talking Saxon if I ever find myself in the past
Merrsharr haha yeah it's amazing to see the similarities!
I'd recommend (Northern) Dutch! Sounds even more similar to old English than German.
@@tamar597 you mean Frisian? It's also a language spoken in northwest Germany
Honestly we should revive all ancient languages
Why
I completely agree!
Another cool fun fact is that, feoh has become the word “fee” as what you would pay for livestock.
That moment when you realize you're more interested old English than modern English 🤣
Yeah this sounds amazingly much like dutch and frisian
Old English sounds so much nicer than modern English.
The Hart, he loves the high wood
The Hare, she loves the hill
The Knight, he loves his shining sword
The Lady, loves her will
Dost thou suggest that the Lady is Willful?
se oxa
tha oxan
modern english still pluralises "Ox" as "Oxen"
Norwegian;
Wild animals -> (ville) dyr (deor),
tame animals -> fe (cattle: stor-fe, sheep: små-fe)
Dutch wild animals : wilde dieren
the tame animals : het vee (the cattle), tame animals: tamme dieren
German:
Das Tier (the animal)
Das wilde Tier (the wild animal)
Das gezähmte Tier (the tammed animal)
Das Vieh (the cattle)
12Tanuha tamed animal means "gezähmtes tier" but tame animal means "zahmes tier".
Österreichisch:
Des Tier (the animal)
Des wüd Tier ( the wild animal)
Des Viech ( the tammend animal
In Icelandic we have the word “fé” meaning tame animal (mostly sheep) but it also means money, related to “feoh” meaning the same thing in old English
The English word fee derives from feoh, so has a parallel with Icelandic. In olden times, cattle were often used as the payment on larger transactions and so the animal used as the medium of exchange became the word for money itself.
Mē līciaþ se hund, sēo fixen, and þæt hors.
Man versteht eigentlich die meisten der Altenglischen Tiernamen. Das ist schon faszinierend.
de Hond, de Vixen en het Paard.
Auf Englisc Hors,kommt von altGermanische und Scandinavian dialecten vielleicht Viking.
Mary Beth Steven good job
sēo fyxen
1:50 In Dutch, there's still the cognate "vee" to "feoh" now meaning "cattle".
Phrenomythic As is in German with the word "Vieh", which also means "cattle" or "livestock".
In Dutch there is also a cognate for "Þæt dēor" " het dier"
No more like "Dat dier / die dieren"
The word still exists in English: "fee". Naturally, the meaning changed--in this case it no longer refers to the animals as such.
...nu je het zegt..
*More Norwegian trivia:* In Norwegian _bear_ means 'bjørn'. For a female bear you could say 'binne', but it would only be used by really knowledgeable woodsmen... The Norwegian word is not possible to mistake for _beer_ or _beard,_ like in English, however, as it's called 'øl' and 'skjegg' over here, respectively.
We kept using 'esel' for donkey, however. Funny how that goes. The Swedes use a word that's very similar to _assa,_ which it is 'arsle' - but it does not mean donkey... Then there is of course 'hare', and we often call dogs of both sexes for 'bikkje'. Didn't think of the etymological connection there before seeing this video, so thanks!
In Scandinavian it would be 'katten', for the particular singular for _the_ cat. In fact most of these old words translate directly to Scandinavian words for the same animals. In Norwegian 'ċealf' means 'kalv', for instance, which isn't far from calf either. It's pretty simple to see the connection.
Instead of sheep, or 'scēap', we say 'sau' in Norwegian, which seems to be a slight deviation. Though it's not hard to see a connection if you use a little imagination, and take away the 'p'. However in both Danish and Swedish, it's more common to say 'får', which is also used in Norwegian in the context of sheep cattle. For young goats we still use the word 'kje', which could come from 'scēap', although they are of course different animals. In any case, the Norwegian pronounciation of goat would be like 'yeyt', though written 'geit'.
In Norwegian the sentence 'Hwilċes dēor oþþe feoh līcaþ þē?' can be translated to 'Hvilke dyr eller fe liker De?' The word that deviates most from the Old English ones is the word for _or,_ which is 'eller' in Norwegian. Here the German word 'oder' is much closer to 'oþþe'. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the origin of 'other'.
Most Norwegians know the word 'De' today, but no one will ever use it, perhaps except when addressing the King, or when speaking in an incredibly sarcastic tone. Even then most would avoid it. Instead modern Norwegians would simply say 'du', which means _you,_ however it does not translate as well in the current context.
The fact is, Norwegians were considered rather rude in the way they adressed superiors, but it all stems from the resentment against foreign rule endured for so many hundreds of years. Since most of the Norwegian nobility had died out, there simply were no pride in swooning to class. After 1905, when Norway became independent, most Norwegians found that they could do completely without a word like 'De' in their daily lives, though it was in regular business use well into the 70's. Another way to explain this, is how the leftist post-war governments successfully made Norway into a very economically homogenous country.
Anyway, fun to see how similar the langauges are / used to be.
It's fascinating to see how many languages came from a common ancestor, and how they shifted and changed over time depending on how far the language traveled and what adventures it got into along the way!
Me līcap se cat and se hund.
No native English speaker would ever mistake "bear" for "beer" or "beard": these three words all sound distinctively different. If they sound similar enough to _you_ that you might confuse them, you need to expose yourself to more spoken English.
In Old English, "other" meant simply "second" (the ordinal number, as in "first, second, third"). "Second' comes from French.
The word that sounds like "bear" in Modern English is "bare," meaning naked or unadorned.
I have no idea why I'm watching this, but it's so interesting how similar it is to the nordic languages! You can really tell we shared a lot of words with each other back then.
For anyone who does not know, ash is this letter -> æ
It's interesting that Old English HAD words for lion, tiger and ape.
Extremely interesting, I can see so much in common with German . Thank you
I like how we say "Forgive my French", when so many of our curse words are Germanic in origin rather than Nordic. Has anyone ever found that funny?
Scandinavian languages ARE "Germanic in origin" so I'm not sure your comment makes any sense. (In fact, probably the strongest theory for the location where Germanic evolved is somewhere in southern Scandinavia.)
Tao Yanbao I think he meant "rather than Norman"
"deor," is since long time back in Swedish "djur" for animals in general, just proving that Swedish and (Olde) English is close relatives.
Swedish is more like English than any other modern language I've seen. I wonder what linguists consider the closest language to English.
Bryce Christian Lowry
Dialects of Frisian on the Dutch and German coasts.
Low german is closer
Being able to spreak English, German and Dutch makes this really easy to follow. I feel like Dutch is kind of a transition fase, a mixture of (Old) English and German
How did they have exposure to elephants?
The word for cow is almost onomathopeic. The Old English always appeared to me as unsettling and creepy sounding, I can't say why.
*Trivia:* Interestingly in Norwegian, we still have 'dēor' and 'feoh' in the language, but simplified to 'dyr' and 'fe', where 'dyr' means animals, and 'fe' means cattle.
Take the word for roedeer, for instance, which in Norwegian is 'rådyr'. It's basically the same word, but with a few different letters, and a slightly different pronunciation. (Also, a daddy-humour pun on the word is that 'rådyr' also means 'really expensive' in Norwegian.)
The word 'fe' on its own is not as popular as it used to be in Norway, though it is still used by older people. However it's not used for _tame_ animals, as in cats and dogs, but instead it's used for _domesticated_ cattle like cows and sheep.
Today most Norwegians will just say 'dyr' for any animal, domesticated or wild, though most people will still use expressions like 'Folk og fe', which means 'people and cattle' - for instance when speaking about the whole population of a country, or some godly blessing that benefits both 'folk' and 'fe'.
Then there is the word so commonly used for beef by most Norwegian cooks, which will forever remain 'storfe' (large feoh), though it's often shortened to 'storf' because of limited stamp lenghts - again the source of yet more puns...
Cats, dogs, cattle and sheep are all domesticated. Domesticated animals are ones which have been shaped away from their wild shape or temperament (or both) by selective breeding to be working animals, pets or otherwise "useful" to humans. A "tame" animal is a wild animal which has been captured and trained to accept humans. Like a bear on the end of a chain or the lion at the behest of the whip in a circus. It is incorrect to call a pet cat or dog "tame", as "tame" does not mean "pet which loves humans".
I'm so glad you still post!
MrOgrezem Лол!
Very interesting lesson. I was told that the term "beowulf" can also be used for bear, as it can be translated into "bee-wolf" which can then become "bee hunter" which then can become "bear". I'd love to know if this is true or not, honestly. Any response would be appreciated, and thank you in advance.
It's amazing how much the sound changed. Old English sounded a lot like Skandinavian languages to my ears.
How do you know how to pronounce old English if it is not spoken in nowadays? (I'm just curious, really, not being ironic or mean)
Many words are pronounced the same way norwegian words are pronounced today :D
Goes to show little Nowegian has changed. ;)
This is so interesting!!
Also a lot like Dutch. I'm a native Dutch speaker and usually Bokmål is easy to read for me.
Bokmål is Danish though and heavily influenced by Low German
It's really very similar to German, especially the distinction between "feoh" - "Vieh" and "deor" - "Tier".
Mē līaþ se oxa. Hahahaha
I like the oxe.
Huh, I guess mus>mys explains why it's mouse>mice in Modern English.
Watching this as someone who knows Dutch, which sets you up to read Chaucer in its original form without even a hint of confusion: most of these words survive to this day with only marginal modification in modern Dutch.
I love germanic plurals so much!
My personal guess for the plural of “catt“ is “catta”, since the Proto-Germanic reconstruction of it is a u-stem noun, and the u-stem declension comes down to OE with an -a nominative plural. However I know approximately nothing about linguistics, so you may very well be right too.
Looking at the English word "kitten" and the German plural word for cat ("Katzen") though, I'll give your comment some grains of salt. I really don't know anything about linguistics though either. ._.
Obviously there simply wasn't more than one male cat at the time. They had to wait for more of them to show up before they could bother having a word for it.
Georgij Korobov ~ but Katzen is a feminine noun, not masculine
I'm Italian, and we don't have two different words for ape and monkey (and as far as I know, most European languages don't distinguish either). They're both "scimmia". Unless you need to be specific, there's no reason to differentiate between the two.
Feoh is also a cognate to German Vieh. This is really fascinating
Most words are still very recognizable for Dutch speakers (like me). The plural form '-an' is still very common as '-en' and it is pronounced almost the same as '-an'. There are some interesting things to note though:
A horse is called a 'paard' in Dutch. Doesn't sound anything like it. A male horse is a 'hengst', a female horse is a 'merrie' and a young horse is a 'veulen'. 'Paard' has evolved from the middle latin 'paraverêdus'. 'Horse' comes from the proto-germanic '*hrussa', which is also still recognizable in the archaic Dutch word 'Ros' for a horse.
A hare is a 'haas' in Dutch. Same word from the same origin. For the old English word 'da' I could not think of a Dutch equivalent.
A male cat in Dutch is still called a 'Kat' or a 'kater'. The entire species is called 'Kat'. A female housecat is called a 'poes' (puss). However we don't call non-domestic female felines 'poes'.
A 'swin' would be a 'zwijn' in Dutch. Same word again. Although the domestic one is usually a called a 'varken', a word which is probably derived from the Germanic '*farχaz', which has a Latin equivalent in 'porcus'. The circle is round, because both a 'zwijn' and a 'varken' end up being pork usually. Another word for swine or pig, in my local dialect (Brabants) is 'Kuus', which also seems derived from 'porcus'.
Gooikes
there is some myth that the first two Saxon leaders to land in Britain in the 400s were brothers called Hengist and Horsa-the stallion and the horse.
Veulen=foal.
Mē līcaþ þæt fīfclawu.
Fun fact: "Cat" is actually of not Indo-European origin at all but rather Afroasiatic origin. The fully Germanic Old English "kenning" I constructed for it is "fīfclawu" (five-claw).
Confused - why would the Anglo Saxons have words for Lion and Tiger? I doubt they'd ever have seen one
Romans brought all kinds of animals into all corners of their empire, often for "entertainment" purposes in their stadiums.
Jasmine Ubah the Romans conquered Britain all the way to southern Scotland. Actually they gave the island its current name because before anybody really knew anything about Britain people called it Albion the Romans decided to rename it Britannia.
Ha! one thing tho'...... the Saxons only came,as the Romans left so no real contact really, unless of course they traded lions and tigers
Lion - yes. Lions were known from scripture and heraldry. Tiger no.
Are you kidding? Do you know how many lions there are in English heraldry
I love how close to Swedish much of this is. I actually wish we could go back a little and speak more in Old English
A little funny how Old English has words for tigers and lions, when neither of these animals were around in that region. But maybe, as seafarers, they had seen some strange animals in other lands.
I kind of understand that they have some rests of the Roman Empire (who know a lot the lions, and as the old english were christians and a lot of early saints were eaten by the lions... they have to said it, no? ^^), but tigers? I have no explanation at all XD
English used to be much more similar to german. I even see that when i read shakespeare... It simply evolved in a different direction. But i guess german was also more similar to english back then.
It's quite fascinating how some of this animal names are nearly identical or very similar to the ones used in swiss german today. For example:
mus -> muus (singular form sounds identical in St. Gallerdeutsch)
gat -> gäes (singular form sounds simliar in Appenzellerdeutsch)
swin -> schwii (singular form sounds similar in St. Gallerdeutsch)
evolved into what we know know as vixen, *yeah alright?*
Feoh= fä an old Swedish word for cattle. My mother’s grandmother used this in the beginning of the 20 th century. Apa = apa in modern Swedish. We don’t have anything else. Stag is hjort in modern Swedish. Hund = hund in modern Swedish with the same pronounciation. The pronounciation of cat, mouse, cow= katt och mus and ko is also very similair. The get with a soft g is how we pronounce it. Svin is the same. So all in all modern and older Swedish has a lot of similairities
Mē līciath thā docgan, thā swīn, thā fuglas, and thā cyy. Ic lufie mīn hund.
Aero Bolt I think it should be mīnne hund since hund is accusative masculine.
Nope we never used the word "dog" a great mystery for grammarians! seems the word dog appears in the 13th century! from where nobody knows, and not related to any language, prior to this,we used the germanic hund and in some cases still do.
I suggest the word dog comes from Old English "dogan", a verb meaning "to be useful, to be of service", suggesting that dogs were thought to be serviceable animals. Removing "-an" changes it from a verb to a noun. Thats just my theory.
This prove to me that Modern English is a creole language btw Old Norse, Old English and Old French...
Rúben Luso You forgot Celtic influences which are more significant than they are usually thought to be.
Wow you explain everything so well!
Explain great I agree
The video already mentions that there are a lot of similarities between Old English and modern German. I noticed something quite interesting about that: Not only are there words that are still pronounced almost the same in both languages (cū and the German Kuh, cȳ and Kühe) but pretty much all the articles still are used with the corresponding Genus in both languages apparently (at least regarding the words in this video). This is especially fascinating if you consider that different languages use different genders for the same word quite commonly.
Another phrase for back and front vowels is broad and slender, as they affect the spelling in Irish.
I really like Old English, the current English is nice too but this just sounds like a bad ass viking or so. Also the rolling 'R' sound is nice. For me it's easy to understand as a Dutchmen. It also looks like German, I can speak that for a little too so this isn't hard to learn I guess.
Anyway Leornende Eald Englisc I like to see more vids! I subscribed to your channel :)
No, no, the vikings murdered the people who spoke this language.
The vikings are most like why these people spoke like that. We brought our languages over there after all and we share a lot of words together.
Current English is Old English with a heavy dose of influence from France.
Sawrattan Latin moreso. 29% of modern English words come from Latin roots while 24% come from French.
Sawrattan And before the Norman-French,a strong influence from old Danish/Norse ,thanks to the Danelaw.Quite a lot of Old English words were replaced by words derived from Norse.Sometimes the Old English and Norse words coexisted in English e.g. Shirt and Skirt.In English, words beginning with "Sk" are often Norse derived.To my ill informed eye(or ear),English is like a creole or "trade language" that developed ,over several hundred years ,between people originally speaking different languages in Britain,hence much of the grammar of old English was discarded.Danish(especially in North-East England and later Norman-French ,in the country as a whole, would have had undue influence as they were languages of ruling elites.Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek)as the clerical and scientific language also had massive input to English.This continued right through the 17th & 18th centuries, as new scientific terms were needed,Latin was turned to for new word coinings-a process that continues somewhat to the present day.Also in that period ,perhaps to look more "learned",some words had their spellings " Latinized"-e.g. the letter "b" being introduced into the word "debt".Later the heyday of the British Empire introduced many foreign borrowings into English, notably from the Indian subcontinent-words such as shampoo,bungalow,bangle,
thug,chutney etc.
Part of the strength of English,I have always felt ,is its simplified grammar and its willingness to adopt foreign words without much fuss(perhaps understandable given the language's origin).
Seo leo: shows lion with a pink bow instead of a lioness. Made me chuckle.
Nice! It very much reminds me not only of German but of the scandinavian languages like Swedish, Norvegian and most of all Islandic.
1:32 Just in case you're interested: since you have already made a comparison to the German "Tier" (deor -> deer): There is also the German "Vieh". Farmers usually refer to their animals as "Vieh", so I guess they are indeed tame animals. There is also the word "Viech", which is more close to the old English pronunciation and is nowadays strangely used as a pejorative for an animal. Also I find it interesting how the pronunciation of Old English seems so much more close to German than the one of English now.
12:13 seo cu: de koe (Dutch)
12:27 paet cealf: het kalf (Dutch)
12:41 peat sceap: het schaap (Dutch)
does Old English "seo" congnate with the Modern English "sow" when referring to certain female animals?
For those asking, I think it's mē līcaþ instead of ic līcaþ as it's literally "It pleases me" or "is pleasing to me" rather than "I like". In any case: Mē līciaþ þā foxas, þā swīn, þā wulfas and þā cý :)
"se mus" ... "d müs" ... holy, nothing has changed there where i live xD (greetings from the alps)
Le Daverix Similar in Swabian dialect. maus = mouse, meis = mice, spelling is different but pronunciation basically the same as in English, whereas in standard German it is maus, mäuse.
Sounds kind of like Swedish
No
in Dutch it's still "Dat dier / Die dieren", which sounds pretty much the same as how you pronounced it
P Y R U V I C A C I D das Tier, die Tiere
xD
"Dat" is not a lidwoord/article but an aanwijzend voornaamwoord/Demonstrative.
It's comparing Apples and Windows.
In German "das" is more similar and it indeed is an article. (In some cases).
8:54 English pubs have always had a tradition of using animals in the name. Heorot shows how old that is!
"Sometimes the singular is also the plural." Sheep... it's still true today.
Mē līcaþ se fox.
It's interesting that the German word for “dēor” (animal) is “Tier”. In Dutch, it’s “dier”. In Danish and Norwegian, it’s “dyr”. In Icelandic and Faroese, it’s “dýr”. In Swedish, it’s “djur”.
In Frisian, they have the word “bist”, which is of course akin to our English word “beast”, although this derives from the Latin “bēstia”. (I’m not sure if Frisian has or still uses a cognate for dēor.)
Dēor reminds me of Swedish's word for animal "djur".
My favorite is the dog. I have a female collie named Lassie, named after the TV star Lassie.
Next time I'm trying to tell if it's a buck or a doe, I'll look for the bow.
4:40 modern day dutch seems to be this way regarding V and F
old english (plural) = dutch (plural) = english (plural):
deor = dier = animal
feoh = vee = cattle
leo(n) = leeuw(en) = lion(s)
tiger (tigras) = tijger(s) = tiger(s)
bera(n) = beer (beren) = bear(s)
fox(as) = vos(sen) = fox(es)
apa(n) = aap (apen) = ape(s)
elpend(as) = olifant(en) = elephant(s)
asol(an) = ezel(s) = donkey(s)
cat(tan) = kat(ten) = cat(s)
hund(as) = hond(en) = hound(s)
mus (mys) = muis (muizen) = mouse (mice)
oxa(n) = os(sen) = ox(en)
cu (cy) = koe(ien) = cow(s)
cealf (cealfru) = kalf (kalveren) = calf (calves)
scaep = schaap (schapen) = sheep (sheeps)
gat (get) = geit(en) = goat(s)
swin = zwijn(en) = hog(s)
lamb (lambru) = lam (lammeren) = lamb(s)
Mē līċiab se fox, se hund, se apa, and se sēo cū
10:18 Just wanted to hear "bitch" and "bitches" in Old English again.
Mē līċiaþ se draca, se ānhorn, and þā cattan! ˃ᆺ˂
About the Donkey, in Czech we have "osel" for male and "oslice" for female ;) Interesting ;) ;)
When did English lose the dative verb to like?
Is it true that a speaker of modern Icelandic can understand both spoken and written Old English?
" de kat / die katten " omg old english truly is (old) dutch
Yes Frisian and if you hear Frisians talking they sound mostly the same as the English.
There's a Frisian version of the traditional Scottish song Twa Corbies from at least 1611. They sound/read very alike.
P Y R U V I C A C I D nowadays the theory is pretty common that dutch is more closely related to english than to german.
Mottmatt Yeah people tried to tell me that but I had a hard time making the connection even though I speak both English and Dutch.
P Y R U V I C A C I D And in German it is die Katze
I thought feoh meant money, does it have two meanings?
Yes - it meant wealth/valuable possessions more generally, and both cattle and coins are forms of wealth, are they not? Interestingly enough, the word "cattle" itself originally also had a similarly general meaning - it's closely related to the word "chattel".
It sounds like Icelandic!
just latters
interesting, in swedish the word for monkeys and apes is also "apa". the word for dogs and hounds is also "hund". the word for mouse is "mus" and the word for cow is "ko" which is pronounced the same way as "cū"
Excellent job and great video!! Is Old English the same as Anglo-Saxon? Thank you!
Thank you.
That's right.
In "Platt" there is the word Väi. Platt is a the common name for the language that linguists call Lower Saxon. This language is an official language both in Germany and The Netherlands in the regions where it's used. As the name "Saxon" says, it has the same origin as most of old English. Englishmen who are used to the coastal dialects have no problems to adapt in about 6 weeks.
hahaha I can't believe you denoted a lioness with a picture of a male lion -- with a mane! -- with a pink ribbon! How ever else could you possibly differentiate a male from a female lion I wonder! haha ;)
I've only seen a few of your videos but I love them all! Thank you for making them!
Rozamunduszek the lion name was luce lenner.
Its incredible to see how many of these have not changed or barely changed in the modern Dutch.
Isn't the thorn voiceless at the start of words and voiced in the middle just like F?
The notation of * in my experiences as a linguist is to show forms which are ungrammatical or infelicitous. What we've used so far to show hypothetical forms is a superscript question mark. I know the * is used, but I feel like people are now not using it for hypotheticals as much as they used to and it is perhaps now being more associated with ungrammaticality.
Well, in my case, I use the * for reconstructions or sometimes for created words.
How did they know the words for apes, tigers and elephants when there were no apes, tigers and elephants in England at the time? Please answer me that one!
Does kind of English come after or before the Vikings, Normans and Romans invaded Britain? I thought the Romans brought cats? Did they bring lions over too?
Old English is pretty recognisable for a Dutchman. Like þeor which is in Dutch 'dier' (animal). Assel is 'ezel' (donkey), feog 'vee' (cattle), mūs 'muis' (mouse), gāt 'geit' (goat).
1:45 German cognate: das Vieh (you english folk would write "fee" to get the right sounds out... ;) )
Shimano makes a family of bike components called 'Deore'. The earliest version had a picture of a stag's head on it so most people assume it's a mistranslation of 'deer', but it's probably taken from that old English 'dēor'.
How would they know about apes and elephants would it be from Roman contact?
Dēor is related to Dutch "dier" which means animal. Apparently "feoh" is related to Dutch "vee" which nowadays means livestock.
...which has apparently already been pointed out
Even in polish we have some of these words today :) "donkey" is "osioł" (it's like esol in old english), also
mouse (mys) =mysz
pig (swin :o) = świnia
*Indo-European connection intensifies*
Me liketh thy video.
Etymology in general is so fascinating.
We also say Viech[ Feoh] in Austria never thought of the idea that it could be tammed. And than you guys kicked it out and now you use the Latin word animalis. Crazy English language craze anglish speech
Icelandic male cat is fress so my guess would b se firass / freass or something like that.
What's Kangaroo in Old English? Please tell me?
There is not word for that.(I think)
Reminds me more of danish and other norse languages than german.
I like the cat.