Thank you very much indeed to Dr. Jackson Crawford for allowing me to be involved in this project after we got in contact a few weeks ago - I suspect many people here are already subscribed to him, but I would highly recommend his in-depth analyses of Old Norse literature and language, backed up by years of academic experience, as well as the occasional more reflective video or piece of poetry set in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. A recent video of his that he makes reference to here: th-cam.com/video/j4K-pGPT46o/w-d-xo.html
Simon your videos are a great supplement to the book I am reading; 'A History of The English Language' by Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable. I'm guessing you've read that already. Your co-student and project assistant is very good too.
I’m afraid the traditional Norse backdrop of Colorado is slightly more impressive than an English wood with the vague drone of a motorway in the distance!
I find both of them very calming. There is something about those nature shots of England I really like, I feel a sense of connection to the people back then, the trees, the animals, the skies, are the same ones the speakers of old English would have known in their world
@@beckihayes220 I'm only kidding, no doubt it's more geographically accurate. Ever since I was a kid and camped somewhere in Surrey and noticed that infernal drone (in that case, the M25) I've hated the fact roads are so freaking noisy. Plus I've got Colorado-envy.
Ah, the strong bee drink? Too bad that old drink has nothing to do with todays beer. Because that would be alu. But perhaps they meant cider? Since it also means strong drink. ;)
I always admire how casual Simon sounds while he's speaking Old English. It doesn't sound rehearsed or unnatural at all. Meanwhile Jackson is just speaking like he is reciting a poem, which is also cool.
Exactly! It's like he's channeling a past life or something. That's why I'm lobbying for him to do conversation stuff. He's got the talent to resurrect a very plausible approximation of what Old English speakers sounded like in casual conversation. It's a tantalizing alternative to the scripted texts that many of us nerds have studied.
Something I love about your channel is how you attempt to depict how Old English was spoken in a more conversational context. Your ability to act while speaking it so that it feels natural is really impressive
I agree, Jackson Crawford almost always speaks very slowly and, while I suppose it helps with learning, it also sounds very unnatural and "academic". I really appreciate when an old language is spoken more quickly and casually.
The big term love only reflects me the only lovable being, and cannot be misused by hum’ns in any way - the word like must be used instead when referring to pretty languages and items etc!
For those wondering whether Icelanders would understand the Old Norse part of this conversation: I am an Icelander and barely understood anything from either language.
Could you read along very well? Most of what I've heard is that Icelanders should be able to read Old Norse with roughly the same difficulty/ease that a modern English speaker could read Shakespeare.
The language spoken in the beginning of this video is Old Danish, Which is a dialect or a language variant of Old East Norse. Modern Icelandic sprung from Old Norwegian, or rather Old West Norse. This is of course the reason as to why it will be hard for Icelandic speakers to understand what is being said.
@@wodanazaugo1345 That's a really good point; however, even if it had been Old West Norse, I think I still would have found it rather difficult to understand what would have been said
As someone who speaks both Swedish and German I'm surprised at how much I can understand... as long as I don't look at the written text because man that's confusing if you've never properly learned it
Presumably a Swede or German from 1000 CE who got dropped in the middle of England could have joined this conversation and had a similar level of mutual compatibility with these two. A thousand years earlier still and all four would have been speaking the same language.
@@fromchomleystreet I don't know about a german but a swede, yeah for sure. A thousand years ago, even though the languages had already started to diverge as old swedish was eastern norse, they were still much closer than they are today. Even today I as a dane understand spoken swedish rather well. Written swedish I understand almost entirely...like I read swedish newspapers without any problems
@@alexlarsen6413 I suspect that someone from Germany at this point would have been in the best position. They might have understood the Englishman better than the Scandinavians did, and the Scandinavians better than the Englishman did.
@@fromchomleystreet Why? The Angles and the Jutes came from current Denmark. The Saxons came from current nortern Germany, a direct neigbour to Scandinavia. All these languages or dialects were close, but also quite distant from what would become high German and standard German. Germany didn't exist at the time, btw. That was just a lot of small kingdoms (up until Weimar).
I’m from East Yorkshire, UK. Around 25 years ago I met the friend of a friend from Friesland. He was over here in England buying some calves. Once I’d listened to him speak for a few minutes we found that we could hold a reasonably decent conversation if he toned down his accent a little and I effected a heavy North Yorkshire “farmer” accent. We quickly discovered that whilst spelling was now very different, the languages are extremely similar. We did find a few stumbling blocks on unfamiliar words, but we could understand each other enough to find mutually familiar substitutions. It was a fascinating insight, and I have always found Norwegian and even Catalan strangely familiar.
One thing that struck me was that an old English speaker speaking to an old Norse speaker reminded me of growing up in South Africa, where English and Afrikaans sit side by side, and influence one another. The fact that the two are similar on paper but very different in terms of pronunciation (but reasonably easy for speakers of the other to learn through osmosis - in my case via TV as opposed to school lessons) is an interesting parallel.
Afrikaans: My pen is in my hand English: My pen is in my hand Die twee sinne klink nie dieselfde nie. The two sentences do not sound the same. Maar hulle beteken dieselfde. But they mean (betoken) the same.
I've always heard and read that Old Norse and Old English were almost identical. Whenever I talk to anyone about North West Europeans, I always bring that up. Now, thanks to you guys, I have a live, 3D, and in living color example of it actually happening!!!
I'm a native English speaker learning Bokmål Norwegian and it's so cool to see the similarities in the languages. Norwegian is by far the easiest second language I've studied because so many patterns follow English, but also there are things that feel less like you're learning them and more like you're uncovering them, because of the deep history, which makes it very easy to draw parallels. In the first part of Ecolinguist's Old English Spoken videos, Simon mentioned the Old English word dēor being used as a general word for animals more than just deer, in Norwegian dyr is the word for animals. Little things like that makes learning Norwegian that much more intuitive. Tusen takk, Simon! Du er veldig hjelpsom og kunnskapsrik!
Cool, and then you almost "know" Danish & Swedish as well, where you will encounter loads more of these deep similarities. This is the main reason why we Scandinavians often don't have to think very much when learning English - apart from a few hurdles like the peculiar un-Germanic use of the word "do" and "-ing" with verbs in tenses it feels very much like we are "just" expanding our own languages in many respects 😉
@@Bjowolf2 I wouldn't say peculiarly unGermanic as the Germans also have a construction with tun+infinitive, although not used in the way it is in English.
@@egbront1506 Well, yes - but it can be rather confusing and unfamiliar to us simple North Germanic folks 😅 The Germans use the cognate "tun" as a "normal" verb - and they don't use it as an auxiliary verb in questions or "negative" sentences ( I don't have it = G Ich habe es / das nicht / D Jeg [yigh] ha(ve)r den / det ikke ). I have read somewhere that the very creative use of "do" in (Middle (!) etc.) English is probably an influence from Welsh, which has a similar construction.
@@Bjowolf2 It's different in Welsh and closer to the English present continuous construction with -ing. In South German, tun is used as an auxillary but it is very much regarded as "bad German" - e.g. morgens tu' ich immer studieren, aber aufräumen tu'/mach' ich nicht so gern.
In Dutch, when we loan words from English, we take the stem and conjugate it just as if it was a Dutch word. This can make for some very interesting spellings, such as "racete" ("race" + "te"). It is quite common to do this, especially for the younger generations. Sometimes you can't find the right Dutch word, so you just use the English word instead.
I'm sure you mean borrow :) I've noticed German does that too: Ich habe diese Seite geliked. It's a bit crazy, because German used to create calques instead of direct borrowings, e.g. German "abhängig" (ab + hängen + -ig) vs English "dependent" (from Latin de + pendere + -ent). I don't know why modern Germans do that; German is so much cooler and more expressive than English.
@@ghenulo With at least an number of expressions we can nowadays do either, so there are people who say "Ich habe das gedownloadet" as much as "Ich habe das heruntergeladen" (admittedly, the latter is more logical and to me, looks nicer).
@@ghenulo geliket* und zweitens handelt es sich nicht um ein Lehnwort an sich, sondern um eine bestimmte Art und Weise um die Übernahme einer bestimmten Funktion in sozialen Netzwerken (Internet), denn wörtlich wäre ja sonst geliket, dass es nicht mehr gemocht wird. Ich habe es geliket wäre so wörtlich ich habe es gemocht, also jetzt nicht mehr. Was natürlich falsch ist. Wenn man das Wort ins Althochdeutsche übertrüge, hieße es likōn. Also etwas mit einem Like versehen haben. Je nach Dialekt im Althochdeutschen ähnlich wie salbōn, etwas mit Salbe versehen.
In Lithuanian we do the exact same thing. But because Lithuanian orthography is very phonological and English's isn't, some weird conventions have appeared for loanwords and some interesting problems also occur. For instance the word "like", if it were to be rewritten in Lithuanian, it would become "laikas", the -as being a nominative ending, but then it looks identical to the word for time "laikas". So to solve this, the younger generation, myself included, keeps the stem spelt as it is in English, but with a Lithuanian ending, so "like'as". With this solution, even though there's not as much consistency in spelling, it does make it very obvious where a loan is, so it makes reading easier I would say, especially in texts
Are you from the Orkneys or Shetland? I’d think a Scots speaker from either of those places would have a leg up on most anyone else in understanding this.
@@marietg8025 Gaelic was largely limited to the Highlands, and yes today those islands are part of the Highlands legally and politically. However, they were ruled by Norway up until a few hundred years ago so to the extent there is Celtic influence it is being built on top of a preexisting Scandinavian base. The people spoke a language called Norn which had Old Norse as an ancestor which was replaced by Scots over a few centuries though even now their Scots dialect contains a number of words from Norn that aren’t found in other Scots’ dialects.
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 I was under the impression that Scots came mostly from them adopting Old English, and that the Scottish just didn't change their way of speaking as much over time
In everyday practice, mutual intelligibility involves a lot of prediction and deduction based on where the conversation is headed thematically, rather than mere focus on vocabulary. This runs the risk of the speakers on occasion completely missing each others' point but in general, the narrower the topic, the better the result. As a Pole this is about the only way I can cope with Ukrainian sometimes, now that it's becoming pretty common out in the street.
@@bashkillszombies Wrong approach. Once the republic is smashed and Deutschland is no longer occupied, the illegally annexed regions will automatically (or with a bit of covincing) return to the Reich. Quit begging for refuge elsewhere.
You reminded me of an incident when I was in college. I had a classmate from Italy. She spoke very fast, even in English, and with her accent I would often have trouble understanding her until I got into the groove of, as you say, where the conversation was heading thematically. Once I was in the right groove, I could understand her well enough. One day, she comes up to me, speaking very fast, and I just couldn't seem to get that hook to get the gist of what she was saying, and it was taking way longer than usual. All of a sudden her hands fly up to her face, and she says, " Oh! Oh! I was speaking Italian!" I'm not sure who was more embarrassed--her for speaking Italian to me, or me for not realizing it.
I just watched this on Jackson’s channel and there was so much to consider. Thank you for all your work and shared knowledge. I am so grateful to see 2 of my favorite content creators collaborate. There is so much to consider and evaluate and this helps so many of us see and share patterns and history, thank you.
This is like crack to me! What amazing video by brilliant linguists and historians. Man, I wish I were there in person to see these two scholars interact in person and that they were in person. Simon and Dr. C. Amazing! To hear Old English and Old Norse-how mutually intelligible? How close? How dissimilar? How dialectic! Truly astounding. These two gentlemen were born to educate and inspire.
Some years ago, I heard a story of one person from East Norway (Valdres?) met a tourist from West Norway (Sogn?), and they didn't immediately understand each other and ended up communicating in English (which Norwegians start to learn in second year? of primary school). I went to high school with lots of pupils from a valley in Southern Norway, and initially it was difficult to understand some class mates from, e.g., Valle (perhaps the dialect closest to Old Norse) and Bykle (which had dative, etc.). But after a few weeks or months, I could understand most of what they said. Of course, I couldn't speak those dialects, but I could understand them. It is important to distinguish between people's first meeting and what they understand, vs. what is understood after some weeks or months of having to communicate.
I am Danish and I attended at folk-high-school in Norway for a year. It was near Trondheim and while I didn't have problems with understanding the Østfold dialects, Trøndersk was a whole different matter! It took me 1-2 months to fully understand it. The first week I was there I met an older, local man who said something to me. I answered and by the look on his face It was not the answer he was expecting. :) :P
@@vanefreja86 I lived in Trondheim for 13 years, and got used to it. As a student, I hung out with people from all of Norway, so I was probably not exposed to the pure dialect that much in the beginning. The dialects outside of Trondheim is a different thing. I could understand most of it. But recently I saw a dialect program on national TV where they talked with a firefighter (?) from the island of Hitra, and I hardly could understand anything.
These two guys are smart and learned,... but I remind myself of Socrates quote "I know I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing" - and then I don't feel insecure or depressed. lol. 😊
Regarding current dialects in Norway, the English word "I" may be pronounced as "eg", "yey" (written "jeg"), "yeh" (written "je"), "ee" (written "i"), etc. The word "week" may be pronounced "uke" or "uge" (similar to Danish), "ukke", "vikke", "vukku", "vike", "veke", etc. When one get used to such variations, it is not too difficult to understand.
In my experience as a native Spanish speaker that has communicated with Brazilians, I doubt most people would notice the correspondences consciously, like adding a "w" or stuff like that. I think for most people, the passive understanding of a foreign language is based a lot on "this kinda sounds similar" without noticing or picking up on patterns. I believe that would begin to happen along the language learning process, when the person is actually trying to learn the language, not when they're just trying to communicate. When you're just trying to communicate, what you do is try to speak slowly, without reducing sounds as much, and using lots of synonyms, hoping one will make sense. People start to notice the patterns of differences only when they're studying the language.
Yep, this discussion could've profited from people who regularly communicate in different but cognate languages, just for the practical aspect of how that works in everyday life.
I think it is studying and reaching some critical mass of understanding. I don’t “speak” Spanish or Portuguese, but I had two university classes in Spanish and have studied it off and on over the years. I lived in Brazil for a short time and studied and used Portuguese. In both with a few days practice now I could remember enough to have simple conversations Portuguese seemed so much easier. Almost immediately I noticed patterns in words being the same root with different endings. Now looking back I see much of this is also true in Spanish, but I never noticed it when I studied Spanish. Was Portuguese easier, or was it because I had already built this base in Spanish I could jump off of?
28:32 interestingly enough, just listening to Simon's pronunciation of this and ignoring the meaning of the words it really reminds me of the accent of Gotland in Sweden.
This is such a treat! I happened upon Jackson's channel a few years ago and found Simon's channel only recently through his appearance on Ecolinguist. I thoroughly enjoy both of their lovely channels and am so happy to see this collaboration! (If either of you see this, thank you for all the effort and work you put into your videos!)
The Proto-Germanic Cognates are fascinating.... where they're clearly near identical words shared by East Germanic, West Germanic and North Germanic Languages. Sometimes these cognates are even 'wider' and are in fact Indo-European and probably part of the original undiluted Indo-European Language.
I read a book a few years ago about how traveling over water was in many ways much easier than traveling over land in the early Middle Ages, which meant that a body of water like the North Sea - which is now seen as separating regions - would actually be connecting those coastal regions much more than they would be connected to the hinterland.
@@lnkvt That's interesting... some areas of hinterland were inaccessible back then, so its quite easy to believe that travelling across water was easier. When Alfred had to flee with a small retinue of followers in 878 to the marshlands of North Somerset, they chose this place because they knew the land better and was inaccessible to the Viking Longships. There were large areas of Swamp and Alluvium in Old English times... e.g Fenlands - of the Herewake the Wake rebellion.
This is a fantastic video to behold! I'm very grateful to have the chance to hear two knowledgeable and passionate people talk about something near and dear to my own hobbyist heart: historical languages. There's just something about the phonemes and grammar of antiquated language that pique the interest.
Oh yea, this is superb, both of these two have been intriguing to watch and learn from. Excellent sound to both the languages, the Germanic languages have such a enjoyable cadence.
Excellent upload. I love how you both brought these languages to life! I have no expertise in old languages but I am a linguist fluent in Norwegian and German so this is fascinating for me. Old Norse sounds to my ear quite a lot like a dialect (or linguistic standard to be accurate) called New Norwegian (ironically enough) spoken currently by about 10% of Norwegians. There are strong similarities with Old English too although much less to my ear, at least in an immediate sense. I can recognise a significant amount of German in Old English.
You two are certainly birds of a feather in matters of Old English and Norse linguistics. Such a fascinating conversation! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and theories with your subscribers.
@@that1niceguy246 That's just rude. Why would you comment just to show your dislike, you are not funny. The same thing has been said a thousand times now. Show some class.
I am from the north of Flanders, living on the right bank of the river Schelde. We speak a dialect that comes from West- Germanic Franconian and Teutonic wich developes into Brabantish Maaslandish and Reinlandish Franconian and finally in High German but also in Low- German, Flemish and Dutch. When we cross the river our dialect starts to mingle with East- Flemish slowly changing into West- Flemish as we're heading for the coast. These two branches are Ingveonic or North-sea-Germanic or DIETS! The whole Northsea coast from Bruges as far as Normandy and Bretagne was called the Litus Saxonicum. Jutes,Angles,Saxon,Frisian,Flemings,Dani,Gutes,Northmanni,Burgundi, Franks,Roman etc. lived here and it was not different across the channel! From Diets comes Anglo and Saxon turns into Anglo-Saxon,Old-Frisia/Flemish then Old-English/Frisian and Zeelandic West-Flemish. In the south Franks adapted to Latin and become French. So we have English, Frisian, Dutch ( Flemish),Low-and High- German and French. In this small country we have the most language borders and issues on the planet. There is hardly North- Germanic input but plenty West- Germanic in all directions.This is old,ancient!....we still say "nee en ja" or "joa og neje" or "jot och nijet"! On the coast they don't say England but "Ingleland", not boat but "busse".....not wool coat but " ne lode" , Ragnar Lodbrok was Ragenhere ( Regenharius) from Wool-march or swamp. Try to compare Old -English with Old-Flemish its much closer :) I enjoyed your conversation thanks for inspiration! Perhaps i inspire some one too.
I only know a small amount of Danish, but I still find it impressive just how many words are still used in everyday Danish that were used 1000 years ago.
Mange ( many, OE monege ! ) af disse Danske (w)ord(s) ha(ve)r parallelle moderne versioner på [po] (uPOn) ( in) moderne Engelsk. Vi [ve] kan derfor let (light, = easy(ly)) lær(n)e dem og holde dem i(n) {v}ore (our) hoved-er ( heads, OE heafod, heafde (sing. dat. ) / heafdum (plur. dat. )), så (th)at vi kan nær tal(k)e Engelsk allerede fra dag [daygh] en. 🤗
I'm reading about Cognates and borrowings in the book I'm reading "A History of The English Language" very fascinating. Celtic only really influenced Old English with borrowings for Place Names and Geographical & Topographical Descriptors. Latin had three stages of influencing OE - 1st Stage was on the Continent in the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and Franks Homelands, 2nd Stage was second hand from the Romano-Celtic Natives of Island of Britain, 3rd Stage was from the Roman Missionaries like St Columba, St Augustine etc. The Norse influence and Norman French is pretty self-explanatory... if you like reading history. 😊
@@joshadams8761 Quite the opposite in the book I am reading. The integration of other language in full force began with borrowings from Latin and especially that of Norse/Danish and then Norman French. I believe the Anglo Saxons didn't want to integrate Celtic Culture, Linguistics or Religion with their own. There was inter-marriage between Angles of East Anglia and Celtic women - but the Celtic elite were driven to the Western Parts of the island of Britain,.. some fled to Brittany - hence the name.
So you're saying that Latin had no influence om English after the 11 th century?? I can think of more than a few Classicists that might want to argue that?
@@ulrikschackmeyer848 "So you're saying" - No.. I am talking about 'Old English' - in the Old English period. Latin became less of an influence to English after the Norman Conquest as English was not spoken by the elite Normans. For the Normans - English merged with Norman French and became 'Anglo Norman' as an elite language of Royal Court until 1399 although English re-emerged with Edward 1st speaking and writing it and as the official National language again under Henry 4th in 1399. "So that's what I'm saying"!
The conversation appears fluid though the differences between the two languages are obvious. As a Spanish speaker, my first interactions with Italian speakers were very clumsy. We often spoke past each other and misunderstandings were common. Now that I have learned the basics of Italian and I've become more familiar with the spoken language, the barrier between standard Italian and my tongue is virtually non-existent, as between Portuguese and Spanish, these two being closer. My point is, these two speakers you portray were obviously familiar with each other's languages prior to their conversation. A Saxon speaker from Wessex unfamiliar with Norse would have a hard time understanding a Dane. Anyway, great video!
The best thing about it is that the speakers in the Danelaw would have been very used to hearing both, and these two dialects are exactly the ones that would have been in contact.
Absolute thanks to both of you for making this. As you correctly say: this video is a milestone, something that if even you wished you had seen decades ago, will now exist on the internet to trigger this passion for languages and History in many people.
@Simon Roper I think Derby it's self is Danelaw, However a smallish portion of what is now modern south/west Derbyshire would be Mercian, since Mercia was bound to the north at Repton which is close to Leicestershire.
Extraordinary work both. I struggle to speak one other modern language. But it is a privilege to begin to see a 4th dimension into the sounds we all make to communicate today.
I was noticing the use of "fulloft" for "often" in both scripts. In German, "voll oft" (spelled as two words) is a quite informal way to say "very often". Since "voll" and "full" are cognates, now I am wondering if this is a coincidence. (which it probably is, given the frequent use of "voll" as an intensifier elsewhere in colloquial German, but it's neat nevertheless :D )
I think it's only partly a coincidence, rather a nice example of how "creative" languages are with their own vocabulary during language change over time.
Thank you both for the video, Simon. :) It occurs to me that the speakers of the two languages would have had accents. It's commonly known now that when people speak together they subconsciously imitate each others' accents. I think that would have added to the mutual intelligibility. :) Have you seen the Eddie Izzard video where he goes to Friesland to buy a brown cow? He communicates with a Frisian-speaking farmer by speaking Old English and is actually able to be understood. :)
Fascinating. What occured to me .. watch you two .. one speaking American English and the other British English is a memory of when I was 10 years old. My father was in the US Air Force and we were stationed in England for three years. For the first month we stayed in an English hotel and I remember listening to the radio and unless I listened very, very closely I could not understand a thing being said. I had to listen intensely to understand. A few weeks passed and all of a sudden .. like cold water splashing over me .. everything became completely clear. A switch was thrown and this previously almost incomprehensible dialect was understandable. I wasn't a slow process but the switch was thrown instantly.
I really enjoyed your conversation. As someone who speaks German, English and a bit of Icelandic, it was not too hard to follow. Maybe a German of that time could have joined the conversation. In Old High German, this conversation would look similar to this (translating the names into Old High German): Harald: Guotan morgan, nâhgibûr. Wuodan: Guotan morgan. Harald: Birut iro niowiht fona Snotingaheime, Wuodan? Wuodan: Ja, daẓ bin ih. Birut iro niowiht Harald fona Darbî? Harald: Daẓ bin ih. Dû kunes "dû" nuẓẓen, Ist dër tag unwolo? Wuodan: Ër ist. Ih sah boc, âno ih farmissita sîn. Harald: Ana donrestaga sah ih feor hirẓ, hinta enti kalb. Wuodan: Daz wunsku ih mir. Hiutu ni sâhi dû sie? Harald: Nein, hiutu sah ih bar eina hinta. Wuodan: Hwâr sâhi dû sio? Harald: Ana dëmu stade, bî dëra furt. Wuodan: Sio ist wola all in Jôrwîh nû. Harald: Bireiti gibrâtan ana dëmu frôs spiẓ. Wuodan: Iẓ ist fruoi. Ih suohhu fram. Harald: Dia mihhilon ebura sint ofto bî dëru bruggu. Wuodan: [Ebura. [Beirar]? Hwaẓ sint [beirar]? Harald: Mihhiliu burtlig tior. "Ebura". Wuodan: [Jofrar]. Ja dû sprihhist wâr. Guotan jagôd hiutu, nâhgibûr. Harald: Ja enti dir. Enti guotaẓ wetar! Wuodan: Guotaẓ wetar, enti triuwe pfîl! I tried to stick relative closely to the originial conversation. As a disclaimer: I am not a linguist. Just someone interested in ancient languages. So there may be some errors.
I have a thought experiment for you: We use a time machine to go back a thousand years, where we kidnap an old English speaker, bring them back to the 21st century, and teach them contemporary modern English as a second language. Some questions upon which to ruminate: (1) as our time traveller is learning modern English, how aware are they that this new language they are learning is related to their own? Do they have spontaneous realisations that certain words they are learning are cognates of words they already know? (2) Do they find learning modern English more difficult, or less difficult, than a modern native German or Dutch speaker would, for example? (3) Once they’ve become a competent speaker of contemporary modern English, what kind of accent would they have? When they met present-day English speakers who were unaware that this person was a time traveller from the 11th century, where would those people assume, from their manner of speaking, that they had come from? Would their accent sound in any way similar to any extant regional British accent? Or would they be assumed to be German? Dutch? Scandinavian?
@@iceomistar4302 It would represent a challenge to immediately recognising it as the same language, and in understanding what was being said when first encountering the new language, even in the case of words that are essentially the same word, because the vowels mean they sound dissimilar on first hearing. But it wouldn’t represent any particular challenge to learning it as a DIFFERENT language. Presumably it would still be much easier for them to learn modern English than it is for a Japanese person, for example, who can rely on no cognates at all. I’m really curious to know what the resulting accent would sound like, and it seems like something that could actually be determined, by somebody with much greater knowledge of Old English pronunciation that me. If we know, for example, how a modern German speaker pronounces “stein” in their own language , and know also how the same speaker is likely to pronounce “stone” when speaking English with a German accent (which they will pronounce differently to “stein”, because they know it is different in English, but will still not pronounce it identically to the way a native speaker will pronounce it - hence the accent - and the ways in which it differs must surely follow certain rules of phonology), surely it would be possible to work out how somebody who pronounced that word “stan” in their native language is likely to pronounce the word “stone” when speaking modern English. And the same would be true of every other sound. I’m not sure how much academic worth such an exercise would have, but it would be fascinating to hear, and would settle once and for all the debate about which, if any, extant modern accent is the most “Old English”
That's fantastic. You should do a version of the story El Disco by the great Anglo-Saxon enthusiast Jorge Luis Borges. In the story the last Norse king in England, reduced to destitution but with a great treasure, meets an Anglo-Saxon woodsman. The king still has the old gods, and the woodsman is Christianized. It is a fantastic story with great depth and it would be a great opportunity to do a dialogue just like this. There is no actual dialogue like this in the story - written in Spanish, of course - so it would need to be written.
Amazing. Thank you for this experience. I found you after searching original version of song "My mother told me". Hello from Ukraine. Being proud that Vikings was one of our primogenitor.
The mutual intelligibility discussion reminds me of the legend of Wynfrith supposedly being able to convert the Frisians to Christianity without ever speaking Frisian. Edit: well, he tried anyway, lol, they killed the dude
“Moi” means “nice” or “beautiful” in Low Saxon, so the reduplicated greeting “moin moin” can be used throughout the day. The /n/ is the oblique case masculine singular.
The reason why Scandinavian languages may have many words related to Low Saxon is because of the Hanseatic trade of the 16th and 17th centuries, one need only to glance at a document in early modern Danish to see all the Saxon words which arrived in Modern Danish and Bokmal
Oh! I grew up in the northeastern Netherlands, where we say moi instead of moin moin, and mooi for beautiful. When I learned about moin moin, I thought it having come from 'morgen' explained so much! But not as much as this...
![[LIVE] MCHOICE & MINT AWARDS 2024 at TRUE ICON HALL, ICONSIAM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wMewUeT5nbY/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you very much indeed to Dr. Jackson Crawford for allowing me to be involved in this project after we got in contact a few weeks ago - I suspect many people here are already subscribed to him, but I would highly recommend his in-depth analyses of Old Norse literature and language, backed up by years of academic experience, as well as the occasional more reflective video or piece of poetry set in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. A recent video of his that he makes reference to here: th-cam.com/video/j4K-pGPT46o/w-d-xo.html
Thank you so much again Simon! It was a pleasure.
Simon your videos are a great supplement to the book I am reading; 'A History of The English Language' by Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable. I'm guessing you've read that already. Your co-student and project assistant is very good too.
Great content!
I already subscribe to you both! For a long time now.
I was wondering why this got uploaded twice in my feed then I realized you both posted it on your own channels
I’m afraid the traditional Norse backdrop of Colorado is slightly more impressive than an English wood with the vague drone of a motorway in the distance!
I dont knoe what your talking about, id prefer a damp wood by an M6 embankment to a sunny Colorado scene anyday
Are hearts still the superior organ in outer space? You should become a space educator or something...
I find both of them very calming. There is something about those nature shots of England I really like, I feel a sense of connection to the people back then, the trees, the animals, the skies, are the same ones the speakers of old English would have known in their world
Simon's wood
Is actually the part of the world the conversation would have taken place
@@beckihayes220 I'm only kidding, no doubt it's more geographically accurate. Ever since I was a kid and camped somewhere in Surrey and noticed that infernal drone (in that case, the M25) I've hated the fact roads are so freaking noisy. Plus I've got Colorado-envy.
The only thing I found "distracting" was that Simon's neighbor had some mighty mountains in his yard "next door"!
Maybe Auðun was facing a mountain with a forest on it and Harold was looking out to the other mountains towards Auðun
@@aerobolt256 not likely in the East Midlands lol
They must've been shouting the top of their lungs from either sides of a valley.
Those are not real mountains. When game is hard to find Auðun enjoys painting murals.
And considerably better weather!
"Avengers Infinity War is the most ambitious crossover in history."
Simon: "Beclypp mín béor!"
😂 Best comment on this video. Right here.
Ah, the strong bee drink? Too bad that old drink has nothing to do with todays beer. Because that would be alu. But perhaps they meant cider? Since it also means strong drink. ;)
@@ralphthestrider4329I bet your linguistic nitpicking is the highlight of every party. 👌
@@SDOtunes You'd be surprised!
@@SDOtunes If you party is composed by people that what this sort of videos, then yep, linguistic nit-picking can be pretty fun
I always admire how casual Simon sounds while he's speaking Old English. It doesn't sound rehearsed or unnatural at all. Meanwhile Jackson is just speaking like he is reciting a poem, which is also cool.
Simon subscribes more to the Stanislavski school
Exactly! It's like he's channeling a past life or something. That's why I'm lobbying for him to do conversation stuff. He's got the talent to resurrect a very plausible approximation of what Old English speakers sounded like in casual conversation. It's a tantalizing alternative to the scripted texts that many of us nerds have studied.
@@TelecastPropellor96 this made me giggle
shade on jackson
Didn't you know? He's the last surviving native speaker of Old English.
Oh my..
I know, right!?
My sentiments exactly!
Hey Hilbert!
It was AWESOME!!!!
So now we are probably going to need a Hilbert (safe) Space 😂 ( it's just a silly math pun for those who don't get it 😉 )
Something I love about your channel is how you attempt to depict how Old English was spoken in a more conversational context. Your ability to act while speaking it so that it feels natural is really impressive
It really brings the language to life.
I agree, Jackson Crawford almost always speaks very slowly and, while I suppose it helps with learning, it also sounds very unnatural and "academic". I really appreciate when an old language is spoken more quickly and casually.
i dont think he tried to act, he is just so bad acting that he sounded natural instead hehe
The Old Norse sounds so much like Swedish! I understood quite a few words.
The big term love only reflects me the only lovable being, and cannot be misused by hum’ns in any way - the word like must be used instead when referring to pretty languages and items etc!
For those wondering whether Icelanders would understand the Old Norse part of this conversation: I am an Icelander and barely understood anything from either language.
Could you read along very well? Most of what I've heard is that Icelanders should be able to read Old Norse with roughly the same difficulty/ease that a modern English speaker could read Shakespeare.
Just shows
Time is more of a hurdle to understanding than different languages
@@beckihayes220 yes, languages are always evolving, changing
The language spoken in the beginning of this video is Old Danish, Which is a dialect or a language variant of Old East Norse. Modern Icelandic sprung from Old Norwegian, or rather Old West Norse. This is of course the reason as to why it will be hard for Icelandic speakers to understand what is being said.
@@wodanazaugo1345 That's a really good point; however, even if it had been Old West Norse, I think I still would have found it rather difficult to understand what would have been said
The mad lads finally did it!
Exactly my thought 😝❤️
my fav crossover
Happy feet! 💕🐝
I can't suspend my disbelief unless you are both dressed in sheets dragging a log through a marsh. Authenticity is vital, I feel.
LOL!
😂😂😂
As someone who speaks both Swedish and German I'm surprised at how much I can understand... as long as I don't look at the written text because man that's confusing if you've never properly learned it
And you clearly speak english too, that helps as well
Presumably a Swede or German from 1000 CE who got dropped in the middle of England could have joined this conversation and had a similar level of mutual compatibility with these two. A thousand years earlier still and all four would have been speaking the same language.
@@fromchomleystreet I don't know about a german but a swede, yeah for sure.
A thousand years ago, even though the languages had already started to diverge as old swedish was eastern norse, they were still much closer than they are today. Even today I as a dane understand spoken swedish rather well. Written swedish I understand almost entirely...like I read swedish newspapers without any problems
@@alexlarsen6413 I suspect that someone from Germany at this point would have been in the best position. They might have understood the Englishman better than the Scandinavians did, and the Scandinavians better than the Englishman did.
@@fromchomleystreet Why? The Angles and the Jutes came from current Denmark. The Saxons came from current nortern Germany, a direct neigbour to Scandinavia. All these languages or dialects were close, but also quite distant from what would become high German and standard German. Germany didn't exist at the time, btw. That was just a lot of small kingdoms (up until Weimar).
I’m from East Yorkshire, UK. Around 25 years ago I met the friend of a friend from Friesland. He was over here in England buying some calves. Once I’d listened to him speak for a few minutes we found that we could hold a reasonably decent conversation if he toned down his accent a little and I effected a heavy North Yorkshire “farmer” accent. We quickly discovered that whilst spelling was now very different, the languages are extremely similar. We did find a few stumbling blocks on unfamiliar words, but we could understand each other enough to find mutually familiar substitutions. It was a fascinating insight, and I have always found Norwegian and even Catalan strangely familiar.
👍
Me, Argentinian, visiting my Brazilian buddies when the pandemic's over.
@@bashkillszombies stick a Mexican in there and it’s a party
@@bashkillszombies the fuck???
@@Bunkerknacker_Retro-Nostalgie sure Jan.
@BunkerKnacker - Retro & Nostalgie The lack of cognitive development you display in your comment is astounding.
@@Caine61 Boring "yoU n0 SMrT" comment. Get vaxxed, gullible tool.
I'm more excited about this than I'm willing to admit.
You just did. Hahh!
Same here. Please don’t tell my friends. 😉
I’ll happily admit it ... all my friends know and love the nerd that is me. 💕🐝
Same!
One thing that struck me was that an old English speaker speaking to an old Norse speaker reminded me of growing up in South Africa, where English and Afrikaans sit side by side, and influence one another. The fact that the two are similar on paper but very different in terms of pronunciation (but reasonably easy for speakers of the other to learn through osmosis - in my case via TV as opposed to school lessons) is an interesting parallel.
That's a great comparison, I think!
There are some South African Languages that I think I could really click with.
@@TheBrianp1 Oh boy.. Very punny.
Afrikaans: My pen is in my hand
English: My pen is in my hand
Die twee sinne klink nie dieselfde nie. The two sentences do not sound the same. Maar hulle beteken dieselfde. But they mean (betoken) the same.
@@joyousmonkey6085 Easy to completely misread that example 😂
I've always heard and read that Old Norse and Old English were almost identical. Whenever I talk to anyone about North West Europeans, I always bring that up.
Now, thanks to you guys, I have a live, 3D, and in living color example of it actually happening!!!
D Du ha(ve)r ret /
S Du ha(ve)r rätt
Thou are (have) right 😉
@@Bjowolf2 thou art* %)
I'm a native English speaker learning Bokmål Norwegian and it's so cool to see the similarities in the languages. Norwegian is by far the easiest second language I've studied because so many patterns follow English, but also there are things that feel less like you're learning them and more like you're uncovering them, because of the deep history, which makes it very easy to draw parallels. In the first part of Ecolinguist's Old English Spoken videos, Simon mentioned the Old English word dēor being used as a general word for animals more than just deer, in Norwegian dyr is the word for animals. Little things like that makes learning Norwegian that much more intuitive. Tusen takk, Simon! Du er veldig hjelpsom og kunnskapsrik!
Cool, and then you almost "know" Danish & Swedish as well, where you will encounter loads more of these deep similarities. This is the main reason why we Scandinavians often don't have to think very much when learning English - apart from a few hurdles like the peculiar un-Germanic use of the word "do" and "-ing" with verbs in tenses it feels very much like we are "just" expanding our own languages in many respects 😉
@John Osman
Dan. dyr [ d:ue:r, "ue" is like in "rue" in French ]
Swe. djur [ c. (d)'y:ue:r ]
@@Bjowolf2 I wouldn't say peculiarly unGermanic as the Germans also have a construction with tun+infinitive, although not used in the way it is in English.
@@egbront1506 Well, yes - but it can be rather confusing and unfamiliar to us simple North Germanic folks 😅
The Germans use the cognate "tun" as a "normal" verb - and they don't use it as an auxiliary verb in questions or "negative" sentences ( I don't have it = G Ich habe es / das nicht / D Jeg [yigh] ha(ve)r den / det ikke ).
I have read somewhere that the very creative use of "do" in (Middle (!) etc.) English is probably an influence from Welsh, which has a similar construction.
@@Bjowolf2 It's different in Welsh and closer to the English present continuous construction with -ing. In South German, tun is used as an auxillary but it is very much regarded as "bad German" - e.g. morgens tu' ich immer studieren, aber aufräumen tu'/mach' ich nicht so gern.
In Dutch, when we loan words from English, we take the stem and conjugate it just as if it was a Dutch word. This can make for some very interesting spellings, such as "racete" ("race" + "te"). It is quite common to do this, especially for the younger generations. Sometimes you can't find the right Dutch word, so you just use the English word instead.
I'm sure you mean borrow :)
I've noticed German does that too:
Ich habe diese Seite geliked.
It's a bit crazy, because German used to create calques instead of direct borrowings, e.g. German "abhängig" (ab + hängen + -ig) vs English "dependent" (from Latin de + pendere + -ent). I don't know why modern Germans do that; German is so much cooler and more expressive than English.
@@ghenulo With at least an number of expressions we can nowadays do either, so there are people who say "Ich habe das gedownloadet" as much as "Ich habe das heruntergeladen" (admittedly, the latter is more logical and to me, looks nicer).
@@ghenulo geliket* und zweitens handelt es sich nicht um ein Lehnwort an sich, sondern um eine bestimmte Art und Weise um die Übernahme einer bestimmten Funktion in sozialen Netzwerken (Internet), denn wörtlich wäre ja sonst geliket, dass es nicht mehr gemocht wird. Ich habe es geliket wäre so wörtlich ich habe es gemocht, also jetzt nicht mehr. Was natürlich falsch ist. Wenn man das Wort ins Althochdeutsche übertrüge, hieße es likōn. Also etwas mit einem Like versehen haben. Je nach Dialekt im Althochdeutschen ähnlich wie salbōn, etwas mit Salbe versehen.
@@chevalierdupapillon downgeloadet oder gedownloadet.
In Lithuanian we do the exact same thing. But because Lithuanian orthography is very phonological and English's isn't, some weird conventions have appeared for loanwords and some interesting problems also occur. For instance the word "like", if it were to be rewritten in Lithuanian, it would become "laikas", the -as being a nominative ending, but then it looks identical to the word for time "laikas". So to solve this, the younger generation, myself included, keeps the stem spelt as it is in English, but with a Lithuanian ending, so "like'as". With this solution, even though there's not as much consistency in spelling, it does make it very obvious where a loan is, so it makes reading easier I would say, especially in texts
As a Scots speaker it was very close to being comprehensible in many places.
Are you from the Orkneys or Shetland? I’d think a Scots speaker from either of those places would have a leg up on most anyone else in understanding this.
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 I thought scots was from the border with England? It isn't gaelic
@@marietg8025 Gaelic was largely limited to the Highlands, and yes today those islands are part of the Highlands legally and politically. However, they were ruled by Norway up until a few hundred years ago so to the extent there is Celtic influence it is being built on top of a preexisting Scandinavian base. The people spoke a language called Norn which had Old Norse as an ancestor which was replaced by Scots over a few centuries though even now their Scots dialect contains a number of words from Norn that aren’t found in other Scots’ dialects.
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 Neither the Orkneys nor Shetland belong to the Scottish Highlands or indeed Scotland at all.
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 I was under the impression that Scots came mostly from them adopting Old English, and that the Scottish just didn't change their way of speaking as much over time
This probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Two of my language heroes together!!
In everyday practice, mutual intelligibility involves a lot of prediction and deduction based on where the conversation is headed thematically, rather than mere focus on vocabulary.
This runs the risk of the speakers on occasion completely missing each others' point but in general, the narrower the topic, the better the result.
As a Pole this is about the only way I can cope with Ukrainian sometimes, now that it's becoming pretty common out in the street.
Give Prussia back, please. You don't need it and we need an ancestral homeland because ours has been invaded.
@@bashkillszombies Wrong approach. Once the republic is smashed and Deutschland is no longer occupied, the illegally annexed regions will automatically (or with a bit of covincing) return to the Reich. Quit begging for refuge elsewhere.
You reminded me of an incident when I was in college. I had a classmate from Italy. She spoke very fast, even in English, and with her accent I would often have trouble understanding her until I got into the groove of, as you say, where the conversation was heading thematically. Once I was in the right groove, I could understand her well enough. One day, she comes up to me, speaking very fast, and I just couldn't seem to get that hook to get the gist of what she was saying, and it was taking way longer than usual. All of a sudden her hands fly up to her face, and she says, " Oh! Oh! I was speaking Italian!" I'm not sure who was more embarrassed--her for speaking Italian to me, or me for not realizing it.
Hmm, gdzieś to ja Cię widuję... Pod filmikami Ecolinguista może? ;)
@@amjan Nie zaglądam tam za często, ale zdarza mi się. :d
I just watched this on Jackson’s channel and there was so much to consider. Thank you for all your work and shared knowledge. I am so grateful to see 2 of my favorite content creators collaborate. There is so much to consider and evaluate and this helps so many of us see and share patterns and history, thank you.
And Wulfstan as well ( in the same manuscript ) 😉
This spoke to my past-life lady bits for some reason 😂
Guten Morgen/Gute Nacht from Germany. :D Love to hear your guys conversation, simply amazing! 😊👍
Morgen und Nacht, gleichzeitig?
Ja! 🙌
Me: An hour is a little too long. I don't think I can invest that much time.
Also me: Watches full video and is thirsty for more.
Made popcorn, settled in. Reading comments on both feeds. :)
So true
This is like crack to me! What amazing video by brilliant linguists and historians. Man, I wish I were there in person to see these two scholars interact in person and that they were in person. Simon and Dr. C. Amazing! To hear Old English and Old Norse-how mutually intelligible? How close? How dissimilar? How dialectic! Truly astounding. These two gentlemen were born to educate and inspire.
This is fantastic, I love ancient chats. 🇮🇪☘🧚♂️
Girlfriend: He surely is cheating on me right now
Mig og Drengene:
Thanks for curating such a rare conversation. It was a bit like time travel
Some years ago, I heard a story of one person from East Norway (Valdres?) met a tourist from West Norway (Sogn?), and they didn't immediately understand each other and ended up communicating in English (which Norwegians start to learn in second year? of primary school). I went to high school with lots of pupils from a valley in Southern Norway, and initially it was difficult to understand some class mates from, e.g., Valle (perhaps the dialect closest to Old Norse) and Bykle (which had dative, etc.). But after a few weeks or months, I could understand most of what they said. Of course, I couldn't speak those dialects, but I could understand them.
It is important to distinguish between people's first meeting and what they understand, vs. what is understood after some weeks or months of having to communicate.
I am Danish and I attended at folk-high-school in Norway for a year. It was near Trondheim and while I didn't have problems with understanding the Østfold dialects, Trøndersk was a whole different matter! It took me 1-2 months to fully understand it. The first week I was there I met an older, local man who said something to me. I answered and by the look on his face It was not the answer he was expecting. :) :P
@@vanefreja86 I lived in Trondheim for 13 years, and got used to it. As a student, I hung out with people from all of Norway, so I was probably not exposed to the pure dialect that much in the beginning. The dialects outside of Trondheim is a different thing. I could understand most of it. But recently I saw a dialect program on national TV where they talked with a firefighter (?) from the island of Hitra, and I hardly could understand anything.
@@berntlie6799 My school was situated on the Fosen peninsula - so yeah.... ;)
These two guys are smart and learned,... but I remind myself of Socrates quote "I know I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing" - and then I don't feel insecure or depressed. lol. 😊
The wise one is he who knows he knows nothing
I like the mental tennis here.
My boys! Together! Today is a special day.
I learn so much when the two of you get together. This is music to me!
Regarding current dialects in Norway, the English word "I" may be pronounced as "eg", "yey" (written "jeg"), "yeh" (written "je"), "ee" (written "i"), etc. The word "week" may be pronounced "uke" or "uge" (similar to Danish), "ukke", "vikke", "vukku", "vike", "veke", etc. When one get used to such variations, it is not too difficult to understand.
Eh... and in addition to "eg", I forgot "æg", and "æ"... (my own dialect...)
So many dialects for a country of 5 mill
@@alexlarsen6413 Low density of people, and people separated by mountains, forests, and fjords :-)
@@berntlie6799 I know, we have quite a few accents in denmark too, probably because of all the islands and then southern jutland has german influences
[ve:k] or [vɛɪk] in Low German. Middle Low German was a lingua franca in central and northern Europe after all.
Been waiting for this for a while. Time to put on a coffee and kickback
In my experience as a native Spanish speaker that has communicated with Brazilians, I doubt most people would notice the correspondences consciously, like adding a "w" or stuff like that. I think for most people, the passive understanding of a foreign language is based a lot on "this kinda sounds similar" without noticing or picking up on patterns. I believe that would begin to happen along the language learning process, when the person is actually trying to learn the language, not when they're just trying to communicate. When you're just trying to communicate, what you do is try to speak slowly, without reducing sounds as much, and using lots of synonyms, hoping one will make sense. People start to notice the patterns of differences only when they're studying the language.
hi, as a native portuguese speaker and a spanish speaker I can confirm that.
Yep, this discussion could've profited from people who regularly communicate in different but cognate languages, just for the practical aspect of how that works in everyday life.
I think it is studying and reaching some critical mass of understanding. I don’t “speak” Spanish or Portuguese, but I had two university classes in Spanish and have studied it off and on over the years. I lived in Brazil for a short time and studied and used Portuguese. In both with a few days practice now I could remember enough to have simple conversations
Portuguese seemed so much easier. Almost immediately I noticed patterns in words being the same root with different endings. Now looking back I see much of this is also true in Spanish, but I never noticed it when I studied Spanish. Was Portuguese easier, or was it because I had already built this base in Spanish I could jump off of?
28:32 interestingly enough, just listening to Simon's pronunciation of this and ignoring the meaning of the words it really reminds me of the accent of Gotland in Sweden.
The crossover of the century!
Of the millennia!
Just wait till these guys show up on Ecolinguist! Well Simon already did but you know what I mean.
This is such a treat! I happened upon Jackson's channel a few years ago and found Simon's channel only recently through his appearance on Ecolinguist. I thoroughly enjoy both of their lovely channels and am so happy to see this collaboration!
(If either of you see this, thank you for all the effort and work you put into your videos!)
My two fave linguistic guys together. This is great. Would love to see more collaboration with Dr Jackson Crawford
Could listen to them all day❤️
The Proto-Germanic Cognates are fascinating.... where they're clearly near identical words shared by East Germanic, West Germanic and North Germanic Languages. Sometimes these cognates are even 'wider' and are in fact Indo-European and probably part of the original undiluted Indo-European Language.
I read a book a few years ago about how traveling over water was in many ways much easier than traveling over land in the early Middle Ages, which meant that a body of water like the North Sea - which is now seen as separating regions - would actually be connecting those coastal regions much more than they would be connected to the hinterland.
@@lnkvt That's interesting... some areas of hinterland were inaccessible back then, so its quite easy to believe that travelling across water was easier. When Alfred had to flee with a small retinue of followers in 878 to the marshlands of North Somerset, they chose this place because they knew the land better and was inaccessible to the Viking Longships. There were large areas of Swamp and Alluvium in Old English times... e.g Fenlands - of the Herewake the Wake rebellion.
Hey, what's with this awesomely unexpected video 🤩😍!?
For real, I'm like oh two of my favorite youtubers
🤣🤣🤣
This is a fantastic video to behold! I'm very grateful to have the chance to hear two knowledgeable and passionate people talk about something near and dear to my own hobbyist heart: historical languages. There's just something about the phonemes and grammar of antiquated language that pique the interest.
This is the best cross over of the century
I'm 54 and I can remember older Yorkshire people, when I was very young saying NAY LAD
I think Yay and Nay might be still used in Parliament.
I'm from Derby and have lived in the East Midlands all my life! It's a piece of my local history coming to life, thank you both!
Ohh snap, this is gonna be epic AF. Two of my favorite TH-cam together at last.
Ay-up me duck? I live in Derby and there is still plenty of deer here. Loving these videos with Simon and Jackson.
incredible! now to watch the whole video! old norse looks a lot more like danish/bokmål than old english looks like english!
EXCELLANT. 2 OF MY favorite eccentrics.
Fascinating and incredibly informative listening to these two linguists.
Oh yea, this is superb, both of these two have been intriguing to watch and learn from. Excellent sound to both the languages, the Germanic languages have such a enjoyable cadence.
Excellent upload. I love how you both brought these languages to life! I have no expertise in old languages but I am a linguist fluent in Norwegian and German so this is fascinating for me. Old Norse sounds to my ear quite a lot like a dialect (or linguistic standard to be accurate) called New Norwegian (ironically enough) spoken currently by about 10% of Norwegians. There are strong similarities with Old English too although much less to my ear, at least in an immediate sense. I can recognise a significant amount of German in Old English.
Guten Morgen to you too.
This was fantastic! Thank you both SO much!
You two are certainly birds of a feather in matters of Old English and Norse linguistics. Such a fascinating conversation! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and theories with your subscribers.
Old Danish: GOÐAN MORGAN
Modern Danish: G'maauuun
Modern Danish sounds like someone is eating something and talking simultaniously
Modern Australian: G'day
Modern North German (Plattdütsch): Moin
@@that1niceguy246 That's just rude. Why would you comment just to show your dislike, you are not funny. The same thing has been said a thousand times now. Show some class.
All languages have these casual short forms.
Modern Swedish: morrn! / gomorron! / god morgon!
I love these guys, and their great work with these languages. I adore Old English and Old Norse.
I'm glad Dr. Crawford got the ACV connection out there right away, even with references to Snotingham and Jórvik in his dialogue
I am from the north of Flanders, living on the right bank of the river Schelde. We speak a dialect that comes from West- Germanic Franconian and Teutonic wich developes into Brabantish Maaslandish and Reinlandish Franconian and finally in High German but also in Low- German, Flemish and Dutch. When we cross the river our dialect starts to mingle with East- Flemish slowly changing into West- Flemish as we're heading for the coast. These two branches are Ingveonic or North-sea-Germanic or DIETS! The whole Northsea coast from Bruges as far as Normandy and Bretagne was called the Litus Saxonicum. Jutes,Angles,Saxon,Frisian,Flemings,Dani,Gutes,Northmanni,Burgundi, Franks,Roman etc. lived here and it was not different across the channel! From Diets comes Anglo and Saxon turns into Anglo-Saxon,Old-Frisia/Flemish then Old-English/Frisian and Zeelandic West-Flemish. In the south Franks adapted to Latin and become French. So we have English, Frisian, Dutch ( Flemish),Low-and High- German and French. In this small country we have the most language borders and issues on the planet. There is hardly North- Germanic input but plenty West- Germanic in all directions.This is old,ancient!....we still say "nee en ja" or "joa og neje" or "jot och nijet"! On the coast they don't say England but "Ingleland", not boat but "busse".....not wool coat but " ne lode" , Ragnar Lodbrok was Ragenhere ( Regenharius) from Wool-march or swamp. Try to compare Old -English with Old-Flemish its much closer :) I enjoyed your conversation thanks for inspiration! Perhaps i inspire some one too.
This is literally the collab we all needed!!!
I only know a small amount of Danish, but I still find it impressive just how many words are still used in everyday Danish that were used 1000 years ago.
Mange ( many, OE monege ! ) af disse Danske (w)ord(s) ha(ve)r parallelle moderne versioner på [po] (uPOn) ( in) moderne Engelsk. Vi [ve] kan derfor let (light, = easy(ly)) lær(n)e dem og holde dem i(n) {v}ore (our) hoved-er ( heads, OE heafod, heafde (sing. dat. ) / heafdum (plur. dat. )), så (th)at vi kan nær tal(k)e Engelsk allerede fra dag [daygh] en. 🤗
Wow im danish and i actually understood some of it. Interesting! Thank you!
Absolutely brilliant video. Thank you!
I'm reading about Cognates and borrowings in the book I'm reading "A History of The English Language" very fascinating. Celtic only really influenced Old English with borrowings for Place Names and Geographical & Topographical Descriptors. Latin had three stages of influencing OE - 1st Stage was on the Continent in the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and Franks Homelands, 2nd Stage was second hand from the Romano-Celtic Natives of Island of Britain, 3rd Stage was from the Roman Missionaries like St Columba, St Augustine etc. The Norse influence and Norman French is pretty self-explanatory... if you like reading history. 😊
The book “English and Celtic in Contact” posits that Celtic’s influence on English was substantial.
@@joshadams8761 Quite the opposite in the book I am reading. The integration of other language in full force began with borrowings from Latin and especially that of Norse/Danish and then Norman French. I believe the Anglo Saxons didn't want to integrate Celtic Culture, Linguistics or Religion with their own. There was inter-marriage between Angles of East Anglia and Celtic women - but the Celtic elite were driven to the Western Parts of the island of Britain,.. some fled to Brittany - hence the name.
So you're saying that Latin had no influence om English after the 11 th century?? I can think of more than a few Classicists that might want to argue that?
@@ulrikschackmeyer848 "So you're saying" - No.. I am talking about 'Old English' - in the Old English period. Latin became less of an influence to English after the Norman Conquest as English was not spoken by the elite Normans. For the Normans - English merged with Norman French and became 'Anglo Norman' as an elite language of Royal Court until 1399 although English re-emerged with Edward 1st speaking and writing it and as the official National language again under Henry 4th in 1399. "So that's what I'm saying"!
Place Torpenhow, means hill, hill, hill!
Good weather, indeed! Thanks a lot, great fun!!!
Two of my favorite youtubers together!
This remains one of the most fascinating and unique channels on all of TH-cam.
The conversation appears fluid though the differences between the two languages are obvious. As a Spanish speaker, my first interactions with Italian speakers were very clumsy. We often spoke past each other and misunderstandings were common. Now that I have learned the basics of Italian and I've become more familiar with the spoken language, the barrier between standard Italian and my tongue is virtually non-existent, as between Portuguese and Spanish, these two being closer.
My point is, these two speakers you portray were obviously familiar with each other's languages prior to their conversation. A Saxon speaker from Wessex unfamiliar with Norse would have a hard time understanding a Dane.
Anyway, great video!
The best thing about it is that the speakers in the Danelaw would have been very used to hearing both, and these two dialects are exactly the ones that would have been in contact.
Perhaps one from Wessex. But, one from Essex or East Anglia would do just fine.
Absolute thanks to both of you for making this. As you correctly say: this video is a milestone, something that if even you wished you had seen decades ago, will now exist on the internet to trigger this passion for languages and History in many people.
The cross-over we all needed.
@Simon Roper I think Derby it's self is Danelaw, However a smallish portion of what is now modern south/west Derbyshire would be Mercian, since Mercia was bound to the north at Repton which is close to Leicestershire.
I'm glad they didn't keep the 'S' in Nottingham. 'University of Snottingham' doesn't have quite the same ring to it
I really enjoyed this, really fascinating.
This is absolutely amazing !
Extraordinary work both. I struggle to speak one other modern language. But it is a privilege to begin to see a 4th dimension into the sounds we all make to communicate today.
I was noticing the use of "fulloft" for "often" in both scripts.
In German, "voll oft" (spelled as two words) is a quite informal way to say "very often". Since "voll" and "full" are cognates, now I am wondering if this is a coincidence. (which it probably is, given the frequent use of "voll" as an intensifier elsewhere in colloquial German, but it's neat nevertheless :D )
I think it's only partly a coincidence, rather a nice example of how "creative" languages are with their own vocabulary during language change over time.
In colloquial English speech 'Well' is often used to represent 'Very'.
@@mikesaunders4775 "well" is not related to "full", though.
@@AntoniusVladislavius No it isn't , but it is probably a mutated vestige of a word that is , as FULL well you might know.
I've subscribed to both of y'all for over a year. Yay!
Thank you both for the video, Simon. :)
It occurs to me that the speakers of the two languages would have had accents. It's commonly known now that when people speak together they subconsciously imitate each others' accents. I think that would have added to the mutual intelligibility. :)
Have you seen the Eddie Izzard video where he goes to Friesland to buy a brown cow? He communicates with a Frisian-speaking farmer by speaking Old English and is actually able to be understood. :)
Link please?
Fascinating. What occured to me .. watch you two .. one speaking American English and the other British English is a memory of when I was 10 years old. My father was in the US Air Force and we were stationed in England for three years. For the first month we stayed in an English hotel and I remember listening to the radio and unless I listened very, very closely I could not understand a thing being said. I had to listen intensely to understand. A few weeks passed and all of a sudden .. like cold water splashing over me .. everything became completely clear. A switch was thrown and this previously almost incomprehensible dialect was understandable. I wasn't a slow process but the switch was thrown instantly.
Weird to talk so casually about a military occupation that's still ongoing
Looking forward to the upcoming Auðun and Harold sitcom, I hope he sees some deer some time
I really enjoyed your conversation. As someone who speaks German, English and a bit of Icelandic, it was not too hard to follow. Maybe a German of that time could have joined the conversation. In Old High German, this conversation would look similar to this (translating the names into Old High German):
Harald: Guotan morgan, nâhgibûr.
Wuodan: Guotan morgan.
Harald: Birut iro niowiht fona Snotingaheime, Wuodan?
Wuodan: Ja, daẓ bin ih. Birut iro niowiht Harald fona Darbî?
Harald: Daẓ bin ih. Dû kunes "dû" nuẓẓen, Ist dër tag unwolo?
Wuodan: Ër ist. Ih sah boc, âno ih farmissita sîn.
Harald: Ana donrestaga sah ih feor hirẓ, hinta enti kalb.
Wuodan: Daz wunsku ih mir. Hiutu ni sâhi dû sie?
Harald: Nein, hiutu sah ih bar eina hinta.
Wuodan: Hwâr sâhi dû sio?
Harald: Ana dëmu stade, bî dëra furt.
Wuodan: Sio ist wola all in Jôrwîh nû.
Harald: Bireiti gibrâtan ana dëmu frôs spiẓ.
Wuodan: Iẓ ist fruoi. Ih suohhu fram.
Harald: Dia mihhilon ebura sint ofto bî dëru bruggu.
Wuodan: [Ebura. [Beirar]? Hwaẓ sint [beirar]?
Harald: Mihhiliu burtlig tior. "Ebura".
Wuodan: [Jofrar]. Ja dû sprihhist wâr. Guotan jagôd hiutu, nâhgibûr.
Harald: Ja enti dir. Enti guotaẓ wetar!
Wuodan: Guotaẓ wetar, enti triuwe pfîl!
I tried to stick relative closely to the originial conversation.
As a disclaimer: I am not a linguist. Just someone interested in ancient languages. So there may be some errors.
I have a thought experiment for you:
We use a time machine to go back a thousand years, where we kidnap an old English speaker, bring them back to the 21st century, and teach them contemporary modern English as a second language.
Some questions upon which to ruminate:
(1) as our time traveller is learning modern English, how aware are they that this new language they are learning is related to their own? Do they have spontaneous realisations that certain words they are learning are cognates of words they already know?
(2) Do they find learning modern English more difficult, or less difficult, than a modern native German or Dutch speaker would, for example?
(3) Once they’ve become a competent speaker of contemporary modern English, what kind of accent would they have? When they met present-day English speakers who were unaware that this person was a time traveller from the 11th century, where would those people assume, from their manner of speaking, that they had come from? Would their accent sound in any way similar to any extant regional British accent? Or would they be assumed to be German? Dutch? Scandinavian?
I think the great vowel shift would be a big challenge
@@iceomistar4302 It would represent a challenge to immediately recognising it as the same language, and in understanding what was being said when first encountering the new language, even in the case of words that are essentially the same word, because the vowels mean they sound dissimilar on first hearing. But it wouldn’t represent any particular challenge to learning it as a DIFFERENT language. Presumably it would still be much easier for them to learn modern English than it is for a Japanese person, for example, who can rely on no cognates at all. I’m really curious to know what the resulting accent would sound like, and it seems like something that could actually be determined, by somebody with much greater knowledge of Old English pronunciation that me.
If we know, for example, how a modern German speaker pronounces “stein” in their own language , and know also how the same speaker is likely to pronounce “stone” when speaking English with a German accent (which they will pronounce differently to “stein”, because they know it is different in English, but will still not pronounce it identically to the way a native speaker will pronounce it - hence the accent - and the ways in which it differs must surely follow certain rules of phonology), surely it would be possible to work out how somebody who pronounced that word “stan” in their native language is likely to pronounce the word “stone” when speaking modern English. And the same would be true of every other sound.
I’m not sure how much academic worth such an exercise would have, but it would be fascinating to hear, and would settle once and for all the debate about which, if any, extant modern accent is the most “Old English”
That's fantastic. You should do a version of the story El Disco by the great Anglo-Saxon enthusiast Jorge Luis Borges. In the story the last Norse king in England, reduced to destitution but with a great treasure, meets an Anglo-Saxon woodsman. The king still has the old gods, and the woodsman is Christianized. It is a fantastic story with great depth and it would be a great opportunity to do a dialogue just like this. There is no actual dialogue like this in the story - written in Spanish, of course - so it would need to be written.
Brilliant. A much neglected part of English language history.
And the people who think Shakespeare is "Old English"... the lulz!
"Good weather, and true arrows."
I like that.
This was absolutely great
Amazing. Thank you for this experience. I found you after searching original version of song "My mother told me". Hello from Ukraine. Being proud that Vikings was one of our primogenitor.
...what a great insightful chat between a couple wise mad lads for language...
...please may I have some mooore...
Wæs þu hæl
forn sidr
Just wonderful! I really hope to see more like this from the two of you in the future.
This is one of those videos that reminds me how nuts your brain is all over again
😂😂yo for real....... this mind of stuff keeps me from worse rabbit holes!!!!
this crossover was bound to happen for a very long time
The mutual intelligibility discussion reminds me of the legend of Wynfrith supposedly being able to convert the Frisians to Christianity without ever speaking Frisian.
Edit: well, he tried anyway, lol, they killed the dude
Top 10 Saddest Anime Deaths
This is just the coolest thing ever - thanks bunches from a Canadian viewer, admirer and fan.
Alliterative example: - "Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said this butter's bitter"
Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said: This bitter butter's badder. Better buy some better butter?
Woooow, I was just waiting for you two to make something together, it's a pleasure to listen!
“Moi” means “nice” or “beautiful” in Low Saxon, so the reduplicated greeting “moin moin” can be used throughout the day. The /n/ is the oblique case masculine singular.
I'll second that. The 'moin' is not a cognate of 'morning' but 'good'. The same in South Jutland Danish 'Synnejysk'.!
The reason why Scandinavian languages may have many words related to Low Saxon is because of the Hanseatic trade of the 16th and 17th centuries, one need only to glance at a document in early modern Danish to see all the Saxon words which arrived in Modern Danish and Bokmal
Oh! I grew up in the northeastern Netherlands, where we say moi instead of moin moin, and mooi for beautiful. When I learned about moin moin, I thought it having come from 'morgen' explained so much! But not as much as this...
I suppose it’s no coincidence that the old Danish sounds like Icelandic? As a Swedish speaker, your old English sounds surprisingly nordic to my ears!