Old English Discussion

[Kirk]

And this is not Old English, I think it's Early Modern English (or Shakespearan). Can someone confirm?

þu / ðu (thu) was the second person singular in Old english.

Somewhere in time it went to "thou" and then to "you"

Well, "thou" didn't transform into "you." It was simply replaced by "you" (except it wasn't replaced in those few dialects that still use "thou" or "tha"). "You" is not related to "thou," being from Old English "eow" which was from Proto Germanic *iuwiz, ultimately from PIE *ju.

Another name for Freyr is Inguz or Ing.
Is England derived from this god Ing?

As Psi said, "English" derives from the term for "language of the Angles." "England" is from "Anglaland" (land of the Angles) but due to regular umlaut the /ɑ/ went to [ɛ] due to the following inflection. This explains the vowel difference between the "Angles" and the language they spoke, "Englisc," pronounced [ˈɛŋglɪʃ] in Old English.

i had never thought about it from þu / ðu => Thou it just sounded more similar to they

Yes "thou" is actually a very old form, going back directly to Proto Indo European *tu (look at related forms in daughter IE languages: Latin tu, Irish tu, Welsh ti, Greek su, Lith. tu, O.C.S. ty, Skt. twa-m).

Regular sound changes from PIE /t/ > /θ/ produced Proto Germanic */θu/. PG */θu:/ then often became voiced due to a sandhi process, yielding /ðu:/ in many Germanic languages (most of which later hardened it to /du/ but a few languages like English and Icelandic have remained conservative in retaining the historical interdental fricatives). The Great Vowel Shift gets to take credit for the most recent change upon Old English /ðu:/, producing regular /ðaʊ/ in Modern English. Thus we have:

PIE */tu/ > PG */θu:/ > OE /ðu:/ > ME /ðaʊ/

[sa wulfs]

"Thou" is pronounced /ðaʊ/? Well, that's consistent with the long u of OE. ðú, but for some reason I always thought it was pronounced like you. Good to know.

I don't really like how /ðaʊ/ sounds, but meh.

[Alcadras]

i knew that old english and early english were the same

[JackFrost]

i knew that old english and early english were the same

???

Erm, Old English is Early English.

[Alcadras]

erm,early modern english?

[Kirk]

"Thou" is pronounced /ðaʊ/? Well, that's consistent with the long u of OE. ðú, but for some reason I always thought it was pronounced like you. Good to know.

Oh, really? You've never heard "thou" spoken? Did you grow up in an English-speaking environment?

I mean I know it's not that common anymore but "thou" is still heard every once in awhile, especially in fossilized phrases like "holier than thou" and other peripheral, if still noticeable, uses. Also, we had plenty of exposure to it in reading texts from Early Modern English in English lit. classes in high school.

I don't really like how /ðaʊ/ sounds, but meh.

Hehe--maybe we should just forget about the Great Vowel Shift and go back to Middle English?

[ðæt suːndz liːkʰ ɪt woɫdə beː weːɹd]

[sa wulfs]

[ðæt suːndz liːkʰ ɪt woɫdə beː weːɹd]

Hahaha

And for the record, I'm Spanish, and I've never been to an English-speaking country, so that explains why I've never heard "thou" spoken (my location is some sort of private joke)

[Nero]

So, Hwa her gecweðeþ þæt lǽden Englisc?

Eom Ic ánlíepig her?

[culúrien]

are there any books or internet resources whatsoever to learn old english?

[ego]

are there any books or internet resources whatsoever to learn old english?

http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl ... /index.htm

This one seems very good:

http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/ ... index.html

Old English is amazing and definetely on my list but not for now.. Perhaps in 2-3 years . Is anyone of you advanced?

[Nero]

are there any books or internet resources whatsoever to learn old english?

http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl ... /index.htm

This one seems very good:

http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/ ... index.html

Old English is amazing and definetely on my list but not for now.. Perhaps in 2-3 years . Is anyone of you advanced?

Those are exactly the two pages I've been using / would reccomend

[culúrien]

what's one more language on top of the 6 i'm already learning

[Dminor]

Oh man, I want to learn this tooooo

[Gormur]

and to be accurate, we better use Elder Fuþark to write it. Forget that Roman alphabet.

[Nero]

and to be accurate, we better use Elder Fuþark to write it. Forget that Roman alphabet.

I thought Old English used the latin script, but with a few outdated letters:

[Gormur]

and to be accurate, we better use Elder Fuþark to write it. Forget that Roman alphabet.

I thought Old English used the latin script, but with a few outdated letters:

In England, the Futhorc was further extended to 28 and finally to 33 runes, and runic writing in England became closely associated with the Latin scriptoria from the time of Anglo-Saxon Christianization in the 7th century. The futhorc started to be replaced by the Latin alphabet from around the 9th century. In some cases, texts would be written in the Latin alphabet but runes would be used in place of the word it represented, and the þorn and wynn came to be used as extensions of the Latin alphabet. By the Norman Conquest of 1066 it was very rare and disappeared altogether shortly thereafter. From at least five centuries of use, less than 200 artifacts bearing futhorc inscriptions have survived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Futhorc

[culúrien]

No escric la cas asucative i nominative. Ho pots explicar? Estic confusa. En l'anglès vell.
I don't understand the acusative and nominative cases. Can you explain? I'm confused. In old english.

[JackFrost]

No escric la cas asucative i nominative. Ho pots explicar? Estic confusa. En l'anglès vell.
I don't understand the acusative and nominative cases. Can you explain? I'm confused. In old english.

Nominative - I, he, she, we, they (subject)
Accusative - me, him, her, us, them (direct object)
Dative - to me, to him, to her, to us (indirect object)
Genetive - ours, mine, theirs, yours (possession)

[ego]

So, is anyone fluent, advanced or intermediate in Old English?

[Nero]

No escric la cas asucative i nominative. Ho pots explicar? Estic confusa. En l'anglès vell.
I don't understand the acusative and nominative cases. Can you explain? I'm confused. In old english.

Oh right, because neither spanish nor Catalan/welsh/lakota/arabic/etc have cases

Nominative is what is doing the action.
Accusative is what is receiving the action

I carry the book
Nominative Accusative