Old English: Esperanto of Dead Languages

Yeah, that one.

I've been reading and listening to Mark Atherton's Teach Yourself Complete Old English.

On the language nerd sites, I've seen a lot of talk about the wonders of Esperanto. Since it is deliberately regular and simple, it is supposed to be a great first step in to wider language learning for the monolingual.  I don't know. It sounds to me like the claims about Latin (logical) and Sanskrit (mystical), but I know zip about Esperanto so I'll stay quiet.

Anyway, I'm about two-thirds of the way through the book. And I've realized something: for native English speakers, Old English is the Esperanto of dead languages. Sure, it's not as clean and free of exceptions as Esperanto, but its core assumptions about language are the same as modern English. Here's an Old English quote taken from Atherton:

Ða Iosep wæs syxtynewintre, he heold hys fæder heord mid hys broðrum.

Ok, there are two words you aren't likely to know. Like ða and mid. So I'll give you their modern equivalents.

When Iosep wæs syxtynewintre, he heold hys fæder heord with hys broðrum.

If you are generous with the spelling, you should pretty easily see:

When Joseph was sixteen winters, he held his father's herd with his brothers.

I don't know how much easier a different language gets. Admittedly, this is pretty easy, but there's a lot of stuff like that throughout the book. Yes, there is some learning curve, because Old English relies more on case than word order to convey meaning. And some of the vocabulary is different. And word order is sometimes different in subordinate clauses. But at the end of the day, it's the same language separated by 1000 years. 

If you're looking for a first dead language to study, you could do much worse than Old English. Atherton's book is lighter on grammar than others, but for a first foray into a dead language you don't want the grammar. It's theory, and you want practice. If you want grammar talk, may I suggest this. (Oops, did I just sound like I was on an anti-grammar rant?)

She loves me

She bought the Teach Yourself Complete Old English (Anglo-Saxon).

I don't know that I'll have time to get serious with it right away, but soon enough. Soon enough. I can't wait to dig a bit deeper into the predecessor of the language I call my own: English.

Future personal study

I'm not sure, but I'm thinking Old English and Sanskrit sound like fun targets for organized study.

I like Old English because it is, after all, the forerunner of the language I speak on a daily basis. It also doesn't hurt that there is quite a bit of interesting stuff written in Old English. Including wikipedia. I suspect it would be pretty easy to get to a respectable reading level but real work to master it. The cool thing here is that cruddy learning materials shouldn't hinder me too much—there are some deeply intuitive things going on in Old English for native English speakers. Well, from what I've seen anyway. Here's a sentence I cherry-picked from the OE wikipedia.

Willelm I (c. 1027 – 9 Hāligmōnaþ, 1087) wæs Engla cyning fram 1066 tō 1087.

There's only one word in there that I can't figure out, and I can see it is a month.

Sanskrit also appeals because it is kind rounds out the trifecta of dead languages with bad reputations: Latin and Ancient Greek being the other two. My apprehension with Sanskrit is that it will be Persian redux—cool, but difficult to crack with self-study. I mean look at this:

मनो हि द्विदिधं प्रोक्तं शुद्धं चाशुद्धमेव च ।

I'd tell you what this says, but I don't know. I've never studied Sanskrit.

Speaking of the Farsi debacle, I've been working on this. The idea behind it is to introduce everything with the context of Persian—this should look suspiciously familiar to Latinists. If you are a native speaker of Persian and see any gross errors, please let me know. This is how I am solidifying what I have learned in Persian. Which isn't much. Of course, the whole thing requires that you have a working knowledge of the alphabet. Hey look! I've found a series of videos that do just that.

Initial Paperwork

I'm starting to get all of the form letters and paperwork from the school. So I guess it is all real.

While I know that I'm perfectly qualified, part of me thinks that I've managed to pull the wool over several peoples' eyes. Sadly, my wife is not one of them.

We had a small bet the other day: which word was the older word? Fall or autumn.

I'll drop the big hint: neither is the original English word for the season. The original Anglo-Saxon word is still in use: harvest. It now describes something that happens during the season as opposed to the season itself.

Highlight for the answer: According to the OED, Autumn is older by a few centuries. Fall, as a name for the season, is a much more recent thing.


I lost.