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Grimm Tales

“Say what?”

There’s a lot of press about Snow White these days: the movie, the YouTube videos, the chatter. The tale, or its reinvention, has recently caused quite a stir. But where did this classic tale of attempted murder, revenge and resurrection begin?

With Jacob Grimm.

Snow White, or “Schneewittchen,” was originally written down in German in 1812 . In the early 1800s, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had begun seeking out folk tales in order to educate the populace on their rich Germanic heritage. Previously hidden away in the old wives’ cottages of the mysterious Black Forest, the tales became familiar through the efforts of these young men. Fairy tales, as they were later called, delighted children and adults alike. Their fame quickly spread beyond Germany and it wasn’t long before an Englishman, Edgar Taylor, translated the stories into English under the title, German Popular Stories. The last printing boasted over 200 fairy tale titles.

However, the brothers Grimm aren’t famous just for the beloved chidren’s stories. Both brothers were educated as linguists and graduated at the top of their class. Their fascination with folklore was part of their love of German culture, history and language.

Latin, Greek, Armenian, Sanskit, the Romance languages, such as French and Italian, as well as the Germanic languages stemmed from Indo-European. Linguists claim Indo-European and Proto-Indo-European began in the area of the steppes of Eastern Europe thousands of years ago. At some point, the people who had lived in this area began migrating in all directions (one is reminded of the Tower of Babel, where God broke up the language of the inhabitants to keep their evil deeds controlled ). Linguists and historians attribute language change to these migrations.

And this is where Jacob Grimm comes into the story. He realized along with Danish linguist, Rasmus Rask, that of all of the languages which had a common Indo- Europan connection, all had similar sounds for common words, except for the Germanic languages. This observation is called Grimm’s Law. As they migrated NW, the Germanic tribes had substituted some consonant sounds for others. Modern English is a Germanic language descended from Old English and thus we have those Grimm’s law changes in our speech.

Aspirated sounds are those which can be extended with breath and this is where major changes came into being. The sounds, p, t, k became aspirated f, th, h. The ancient aspirated sounds b, d, g became p, t, k. Also aspirated b, d, g became unaspirated. Wow! that is very hard to follow, so I have linked this very clear (sort of) video. https://youtu.be/OLEz1XP9du4?si=r3aockomvOn4Y_77

“Grimm’s Law … explains why Germanic languages have aspirated ‘f’ where other Indo-European languages have ‘p.’ Compare English father, German vater (where ‘v’ is pronounced ‘f’), Norwegian far, with Latin pater, French père, Italian padre, Sanskrit pita.”

What was once a theory is now an established linguistic law. This understanding has become a clue for linguists to view patterns in language change, enlightening their comprehensive study of language.

Way to go, Brothers Grimm! A sidenote here – Grimm in German means “severe” similar to English “grim.” The fairy tales have often been criticized for being too “dark.” The huntsman in Snow White is sent to kill the princess and bring back proof of the deed with her heart. He brings a pig’s heart back instead. But the queen thinks she is eating Snow White’s heart at his return. These are grim details indeed. Well, don’t blame the Grimms. After all, they took their stories from the German “folk” or common people of the time. Perhaps the tales are a kind of magic mirror reflecting the Germanic culture of the 19th century.

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-grimms-law-1690827

Tick Tock

“Say what?”

Tick Tock. Tock Tick.

Mmmm, that doesn’t sound quite right.

Nor does flam flim, or dong ding, hop hip, or song sing. Why? might you ask. You know instinctively that those are …”just wrong”. But you ponder – Why? What ancient linguistic police decided these expressions were incorrect?

The truth is that these pronunciations are instinctive to the English language. And why, you may ask?The answer to the 24,000 dollar question is – the placement of the vowel sounds in our mouths.

There are high vowels, mid vowels and low vowels. Countless acting students have learned to “speak with distinction” from the Edith Skinner method of speech. And in mocking tones, the students joke that they “mutht thpeak with dithtinkshun.” But this is no laughing matter. To aid in clear speech, as well as dialect speech for performing, the actor would do well to discover the placement in the mouth for proper pronunciation of English words as well as correct dialects of any kind. Short i, e, a, and ah, aw are the sounds made by placing the lips and teeth highest, lower and so on in the mouth. It is natural to form the highest placed vowel first and move onto the lower placement as in “tick tock” rather than “tock tick”. It’s just easier to do. This is called ablaut reduplication by linguists. The standard explanation of how we determine the vowel progression is described as short I, followed by short A and if a third vowel sound, short O. In other words, the vowel sounds of the repeated word or phrase are I,A or I,A,O. This phenomenon also occurs in other languages because, hey, we all have the same mouths. However it should be noted that this vowel pattern goes all the way back to the origin of many languages, Proto-Indo-European and Indo-European, which I mentioned in a previous post. Proto-Indo-European and Indo-European began in the area of the steppes of Eastern Europe some 4,000 yeras ago. Sanskrit, Hindi, Farsi, German, French, Latin are some of the languages that stem from that Mother Tongue.

There’s also a natural rhythm expressed with the stresses in the common words and phrases we use. There was an old convenience store with the name White Hen Pantry, the sound of which drove me nuts and I never knew why that was so. I always said it should be better to say White Pantry Hen. Why? Because of the stressed and unstressed pronunciation. If a stress on a syllable is marked as / and the unstressed as __ , the first store name is / / / __ , and the second name, __ __ __ /. This is why iambic pentameter, ( __ /, or unstressed, stressed) is the most common stress pattern in poetry, particularly in Shakespeare’s verse. “Light through her window breaks” doesn’t have the same appeal as “What light through yonder window breaks”. The latter is iambic pentamenter – unstressed/stressed. Why do our ears prefer that pattern? Well, it has been suggested that our heartbeat is iambic pentameter (da dum da dum) and therfore unstressed/stressed is attuned to our own bodily rhythm.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160908-the-language-rules-we-know-but-dont-know-we-know

Darkness into Light – a Deeper Phenomenon

There have been many ancient traditions that celebrated the yearly transition from darkness into light. After December 21, the daylight begins to increase, causing mankind to rejoice at this pivitol time. But is there a deeper reality beyond the courses of earth and sun which established the celebration of darkness to light?

While you contemplate, see here what the early speakers of our English language wrote so long ago and compare the change in the way they have expressed themselves over hundreds of years in the gospel of John.

MODERN ENGLISH

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

OLD ENGLISH

On anginne ærest wæs word. & þæt word wæs mid gode. & god wæs þt word.
þæt wæs on fruman mid gode. ealle þyng wæren ge-worhte þurh hyne. & nan þyng næs ge-worht butan hym. þæt wæs lyf þe on hym ge-worht wæs. & þt lyf wæs manne leoht. & þæt leoht lyhte on þeostrum. & þeostreo þæt ne ge-namen.

MIDDLE ENGLISH

In the bigynnyng was the Word and the Word was at God and God was the Word. This was in the bigynnyng at God. All thingis weren maad bi Hym and withouten Hym was maad no thing that was maad. In Hym was liif and the liif was the liyt of men; and the liyt schyneth in the derknessis. And derknessis comprehenddiden not it.

Hear the Old English –https://www.google.com/search?q=in+the+beginning+was+the+word+in+Old+English&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS1097US1097&oq=in+the+beginning+was+the+word+in+Old+English&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigAdIBCTIzODE3ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:bf987f25,vid:Mu2AKjMMAXM,st:0

Hear the Middle English – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8pqljv81cI&t=104s

Middle English speech developed over time after the Norman invasion of 1066. The subjugated Anglo Saxons, who spoke Old English, mingled and intermarried with their conquerors and in so doing, added “French” and Latin words into the English language. Middle English developed into Early Modern English, the language of Shakespeare. Glæd Ġēol Eallum!

Despicable “Me”

“Say what?”

I’m here to stand up for the little guy. Poor “me“! In contemporary speech, this first person objective pronoun is often left out, cast off, and upstaged in current everyday American speech.

Today in any typical conversation, one is apt to hear statements like, “Give the money to Jason and I.”, or “That’s the best choice for my husband and I.”, or perhaps, “The cat really likes Lukas and I.” Or whatever combination of possibilities may exist without the dreaded “me”.

All of the above sentences are gramatically incorrect. If you removed “Jason”, “husband”, and Lukas. you would be saying “Give the money to I”. “That’s the best choice for I”, and “The cat really likes I.” These sentences are not grammatical. They sound “funny”. If you spoke these sentences, people would give you a quizzical look with a, “say what?” response.

The correct pronoun in these sentences would be “me” because it is the object of the action in the statement – after a verb or after a preposition. But often people substitute “me” for “I”. So why do we avoid “me”? If you ask the average speaker why they think that is, they are likely to say that people don’t know which pronoun to use.

But I maintain that there is a deeper reason to drop “me” and it reveals a current state of mind in our culture. The answer is simple. Because it sounds common. If we use “me”, we have an uneasy feeling that we are unrefined, ignorant. There’s an unspoken code that says “I” is formal, delicate, not heavy. We don’t dare to sound uneducated when we are unsure which pronoun to use. We think of “me” as the supervillain. Run away in terror. But he’s really our friend. Where did the little guy come from anyway?

Modern English is developed from Early Modern English (1500 – 1700), Middle English (1100 – 1500) and Old English (5th century – 1100). Old English was part of the West Germanic branch of the Indo European language which originated in eastern Europe and Asia. “Almost half of all people in the world today speak an Indo-European language, one whose origins go back thousands of years to a single mother tongue. Languages as different as English, Russian, Hindustani, Latin and Sanskrit can all be traced back to this ancestral language.” 1

The West Germanic Old English language gave rise to what is now contemporary English and we can see the roots of many familar words in that ancient tongue. The bread and butter, meat and potato words of English include prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns. Scientists at the University of Reading have discovered that ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘who’ and the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ are amongst the oldest words, not only in English, but across all Indo-European languages. 2

What did “me” look like back in the 5th century? In the singular, involving one individual, “me” is a first person pronoun having to do with self. Second person is the person you are addressing – you. Third person is everyone else – he, she, it.

Singular First person pronouns in Old English were: ich, me, min, me. They were as follows:

Nominative or the Subject of the sentence “I” was ich (sounded like “each”)

Accusative or the Direct Object in the sentence was me (sounded like “may”)

Genetive or Possessive was min (sounded like “mean”)

Dative or Indirect Object was me (sounded like “may”)

Good old “me” – at the ready since the dark ages.

“Me” is helpful. Keeps things clear. Launching the sentence? Nope, taking the hit of the action.

So, let’s put “me” back in circulation like a comfortable, old couch. Afterall, it’s been around for 2,000 years, older than “I”. A trusted companion. And remember, https://youtu.be/0hG-2tQtdlE?si=yHgreU3L3D-C1Ll6

Eggcorns

Say what?

“Duck tape you say? Not in my tool box! That’s duct tape you quack! You need duct tape to repair ducts!”

This little friend won’t “duck” around the problem of eggcorns, the made up words that sound like the real, traditional name for something but have been substituted with new monikers. The dictionary entry defines an eggcorn as, “a word or phrase that results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another, an element of the original being substituted for one that sounds very similar or identical.” – eg., duck tape instead of the original duct tape.

Now here’s a kicker. I asked an acquaintance if he knew what an eggcorn was. He promptly and brightly answered, “Sure I know what an acorn is.” I replied, “Are you talking about the acorn from an oak tree? I’m talking about the word eggcorn that people made up to replace the word, acorn.” Even though I gave my best enunciation, he couldn’t hear the difference. And that’s how it starts.

According to Wikipedia, “…the term egg corn (later contracted into one word, eggcorn) was coined by professor of linguistics, Geoffrey Pullum, in September 2003 in reponse to an article by Mark Liberman on the website, Language Log, a group blog for linguists. In his article, Liberman discussed the case of a woman who had used the phrase egg corn for acorn and he noted that this specific type of substitution lacked a name. Pullum suggested using egg corn itself as a label.”

Here are some of the most common examples of eggcorns. No doubt you’ve heard someone had “old timer’s disease” (alzheimer’s disease). Of course everyone now says “butt” naked even though the original term was “buck” naked. The “butt” form apparently came into use in the 1970s as opposed to the less crass “buck” naked which can be found in printed entries from the early 1900s. The buck, or deer, had smooth fur, which didn’t look like some of the furrier animals which lived in the frontier forest, so a “buck” was described as naked. It is also said that people on the US frontier referred to young, male Native Americans as bucks. The braves often rode their horses with no clothes, thus the reference, “buck naked”.

My all time favorite is beckon call, which has evolved from “beck” and call. In the Middle Ages, a “beck” (from the Germanic, Old English and Middle English) was a nod or signal from a person of power such as a king, or noble. He or she would nod or indicate with their hand to “come hither”. And if that didn’t work, they would call out to the hearer.

Here’s a list of less common eggcorns:

Flustrated instead of frustrated

Nip it in the butt instead of nip it in the bud

Take it for granite instead of take it for granted

It should be noted that Eggcorns are closely related to Malapropisms. Say what? A Malapropism is a single word that is mispronounced to create a humorous twist in a spoken line, usually in theater. The term comes from the errors in a speech that are close substitutes to the intended word. This style of farce originated with Mrs. Malaprop, a silly woman who spoke the wrong word at just the right time. In the play, The Rivals, the character makes mistakes that perfectly mock the situation. Some lines are: “he is the very pineapple of politeness” (instead of pinnacle) and “she’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile” (instead of alligator).

My favorite malapropisms come ftom Archie Bunker, the dock worker, on the TV sitcom, All in the Family, who creates the perfect put down when he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

“Back in my day we learned to keep things in their proper suspective.”

“It’s a well known fact that capital punishment is a detergent to crime!”

“It smells like a house of ill refute.”

Eggcorns give us a glimpse into a language evolving in real time. These word substitutions can either offend or amuse. Humor usually arises from irony or contrast. If you say that something is what it is not but there’s a joke in the saying, it’s an understated trick of language and it usually creates a laugh. You might say, it “trickles” your funny bone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/61/messages/530.html#google_vignette

The Archie Bunker Malapropism Dictionary of Mangled English! Season One

Twelfth Night

Say what?

Twelfth Night? What is it? The twelfth night of what? A well known Shakespeare play of course, but its significance in Medieval culture runs deep in tradition.

Americans are not as familiar, as are our friends across the pond, with the festivities of the twelve days of Christmas. This festive time begins on Christmas Day and ends on the twelfth night, either January 5 or 6th, depending upon your church tradition. The Twelfth Night is also known as Epiphany, the celebration of the Magi visiting the Christ Child.

Today. most people have at least heard of the term, “the twelve days of Christmas.” Most of us are familiar with the bizarre gifts in the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, the most important being the proverbial “partridge in a pear tree.” Some Brits still celebrate this, almost a fortnight, of Christmas cheer in modern revelry. But in the Middle Ages the need to find a way to combat the cold, “bleak midwinter” doldrums was crucial. The twelve day feast was a way to celebrate the winter solstice – the increase of the sunlight beginning in late December was something to rejoice in. Men would fell a large log which was set on fire and continued to burn for approximately twelve days. But more important than the return of physical light, the dispelling of spiritual darkness with the light of the Savior was essential to the Medieval Christian.

In a delightful book, “Christmas Folk” by Natalia Belting and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, the medieval “folk” frolic through the pages enjoying the twelve day feast. “On December 24, “the mummers go out…wissal, wassail through the town, if you’ve got apples throw them down. And with them go Snap the Dragon, Hobby the Horse and the Christmas Bull… For this night Comes Christmas in.”

Mummers wore masks, costumes and generally “frolicked” about the town adding to the merriment. “The Christmas folk dance, in the lanes, in the halls, past fall of the night.”

The culmination of the festivities on January 5 , was the dinner, complete with the Twelfth Night Cake. A bean and/or a pea were hidden within the cake/s and whoever found the treasure in their slice of cake became the Christmas king or queen and donned the Christmas crown.

“January 5, “the season of Yule now comes to its end. Twelfth Night, the Christmas folk dance, sing merry and feast on meat and fowl. And he whose slice of the Twelfth Night cake has the bean, is king of the revels. And she is his queen who has in her slice the lucky pea.”

Our family adopted this tradition many years ago and combined it with the “Baby Jesus birthday cake” on Christmas night. Although every family member protests heartily that they don’t want to get the pea in their slice, they secretly hope they will be the lucky one to wear the crown after all!

“Yule’s come and Yule’s gane,

And all have feasted weel,

So Jock takes up his flail agane,

And Jenny spins her wheel.

Where is the bubbler? and other such baffling regionalisms

When I was in my twenties and began traveling around the country I quickly realized that you didn’t walk into a town to ask for the bubbler.

If you did, someone would look at you quizzically and retort, “The bubbler? What are you talkin’ about?”

Well, of course I was talking about a drinking fountain that didn’t send an arch of water into the air where it would be collected in a metal basin after you had turned a metal handle. No, this was a metal or ceramic tower which had no handle, which in fact didn’t need a handle to turn on the water because the water constantly bubbled up through holes in the center of the basin at the top. You only needed to bend over, put your mouth over the bubbling stream and slurp it up.

Even though this was a big improvement over the tin cup people used to pass around at ye olde bucket of water, it was still of questionable hygiene. Today of course, the covid health czars would shut one of these babies down in a heartbeat, but since we did things like playing with lead paint chips and riding in cars without seatbelts, you never gave slurping the bubbler a second thought. They were in every park. They were seen as a respite from the heat while playing in the Milwaukee summers.

Now there are only two areas in the US where the term bubbler might seem familiar, and then, possibly only to a baby boomer. Besides southeastern Wisconsin, the drinking fountain is affectionately called “bubblah” by some Massachusetts area natives. Its charming moniker can also be heard in nearby Rhode Island. If you glanced at the map which indicates the areas where bubbler might still be a household name, (like Sheboygan, Wisconsin, home of Kohler Corporation ) you would be surprised at the tiny regions represented as well as the distance between them. The story goes that the unique fountain design was invented by an employee of the Kohler Co. and Kohler patented the design and began to sprinkle the surrounding Lake Michigan cities with the refreshing invention. However, Kohler claims that both these tales are tall. Regardless of where the name and invention actually started, one wonders, “How did the little gem get from Wisconsin all the way to its Eastern counterparts, that tiny Bastion of Bubblers in Brockton, MA or Barrington, RI”? And to make matters worse, the Easterners that use the “bubblah” are talking about the arched stream rather than the bubbling one in the bottom of the basin.

Well, after much research, I came up with no answers, nuthin’, nada. If you know the answers to this mystery, give a holler out to me, cuz I wanna know.

Now I am feeling wild and free with “the colorful word” on this post in anticipation of the crazy words we are about to discuss. Words like “yins” and “jimmies”, “pop” and “devil’s night.”

My source for all this was an article in the Readers’ Digest that I discovered in the doctor’s office which showed the US maps of what Americans say for “the colorful word” in their particular region. The source of this geographical linguistic palette is the fascinating, Speaking American, How Y’all, Youse, and You Guys Talk, by Josh Katz.

The tiny area where people use the term “bubbler” is a purple swath on the east coast of Lake Michigan and the Northeast coast of MA and RI. As one looks through Katz’s book at the varied colors representing our favorite terms, we turn to another regionalism – “pop”. That was a strange word to call my soda. But if your relative from Michigan was here to visit, they would insist that’s what a carbonated beverage was called. “Jimmies” are the chocolate sprinkles that in name surpass the mundane chocolate sprinkles that adorn others’ cupcakes and ice cream. “Yins” are the “you guys” of Pennsylvania. “Yins, come on over here!”

Now, the little bugs that light up the early summer nights are claimed as “lightening bugs” by the Eastern US, whereas the Midwest and West elevate them to the poetic, fairylike “firefly”. Wisconsin is home to the city of Wauwatosa, the Native American word for this tiny electrified friend. It means “flash flash, fly away”.

The most startling of all the images captured in the lists of peculiar names has to be the American Southeastern names for the sun shining brightly while the rain pours down. Most Americans have no name for it. Some call it “sunshower.” But the residents of Louisiana and Georgia have dubbed it, “The Devil is beating his wife.” When this phenomenon of nature happens on a southern afternoon, you might hear someone drawl, “Well, the devil’s beatin’ his wife again.”

Apparently, this began in France or was it Hungary. But the strange circumstance has caused it to be labeled something akin to supernatural evil afoot in the world. In South Africa, this phenomenon is referred to as the monkey or fox getting married. And that would be strange indeed.

https://www.theidioms.com/the-devil-is-beating-his-wife/

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-inexhaustible-and-curious-terms-for-sun-shower-around-the-world

F words

Continue reading F words

Long Days

Sigh, long days. With the social distancing and quarantines that we experience during this pandemic, the days do seem to get long. For some, this is a welcomed opportunity to catch up on put-off projects or cleaning, for others it seems like there is little to do except clean up the hair all over the floor that you tore out. I just got an email with some clever quips about the current situation. “I wonder if God got so mad about all of our fighting down here that He sent us to our rooms?” or “This is the day dogs have been waiting for. They realize their owners can’t leave the house and they get them 24/7. Dogs are rejoicing everywhere. Cats are contemplating suicide,” or maybe the one that sums it up best – “The truth is, it’s not so boring at home. But it’s interesting that one bag of rice has 7,456 grains and another has 7,489.”

In the midst of this season, some are also experiencing the season of Lent. Lent is the 40 day period in which the church reflects on the time before the death and resurrection of Christ. So recently, I discovered that the word Lent comes from “lencten”, the Anglo Saxon or Old English term for “long days.” We get the word “lengthen” from it. The Anglo Saxons didn’t have clocks. They observed the obvious. The sun rose earlier and set later in the spring of the year. According to Bede, 8th century historian and scholar, and later Aelfric, Anglo Saxon prose writer, the Anglo Saxons had four seasons: lencten or lenctentid was spring or spring time, sumor was summer, hærfest was harvest or autumn, and winter remained our word winter. Bede wrote that winter was over for the Anglo Saxon on February 7. On February 7, 2020, the London sunrise was 7:29 am and sunset was 5:01 pm. That doesn’t seem like a real long day. Now, April 1 is a different story. Sunrise was at 6:35 am and sunset at 7:34 pm. So with 13 hours of light, you could call April 1 a truly long day. So what did these early English speakers do with their “lencten”?

A typical Anglo Saxon’s spring workday would consist of feeding the animals, planting, plowing, and of course eating, all of which needed daylight. There was plenty to keep these people busy attaining their yearly goal of a good harvest. April was called Eostremonath or Eostre month. Eostre, according to Bede, was a pagan goddess of rebirth. Her image is associated with Hares and Eggs, both symbols of new life. The name probably stems from the Germanic Ostara, from the Greek goddess of dawn, Eos, and ultimately, from a Proto-Indo-European goddess of dawn.

You may have noticed that the name of this goddess sounds an awful lot like Easter. Well, the Christian missionaries didn’t want to abolish all pagan traditions as they shared their new ideas, so they translated the new birth of the earth in the celebration of the spring season into the message of the death and resurrection of Christ. The church kept the pagan name “Easter” for the Sunday celebration. And somehow the little pagan bunnies and eggs of the Eostre celebration, also survived.

After the darkness and cold of winter, April was considered the apex of new life. Not only did the Anglo Saxon peasant have the joy of increased sunlight, but animals usually gave birth at this time. With the warmer days and the first flowers blooming, April has always signaled that the world is changing for the better. Easter is often in April. Scholars have proven through historical record, geological research, and the computer studies of the ancient positions of stars, that Jesus Christ was indeed crucified on April 3, 33 A.D.

So celebrate April! Celebrate the looooong days. Celebrate the light! Things could be worse. You could be an Anglo Saxon with no electricity. Then you would really be enjoying the “lenctenid.”

Sources:

https://oldenglishwordhord.com/2017/02/07

http://research.uvu.edu/mcdonald/anglo-saxon/paganfestivals/Eosturmonath%20Festival.html

Seasons and festivals: Time in Anglo Saxon and Viking England

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61127/month-month-guide-anglo-saxon-calendar

Click to access lent.pdf

https://qz.com/1544541/winter-is-over-according-to-the-anglo-saxon-calendar/

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/anglo-saxon-england/article/seasons-of-the-year-in-old-english/39241A50CEFF4FB7A63A458FC9D6C3FA

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jesus-crucifixion-date-possible_n_1546351?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABlo_KKad3kvKem50GQMngbi02ZUaIxwcG4Exsn7H84iKLMd6Y4CZHpYoXnWKM1J1HN7H1dnbnF-U9uT8RF2GihOjHL4ODhX_xPBVT_M77yaA9pLz8h-EHuQK_ZThfrbSyBQWhs9cuPp1eKhdJ8dcD5XcLzab_sWbU6nGQ40lf_W

Kennings and Compounds

say what?

What in the world is a kenning? Sounds like cunning. Aha! Both words come from Old Norse kunna meaning “know” and Old English cunnan meaning “know.” Cunning originally meant knowledge. Only later it became a synonym for craftiness or trickery, probably because it also used to mean using magic arts. “Cunning folk” were people who supposedly helped their neighbors with tricky little problems of life like “Where did I leave my keys?” and “Can you get my daughter a good husband?” So they “knew” stuff. They practiced their methods, including spells, from the Middle Ages through the early 1900s. In Scotland, to ken means to know…you know like, “beyond my ken” in “Timid and shy and scared are you, Of things beyond your ken.” in “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” from The Sound of Music or that other musical theater gem, Brigadoon where the confused Fiona says, “I dinna know…I canna (ken nae) say.”

Now, a kenning is a completely different thing, although it is related to knowing. If you could go back in time to England of the 800s AD, you would probably meet some Vikings. And they would be speaking Old Norse. Old Norse gave us words like berserk, club, slaughter…get the idea of their favorite pastime? The Anglo-Saxons who also raided and later settled England were cousins of the Vikings and shared a common Germanic, linguistic ancestry. Both Norse and Anglo-Saxon poets created kennings – compound words which were metaphors or comparisons of one thing to another by combining two seemingly unrelated words. The poets had a “knowing” about some deeper image they were trying to convey. My favorite is “whale-road”. Can you guess what this meant? Think about it. I will reveal later.

These kennings are almost riddles and they are the reason that Bilbo and Gollum have their riddle contest in The Hobbit. J.R.R. Tolkien was a master of the Old English or Anglo-Saxon language. He would have been very familiar with the literature of the Anglo-Saxons, including kennings and riddles. A kenning is a compound word which is a new way to look at something. It is something you need to figure out. But it’s not nearly as complicated as a riddle. The riddle in the fifth chapter of The Hobbit which I think captures the feel of the scene best is one of Gollum’s riddles,

Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking

Answer: Fish

A kenning for fish might be scale-swimmer, or mail-swimmer. Ok, now some of you probably guessed that the whale-road is the channels of the sea. Giving an insight into the mind of an Anglo-Saxon, here are some of their kennings: battle-sweat (blood), battle-light (sword), sky-candle (the sun), bone-house (body), winter-spear (icicle).

Now, onto compound words. We have a lot of them in English. In my first blog post, “The Journey Begins”, I gave a very brief history of the English language. The Old English words that survive into Modern English are “meat and potatoes” words like prepositions, conjunctions, functional words that hold our thoughts together. The use of compounds has also survived… big-time. Railroad, moonlight, firefly are examples of closed compounds. Good-looking, sugar-free are examples of hyphenated compounds. This Germanic language compounding trait begins in Old Norse and continues in English and German. The Germans actually are the champs. Germans add and keep adding smaller words to create long chains. The longest ever created is: rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertragungsgesetz, a 63 letter word for a law regulating the testing of beef. They finally dropped it officially in 2013. I guess it was even too long for the Germans. The man who shortened his name from Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, said of the length of some German words, “Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:
Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions.”

Ahh, the procession of words! We keep creating these wonderful nuggets of letters and sounds to express images. English is expanding with new words every day, including new compound words. I challenge you, my readers, to create some new words. How about some kennings? You can start with a base word that is like the kenning you will create. For example, road, in whale-road, is the base word which is like the channels of the sea. Couple it with a word which describes the base word, as whale describes what kind of road it is. Please give us your creations in a comment to this blog. Have fun, word-makers!

https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Scots-English-Scots_dictionar

https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/kenning

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10095976/Germany-drops-its-longest-word-Rindfleischeti….html

http://www.twainquotes.com/German.html