Comments on: We’re All Gonna Die!

By: Mitch

Mitch — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:21:09 +0000

Old English used some letters that we don’t have any more. The easy way to write them is to just copy them, like I did. Some of them are currently used in Icelandic, so they have ASCII codes and HTML escape sequences.

� = “thorn” = th (sometimes used to differentiate unvoiced th like in “think”)
� = “eth” = th (sometimes used to differentiate voiced th like in “those”)
� = “ash” = a as in “hat”

There are a couple of others that can’t be rendered in HTML & so can’t be shown here. The text uses “gh” for the OE letter “yogh,” meaning “yoke,” and representing a sound sort of like “ich” in German. I don’t see “ezh” here, either.

Some of the letters & combinations don’t mean what they look like.
OE “sc” = ME “sh”
OE “c” was used for ME “k” and “q,” which did not exist in OE (cyninge = king, cwen = queen, although not pronounced like that)
OE “y” as a vowel sounded like French “tu”
OE “ea” is a long “�”
OE “eo” is a long “e” (Continental long “e,” like “beta” rather than “beet”)

Once you get the screwy spelling down, you can see modern words there, with some pronunciation differences mostly in the vowels. Examples:
��t = that
so� = sooth (as in forsooth and soothsayer), meaning “truth”
“swa leng swa wyrse” = so (much the) longer, so (much the) worse
deofol = devil (the “f” here pronounced as a “v” between vowels)
ealle = all
yfel �fter o�rum = (one) evil after another
wyr� = worth
sceal = shall (identical pronunciation!)

Sad to say, but even as an undergrad English major, I was hopelessly geeky.

By: Shannon Love

Shannon Love — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 11:14:34 +0000

It has been noted that modern environmentalism follows a religious template. First, we have a golden era far in the past when everyone lived in harmony with nature. Then humans fall from grace by developing advanced technology. Now we face a cataclysmic end of days if we don’t mend our ways.

By: Couhoulinn

Couhoulinn — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 09:40:41 +0000

The � is pronounced like “th” I think.

Fortunately, William the Conqueror came in England with French and Latin!

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:17:36 +0000

How do you get it to make that � thing? And how is that pronounced?

By: Ginny

Ginny — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:40:10 +0000

Thanks Mitch.

& go to hell – which we deserve for melting Greenland (or is it making it freeze over?)

600 years later & 350 before us, “Day of Doom” was a best seller; indeed, Edward Taylor was beguiled by his lovely wife, whose speech was “perfumed” with Wigglesworth’s lines.

Something there is that loves death & damnation.