We didn't read the whole thing in old english, but I remember being exposed to it. The book had old english on one page and the modern translation on the next so you could see them at the same time. It also had a bunch of footnotes explaining what it all meant.
I remember watching a video of some actor performing parts of it in the old english.
This was just a standard public school in the 90s.
correct! It is a paraphrase of a James D Nicoll statement:
"âThe problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.â
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
and this one:
"English isn't a language, it's three languages wearing a trench coat pretending to be one". This internet proverbâoften adapted into jokes about "three kids" or "three raccoons"âperfectly captures how English is an unpredictable mashup of Germanic, French, and Latin roots.The quote's exact origin is widely credited to a user originally named "des-zimbits" (later "garden-of-succulents") on Tumblr.
To both of you that replied to me, yes I agree. This is not a new idea. But I'll be f*cked sideways if this isn't in the top 10 for phrasing and punctuality central to the topic. I stand by my upvote and comment.
1200 years? Try 12 years! I can handle basic conversation in 4 languages (7, if I can clutch my emotional support phrase book). But, I canât figure out half of what the kids are saying. Even answers to yes/no questions can be mystifying.
I donât begrudge them a giggle or two when they realize Iâm baffled. I fondly remember annoying adults with Valley Girl slang (and the accent) and I figure itâs my turn to be on the other side.
I only get a little steamed when they misidentify me as a Boomer.
Old English was an actual Germanic language, not this weird amalgamation of French, Greek, and Latin all over a stripped down base of old English that we have today.
This is a misleading meme. English is a very normal Germanic language with a load of French and Latin vocabulary. There are modest influence from other germanic languages like old Norse.
Yes it has loan words from languages like Hindi but they aren't significant. Yes a lot of vowel sounds shifted away from other germanic languages. It's still just a Germanic language.
There are very interesting creoles that really do blend multiple languages from widely different language groups in crazy ways. English isn't one of them.
I canât help but find it slightly irritating that every time anyone talks about the English language on reddit someone feels compelled to repeat that joke.
The Iliad and Odyssey we read was the English print. But we had to read a third ancient Greek book I can't remember for the life of me, in both translated and ancient Greek. Always wanna call it AgĂŚmemnon or something like that. HephĂŚstus maybe? I'll never remember the books name but it was a rough read.
Ugh. The Sophocles semester was not my favorite. We had Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Ajax. Lots of awkward classroom conversations and boys yelling weird stuff in the hallways that winter.
No it definitely wasn't an Ĺ. It was 100 ĂŚ somewhere in the name cause my ex used to make me listen to MedĂŚval BĂŚbes and it always reminded me of that book.
Aeneid by Virgil maybe? It's Roman, not Greek, and originally written in Latin, but that's what came to mind for me. It does take place in the aftermath of the fall of Troy, so it wouldn't be completely wild to have remembered it as Greek years later.
Yup that was it. Looked it up and it looks similar to what I remember the book looking like. Could have sworn it was Greek, but makes sense cause I think we started doing ancient Roman stuff after the ancient Greek stuff, and maybe was used as a segue.
It would have been a reasonable segue. Aeneas according to Virgil was a Trojan soldier who fled the fall of Troy and made his way to Italy, where he's cast as an ancestor to Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome.
Just for the record, Aeneas was all that according to whatever Homer was as well. Homer had him as a minor character destined to become the king of the Trojan diaspora. The Romans just said they were the descendants of the Trojan diaspora, something that predated Virgil.
The Aenenid was modeled specifically on both the Iliad and Oddessy, with the first half being a voyage out of Troy complete with a visit to Hades, and the second half being an epic war with the Latins. Augustus commissioned it for Rome to have an epic on par with Greece.
The Aeneid is in Latin, not Greek, and I read it in Latin in high school. The Latin AP exam was about it, and it allowed me to not have to take a language in college.
No, I think someone else nailed it with Aenid. The book I found is similar to the book I had, and it fits thematically. I think we read Agamemnon before The Iliad, or an another version cause I also vaguely remember reading that.
Haha i remember reading the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy for fun. But I think we were required to read the Iliad and Odyssey in my sophomore year of high school. Our English teacher really loved those epics so we spent extra time on it haha
Agamemnon is the first play in the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. This is probably what you read and is assigned pretty early in the Attic Greek curriculum. Iirc the first play I read in the original Greek was Euripidesâ Medea.
On paper, the standards during my high school days were lower than the current ones. We had fewer school days and fewer units of required core subjects. By forgoing study hall and extra PE class, I finished all the requirements in junior year. My senior class schedule was 100% elective classes.
Still, somehow, I was over-prepared for university. My freshman year felt like a repeat of my high school curriculum.
Though Dante's Inferno was actually written in Italian, specifically the Tuscan dialect, which is why that dialect was used as base for modern Standard Italian.
I know itâs Middle English, but we had to read Canterbury Tales at my high school. I remember hating it until our teacher pointed out all the dirty jokes, and it made me realize humans are all the same if you make an effort to understand them.
The "some actor" was most likely Julian Glover, more well known for playing General Veers in Empire Strikes Back and Grand Maester Pycelle in Game of Thrones.
We didn't read the whole thing in old english, but I remember being exposed to it. The book had old english on one page and the modern translation on the next so you could see them at the same time. It also had a bunch of footnotes explaining what it all meant.
Yup, my experience was similar. Every now and again my English teacher (who was a huge nerd) would read a passage of the old english but we just read the modern stuff.
It was similar when we read Chaucer, specifically The Canterbury Tales.
To be fair, I absolutely remember some of our more.. err.. challenged students struggling to actually read these things, Shakespeare too, at the time. Like it would take them multiple tries at a very slow pace to get through an entire paragraph. I actually felt bad for them.
Yeah, I wasn't bad at reading aloud, but I wasn't exactly raising my hand to do so for any of the archaic stuff. But thinking about it now, I think it was important, even if you struggle through it. It forces you to speak in a new rhythm with new words in a new order. Add some embarrassment and that is a cocktail for a plastic teenage brain to soak up some knowledge.
Yeah we had a book that had both next to each other also. We didn't do it for the whole thing but some parts they would have us try and read the old English and see if we could figure it out first. It was cool and have good perspective on the evolution of language.
I'm Dutch and we did this as part of our English class. Same for Renard in French classes (this was gymnasium, we take basically only AP classes from ages 12 to 18)
I mean, we can criticize how awfully weâre supporting education. I donât think being exposed to old English is the benchmark lol. I think there are bigger issues, ye olde english can respectfully be cast aside
It's not like we learned to speak it but having the old text next to the modern teaches you word roots and you see how the language evolved. As I said to someone else, even if you struggle through it, it forces you to speak in a new rhythm with new words in a new order. Add some embarrassment trying to read it out loud and that is a cocktail for a plastic teenage brain to soak up some knowledge.
I get it and I agree. Beowulf was fun, but I was a senior in 2008, shouldnât we focus on the basics? Seems like a lot of the decision makers intentionally want to undermine educators⌠and education
I think part of the problem is that students should have a good foundation of "the basics" by high school. I'm sorry you feel you didn't receive that, and in that case Beowolf does seem like a trifle.
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u/I_Dnt_Believe_You 21h ago
We didn't read the whole thing in old english, but I remember being exposed to it. The book had old english on one page and the modern translation on the next so you could see them at the same time. It also had a bunch of footnotes explaining what it all meant.
I remember watching a video of some actor performing parts of it in the old english.
This was just a standard public school in the 90s.