Grǣġhama

The Spring Old English course is now live! Come read Ælfric homilies with us. This is officially the follow-on course from the OE Beginners' Class, but anyone who has familiarity with Old English grammar is welcome. More here: habesnelac.com/courses/p/sp26…

The word "indictment" not being spelled how it's pronounced is actually a relatively recent development. We used to spell it "enditement" in the 15th century. For whatever reason, it was respelled in the following centuries as indictment to match the Latin root of indicto. Some other 15th century spellings were indytament, indytement, and endytment. All better, in my opinion, than the current spelling.

It’s about that time of year when polemics and misinformation on the origins of Easter begin cropping up everywhere. Stay informed and check out my interview with Richard Sermon on this topic: youtu.be/ERGnkf_m-nY?si…

Nīeten is a diminutive of nēat, another word for a farm animal. There was also fēoh, which came to mean “money”, but originally meant “livestock”.

There are mainly two words for “animal” in Old English. ‘Nīeten’ generally means a farm animal or something you can domesticate, while ‘dēor’ or ‘wilddēor’ are wild animals. The latter word is where we get “deer” from, but the meaning doesn’t become that specific until ~13th c.

A year ago today, I achieved my goal of being able to recite 1,000 lines of Beowulf from memory: youtube.com/watch?v=ymkK9j… These days, because of my pigritia and signifigantly busier life, I can only get to about line 750 before I have to reference a book, so hopefully I can reconquer some lost territory in that regard in the coming months. Either way, I'm extremely grateful to my past self for brute-forcing through it; the experience permanently transformed my ability to understand Beowulf and the rhythm of Old English verse in a totally unique and irreplicable way. Memorize poetry!!

Read the Homilies of Aelfric ENTIRELY in Old English with @grahamscheper!! Learn more here: habesnelac.com/courses

@cribbenMerrill @PaulDeane3 It’s my favorite thing he ever wrote!

Till We Have Faces, which I grudgingly set out to cram in last minute for a couples book club, turned out to be an incredible page-turning read.

Today’s interview is with Mark Faulkner of @tcddublin , to talk about what happened to English literature after the Norman conquest. Did French replace English as the literary language? Or is the reality more nuanced? Check it out here: youtu.be/mCaXmVsyp1o?si…

On this page, we have the first two lines of Horace’s Carmen VI, and then… notes! On one hand, it is kind of annoying to have to flip the page after two lines, but on the other hand, the editors have really striven to answer any possible question I could have.

There’s a whole museum / children’s attraction for Beatrix Potter in Windermere. It’s really charming, I definitely recommend checking it out.

It's remarkable how intimidating a wall of apparatus criticus like this looks, compared to how easy it actually is to understand once you have someone explain it to you. I am also very grateful to the French editors of this text for writing their notes in Latin!

@danae_hudlow @kingsepp I had an undergrad student once complain that they struggled to complete the reading because it was the first time they had read Old English. It was from the 1930s

People describing Shakespearean English as "Old English" is one of my greatest pet peeves

@SueBursztynski @AarghhhhT What a fun soundtrack that was, especially the decision to mimick Wagner at the end.

@AarghhhhT @grahamscheper I’m a huge fan of both film music and classical. A lot of women are doing great film music these days. Natalie Holt composed the great score for the TV series Loki, and there is a string quartet of the main theme. Plus some concerts of that music.

Would someone in the Classical music sphere explain to me why composers of movie soundtracks get sneered at? I find that kind of music extremely enjoyable, even for movies I’ve never seen, and structurally I really cannot tell the difference between eg. Williams and Holst.

@AarghhhhT What’s the news? 👀

It’s called “Sanctus Beda was iboren her” (Saint Bede was born here) and can be read here: csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/m…

This Middle English poem praises the heights of English literature and education, lamenting that English learning has waned under the Normans. A sad and ironic note - in a poem complaining about under-education, the poet seems to think Ælfric and Alcuin are the same person…

@Werbil195791 I would argue a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is honestly rather banal, but the music is incredible (with a pretty funny reference to Morricone, actually). But I see Zimmer get called a “four-chord repeater” by Classical enthusiasts 😳

@grahamscheper Most movie music can never rise above the movie they accompany. When they do, we remember them forever, eg Ennio Morricone, Ferrante and Teicher, Lalo Schifrin, and the Bee Gees. I don't see the others as sneered at as much as simply forgotten.

📣📣📣Spring Classes available now in Latin, ancient Greek, and Old English! Join us to grow your ancient language proficiency!!!

@ChozangNoyb Does it being in the last few decades make it incorrect? Would you have said that “you” was incorrect in the first few decades that it became commonplace to be used in the singular? Just because a change is recent doesn’t mean it didn’t happen

"They" being used in the singular is only the past few decades. It happened when people started complaining about using "he" when the sex was unknown. For animals, I would rather have one referred to as "he", which is potentially an error of sex, then "it", which is an error of sentience.

Sometimes, “mistakes” get used so often they become the standard. “bird” should really be “brid”, but it was mispronounced as bird (metathesis) and the mispronunciation stuck. “words” should be “word” like sheep in the plural. Oh, and “books” should be “beech”, like geese. “They” being used in the singular is now accepted in official English usage, which mirrors “you” being accepted for singular use a few centuries ago (it’s the plural, while “thou” is the singular. That’s why we have to say things like “y’all”). Languages change 🤷‍♂️