My father, born and raised in Dorset in 1922, was fond of using 'bist' in the context of saying 'how are you' - 'how bist'. He always said it with a smile as he was remembering how his grandparents had spoken.
@damonwilliams78992 жыл бұрын
My father from Headington in Oxfordshire also said bist as in 'How bist,my duck?'.
@boum622 жыл бұрын
Lovely tale.
@grossmeister13372 жыл бұрын
In german it is form of a verb "to be" ("sein") in 2nd person singular, which conjugates like "You are" ("Du bist"). So, it seems to be a shortned variant of it.
@simongreaves94652 жыл бұрын
I've heard in Suffolk 'There ta be' as a similar sort of phrase for 'There you are' when you give something to someone. I guess a remnant of 'There thou bist'. I can't remember if the speaker was a Suffolk dialect speaker though.
@kamranabbasi6757 Жыл бұрын
@Peter Bennett you must be arround 75 years of age
@halsawyer99304 жыл бұрын
My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word "the" used in phrases like: "the more I look at this, the stranger it seems', or "the bigger they come, the harder they fall". This "the" is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English "þā", pronounced "tha" which means either "when" or "then". Back in early Middle English the structure "if - then" had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said "þā whatever, þā whatever", meaning "when such-and-such, then such-and-such". "þā" sounds almost the same as "the" and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. "the more, the merrier" literally means "when more, then merrier" or "if more, then merrier'; same as centuries ago.
@oddlang6874 жыл бұрын
Wow, that's really cool! I never even thought about how "the" is different in that construction. Thank you!
@pyrointeam4 жыл бұрын
The ð sound has been one letter before it became th. And handwritten it looked similar to the d and similar to the y and j (handwritten that is). In german it is der, die, das (pronouns in male, female, neutral) but in german accents it's sometimes only "de" very similar to ðe/ the. Ther was a time when the handwritten ð was read like an y or j (in german the same sound when in the beginning), that's where the old "ye" comes from "ye olde pub" - "de alde" (german Plattdeutsch accent) - "Der/Die alte" (Highgerman). But in german there is also a "je" which sounds exactly like the ye in ye olde pub but means exactly: Je mehr, je besser! OR Je mehr desto besser! (The more, the better!). Couldn't it be these pronounciations just got mixed up during that phase and the more is not really from "þā" but from "Je" ? Just a thought. It would make sense to me.
@toopieare4 жыл бұрын
The more you know...
@Spergen4 жыл бұрын
This is really interesting, I had never realized or even thought about that
@____spacecadet____4 жыл бұрын
Raymond Lu *When more you know
@yvonnebloor66573 жыл бұрын
My grandmother was born in West Yorkshire in 1888 and lived to be 105 years old. I can remember her using a reflexive verb that we don’t hear now. She would say. “Eee, I’ve just bethought mysen”(myself), meaning, “I’ve just remembered.” I never heard anyone else say this.
@rjmun5803 жыл бұрын
I remember people in Lancashire using ` I bethought mysen` in the 1950s but it's probably died out now. Another phrase was the warning to children which always started with `Now think on ` accompanied with a wagging finger. For example `Now think on, remember your manners at their house`.
@EvilPenguin905 Жыл бұрын
In Dutch "ik heb me bedacht"
@joriskbos1115 Жыл бұрын
In Dutch, this would literally translate as "ik heb me zojuist bedacht", but is usually phrased "ik bedenk me net", which is a very common phrase. The reflexive verb "bedenken" can also mean "to change your mind" alongside "to remember just now"
@psychodonkey1215 ай бұрын
@rjmun580 I'm from the Staffordshire Moorlands, and all four of my grandparents grew up farming or in small villages in that area. They frequently used "sen" as a reflexive pronoun and my mother even still does it to this day and she was only born in the 60s. I've heard her come out with me-sen, yuh-sen, 'is-sen and 'er-sen in place of myself, yourself, himself and herself respectively. She also uses a weird construction where instead of saying, for example, "I need a pan to cook the eggs", she'll say "I need a pan f't cook the eggs", where f't is pronounced f schwa t. I feel like it's a shortening of saying "I need a pan FOR TO cook the eggs" but I've never heard it in another dialect so I've never stumbled upon anything about it in my reading before.
@AZURNERUB3 жыл бұрын
In the expression "in the olden days" the word "olden" still has the old case ending of dative plural. In German for example it is always mandatory to add n at the end of adjectives and nouns in Dative plural.
@vattenflick Жыл бұрын
Is that related to adjectives for materials: golden, wooden, oaken?
@easterlinear Жыл бұрын
@@vattenflickno
@theodoremrodgers Жыл бұрын
Ox and Oxen, and old and olden. Very few other examples of pluralization with an 'en' in modern english.
@ZBisson6 ай бұрын
@@theodoremrodgerschildren
@tothemountains4 жыл бұрын
This video is really interesting for me: as an English speaker living in Germany, my son (aged 5) speaks English with his version of German grammar: for the past tense he uses the German perfect 'ich habe etwas gemacht' but with his own take on it 'I have that a-do': the fact that the a- prefix he uses this for all verbs (e.g I have that a-hear, I have that a-play, I have that a-say) etc) has precedence in variants of old English is fascinating!
@killepitsch97264 жыл бұрын
This is fascinating!
@liamgraves89163 жыл бұрын
Similar with my son and Dutch. He speaks pidgin at home that includes "I have gefound it"
@PraxisAbraxis Жыл бұрын
@@liamgraves8916 adorable
@elsakristina2689 Жыл бұрын
Well, he’s not really wrong ^^
@hazyorange8 ай бұрын
That's an amazing way to explain German grammar
@mmuchoco7714 жыл бұрын
Ah, another episode of Accidental ASMR with Simon Roper
@smuu19964 жыл бұрын
It's good though, niothing to really complain about.
@thorr18BEM4 жыл бұрын
SBSTN DRKS , one simply does not complain about ASMR.
@adamclark1972uk4 жыл бұрын
@@smuu1996 Definitely nothing to complain about. This is one of the best channels on KZbin, if not the best.
@smuu19964 жыл бұрын
@@adamclark1972uk In der Tat.
@simonroper92184 жыл бұрын
@@adamclark1972uk Thank you friend 💛
@saxoman14 жыл бұрын
I LOVE the fossilized remains of Old English in Modern English! Since you asked us to mention more examples, here are some of my favorites: 1. Midwife : from Old English "midwif" "Mid" = With (cognate with German "Mitt") "Wife" = human female (Woman) or wife (cognate with German "Weib") It literally meant "with (the pregnant) woman", which is exactly what a midwife is today (we don't even think about it!). It is one of the few fossilizations of "mid" (meaning "with") and wife (meaning "woman") left over! It also shows how both archaic words AND *old meanings* of *modern* words can be fossilized! Thus, "midwife" is also an example of this, as it is the only instance in Modern English that I know of where "wife" actually means "woman" (a fossilized meaning). Although, most people today probably vaguely interpret "midwife" as "middle wife". And on the "wif" meaning "woman" note, we have the male equivalent that survives in: 2. Werewolf from Old English "Werwulf" Were = human male (man) Wolf = ... wolf! Its cognate with Swedish "varulf"! So the beautiful companion to "wife" is "were" (OE "wif" and "wer", or "man" and "woman")! I've heard it said that for the sake of poetry/alliteration, it is a shame that we mostly lost "were", however it at least survives in this one word! But wait a sec! How did "wife" come to only mean "married female companion" and lose its other meaning as just "woman" and where the heck did "woman" come from? Come to think of it, why did "were" get replaced my "man"? Well continue with me on this journey: 3. Man from Old English "man" meaning... well... man haha. But it had the *primary* meaning of "human being" in general!!! Now, this is one of this complex ones, because in a way we *still* use it in that general sense believe it or not! When we say phrases like "man made" or Armostrong's "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", this is actually using the word "man" in that older sense of "human beings" in general (it includes females)!!! With this knowledge, we can figure out "woman", which comes from Old English "wifman"!!! I hope something clicked just now! Because using all the previous knowledge, that equals wif "female" + man "human"! And that is exactly what we mean when we say "woman" today! Furthermore, the general *pronunciation* of the plural "women" *also* comes from an Old English form, which contracted "wifman" to "wimman" (pronounced "wEEmon")! Think about how that's generally pronounced today ("woman" vs "women") and you can hear the slight "i"-ish sound (ɪ as in "pit") in the plural! Amazing! So what happened with man vs were? Well, there used to be a "werman" just as there was a "wifman", but "wer" eroded over time and we came to just use "man" for "(adult) male human". And that's how you go from "wife" to woman and from "were" to man. What a wild ride! 4. Hussy... yes, *that* word... meaning "improper woman" among other things... from the Old English compound word "huswif" which was "hus + wif" (equivalent to " *House* " + " woman, *wife* ") Wait, "hussy" used to mean *"housewife"* ?! How could that be? And why do we still have the modern compound "housewife"? Well, if we trace the sound/spelling changes of "hussy" back, it goes (MnE - Modern English, ME - Middle English, OE - Old English): hussy (MnE) -> hussiv/hussif (ME) -> huswif (ME, OE) (Pronounced " *hOOsWEEf* ") Now I don't know about you, but " *hOOsWEEf* " is a bit cumbersome to fully pronounce... Human languages tend to naturally simplify pronunciations over time and English is no exception, quite the opposite actually! So, over time, the "wif" in "huswif" was gradually reduced to "y" in the new "hussy" (pronounced hOOsEE, much easier!) and in the process the entire word became derogatory. This, combined with the vowel sound changes in the *free-roaming* words "hus" ("hOOs" to "house") and "wif" ("WEEf" to "wife") meant that, eventually, people could no longer recognize "house + wife" in "hussy" (which went on its own less extreme vowel sound change to modern "hUHsEE") and thus it was no longer a compound word. But... apparently there was a need for the old word with its old meaning, so English speakers *reinvented* the compound word with modern pronunciation and spelling *without even realizing* what they did! Thus, the modern compound word "housewife" is a *restoration* of the Old English compound "huswif"! This *new* compound word was needed because the *original* Old English compound "huswif" became the derogatory non-compound word "hussy" over time!!! Therefore, "housewife" and "hussy" are doublets!!! Despite all this, amazingly, "hussy" is *closer* in its vowel sounds to the original "huswif" (compare the old "hOOsWEEf" vs modern "hUHsEE") while "housewife" has the modern vowel sounds! Thus we reveal another truth, that "hussy" has an older pronunciation of the word "house" fossilized in it! This kind of stuff blows my mind! 5. (final one I promise) Ye as in "ye olde shoppe" (you have probably seen this in shop names going for an "archaic" sounding title) This is one of those ones that really messes with modern speakers on many levels. Most people pronounce "ye" as "yee" and, at least I have a sense of the word as meaning "you" somehow (even though it doesn't make sense in the sentence"). But what we *actually* should be saying is "the" as in "The old shop", why is that? Well, what if I told you that the "y" in "ye" in this sentence is, technically, the sole survivor of the *ancient Germanic runic system* in English?! Lemme explain a bit: English used to not have the digraph "t + h" to make the "th" sound, as in "the", "there", "that", "thing", etc. It used the old rune symbol "thorn" (among other symbols) to make "th" sounds (this is a simplified explanation but that's okay). It looked like this: "þ". This character goes *way back* to when all the Germanic languages were still merged into the mother tongue, Proto-Germanic! This is so far back that this character would have *still* been carved into stone (although parchment did exist for millennia already by this point)! The *real* character itself only survives in Icelandic today, but there's more to the story... You see, in Old/Middle English, the word "the" was spelled "þe" (using the thorn character). Hence, "þe olde shoppe". But with the invention and use of the printing press, the printer type fonts rarely if ever had the "þ" character. Their solution? Well, the "þ" character looked similar to the "y" character in medieval English blackletter font so they just substituted "þ" with "y", thus began our woes! So, when scribes finally started using "th" for "th" sounds, the substitute "y" was more or less dropped... except that it was later picked back up for use in "psuedo-archaisms" (fake oldness if you will, haha). The problem was that when it was picked back up, it was both confused with the *actual* word "ye" (meaning "you all") and detached from any relation with the "þ" character and the "th" sound. Thus was born our modern pronunciation of the phrase "Ye Olde". So next time you happen upon a store/shop with "Ye Olde" in its name, defy all your friends and link the ancient flames together by proudly pronouncing it "The Old Shop"! If you made it this far, thanks for indulging my overindulgent comment haha. Thank you Simon for these AWESOME videos, your knowledge and ability to pronounce all this stuff blows my mind and I really learn a lot from every one of your videos. Keep it up!
@blayzenbarbee-mclemore80904 жыл бұрын
You're actually a legend for writing 26 paragraphs in a KZbin comments section. The worst part: you didn't get any clout for it. I hope you educate people with all that brain knowledge 🧠
@saxoman14 жыл бұрын
@@blayzenbarbee-mclemore8090 or I'm crazy 🤪. But im glad you got something from it :)
@thephidias4 жыл бұрын
Enjoyed reading that. And finally someone who gets the "ye" and the runic root right.
@allanrichardson14684 жыл бұрын
An anthropology professor wrote on the board at the beginning of the first class each semester, “Anthropology: the Study of Man.” After some female students complained, he changed this first-day title to “Anthropology: the Study of Man, Embracing Woman!”
@williamt12674 жыл бұрын
saxoman1 neeeeeerd. Just kidding. Glad to see you’ve found a way to spend time in quarantine :)
@ojc89024 жыл бұрын
You're like the language geek friend I've never managed to meet, really fascinating stuff. Stay healthy man
@simonroper92184 жыл бұрын
Thank you :) You too!
@KoreyMacGill4 жыл бұрын
@@simonroper9218 Yeah this stuff is fascinating! Do you have lessons anywhere? It would be really cool to have the ability to speak old English. Is it possible or have we lost too much?
@auldrick4 жыл бұрын
@@KoreyMacGill I feel the same way, although I wouldn't say we've "lost too much". It's only lost when no one remembers it any more. Language evolves. That's not a loss, it's just a change. You wouldn't prefer to wear a powdered wig just because it was the fashion two centuries ago, would you?
@entiretinofsweetcorn70254 жыл бұрын
@@auldrick if words are forgotten and no word replaces its meaning, or two words with originally different meanings are combined into one, that isn't "evolution" and it isn't just change - it's a loss of ability to communicate as well as before, a devolution if anything
@patrickturner68783 жыл бұрын
This is fascinating stuff. In parts of Appalachia up to the early 20th century there dialects that said things like; “Where's Pa? " “He went a-huntin" Or "He's a-gone to the dry goods store" I never knew that was a leftover of old English.
@southpark1you04 жыл бұрын
I love how being a native german speaker helps me read and understand old english. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn them. You can see the evolution of words and how people carried their language through the world over the years. With how much I hated geography in school, I am surprised at how fascinated I am by this today.
@joopspeth64833 жыл бұрын
So Old English is in fact much closer to germanic, like Dutch and German.
@ericmoore74133 жыл бұрын
As an Anglo American, it was easy to learn German grammar in school. At first, i pretended it was the King James Bible. Then, i understood it just fine.
@Beruthiel453 жыл бұрын
I took Latin at school as well as French and it helps to this day with not only English but also every romance language. Saves looking up everything in dictionaries. 😉
@tonniesoms3 жыл бұрын
Same with me being Dutch.
@christopherpugmire2969 Жыл бұрын
I’m an English speaker in Amsterdam - knowing Dutch is really helpful for making the connections to Old English. For example “eek” (also) is a lot like the Dutch “ook”.
@ForgottenMan20094 жыл бұрын
In my first job , in Jackfield , just downstream from Ironbridge in Shropshire , the older guys used to as 'huw bist tha?' (howare you?) and 'where bist tha?' (where have you been?) and lots of thees and thys! It was a bit like being time traveled into the 19th Century! I sort of got the hang of it after a while .... not sure they understood me with my broad Wiltshire accent! The flip side of this linguistic puzzle was that when I went to school nearby I would still address the women teachers as 'ma'am' ...the 'progressive' new school I arrived at addressed the women teachers as 'Miss' so they all thought I was a bit simple and was calling them 'mum!' The English, separated by a common language...
@hankdewit75484 жыл бұрын
Ha - just like in Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective', kzbin.info/www/bejne/d4bClKN8md6HpKs , addressing teacher as 'Miss'.
@stephenderry94883 жыл бұрын
If "Be" was a regular verb, with the second-person -st ending (thou hast, thou dost), "thou best" would make sense, and "tha bist" is close enough to make sense too. I wonder if there was ever a third-person form along the lines of "he bith"?
@fromchomleystreet3 жыл бұрын
My favourite bit of English etymology is the fact that the words “lord” and “lady”, while they have taken on notions of grandeur over time, were both originally all about something as common and homely as... bread. Both of them were originally compound words beginning with “loaf”. Lord is a contraction of hlafweard or “loaf-ward” - literally the guy in charge of the bread - while his wife, who actually made the bread was the hlaefdige - loaf + a word which meant to knead but survives as a noun in our word dough (bearing in mind that all those weird silent “g”s we have in English in words like “dough” and “knight” are vestiges of the ways they were formerly pronounced). All those grand ladies (“lady” being what was left after the “f” and the “g” were elided over time and the “a” vowel shifted) of the aristocracy are really just makers of loaf dough.
@PraxisAbraxis Жыл бұрын
I feel like the grandeur came from the meaning that lords and ladies were responsible for making sure there WAS bread to go around. The hand that ensured there was bread for the people was the hand that ruled. Still quite an amusing etymology.
@byron9001 Жыл бұрын
@@PraxisAbraxis this makes sense especially when you consider the word for servant: “hlafæta” literally “loaf-eater”
@8ofwands300 Жыл бұрын
This is SO fascinating!
@FrozenMermaid666 Жыл бұрын
There is only one Lady / Ladies and wf / gf / bride etc and that’s me (all wom’n are the exact opposite of lady or other big terms or pretty-sounding terms) and, the words lord and man / guy / lad / swain / boy / men etc only reflect my pure protectors aka the alphas, as do all love related terms like lover / bf / friend etc, and only I reflect terms like loaf or other food / plant / flower related terms and other purity terms and all love related terms, as love only exists for me the only lovable being and the only loved being, tho the words have always been misused by hum’ns that do not understand what such words would mean and that do not reflect hum’ns at all, and all compIiments also only reflect me the only grand being and The Goddess / The Princess / The Queen / The Leader / The Star etc - big / food / nature / purity / compIiment / love related terms cannot be misused by hum’ns in any way, and the ley word combination also cannot be in someone’s name as it only reflects me The Leya / The Leia, as all special / big / flower names only reflect me, and the special words girl / maiden / chick / hussy / lass etc also only reflect me!
@FrozenMermaid666 Жыл бұрын
Anyways, I’ve recently started learning languages, and, I have over 30 languages on my list... As a writer / lyricist, I know over 60k words in Modern English, and, I also used Scottish and Middle English in my lyrics... I want to learn OId English, which is completely different from Modern English - knowing Dutch and a lot of Norwegian and Swedish and some German definitely helped me figure out a lot of words in OId English, because, it’s more similar to these languages than it is to Modern English...
@LAMarshall4 жыл бұрын
"I shall *cough cough* see you soon, if I don't PERISH." XD
@pyencdocde57164 жыл бұрын
Lol where'd he say that?
@martonkormendy61504 жыл бұрын
@@pyencdocde5716 at the very end of the video
@justincaseu8124 жыл бұрын
We moved from London to the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire in 1986 and it was a real linguistic shock. The local dialect was almost unintelligible. The word "bist" was standard Forest dialect and "Ow bist?" was the normal way to ask "How are you?". The locals referred to outsiders as "vareigners" and themselves as "varesters". I remember "yud" was the local word for head. Moreover, some even used thee and thou pronouns.
@martinandmatt3 жыл бұрын
I'm a 39 year old man. I was born and brought up in the Black Country (Dudley) and regularly remember older men and women saying 'Bist thou alright?' when greeting my grand-mother.
@toffthe4 жыл бұрын
In Caribbean English dialects they have preserved the a- prefix, especially among older speakers and for emphasis and comic affect . Probably because of the close connection between Bristol and Plymouth with the Slave trade and the navy. I've just finished Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo and she reproduces it very succesfully.
@icravecheese4 жыл бұрын
I thought it quite interesting what you said about the "An Ickname" becoming "A Nickname" as people would have not seen it written down. My son (5 year old) calls "Yorkshire Puddings", "ikshire Puddings" and I couldn't understand why he called it that until in sentance he said to his brother someting along the lines of "That is my ikshire, and that is your-ikshire pudding" and I realise he had misunderstand the word as a phrase and as he is only just understanding reading and certainly not come across any written material containing the phrase "Yorkshire Pudding" he had not been corrected.
@4d1ce4 жыл бұрын
I love the idea that you can see language evolve in kids just as it has in history!
@marshallferron4 жыл бұрын
My nephews and neices would sometimes call minecraft "yourcraft".
@iamtheiconoclast34 жыл бұрын
When my Dad didn't want us to do something, he'd often say "Stop that. That's just plain dangerous." It was one of his favourite phrases. One day I saw my little sister trying awkwardly to slide down the railing of the basement stairs. I asked her, "What on Earth are you doing?" and she said, "I'm just playing dangerous." I was about seven at the time, and after about two or three seconds I had probably my first ever epiphany and fell over laughing.
@Cyallaire4 жыл бұрын
Years back, when my son was 6, we were in a restaurant looking out a window across the street where an old theater was getting a new roof, and huge rolls of felt were being brought to the height of the roof by use of a large forklift. My son was used to seeing smaller forklifts at his father's work used for moving pallets of batteries. He exclaimed "That must be a TWENTY-clift!" He'd misconstrued the motorized items for moving pallets as FOUR-clifts - not realizing the joined projections that hold the pallets or the rolls of felt were called "forks."
@maxnadeau32004 жыл бұрын
When I was young, I once asked my mother to give me a "gaw" for a wound, thinking it was the singular word for "gauze"
@NPrinceling4 жыл бұрын
Just an aside: I love the little bits of nature shown before the videos. Aside from feeling quintessentially English to be fascinated by the countryside, in a lot of ways, language to me feels driven by the natural world around us, and those little snapshots of toads or trees or the moon, followed by an exploration of how our ancestors described the world feel connected to one another in a deeply primal way.
@ericmoore74133 жыл бұрын
No kidding. I'm out here in Oklahoma. I can't help but notice our words come from England. And they're full of old fashioned "Englishness" for some reason.
@geoffboxell93013 жыл бұрын
Thrush: in southern English dialects "throssel" - the German is "drossel" , where, I assume, the "d" was originally an "eth" and became 'd" with the restricted font of the printing press (the same happened in English with words like burthen and murther becoming burden and murder).
@grahamt197813 жыл бұрын
aside 👍
@tomjordan47024 жыл бұрын
I was on a uni exchange program in Bath in Somerset in 2018-2019 from Australia and one of the most confusing/fun aspects of the west country dialect for me was when people would ask you “how bis then?” I always thought it was short for “how’s (your) business then?” As in how are you doing, but now I know it must be related to “bist” instead!!! Thank you so much for another great video.
@timmcmanus70034 жыл бұрын
"I'm gonna turn, probably predictably, to Cumbrian at this point."- if you saw that coming you deserve a PhD
@TheBlewtigercars3 жыл бұрын
His family ties are in Cumbria which he stated in other videos, he assumes you had seen these and knew this.
@jaycee330 Жыл бұрын
7:24 In American English, "hob-nob" or "hobnob" means to socialize in a crowd (a give and take, if you will).
@dazedconfused21464 жыл бұрын
Amongst some older speakers in Northumberland, you'll often here them say they're "starving" to mean they're feeling cold. This comes from the fact that the OE word 'steorfan' broadly meant to perish by any means (literally meaning 'to go stiff'). So while in the rest of England the term was narrowed down to mean perishing from hunger, up here it continued to mean perishing from cold as well.
@Galenus12344 жыл бұрын
an ick-name => a nick-name a napron ==> an apron a nadder => an adder
@eshafto4 жыл бұрын
an eft => a newt an uncle => a nuncle (not that I've ever heard 'nuncle' used, but I understand it was said by at least one human at least once)
@greghowe32934 жыл бұрын
Eric Shafto Where would ‘nuncle’ come from? Anglo-Norman sources already mention ‘uncle’; the modern French of course remaining ‘oncle’
@liquensrollant4 жыл бұрын
an orange! (Edit: that probably came like that from French, so presumably the same sound change happened in French?)
@maxwellgarrison67904 жыл бұрын
*an eke-name
@michaelaaylott16864 жыл бұрын
@@liquensrollant in Spanish it’s naranja, and I thought I had heard that when it first came to England people called it a norange or something similar
@regular-joe4 жыл бұрын
I always enjoy that your videos are more like a friend casually sharing something interesting, than a lecturer speaking from a script. Thanks for another pleasant conversation. On another note, I was told years back that willy nilly came from "will he, nill he". I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense, though.
@woodfur004 жыл бұрын
Makes perfect sense to me, if "he" is God for instance.
@Ptaku934 жыл бұрын
Probably just folk explanation
@Dr_Mel4 жыл бұрын
@@woodfur00 "he" was also the gender neutral up until fairly recently
@rencesbunt4 жыл бұрын
Latin nolens volens ?
@ragster18993 жыл бұрын
I think that may be a line in Shakespeare, or maybe it's "Will I nill I." Don't remember the play.
@nickbutcher64084 жыл бұрын
Thanks for this Simon. Totally fascinating. I come from Gloucestershire and my grandparents and their siblings who were born in the very early 1900s often used the 'a' to begin verbs. So for example 'I was a-running for the bus' or 'it did a-rain all day'. Similarly 'bist' may have more of less run its course in modern speech but it was common to my knowledge in the 70's in the Forest of Dean as in 'Ow bist goin' on', 'Ow bist old butt' etc etc. Th opposite of 'bist' was 'byunt' (as in - 'I be skint so I byunt goin' to the pub tonight' In Bristol though opposite of 'bist' is 'bissn't'. These days my brother. my Dad and I as well as a lot of mates will all ask each other 'Ow bist' when we meet but we're doing it in an arch way as a sort of group cultural signal rather that because we actually grew up talking like that. You can see a lot of this in dialect poetry by Keith Morgan from Coleford in Glos in his book 'Th'azzards o' chimuck szwippin' (The Hazards of Chimney Sweeping :-) )
@suzbone9 ай бұрын
Love your comment so much! I grew up in Louisiana, where local language is very colorful and retains some quirky archaic features. Old country folks still say carry for take, as in "I've gotta carry Momma to her doctor's appointment tomorrow." We say fixin instead of about to, as in "I'm fixin to carry Momma to the grocery store." People of all ages say ain't and y'all with zero irony, too. Bist and Bissn't takes the cake though! I love it! Bist and Bissn't... that's awesome. Big ups from Texas.
@1336mg4 жыл бұрын
Your pronunciation of 'enough' in Dutch was exactly right: genoeg (NL) with the harsh g's. Same as genug (GER) with the g's as in gun. In Dutch we always use the GE before a past participle: gaan - ging - GEgaan (to go), rijden - reed - GEreden (to ride), zien - zag - GEzien (to see). When i hear you speak the old English it sounds rather familiar for me as a native Dutch speaker and a good German speaker.
@asjenmensink27402 жыл бұрын
One exception We don't use ge- with verbs prefixed with unstressed aan-, achter-, be-, door-, er-, ge, her-, mis-, om-, onder-, ont-, over-, ver- vol- and weer-/weder: for example: Voorkomen is both a seperable and prefixed verb, meaning to prevent or to occur. In the 1st sense it is prefixed: voorkómen; ik voorkóm; ik voorkwám; ik heb voorkómen (accents are sometimes used in writing to emphasize where syllable stress lies) In the 2nd it is seperable: vóórkomen; ik kom voor, ik kwam voor; ik ben vóórgekomen (in subordinate clauses: waar dat vóórkomt, ....)
@BlackJar724 жыл бұрын
Devonian reminds me superficially of Appalachian, "He was a-huntin' in the kitchen for some'em to eat." People from other regions often mistake it for a non-standard pronunciation, failing to realize it's a grammatical prefix that appears only in very specific contexts -- but recognize it as sounding "hillbilly."
@chrishealy16794 жыл бұрын
as far as I'm aware, the a-(verb)ing construction also has its roots in Old English! but instead of ge-, the "a" is from the "on" in "ic eom on (verb)ing", not dissimilar from the modern German "ich bin beim (nominalized verb)"
@rredd77774 жыл бұрын
I heard that the a came from on, though it was related to the Welsh which uses a similar construction such as "Mae 'e'n siarad Hen Saesneg." , He is speaking Old English. The e'n is a contraction of e yn, yn being a preposition meaning in.
@paulthomas82624 жыл бұрын
Coastal North Carolina has the west country accent the most pronounced. The mountains have more influence with Scots and Irish, but with a lot of cross over in phrases and speech patterns.
@paulthomas82624 жыл бұрын
Anywhere where there was early non-indigenous mining of tin or coal in the new world you are likely to have some influence of Cornish or Welsh culture.
@jennygw18834 жыл бұрын
I think you will find some Appalachian comes from Suffolk, England
@rnrbishop4 жыл бұрын
I'm from West Somerset, my Grandfather would say wur bist thou and other such things alot.
@palepilgrim11744 жыл бұрын
It's a real shame these strong regional dialects and accents slowly died out in recent centuries (although it's happening with all languages). They preserved so much of the older forms of English, especially in the far north and west of the English-speaking world at the time.
@rnrbishop4 жыл бұрын
Pale Pilgrim alas i was moved around a lot as a child so largely lost my accent, which I deeply regret.
@greghowe32934 жыл бұрын
I’m from Somerset too, my rural relatives say “wur be to” 😁
@adventussaxonum4484 жыл бұрын
@@palepilgrim1174 Exactly the same as my grandfather's chums in West Hampshire/Dorset/Wiltshire. Maybe it's a Wessex thing?
@christopherthewreckerthats22954 жыл бұрын
@@adventussaxonum448 good olde Hampshire from a English celt
@percivalyracanth15284 жыл бұрын
Another one is dread, which is a reanalysis of and-rædan, literally 'rede/advise against', as an-drædan. Little spoors of OE still belive with us, mates
@percivalyracanth15284 жыл бұрын
@@tyrejuan8 Nay, it was more like /ɑnd-ræːdan/ > /ɑn-dræːdan/ /drædan/ > /dreːdən/ > /drɛːd/ > /dɹɛd/ I believe that for the two voiced consonants about the middle vowel, 'dread' did not take on its cousin 'rede's long /i:/, as it would be the case with most OE words with long /æ:/ which otherwise regularly became /i:/
@simonroper92184 жыл бұрын
That's really interesting! I didn't know about that one, but I'm sure there are loads more examples like that :) Thanks for pointing this out
@percivalyracanth15284 жыл бұрын
@@simonroper9218 You're welcome :) I spend too much time staring at Bosworth-Toller and the Concise ASD is all
@linusyootasteisking4 жыл бұрын
in swedish the word for afraid is "rädd", fear is "rädsla". it's a cognate with the -read part of dread :)
@percivalyracanth15284 жыл бұрын
@@linusyootasteisking Wow, so they took the second deal of the word, but didn't take the last bit of and- with them. How interesting!
@oktalkintommy4 жыл бұрын
You are one of the important keepers of what English treasure. When English people are here in the U.S., they answer our questions always with a reference of their home's history. You are preserving what they refer to, and love. Keeping it dearly and they depend on you.
@ericmoore74133 жыл бұрын
No kidding. I'm here in San Antonio Texas, and i love this channel.
@walesruels3 жыл бұрын
Another example of "n" being dropped at the beginning of a word: Oranges used to be called noranges, I believe. As in the Spanish "naranja".
@babarfyi4 жыл бұрын
Perhaps someone already commented. The Swedish öknamn for nickname is obviously the same, but it is only used when the nickname has negative connotations
@GoodmansGhost4 жыл бұрын
Öknamn & smeknamn. I wonder when Sweden split it into a negative and a positive( maybe?) one.
@Sayntavian4 жыл бұрын
"I'm going to turn, probably predictably, to Cumbrian at this point..." *Me:* Ahh yes... just as I... predicted...
@leahcimolrac14774 жыл бұрын
Was my 2nd guess
@profitfever4 жыл бұрын
Bill bailey face....
@gertbinroth45693 жыл бұрын
Very interesting
@leehaseley21644 жыл бұрын
Bist is still in use in Shropshire, where I come from, with older or more rural speakers. A common greeting is 'ow bist? How bist? How are you? Would 'anent' be where we get 'on it' from?
@backalleycqc47904 жыл бұрын
"How be you?" isn't that more direct translation?
@risvegliato4 жыл бұрын
still heard in the black country too - 'Ow bist?' means "how are you?"
@leanderthal26894 жыл бұрын
@@risvegliato at work, in the Black Country, I hear and say "Ow bist" every day.
@c.norbertneumann49864 жыл бұрын
We Germans say "du bist", meaning "thou art"., E.g. "du bist hier" - "you are here."
@pshawc14 жыл бұрын
Anent --> anoint ?
@miamaslegi2 жыл бұрын
I'm from Arkansas and lots of my older family members (and I, sometimes) will say things like, "I'm a-goin' to the store," or "Daddy's down yonder a-fishin' and Mama's up at the house a-bakin' a cake." It's fascinating to see how this was brought over here by settlers and preserved!
@reddturner69922 жыл бұрын
Here in the American South, the prefix “a” is quite commonly added to verbs: “I’m afixing to...” which is “I will/am planning...” The use indicates an intended future action. “I’m agoing” as opposed to “I’m going to go”. You will hear this quite often as you venture into the more rural areas of the Appalachians.
@Zeutomehr4 жыл бұрын
"I might go somewhere else" 10 seconds later: that was fun, also pretty sure the symptoms are dry coughs :D
@lennsisson3 жыл бұрын
Growing up in the Appalachian mountains of north Georgia (USA) in the 1960s, I knew a few older people who would use the form "I've a-gone" or "he's a-gone." I just thought it was the way old country people spoke. It's interesting to see the historical linguistic connection. Also, I had a great uncle who would sometimes say, "Let me hope you," instead of "Let me help you." I later found out that this was derived from the old English word "hopen" for help.
@clarebutler99010 ай бұрын
In the book of Common Prayer it's 'holpen'.
@christophernewman50274 жыл бұрын
Bist is still used in Bristol or, at least, it was in the 1980's! As in "How bist?" for "How are you?"
@blacksmock4453 жыл бұрын
Another Bristol and Somerset term is er for he as in German. "Wosser up to now?" for "What is he doing now?".
@blacksmock4453 жыл бұрын
Another Somerset term is 'n for him (German ihn?) "I saw'n last week but I an't sid'n since"
@andrewneenan5663 жыл бұрын
I had a great uncle who was born and bred in Worcester in 1900. One of the characteristics of his speech was, "they were a-going...", "he was a-coming..." etc., all delivered in a hearty Worcestershire accent.
@EclecticHillbilly3 жыл бұрын
Some of that is still found in Appalachia today.
@c.norbertneumann49864 жыл бұрын
"In olden days" is likely an archaic dative plural.
@zeddeka3 жыл бұрын
N also used to be used to form plurals in old English rather than s. Some words that survive include oxen and brethren.
@txviking4 жыл бұрын
As a native Norwegian speaker, it's always fascinating to spot fragments of "my" language in English dialects. Like several other commenters, I also hope you have not caught "it", and I wish you a speedy recovery from whatever is causing that cough.
@geraldwagner87394 жыл бұрын
As a native German speaker I share your fascination about spots of "my" language in English. But I'm sure that "your" spots are more welcome than "mine".
@alexbowman75824 жыл бұрын
You should come to Scotland we say huis haim nae mer brun ko ut nu stain bra. I believe okay may be from the Swedish och aye or Norwegian og ja and watching Norse films/programme okay is now used in Norse.
@ironfront95734 жыл бұрын
In regards to "it" that shall not be named. The best scenario for each of us is that we do catch it but it doesn't affect us greatly. For those of us that do not catch it we remain in fear of how bad it will be when we do and the populations around us remain in fear over too many people both getting it and getting critically ill at the same time overwhelming healthcare capacity.
@danilodistefanis59904 жыл бұрын
Stian O not really yours but Germans 😂
@alexbowman75824 жыл бұрын
@@ironfront9573 Simon, if he has it, is probably typical of most infections where it's a relatively minor disease. I think we had it in February before the quarantine. I woke up with what seemed like a worse hangover than I should have had as I hadn't drank that much but later realized it was more a cold. I felt crappy, had a sore throat, a deep dry cough and couldn't smell. It wasn't enough to stop me going out and to put it in perspective my son had it and it wasn't enough to keep him off school. His mother just recently said when she had it her lungs crackled which is pneumonia probably. There's also, at least in Glasgow, another cold which I've recently had and which may be the same one my friend has and because she's a care worker she was tested near Glasgow Airport and told it was just a normal cold and one of the airport workers told her that a few months ago a flight of students flew in from China and all the workers there caught covid 19.
@andyharpist29383 жыл бұрын
I collected a Chinese takeaway from Ottery St Mary one evening with my dog, a Lurcher.. The Chinese man behind the counter, looked up at me with his palid skin, slowly said, "Good evening lads. You been a poaching! That be a whippet-lurcher crass. An you baint be from around ere then!"
@danniebassano20332 жыл бұрын
The addition of "a" to verbs is very common in the Southern United States to this day, particularly in rural and isolated ares (such as the Appalachian Mountains). I remember my relatives in Georgia saying things like, "She a-went horseback riding," "She's a-gone to the store," or "She had a nightmare, so she's a-feared."
@AllotmentFox4 жыл бұрын
Bist is still used in Bristol. Mostly people over 50 but younger people use it, sometimes ironically, sometimes not. "'Ow bis?" - > "How are you?". I'm an immigrant but sometimes it gets you. I went to a dinner party in Berkshire and said: 'hark at him!" without any irony but quite a lot of mirth from those around me. I thought I'd said 'listen to him'. If I was fully naturalised it would've been "'ark at 'e". I had assumed 'bist' was 'be-est' (as in how be-est thee) and not the German 'bist'.
@justanotherfangirl63604 жыл бұрын
The amount of stuff I understand in old english is incredible. I am German so that is my mother tongue I am amazed at how much of old english is german
@violjohn4 жыл бұрын
I speak English but also know Afrikaans. I was amazed at how much of a Germanic nature still exists in English, but only realized this when i visited Germany and had to learn German. It's very interesting to realize how close the languages still are!
@Ellie493 жыл бұрын
@@violjohn Intriguing. I lived in South Africa for several years working for the Anglican Church there. A priest friend of mine was certain I spoke Africaans because he had heard me singing some hymns, the texts of which were in Africaans. I explained that I was a music major as an undergraduate and had minored in voice; so I got by with the hymns using German diction rules. (I don't speak German, either, but I figured the two languages had to be close!)
@violjohn3 жыл бұрын
@@Ellie49 Yes I think the diction rules are pretty much the same. I found Afrikaans easy to learn apart from the word order differences with English. ( My parents were from the UK and I started learning Afrikaans relatively late.) There is so much that is Germanic in English if you throw away the later Norman accretions!
@petertuffley74753 жыл бұрын
I remember hearing "thi bist" used by Black Country dialect speakers when I was a chid in Wolverhampton in the 1940s and 1950s, and my father, who grew up in Cannock in a dialect-speaking family, cited it as an example of Black Country speech. He had acquired a more standard speech, but could still speak broad Black Country..
@user-ms7gt2km5f3 жыл бұрын
Thi bist the nicest folks I've come across out in the black country!
@s.j.rogers61203 жыл бұрын
Yes! I grew up in Wolverhampton also. I remember my Nan using bist regularly. Must admit I still use it occasionally. In a previous video I noticed the use of Ferther for Father in London and that we still use in the Black Country today. Would love to see what Simon makes of the Gornal dialect.
@NewArcadian4 жыл бұрын
MVP Roper, hands down winning the quality quarantine video award, as per the standard. Had a small group of Sussex speakers recorded for an oral histories project a year or two back (encouraged by some whisky), which I still need to have a listen to. While a fairly glorious number of Sussex dialect words were recorded by W.D. Cooper and W.D. Parish in the nick of time in the 19th century, the vast vast majority have since fallen out of common use here (excepting in place names). Nonetheless, weaker forms of the accent can still be found with a bit of effort and it now sounds quite like a subtler West Country one. In Cooper's view, ‘the Sussex pronunciation of many words derived from the Saxon is superior to that generally received; thus earth...in Anglo-Saxon books written e-orth... is still correctly pronounced as a word of two syllables, e-arth.’ He gives a few other pronunciation pointers which give an idea of early 19th century pronunciation in the dialect: - a before double l is pronounced like o; fallow and tallow become foller and toller. - I is pronounced as ee, so mice, hive, dive, become meece, heeve and deeve. - O before r is pronounced as a; as earn and marning, for corn and morning. - A before ct becomes e; as satisfection for satisfaction. - E before ct becomes a; and affection, effect and neglect are pronounced affaction, effact and neglact. - Double t is always pronounced as d; as liddle for little and the th is d; thus the becomes de; and these, them, theirs dese, dem and deres. Primarily nouns are listed (including 'ammut-castes' for ant hills - no sign of 'attercop' for spider though), but a few older forms of verbs are in there too following the pattern you mention such as 'agwain' (going). Another, ax/axe from OE 'acsian' (i.e. the subsequently Danish influenced 'ask'). I'll be keeping an ear out for some linguistic fossils when I give the recording a listen. True living history. Keep up the fine work 🙂
@simonromijn36553 жыл бұрын
Historically, the Dutch used nicknames 'bij namen' commonly in rural areas where certain patronymic family names were common. Bij namen were very descriptive and added a great deal of colour to the language. I note a strong parallel in Australian English where men go by nicknames derived from either their first or family names.
@GuyJames5 ай бұрын
my ex is from a village near Madrid and all the families who have lived there for generations know each other by family nicknames, they never use their actual surnames when referring to them, probably because there were not that many surnames, a lot of 'Garcia's, etc.
@stephaniefairchildfister17814 жыл бұрын
Many of these words sound like words I heard my family in the eastern Kentucky mountains saying when I was growing up. We went there several times a month in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s. Sometimes it was as if I was switching languages from the mountains to the city and back....with the dialect there being what we called “thick.” My friends always knew if I had been to see my grandparents by the way I talked when I came back to school on Monday. I think I heard you mention once that there may be some dialects left in the Appalachias from before the great vowel shift. I think of these accents fondly and as a part of our heritage. There was some talk of a royal line of the Howards who came to settle there in the mountains where the dialects were “protected” from outside influences. My great grandma was a Howard. Funny to me that some judge it as low, when it may be a sign of prestige from past times.
@BasedZoomer2 жыл бұрын
People only judge it as low because they have a hard time understanding and therefore decide that you, the speaker, must be the problem, and not them, the listeners. I'm glad you cling fondly to your heritage, truly it is a precious gift passed down to us by our predecessors. More so than any other heirloom.
@Valmor23884 жыл бұрын
Your videos are fascinating. I have little knowledge of etymology and linguistics, and it amazes me to see how some of these words and phrases survive into modernity. While in high school, I loved speaking with the Scottish exchange student. He found it interesting how some words and phrases survived in nearby Appalachia (Ohio) from the original Scottish settlers, but others had disappeared completely. Most had changed slightly, and some have even entered the lexicon of non-Appalachians like myself. Anyway, thanks for making nice, informative videos and I hope you’re feeling well.
@CescKragge4 жыл бұрын
Fascinating as always! Husband comes from Scandinavian "husbonde" which means master of the house.
@Bjowolf23 жыл бұрын
Yes, bonde = farmer / peasant en husbond = a farmer with his own house(-hold) = hushold(ning)!, the master of the house
@williamivanhoe82643 жыл бұрын
Me I think husband (as house-wife) comes from huis-vent (vent =guy). That guy that comes home, I don't know if he is really the master in his house :-)
@Bjowolf23 жыл бұрын
@@williamivanhoe8264 www.etymonline.com/search?q=husband husband (n.) Old English husbonda "male head of a household, master of a house, householder," probably from Old Norse husbondi "master of the house," literally "house-dweller," from hus "house" (see house (n.)) + bondi "householder, dweller, freeholder, peasant," from buandi, present participle of bua "to dwell" (from PIE root *bheue- "to be, exist, grow," and compare bond (adj.)).
@williamivanhoe82643 жыл бұрын
@@Bjowolf2 ;-) thnx for the additional info To be honest, was joking a bit with Al Bundy crossing my mind. That henpecked husband seems a bit off when compared with Norse bondi's as master crafstsmen, sailors, merchants and Vikings. www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bundy But I do think there is a bit more to say about the word 'husband' then saying "probably from Old Norse husbondi". Because the word "hus" was allready known in Old English: from Proto-Germanic *hūsan (source also of Old Norse, Old Frisian hus, Dutch huis, German Haus), of unknown origin ... they say www.etymonline.com/word/house Concerning the unknown origin, I don't think so unknown: www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/hoes1 And the word "bonda" was evenly known before the use of "husband". It is clear that "bond", "bund", "bind", "band" are alternatives to point to a connection (servedom or collaboration) www.etymonline.com/search?q=bonda So in a sense i can't understand that the composite word "husband" (huis-band, he's bound to the household) should only be known and used after the introduction in its whole form from Norse husbondi. Though it is clear they share common origin Just my opinion …
@ericmoore74133 жыл бұрын
House bound. Just for 9 months or so.
@chriswatts59214 жыл бұрын
Hi Simon! Regarding your audio issues, follow this basic rule of sound recording: get the microphone as close to the source as possible. I recommend investing in a larapel microphone or two. This will make your voice much louder compared to any surrounding wind or background noise.
@karenashworth57433 жыл бұрын
I find this fascinating! In my local are( E. Lancs/ Yorkshire border) the phrase " How ist a? " is commonly used (It means " How are you?") Even amongst younger people.
@johannajames78243 жыл бұрын
My Nanny was born and bred in Yorkshire.. staineforth.. and even after she moved to live in Sheering, Essex, she would always say (and its hard to write a sound!) ' im going t shops' .. it sounded more like tut shops .. like the t had a glottal stop. It reminded me of that when you was talking about the til in cumbria. Funny both northern areas have it!
@Jibbolino3 жыл бұрын
Thanks Simon. As a native speaking Icelander, I always find it interesting to learn about the numerous connections between Icelandic and English. There are also some complicated connections between Gaelic and Icelandic that probably go further back in time. I find it all very interesting.
@cantona74493 жыл бұрын
Hi Simon, I have now viewed quite a few of your videos - they are fantastic, absolutely fascinating. How you learn, comprehend, interpret and demonstrate these language variants is genuinely incredible. Considering these older dialects are ‘dead’ and no longer spoken... for you to be able to resurrect them and allow us to experience them is amazing. Thank you! I am hooked.
@frogindeed4 жыл бұрын
I'm impressed that everyone commenting on this channel sounds like an expert while offering real synergy. Am I the only curious observer? (I'm actually a professional translator, peeking out from my tiny corner of the Valhalla of linguistics.)
@MattyMatiss4 жыл бұрын
Nah, you're not the only one. I work in IT and I'm not even a native English speaker :)
@TM-ng2bz4 жыл бұрын
No, you're not the only curious observer. Similarly to the previous one commenting, I'm not a native speaker and I actually study IT. But I find this stuff very interesting.
@anthonyhearn6886 Жыл бұрын
" 'Ow bist? " Is a standard greeting among native Bristolians , especially now the older generation.
@pgruszewski3 жыл бұрын
All these peculiarities are awesome. And I say that as a non-native English speaker.
@mejlaification4 жыл бұрын
I just wanted to say thank you. We might not even fully realize how priceless your videos are. For uneducated linguistics buffs and languages’ history geeks like me they are pure treat. Thank you again, sir.
@ninjapineapplez4 жыл бұрын
(Long-ish post) So I'm from a rural farming community of central Devon and I have plenty of exposure to the dialect. Unfortunately, it is dying out, nowadays mostly being spoken by older people. The a-gone a-ridden a-seen feature is lost, but there are some other features of older versions of English that are still preserved and other features that I just find really interesting. First is a lack of conjugation of the verb "to be", hence the phrase "us be gwain" (we are going). The word "thee" is preserved as just "ee", as in "I'll give ee zome o'this" (I'll give you some of this). Some consonants are voiced where they are unvoiced in most other accents and dialects: vor=for, vlize=flies, zowed the zeed=sowed the seed and so on. The past tense is accomplished almost always by adding a "d" or "ed" on the end of the verb. Rinned=ran, aited= ate or eaten, gawd=gone (go-ed), etc. Gerunds are formed with a reduced "in" rather than "ing". A weird idiosyncrasy I personally find funny is using "er" to refer to both men and women and often animals and even inanimate objects sometimes. "Av'er vinished 'er dinner?" = "Has she finished her dinner" and "Av'er vinished 'ees dinner?" = "Has he finished his dinner?" As an old saying goes "In Dem, 'ees an 'er an' er's an ee, 'cept th' aud tom cat an' even 'ees an 'er" (In Devon, he's a her and she's a he, except the old tomcat and even he's a her). This in and old joke told in Devon (mostly forgotten and most people I've spoken to have never heard of it), and is about a young man and a young lady walking alone down a lane late at night, and the man is carrying a piglet (or "vear") in one hand and a lantern in the other. She starts fidgeting, and the man turns to talk to her: Him: "Yer, wat be 'bout maakin' awl thick 'awl scritch ver?" Her: "Wull I be vrit y'um gwain taak 'vantage o' me" Him: "Ow c'n I taak 'vantage ov ee?" Her: "Wull, yu mite ztart kissin' an' cuddlin' o' me" Him: "Doan't ee be sa maazed gurl, ow c'n I be kissin' an' cuddlin' uv ee, way a zuckin' peg een wan 'and an' a lantern een t'other?" Her: "Wull, I cud 'old th' lantern ver ee" Translated that's: Him: Hey, what are you making a fuss and crying about? (Here, what is about making all loud all crying for) Her: Well I'm afraid (frightened) you will take advantage of me Him: How can I take advantage of you? Her: Well you might start kissing and cuddling on me Him: Don't you be so stupid, girl. How can I be kissing and cuddling with you, with a suckling pig (piglet) in one hand and a lantern in the other? Her: Well I could hold the lantern for you.
@CyberDwarf19494 жыл бұрын
🤣🤣🤣
@shashwatsinha27044 жыл бұрын
Nice story
@PoshLifeforME4 жыл бұрын
I always thought that English was my strength and not maths, now I realise I'm poor at both.
@dan-ho1zz4 жыл бұрын
Same
@davidpope2279 Жыл бұрын
I can remember my grandmother (b. 1923 in the Piedmont region of North Carolina/ South Carolina, USA) having used the word "holp" in place of "helped". It's interesting how these vestiges of OE have remained over time and continents.
@teidisands69994 жыл бұрын
On the subject of West Country usage of 'Bist' - this was very much in common rural use in Somerset during the 70s. In my youth being asked ' where bist to?' would not have been a surprise.....'.it means 'where are you?" . Also 'how bist?' - 'how are you?' There was also an insertion of the letter 'b' into constructions like 'you b'aint from this village' - meaning 'you aren't from this village'. I don't know if this is related to the usage of 'bist' but it's interesting. I rarely hear these constructions used now but I suspect there are some dark village pubs serving cider where you might still hear them.
@catsupchutney4 жыл бұрын
vogel / fowl - I never realized!
@Kire11204 жыл бұрын
Fågel in Swedish
@saxoman14 жыл бұрын
Yep! And it was spelled "Fugol" in Old English! Further more, believe it or not, it was pronounced remarkably closer to how we use it today then to the German cognates! The "g" was pronounced as a "y"-ish (but a more rough sound, see "ɣ") in this position, hence it sounded like "fooyol", and if you say it enough times, you can see how it could have become our modern "fowl": "FOOyal" -> "FOOwul" -> "FOHwul" -> "FAHwl" -> "Fowl" (I'm not saying this is precisely how it happened throughout the vowel shifts, but you can see that every step is sensical)! Similarly, "G" had this "y"-ish sound like this in many words: Nail = (OE) "Nægel" = (G) "Nagel" Young = (OE) "Geong" = (G) "Jung" (in this video ->) Enough = (OE) "Genug" = (G) "Genug" One time, in Germany, I used this knowledge to actually understand and find something! I was in a supermarket, and was looking for a nail clipper. So I thought "nail seems like a simple word, its probably from Old English, how would that have been spelled?" Then I remember that I DID look it up one time and then i remembered that old spelling! So I knew I was looking for something like "nagal" and BOOM, I found it: "NagelKnipser". Amazing! I could go on for a LOOOONG time with these modern Old English decedents with "y" sounds (and similar) in Modern English! We are truly connected to our linguistic ancestors!
@galier24 жыл бұрын
@@saxoman1 in middle german dialects (Rhine and Mosel frankish) it's pronounced "fɔχəl" or "fɔʁəl" i.e. a fricative instead of the standard german plosive (I tried to use IPA but I'm not used to it and make no guarantee).
@saxoman14 жыл бұрын
@@galier2 Amazing! So that's actually closer to Old English then? And what about Low German dialects? (since that's what the continental "Old Saxon" languages continued to develop, away from England's "Anglo-Saxon" dialects. I wonder if Low German is even closer to Old English in that way, and maybe even closer to Modern Egnlish! I have no idea tbh)
@galier24 жыл бұрын
@@saxoman1 From what I found online, "vagel" which is the plattdüütsch (low German) word for bird, it's pronounced with the plosive g like in standard German. I've noticed a lot of cases where my frankish dialects (I speak the Rhine frankish dialect of the Saar region) have very archaic forms of the words that were not affected by the different consonant shifts high German (and even low German) went through.
@ProfessorBorax4 жыл бұрын
That story of the ethimology of the word nick-name was absolutely facinating. Thanks so much! :D
@williamivanhoe82643 жыл бұрын
and then to know that "eke" in Frisian is "aka". laughing out loud aka lol :-)
@ProfessorBorax3 жыл бұрын
@@williamivanhoe8264 Really? Da wist ik ook ni ;)
@williamivanhoe82643 жыл бұрын
@@ProfessorBorax :-) Yes true! Ja is trouw_> ter uwe. Uwers trouwelich. Yours truely. Simon doet dat goed, zet voor hen de juiste stappen terug, zullen wel zien waar ze uitkomen als ze volgen. Laat ze maar eens goed dabben via dat 'oud' noors (nors, want zo is dat klimaat daar) en duits, dutch maar eigenlijk diets. Uiteindelijk zijn wij die het verst kunnen gaan in dit 'spel'. Want we gaan het allemaal voor hun uit-spellen, Diets maken zeggen we dan. :-)
@ProfessorBorax3 жыл бұрын
@@williamivanhoe8264 Awel, ge zijt ee vanalles on’t zievere da’k ni goe verstoen mo ’t es wel plezant XD
@violettiger214 жыл бұрын
I'm from Norfolk (our accent is often confused with west country as they sound similar, despite being miles away in location), and older people will use the "a-", but often in the present tense too, e.g. "He's a-driving", or an older phrase "keep you on a-troshin'" (keep on going/keep working).
@MBCTrader034 жыл бұрын
That come from the fact that Old English probably used "he is on drifung" (he is on driving), but it's hardly recorded anywhere because that was considered lower-class grammar, and ultimately was probably borrowed from welsh.
@keighlancoe59334 жыл бұрын
That's because you and us are Saxons (I'm from the West Country) the whole of the South sounded 'somewhat' like we do back then. London accent for example used to sound more like Ipswich or Norwich.
@robertsoslow7332 жыл бұрын
a-goin' and a-doin' are used in American depictions of rural Southern or Appalachian colloquialisms
@RobWhittlestone4 жыл бұрын
Thank you Simon for another fascinating video. You permit us to feel we are curating a valuable antique by speaking English, rather than making slovenly superficial utterances. Greetings from Switzerland, all the best, Rob
@Leery_Bard4 жыл бұрын
One thing I personally find quite interesting is that “willy-nilly” has a nearly exact counterpart in Italian which also happens to be peculiar. Whilst we don’t have a huge number of negative versions of verbs, we generally use prefixes to form them, so a verb in which the initial is substituted with an “n” is quite the exception in its own right. So, the Italian forms are “volente o nolente” and “volere o nolere”. They are both used to introduce the action or situation. The first one is a present participle and it is typically used as an apposition, whilst the latter is an infinitive and basically forms a clause that is generally used as a response. Finally, I was wondering, since the Italian phrases come directly from the Latin “velle nolo” and its derivated forms, whether the English one also ultimately stems from that. In this case, it seems to fit and make a lot of sense. As a matter of fact, the only similar formation I can think of in Italian off the top of my head is "né" which means ""neither" or "nor". That had me thinking these might also be of Latin influence, though I doubt it.
@groeleorg Жыл бұрын
the two more likely stem from the same form in the common ancestor language of the Germanic and Italic languages spoken at a time before the proto-Italians crossed the Alps and settled the Italian peninsula
@kauemoura4 жыл бұрын
11:17 "I'm going to church, she turned to drugs." Roper, S. 2020
@aryyancarman7054 жыл бұрын
xd
@greghowe32934 жыл бұрын
My family are from rural Somerset and we say ‘Somerset-isms’ as a joke. Now I’m wondering if many are indeed remnants of Old English 😯
@concars12344 жыл бұрын
Well you've been there a long time
@Guttlegob4 жыл бұрын
Less migration to the Westcountry, thats why its arguably most preserved in England, along with Cumbria and around North.
@peterhatfield56324 жыл бұрын
Why do many English people use plural verbs with singular nouns? I would say: My family is from Buckinghamshire. I still remember my old English teacher's mantra: collective nouns are singular, boy.
@BeingJenniRae4 жыл бұрын
@@peterhatfield5632 I always see it as "one group" and that's how it makes sense to me. One blob of people who have suddenly melded into a single unit. We're not talking about the people. We're talking about the blob that they have formed. They are not individuals anymore. They have been swallowed by the blob.
@oliver79013 жыл бұрын
@@peterhatfield5632 A foreign colleague once asked me whether it was correct to say "the company are..." or the company is..." I'm no scholar of English, but both intuitively felt correct to me so I said that I thought "the company/family/organisation ARE..." emphasised the coordinated actions of the members whereas "the company/family/organisation IS..." emphasised the action of the group as a whole. My family are also from the Westcountry like @RSheen, which may be relevant. I know farmers who call countable objects "he" or "him", which I think is a local thing too. I even knew a bloke who would ask "How bist thee?"
@ChurchOfTheHolyMho Жыл бұрын
"I'm a-goin to the store." - heard that my entire life, here in the Smokies / southern Appalachians. There is a YT video that compares traditional acapella Appalachian singing (by oral tradition) with the oldest known forms of the songs from England. One example actually had 2 verses completely intact from a 1540 lyric sheet. Good stuff. It is amazing what happens when English immigrants from the 1500s become isolated in rural mountain communities... and preserve their culture... until radio, tv, and the internet brought in outside accents. :)
@flowerptАй бұрын
The elderly West-Central New Hampshire English speakers use the Devonian a- prefix on their past participles.
@athulfgeirsson4 жыл бұрын
We still use 'bist' in the Black Country, though with that said, it's almost exclusively older speakers.
@unfinished81324 жыл бұрын
I’ve always understood ‘bist’ as ‘be-est’.
@Earthfield-GeopolymerWorld4 жыл бұрын
I don't think I know that - can you give an example ?
@ironfront95734 жыл бұрын
I was sure I'd heard it before. That must be where as I've not spent much time in Devon.
@moeran19444 жыл бұрын
Yep - Black Country do say 'ow bist or 'ow bist yer. They also sat 'ow am yer - how are you. Am is a very common replacement for are. They even write am and not are!
I’m so happy to have found your channel. I recently decided to take a go at writing a novel and for the sake of due diligence, I’ve been researching Germanic linguistics. Oh my god. I never knew I’d be so passionate about linguistics hahah you make it so simple and applicable. Thank you.
@simonroper92184 жыл бұрын
Thank you, that's really lovely to hear :) Best of luck with the novel!
@ceradaddygibson4 жыл бұрын
Simon Roper Dont mention it :) and thank you ❤️
@melindahalsall36814 жыл бұрын
I am fascinated by languages and you are feeding my curiosities! Thank you so much for the videos. I’m enjoying them very much. ☮️
@paulodingle21423 жыл бұрын
I watch all your videos with a smile on my face so wonderful to listen to and interesting thank you
@andrewstrebkov65073 жыл бұрын
Great discussion. But the part about "til" brings particular joy: I've been trying to explain the Russian "до" (/do/) to English speakers by pointing out that it is like the English "until" or "till," but with the added spatial semantics. The meaning of «до» extends to "reaching a physical/spatial destination", in addition to reaching a point in time (I waited till December - Я подождал до декабря). Я дошёл до дерева - I walked "till" the tree. It turns out that the precursor of the modern English "till" had the same, broader semantics as the modern Russian «до»! It narrowed over time to just the temporal dimension. Except for the vestigial usage you exemplified here. THANK YOU!!
@stevec55864 жыл бұрын
Very interesting indeed. I'm English, but speak German too, and I recognised many of the words and features you described. I also lived in Aberdeen for many years, and I also recognise some of the words and preposistions from the Scots and Doric that is spoken up there. "Frae", for example, is in common use. Stay healthy.
@jameshall30104 жыл бұрын
I'm from South Shropshire - "where bist ye going surrey?" is still a (tongue in cheek) greeting among a particular generation. I believe 'surrey' is a diminutive form of 'sir'. Have always wondered about that German connection! Thank you for that light bulb moment! Also - your content is a breath of fresh air, and tickles my language spot just right! Very grateful for it - please never stop! All the best
@schmozzer4 жыл бұрын
'Sorry' was used in Nottingham till the 1950s. I never heard it but my older sister did and she thought it was 'sirrah'.
@yumyummoany4 жыл бұрын
Like the Nottinghamshire 'sirrah'.
@genli56034 жыл бұрын
It's sirrah in Shakespeare. :)
@kittling54274 жыл бұрын
When I was living in Bristol an old chap who lived down the road always asked 'ow bist? but its not a phrase used outside the older generation though. Which is sad - I always found it a very friendly phrase probably because he was actually asking a question as opposed to a throw away greeting phrase.
@maximan43634 жыл бұрын
My Bristolian Grandmother (mother's side of the family), God rest her soul, also used to say 'ow bist? It was actually a fairly common greeting between people of a certain generation - and their children to some extent. I had no idea that it was so old - honestly I'm amazed. She used to have a fantastic book on how to speak Bristolian which made absolutely no sense if you read it but if you spoke it I understood every word! I just found it on Amazon: Krek Waiter's Peak Bristle (Correct Way to Speak Bristol) Paperback - 1 Jan. 1978 - unfortunately it's unavailable. I used to find it hilarious when she spoke proper Bristle to my Great Grandmother - it was like a totally different language. I can't believe that I never picked up on it's Germanic roots - seems bloody obvious now! On a more pressing note, I hope that cough is better. Thank you for yet another fascinating video - my Mum is going to love it. My father is Glaswegian and my mother couldn't understand a lot of what his Mother said so I would have to translate. Oh happy days.....
@popius613 жыл бұрын
My grandad was a well known Bristol comedian who wrote ‘The Bristol Song’ many years ago, written in the Bristol dialect and the chorus was: ‘Wos’ fink of ‘ee then? Wos’ fink of this? Wos’ fink of ‘ee then? Likewise, ‘ow bist? If thee casn’t speak as well as thee could, sing this song with me, Wos’ fink of ‘ee then? Wos’ fink of this?
@bruh6662 жыл бұрын
Fascinating, seeing the history of words reflected in modern language is one of my favorite aspects of language
@algonquin914 жыл бұрын
This sounds a lot like Newfoundland-English and English spoken in small communities in Canada's Maritime provinces!!
@koffski934 жыл бұрын
Eekname is found in swedish in the form of "öknamn". Meaning "pejorative nickname". An old etymology lexicon says it comes from "auki" which ment increase, modern form "öka". This was a name with something added to it.
@hennobrandsma47554 жыл бұрын
Modern West Frisian has “eak-”, though spelled “heak” nowadays. Eek corresponds to “ek” now (shortened). But ta-(h)eakke is used as attachment (as in e-mails), e.g.
@chrisdaniels39294 жыл бұрын
So a nickname like Little John or Long John Silver or Fat Les. That's different to names like Shorty or some general embarrassing description, used as a sign of fondness among acquaintances. That seems to be how they used to give nicknames - like English kings. William the b.....d, William the Red, his brother Robert short pants, Richard Lionheart, John Lackland and so on.
@gilbertevans75863 жыл бұрын
@@hennobrandsma4755 I have no idea if this could possibly be relevant as the discussion is centred on central European and Scandinavian languages, but in Turkish the word "ek" is also used as "attachment" on emails. "Ek" is of greater significance grammatically, as it is the word used for "suffix", an important concept in Turkish as it is an agglutinating language.
@tamasmarcuis44554 жыл бұрын
I see a lot of these are the common forms in modern Scots. Abun/Abuin/Abin Til/Tii/Te/Tae Frae/Fae Anent=(beside, by, concerning, including, associated with, goes with, attached to). I came across this in conversation and in legal documents. " all other cost anent the occupation of a multi-occupancy property "
@marycrawford15943 жыл бұрын
Apologies if someone has already mentioned this. You might like to listen to old Adge Cutler cds. He was a Somerset singer of folksongs back in the early sixties. He always used 'Ow bist ee' or 'Ow bist thee,' as a well known Somerset greeting he knew from his childhood. I knew exactly what it meant, though I never gave it a thought until I studied Anglo Saxon later on.
@christinewright1103 жыл бұрын
I was born in Shropshire and we often asked "how bist?". My Salopian cousins still do use this greeting.
@johnt-r61334 жыл бұрын
In Cornish dialect (of English), we also have the "I do/did go" auxiliary form, but I was always taught that was because it mimics the Cornish (Celtic language) pattern of using auxiliary verbs to avoid conjugating them. i..e me a rug mos an shoppa [I did go the shop] rather than the more complex - me edh-vy bys y'n shoppa [I went+suffix pronoun until the shop]. I wonder which is correct, perhaps both influences at the same time?
@AslanW4 жыл бұрын
I'm Swedish, and we have a word that also derives from the same word that eekname (and later on nickname) does. It's called 'öknamn', but in modern Swedish it only means a derogatory nickname. It's very interesting to see how much our languages have in common that I didn't know about. Thank you for these videos. Edit (rant): I believe the old Norse word for it would be aukanafn, which probably would mean an add-on name or also-name, like Bluetooth or Ironside. I knew that the Swedish word "öka" comes from old norse "auka", which came from Germanic but I had never made the connection between that and the English 'nickname'. "Öka" means increase or add in modern Swedish by the way, so the word 'öknamn' literally translated means 'add-name' or 'increase-name'.
@andrewhoward72004 жыл бұрын
I so regret the gradual passing of the Devonshire dialect. How impoverished I consider my ' educated' accent to that of my forebears. Standard English conveys information but where be the soft hills, the ancient moorland villages, the scrumpy and the scones?
@Epicrandomness11114 жыл бұрын
True, the same tragedy is all over England
@jellybebe27534 жыл бұрын
The scones are in no danger. More's the pity ;-)
@wendylorimer56634 жыл бұрын
@Coelacanth Q Except in Merseyside where the accent becomes stronger every year.
@alanprice75842 жыл бұрын
I lived in rural Cumbria for about 20 years up until 2019. A neighbour of ours who had lived his entire life (he was in his late 80s) in the village spoke broad Cumbrian and often used "till" and also "telt" for told, styane for stone and madder for mate. His wife originated from a small town just 5 miles away but when started talking too fast she couldn't understand him. You might like to check out Dickie Dipperson who does a funny take on the cumbrian dialect.
@heronimousbrapson8634 жыл бұрын
There are remnants of older English in some American dialects as well, notably in Appalachian and Ozark dialects (a-courtin', a-huntin', etc.).
@ardyer34 жыл бұрын
I lived in the Appalachian region of North Carolina an et still gets used there occasionally.
@caliali10003 жыл бұрын
My father was from Arkansas and used “et.” Born 1906.And my mother from Western Kentucky used “a” a lot before many ing verbs.
@streglof4 жыл бұрын
as also displayed by the great linguists of South Park "I have to give my father a nerection"
@Survivethejive4 жыл бұрын
Fascinating! Living in Devon, i suspected the local yap to retain archaic features. Some dialect words are also OE i think. The local word for a bat is "flittermouse" which is cognate with many other germanic language words for bat
@bigaspidistra4 жыл бұрын
Bat has cognates in some Northern Germanic languages but in English it has been considerably shortened maybe to match rat. Hrērmūs was the Old English word ('rearmouse').
@Survivethejive4 жыл бұрын
@@bigaspidistra well i expect some root of Devonian fluttermouse or flittermouse is highly likely to have existed in Old English since we have cognates of Swedish: fladdermus German: Fledermaus Norwegian: flaggermus Danish: flagermus
@nadine16274 жыл бұрын
Yeah er say „Flädermuus“ in Swissgerman, which means a flutter mouse.
We in Italy have so many dialects too. Thay are really other languages. I am very fascinated by all the dialects around the world. When I was young I lost my mother ... She spoke a mixed language between russian, austrian and some slavian Keep your roots alive
@MrThayr6 ай бұрын
In the Appalachian area of the USA old people still said such sentences as:I have been a-workin' (I have been working), when I was growing up some seventy years ago.
@drfill92103 жыл бұрын
Fyi a famous poem in Australia, Clancy of the overflow, has the phrase: "Clancy's gone a-drovin and we don't know where he are" Don't know how well known that is.