What was a 'Northern Accent' Like in Old English?

[@tobybartels8426]

I've only watched the introduction so far, but I'm struck by how often the reconstructed Northumbrian pronunciation is closer to modern standard English than the reconstructed Wessex pronunciation is.

[@revolution1237]

Fun fact: Modern English mostly descended from the Mercian dialect.

[@aidanmahony1681]

The Wessex “Milk” sounds like the “Miwk” in my local dialect

[@historywithhilbert]

This was an absolute gold mine and endlessly interesting. Thanks for putting this one together, Simon!

[@antonyreyn]

Hilbert in the Hof! Hilbert do a video explaining that the Anglo Saxons were the Proto Vikings, pagans from Scandinavia the vikings just appropriated our culture and followed to England. Cheers

[@jimbobur]

"Fuck it, people'll be able to work it out from context" might be my new favourite quote.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Thats how I write english. I generally dont give a damn about the nosense that is english spelling and just let me fingers do the clicking without even needed to look at the keyboard or screen and I am always understood.

[@LemoUtan]

Yup. It's called 'externalising the costs', in this case of understanding you.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

@@LemoUtan No. There are no costs.

[@LemoUtan]

Thattsardly 4u2saythoizitt?

[@ShizoMoses]

@@LemoUtan Nice.

[@chrisstucker1813]

Being a Geordie, we still pronounce old and cold exactly the same as it was in this video. “All” is still pronounced the same but it’s more similar to the West Saxon dialect. It’s quite amazing how many Anglo-Saxon words still form the backbone of modern northern dialects.

[@ErickLöfdahl]

I see there are several connections to Scandinavia: Seed in Northumbrian is very similar to Scandinavian säd/sæd. Goose in West Saxon and Northumbrian has the same vowel in singular. Arm in Northumbrian has the same vowel and r-consonant as in Scandinavian languages. You can also notice the same vowel in West Saxon "church". There are both variants in Scandinavia: the i-sound, which is standard in Danish and Norwegian (y-sound in Swedish), and the u-sound in some Scandinavian dialects. Bridge is pronounced in the same way as the actual Scandinavian word for it today: brygge/a, where the first vowel is identical. "But" in West Saxon is very similar to Swedish "ack", an old word for "oh, alas". Finally, "leaf" is the same word as in my last name, and in Northumbrian (the changed vowel and second example) it is similar to how a speaker of Old Swedish would have said "löf". In modern Swedish, the "f" would always be pronounced as a "v", why the spelling reforms also changed it to a "v" (same in Danish and Norwegian). Icelanders still write the f:s, but pronounce them as v:s, so the Icelandic word would be "lauf", where the "au"-vowel today is more late Northumbrian than Proto-Germanic or early Northumbrian. Maybe the same vowel-change occurred in Old Norse?

[@seanpaulhiggins9159]

The way cold, old, and all are pronounced in the Northumbrian dialect is almost identical to the way those words are pronounced in Scotland to this day. You can also see similarities with church and bridge, as our national church is called the Kirk of Scotland, and although pronouncing bridge as "brig" has almost died out, it still remains with place names. Most people in Glasgow wouldn't say "I drove over the brig" but they would say "I drove over the bridge to get to Brigton (Bridgeton)", I've also heard other places like Coatbridge being referred to as "Coatbrig", etc.

[@chrisstucker1813]

Im from Newcastle and we also say cold and old exactly like in this video.

[@sisi2484]

No doubt standard english of south england had an impact . In Yorkshire brigg was also and still is used . Tho its usually regarded as being from old norse/danish rather than anglian/Northumbrian... who knows

[@moogypoog9714]

People in the highlands, especially older speakers can still be heard saying “Brigg”

[@alfiehaigh8412]

Always love the northern/north eastern based videos on this channel. It feels like it's rare to get coverage of linguistics from the region. Ik this delves into sociology as well as linguistics, but there's a really cool thing happening in Teesside/Middlesbrough atm. The social identity of whether people in the region identify with North Yorkshire or the north east is being heavily reflected in the accent and dialect. There seems to be a large generational trend where older people feel more closely connected to Yorkshire and speak with a much more Yorkshire dialect and accent, whereas younger generations are quite staunchly affiliated to the north east (county Durham, Sunderland, Newcastle etc) or teesside itself, and younger generations accents and dialects sound far more north eastern or Middlesbrough/teesside specific. There is a chapter I read about this in university though i can't remember the book/author's name for the life of me. Think this might possibly be dictated as well by Redcar and Cleveland becoming it's own council/county which has given younger generations a greater sense of self identity/seperation from Yorkshire *Note* this isn't absolute, you still get a good amount of 50+ people speaking with quite a teesside accent, but you don't really get many young people speaking with a more Yorkshire twang

[@Vingul]

0:55 this is precisely how we say «mosquito» (which is in the midge family) in modern Norwegian («mygg»). The more Scandinavian pronunciation in the Northern examples is noticeable in general.

[@leod-sigefast]

The Angles (Northumbria and Mercia), being closer in origin to the Danes might have had a closer linguistic pronunciation, than the Saxons of Wessex. It is believed the Angles might not have undergone as much paletization as the Saxon (south of England). Hence, church remained Kirk, Cheese remained Kese, Bridge remained Brigg, etc. Of course it is tricky to untangle because the Anglian north of England also had the most Viking settlement later in the Anglo-Saxon period. But the famous Northumbrian monk, Bede, was writing from early 8th century when there were no Viking incursions and his written English hints at some of these non-paletizations in his spoken Northumbrian English.

[@jenlulabelle]

I’m Scottish and I’ve been learning a bit of Norwegian on Duolingo. A lot of Scots language is very similar to modern Norwegian. I think it’s made it a bit easier for me than other English speakers

[@hilarychandler3621]

Very interesting. Reconstruction from writings is so mysterious to me. I am American English speaker transplanted from New England to the northern edge of the South- so why I am saying this is if you look at the word ‘laugh’, you would be hard pressed to get an accurate reconstruction of all our modern accents let alone British and Scottish or Welch or Irish. You do amazing work.

[@brythonicman3267]

It is, I remember in the late 90's talking to a businessman from Norway, I knew how to speak in the the old Yorkshire dialect to an extent as I originated from there, when I spoke in dialect he was fascinated and said it was very closely related to the way old farmers would have spoken in Norway in the middle 20th century, so in context it's not really that long ago.

[@riley02192012]

I really enjoyed this video, Simon. I love how you opened the video with speaking and comparing different dialects together. That was so fun! Great Job with the video's content and presentation.

[@Krystaliine]

Oh, I truly hope you make that second video! Thank you for this one, it was a treat

[@shandyooo]

Hi Simon, have you ever explored South Wales dialects? What so fascinating with ‘the valleys’ is the rapidly changing accents in a very short distance. Not only the geography of valleys but it’s also been said that the churches and mines created many distinct sounds. Even today, you can detect changes within a mile.

[@cartoonhanks1708]

Pretty sure they were still speaking Welsh then which is entirely a different language

[@nickkellie]

Interesting that in Wigan where I’m originally from people still colloquially say “owd” instead of “old”

[@waelisc]

Same in (most of?) the East Midlands

[@acatonawall3938]

See also cowd instead of cold.

[@nickkellie]

@@acatonawall3938 exactly

[@antonyreyn]

@@acatonawall3938 yeh its Code in Nottingham. Cheers

[@TheReddkatt]

Im amazed as a Yorkshireman how much of my strong yorkshire accent fit with old English

[@eliane2743]

It’s amazing how, being French and listening to the beginning of the video while not looking at the images, I first got the impression you were speaking German.

[@peterszeug308]

woah dialects from central or northern germany are even more similar to northern old english than they are to West saxon old english. Many examples you showed Sound exactly the same in my dialect (i live close to the belgian border).

[@tommeakin1732]

Which is interesting because I think the northern sounds much more like modern English as well

[@awibs57]

Absolutely fascinating video, loved it. My partner is an actor with a special interest in dialect and I am a history geek, so we love to take in topics like this together.

[@HBon111]

Such a brilliant and comprehensive look at the topic at hand. Great work!

[@Utgardaloki76]

@Simon Roper There is in fact an Old Norse cognate to ”cheese” @12:51 which was ”kæsir” meaning rennet. Modern North Germanic dialects also have verbs like ”k(j)æsa/käsa” meaning to turn milk into cheese. I don’t know the age of the word ”kæsir” so I do not know if it has any bearing on the old Northumbrian word. After all it is a loanword in Germanic languages (from Latin). Usually Old Norse and Modern North Germanic dialects and languages use other words for things pertaining to making cheese and there is no other word for ”cheese” than ”ostr” through out Scandinavian recorded history.

[@stu6533]

The ‘goat’ sound IMHO has a continuum across the Pennines as it is. In Preston and Blackburn it’s nearer ‘gort’ whilst in Hull it’s ‘gert’. I’d say in Leeds area it’s literally the mid point in between.

[@anonymoususer2756]

Where I’m from in Lancashire (near Leyland) the GOAT vowel is definitely a diphthong. Something like /ɤʊ/ or /ɤw/ maybe?

[@hglundahl]

11:18 A little tip from Polish. The groups KE and GE don't exist. It's always KIE and GIE, like with other palatalised consonants. However, before back vowels, K and G do accur as non-soft. It is possible that Old English in Northumbria also classified velars as "front" (at least in that position) - for H just take the phonetic value [ç].

[@user-td4do3op2d]

I’d love to see a video where you reconstruct accents from different parts of England c.1500-1700. You could make it quite general, e.g. London, West Country, Midlands, North West, North East.

[@Leofwine]

Do you, by any chance, know this channel? www.youtube.com/@a.z.foreman74/playlists

[@user-td4do3op2d]

@@Leofwine Yes I do! He hasn't done anything quite like that either, unfortunately.

[@revolution1237]

I do think other Old English dialects are underrated because the West Saxon dialect gets the most attention in terms of what Old English looks and sounds like. Thanks to you, and probably other KZbin channels, I now know that like Modern English, Old English had a lot of differences in terms of places in which native speakers were living. I know we have to be cautious of thinking that, but on the whole, I'd say a lot is going on with the language of the Anglo-Saxons than just one dialect. I'd like to see you do more videos on them, 'cause they're interesting. What can I say? You never know what's going on inside until you enter from the outside past the surface level. Man, that's something beautiful!

[@katypilkington1704]

This is so very interesting! Having been watching The Last Kingdom recently, my mum, my sister and I had a discussion about how "Eoforwic" in old Saxon could turn into modern day "York" as a place name - we think we cracked it, but I'd love to hear something on how old place names became place names today!

[@gin3645]

Much of the pronunciations you're describing for the Northumbrian dialect sounds like you're talking about my home area of southern North Carolina, in and around Scotland county

[@PSWeather19]

Hi Simon, I've been a long time viewer of your channel and I'm currently taking a course on the History of the English Language at a local college. Upon viewing "Some Words from Proto-Germanic to Old English" video, I've taken note to the hypothetical progression of the word 'haver' in the video from the old Germanic word which I refuse to write out. Although hypothetical, is it possible for you to show more examples of these "ghost words"? I find it incredibly fascinating to look at words which-could-have-been if speakers preferred a different word to a different ancestors. All the best, great video!

[@qeithwreid7745]

I just bloody love this channel. It’s so honest and regarding of the topic. It really brings it alive. I am slightly distracted by the brown stain over the anterior aspect of right Pectoralis Minor.

[@senecaflint6853]

Where’s Baldric? I miss him…

[@dracodistortion9447]

the villagers found out he sang that song about Woden and had him drawn and quartered

[@thatotherted3555]

Please do make a video about the differences in vocabulary! Your videos are always interesting, but this one really grabbed me for some reason. I actually took notes.

[@laamonftiboren4236]

I had questions about halfway through the video, but by the end you had answered them all! Gód uuerc!

[@ThePassionFwuit]

Fascinating video! I've often wondered what the roots of today's northern English accents are and I was not disappointed with what I learned today! I'm glad to see another example of how, despite what some might say, not everything distinctive about northern English necessarily comes by way of the Nords. :) I was interested in your examples of Dutch and Polish around 9:13 as well! It reminds me that in Ukrainian, the old proto-Slavic velar Ls have gone a step further and are spelled as V. The word for wolf for example is вовк (vovk), which is volk in most Slavic languages. Although spelled with a v in standard orthography, the pronunciation of these particular Vs vary quite a bit. Anywhere from [v] to [ʋ] to [β] and [w]. In Belarusian, a very close sister language of Ukrainian, the old Ruthenian (their common ancestor) v has, from what I know, universally become a [w], spelled Ў (Latin: Ŭ). Ukrainian is a fifth language for me, however, so I might be getting something wrong in the process. Hope to see another video like this soon, Simon!

[@aboba5995]

Ruthenian subgroup (Ukrainian, Belarusian, Rusyn) is literally Polonized.

[@ThePassionFwuit]

@@aboba5995 So? Sure they have lots of Polish influence but this particular sound change seems to be parallel to the Polish sound change, and not a direct result of its influence. I don’t see the relevance here.

[@harbourdogNL]

So much of this is over my head, but I find it so fascinating...one can only guess at the number of lost regional languages, dialects and accents of the Post-Roman era...I've no doubt that dialects were different between villages within a few kilometres of each other. A village I lived in West Sumatra, Indonesia, which was spread over about 4 km. had for different accents of the local language.

[@melissamybubbles6139]

If a western American time traveled somewhere in the British isles in the 1700s, where would people think that individual was from?

[@senecaflint6853]

Wales maybe? Idk that accent is pretty unique to its circumstances

[@StalinLovsMsmZioglowfagz]

Mars

[@oceantree5000]

Stalin- exactly. Was just finna say “outer space” 😂

[@oceantree5000]

Dushman- presumably they mean the modern American West, nota bene “time-traveled”

[@StalinLovsMsmZioglowfagz]

@@oceantree5000 Commiefornia may not even actually be from our solar system, or universe, at all. Think about THAT.

[@mew2knight337]

West saxon vs Northern difference in Old English seem to be as it is in Old French between Parisian and Normand variety ! That's so interresting !

[@midtskogen]

As for the loss of infinitive -n in Old Norse, I think it was a nasal -ã until the 12th century, maybe first completely reduced to -a in Iceland, elsewhere later. Apparently, Elfdalian still has instances of -ã. The nasal vowels were still discussed in the 12th century Grammatical Treatise.

[@katepalmer747]

Simon I've learned so much from you. Thank you 🌷

[@authormichellefranklin]

""And he just says, 'Fokket, people'll be able to work it out from context'." Haha, yep-- the bane of every linguist.

[@Monothefox]

The old Northumbrian accent really sound much more like a northern germanic language.

[@iceomistar4302]

When I was in high school I tried transcribing Beowulf(not a school project, I just enjoyed learning this stuff myself) into Northumbrian and it's kinda gratifying to realise that my transcriptions at least on a phonological level were correct. I often wonder what level of intelligibility the Danes had with the English in the North and if the lack of palatisation made it easier for the Danes to understand Northumbrian and Mercian? We may never know for sure but it's interesting to think about. I sure also add that Simon you are too humble, you are most certainly a linguist in my eyes, I studied Linguistics for 2 years and can say that I know nowhere near as much as you.

[@SoulcatcherLucario]

he actually made a video with dr jackson crawford about this very subject. here's the link to the video if you're curious: kzbin.info/www/bejne/m4XUemmGa86qmKcsi=xlZL_iatnUs60Mlt their conclusion is that it wouldn't be immediately intelligible, but it'd be very easy to learn the other's speech. a modern example they came up with was spanish and portuguese. hope this helped :3

[@obamabinladen4109]

0:41 This is literally how 21st-century Londoners say "milk"

[@TheAdrianRox]

Love these videos, thanks Simon! I had an idea for a video: maybe you could speculate what some of the main accents will sound like in 50 or 100 years if current trends persist?

[@mixolydian2010]

I have a friend from Newcastle, the way says 8 and h confuses me somehow. From Bolton.

[@hiccacarryer3624]

Seems odd that we in the urban southwest ( Plymouth) also use coŁd, oŁd miŁk even though we descend from Wessex speech - its the reverse of intrusive L in Bristowe>Bristol and very distinctive within the region

[@fatjackjack5416]

LOVE ur videos.

[@LeavinMyTown]

It's really interesting to me that the Irish word for but 'ach' [ax] seems to be the same as the Northumbrian Old English. Does [ax] in Old English share the more extended meaning of the Modern Irish word (where 'ach' is also used to form other forms - 'ach aon' - meaning 'only') or is it more of a coincidence/convergent evolution?

[@furyiv]

I found an old map of my town where a Church Street used to be called Kirkgate. Figured Kirk must mean church, then I saw this video thumbnail! Interestingly the City of Oslo, Norway has an area called Kirkegata (Church Street in Norwegian)

[@Excommunicated-ei1ep]

If French Speakers had a choice of Learning a Old English Dialect? I bet they’d go straight to Northumbrian tbh. Because both the Spelling and Pronunciation of Northumbrian, sometimes Looks and Sounds French? Especially the Spelling of “Lond” (Land) and the Pronunciation of “Come”?

[@bob___]

Great discussion of an important topic

[@carlstein9278]

and again i am amazed by the similarity of old english and rhinenish dialects of german. this old northern version of cold is just modern cologne accent

[@AutoReport1]

What I understood from Wrights Old English grammar and Wikipedia, the e in the diphthong "ea" is the phoneme /æ/ and the a is a back off glide (theoretically ʌ but in practice more probably ɐ). But you only need "ea", if the quality of the initial vowel is different to that of "eo". As the o is also in fact a back off glide (I think more like ə than o however), if Northumbrian æ becomes e, then ea and eo are in fact identical. That the second vowel is inaccurate is just testament to the difficulty in distinguishing the sound without modern audio processing.

[@shaunmorgan2202]

Growing up in 70s Lancashire, the pronunciation of common words was totally different. Soldier being sowjer, and the L would often be ow as in "I'm cowd" meaning cold.

[@benw9949]

For eo and ea, perhaps others -- Not just eh or ey for that first sound, but maybe ih (short I in fish, pit), and ah or uh or aw as well as oh, for the second element. So maybe huh, ih-ah, ih-aw, ih-oh. The common British year or beer as yee-uh, yih-uh, bee-uh, bih-uh would work there, as would American R for yin-er, yee-er, bih-er, bee-er, as examples of the bowel diphthongs. -- Note I think my accent (dialect) tends to say ih-w for things like dew, hue, new, more than nye, dye, or not, doo, but hyun, hew seems to be stronger, while hew (to hew a log) would tend to be hih-w. (and auto-spell-correct is probably ruining much of that.) -- But maybe the sounds varied over the region for each Old English dialect, sometimes merged, sometimes split, or sometimes, it was just confusing versus any common spelling they might see or use, for those who could read and write. Surely someone else has thought of this ih for eo and ea before me. But it seems possible enough to mention. Note how convention gives us ew instead of changing to iw, even if some portion of speakers say something closer to iw. Yew and hue both still get the y- in front, as if yew, you, hyiw, hyiu. So might this same diphthong have appeared (different circumstances) in Old English? (Or Middle English?)

[@Miss_Toots]

I have always found it fascinating that 5 miles down the road in south Yorkshire, word meanings and accents are so different...then I listen to this channel and realise that's NOTHING compared to how it used to be

[@dees3179]

5 miles down the road used to be achievable to travel. But much further and you had to have a reason that justified losing the work time, and that had to be a significant one as people were far more on the knife edge than they are now, much as we like to complain how broke we are. But the consequences of this reduced movement is that local dialects, accents and words were much more likely than in out current society. I don’t think we can get our heads around what life was like even for our own immediate ancestors. Yes, you could travel. But the need necessary to do so and time/effort required were proportionally unfathomable.

[@Bob_the_Jedi]

Wonderful

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

as another example of nasal vowels rounding, at least potentially, Pennsylvania Dutch (German dialect) has had a fairly significant amount of nasal loss so far Specifically, middle High German long A's have rounded to [o:] as in 'schlofe' (rather than schlafen, sleep) while new long A's (from open syllable lengthening) have rounded only relatively recently (and I think some Pa Dutch speakers still don't but I'm unsure) thus 'Naame' rather than 'Name' (obviously meaning 'name' as in English), with the AA being an [ɒ:~ɔ:] sound (it's roughly around that area) This has also happened with 'an' clusters from Middle High German where the nasal has been lost thus 'aa' for 'an' in German (cognate with 'on,' meaning quite different) That vowel used to be nasal, at least in the late 19th/early 20th century. At some point it denasalised but some may still have them (impressionistically, many Amish sound quite nasal so I've heard so far, so perhaps they're a bit more conservative here). The -e of 'schlofe' would have been nasal as well back then, but today no longer. It's not purely the long A's simply rounding as rounding also occurs with short A's but only around nasals specifically words like 'Mann' and the like can have backed and rounded pronunciations, though there seems to be a lot of variety, especially as short O's like [ɔ] and the AN clusters (where the nasal wasn't lost) can be variably unrounded and the result (at least with AN's in my experience) can vary in height with some higher and some lower I think the range is roughly [ ɐ~a~ɑ~ɒ~ɔ ] probably depending on where one comes from and specific words may go one way or another A good example is the word 'Hosse' (from Hosen, but note that German uses the singular not the plural like Pa Dutch, which could come from English influence, the word referring to 'pants'), where the O here can sound like that of 'cut' rather than the Englishman's pronunciation of 'cot' that one might have expected given the spelling You'll see words like 'cut' and 'cup' be used to explain the vowel spelt O by many Pa Dutch speakers in various dictionaries, me myself I'd not use a terribly fronted pronunciation here but the rounding is rather weak on mine, and this includes that of words such as 'Mann' where the vowel is roughly between [ɑ] and [ɒ] (I'd have [a] in other positions)

[@thurianwanderer]

This corresponts well with the dialectal areas, from which the Pennsylvania Dutch speakers originated. Although, the core of Pennsylvania Dutch traces back to the (Southern) Rhine Franconian area (Rhineland-Palatinate), there was a high amount of Alemannic/Swabian influence, in the case of the Amish often referred to, unspecifically, as Southern West German. The "Nasalierung" must have been a common Alemannic feature already during the Middle High German period, to a lesser extent also in Bavarian. It developed in some Western Middle German (Rhine Franconian) dialects, but I can't say, when, to what extent. Althoug, my dialect isn't related to Pennsylvania Dutch, I'm from the easternmost Alemannic border, Augsburg, my Swabian (influenced also by my mother Leutkirch im Allgäu), the standard form for "schlafen" is "schlôfɑ", usually rounded (lowered) but denasalised, as in an > â / Mann > Mâ (I use the circumflex for long vowels in general), some dialect speakers would spell it even o and Mo. Considering my East Swabian backround, rarely though, I also produce the so called East Swabian diphthongization of MHG â to au (already recorded in the Augsburger Stadtrecht 1276, mostly in its supplements until 1370: aubent, gaun, staun, rauthus instead of âbent, gân, stân, râthûs), therefore, I say "schlaufɑ", but still today, throughout the Swabian landscape, the diphthong often appears in different shapes, oftentimes an intermediate state between o and au, that's. why I often use "ao" instead. Also The nasalisation at the final is a common Alemannic feature (schlofə, schlofɑ, schlaofɑ, han/hã/hâ/hãu/hâo etc. = have, gã/gãu & štã/štãu besides MHG gangen > gangə/gangɑ and štanden > štandə/štandɑ/štɑndɑ), even the archaic Walser dialects far to the south, where OHG features are kept alive, which went extinct elsewhere already in the MHG period, such as the clear distinction between verb classes by using distinct OHG suffixes (OHG geban : gebä[n], ich gibu/gibe, dü gibisch, är gibit, wier gebä, ir gebät, ši gebänt, but OHG mahhôn : machoⁿ/machuⁿ, ich machuⁿ, dü machuscht, är machut, wer machu, ir machut, ši machunt). Unlike the majority of dialects within the High German area today, few kept the old gerund next to infintive: geban, ezzan : za gebanne, za ezzanne. In a few Walser varieties they still distinguish them, the inf. gebäⁿ lost the nasal, but the gerund z'gebän still has it. In the other major Alemannic/Swabian areas the gerund became very rare, yet, in a few places it is used, although, it changed during the MHG period, OHG gerund "gebanne" (gebenne) and the participle "gebanti" (gebente) conflated, together with the final nasalization it resulted in gebɑ but z' gebɑt. Nontheless, the actual nasalised vowels are gradually losing their nasal characteristics. It might seem odd, but throughout the comment, I avoided to highlight the lengthening in "geben" (gêbɑ / to the east even diphthongized geabɑ etc.), between all the mess I wrote, it could get confusing.

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

@@thurianwanderer gewwe in Pa Dutch interestingly enough, lots of vowels vary in length (another example is Ooscht instead of the perhaps expected Oscht, or hawwe instead of haawe). Nasal loss is also extremely widespread in at least Palatine German and I think Rhine Franconian more generally. Unsure to the status of the nasality of the vowels left behind though, so I don't think it's allemannic influence in Pa Dutch specifically per se especially as certain things like -li diminutives as an example and the like are also common in the southeastern dialects of Pfälzisch which Pa Dutch is closest to, so I've read, though there likely is a spectrum of influence with there kinda being a... dialect Sprachbund? Dialektbund maybe? lol, you likely understand what I'm aiming for there, that played into Pa Dutch from the get go. ich hab gheert deel Leit denke ass Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch wie Schwaewisch glange, was ich indresding finn, bikas meinre Meening nooch sinn se net zu aehnlich. 'S wunnert mich wieviel Leit erkenne wie pelsische Dialekde glange. Es dinkt mich ass sie net arrig bekannt

[@thurianwanderer]

​@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 Ja, i dät's Deitsch vo de Amischa ao ned Schwäbisch hoißa wella. Oigatlich isch'es Rheifränkisch. I didn't want to give the wrong impression, I should have replaced "high amount" with "uncertain amount", I didn't want to neglect its Rhine Franconian nature, not too long ago, I even had to point it out, when someone thought to overstate some Alemannic (Swiss German) features, which, of course are Rhine Franconian. Isch kunn ned schwätze wii eena vo de Pälzä, awwä isch hunn e Freindin unn iwwahapt, im Pälzische nasaliere se aach all Endunge (mache, gebe, sage, dringge, esse unn so weidä). Och de middelfränggische Moselfrangge (Letzebuergesch) unn Rhinglänner (Ripuare: Kölle, Ooche) hon kee/king Nasal mee, nit iwwerall, owwe in de meescht Weerre/Wierder (Wörter). In general, as you already pointed out, there was Sprachbund among those Western High/Low German dialects. Btw., there is another correlation, considering the palatalisation of s not just at initial pre-consonantic positions as it became a common High German feature (sp-, st- ,schm-, schn-, schw-) but also in mid-positions (bischt, fescht, hascht). Although it is developed to the fullest extent in Alemannic, it's known to your Pennsilv. Dutch, Rhine Franconian and parts of Bavarian. Yesterday, I wrote a draft for a comment, but the text became exaggerated in relation to the prior comment. In it, I wanted to draw a rough overview about the development of Gmc. sk. But that's just too much off the topic now. I had just the similarity of the nasalisation as in Old Northhumbrian in mind as I went on. As he mentioned Dutch, it's an interesting feature across the Germanic landscape. I basically want to give the Alamanni (swâba) their own voice, because in a broader sence, oftentimes, I'm somewhat deeply disappointed, that the High German continuum in its historical richness, is often reduced to our colourless standard variety, whereas, our genuine dialects are often despised and get ridiculed, especially by those Germans, who think, the lifeless Standard German is believed to be some kind of idealised lingua sacra, that existed since the dawn of time lol. There are many videos across KZbin, where I start to sigh, take the alveolar R for example. It has always been a basic feature in German as well, just 4, 5 generations ago it was common throughout the whole Low and High German areas, with exceptions of course. A good example would be the situation of Swabian as spoken today in Württemberg, just about the last 3 generations, the velar or sometimes uvular R completely replaced the alveolar. Today, many pretend, the guttural/velar approximant has always been the status quo in German, which contradicts the recorded data of earlier linguistic observations, before 1950 resp. 1900, as well, as my own real mother tongue. The velar R might have existed since the Middle Ages, m a y b e, there was a correlation with a specific Istvaeonic/Frankish origin (s. the langues d'oil), as long, as one ignores the existence of the alveolar R in some Low Franconian areas (e.g. Flemish) too. Mînan (althôh)thiutiscan (suuâbiscan/suuêbiscan) groaz themo engiliscan Lernungkneht etho Lernungthegan :)

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

@@thurianwanderer oh fer schur ya, it's a fascinating thing all the dialects and my God have I come across the type to disregard all them just for the Standard, ei ei ei Is your R uvular yourself? Pa Dutch varies between either an American R or an alveolar tap, I've an alveolar tap myself. Uvular never pops up here Most American German dialects migrated here before the uvular R really began spreading

[@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410]

@@thurianwanderer ooh actually I forgot to mention as well, though not Pa Dutch per se there are also dialects spoken by the Swiss Amish of Indiana of Alsatian and Bern Deutsch bent. The Alsatian one as a niederalemannische dialect might very well be a good bit closer to Swabian, beyond the overall southwestern vibes of all dialects in question Sadly I don't know any American forms of Swabian specifically (this is probably because most people from that region would've assimilated into the Pa Dutch), most movement seems to be from western Germany to the US (which makes sense, wars with France were the impetus for a lot of it), closest I know of probably is indeed the Alsatian dialect prior mentioned, next closest besides Pa Dutch'd be Hutterite German, but that's a dialect of Carinthian German and not even alemannic

[@philippehendrickx1109]

Im a native Dutch speaker and recognise a lot of words that we still use in Dutch today

[@foundationofBritain]

Great video mate. Can you please do one on the Mercian dialect.

[@offaofmercia3329]

Would East Anglian have had a discrete dialect too Simon? I imagine Tamworth accent of Aethelflaed's hall retainers would have differed to a Norwich accent. Fascinating discussion as always.

[@tompatterson1548]

Maybe for those diphthongs, the vowel assimilated in West Saxon, but the consonant assimilated in Northumbrian?

[@sisi2484]

We were told alot as school kids that our Northern accent/dialect was born through 2 distinct languages meeting ...the Angles(Northumbrians) language and the new comers from Scandinavia . Possible Nevertheless , I wonder how different Danish , Norwegian and Northumbrian Anglian were at that time . Maybe the Northumbrian language had differed from the Norse and Danes language after 400 years of detachment and being settled in what is present day Southern Scotland/Northern england and mixing and being influenced from both Britonnic Celtic native peoples and later the Irish/Gaelic Celtic of the Church ... the Northumbrian Church at that time was close to the Irish Celtic Church in Iona (Dalriada) or rather was part of it . ( The Irish brought Christianity to the Northumbrian elite).....so it's not far fetched that the Northumbrian language was influenced by the clerics/ruling class who were close to and part of the Irish Celtic Church in Iona etc and more probably the local native Britonnic Celts in Northumbria. Then ofcourse at a later stage we have the massive influence of old Danish and old Norse in most of Northumbria.

[@mrtrollnator123]

From what I can hear, the northumbrian dialect is more heavily influenced by old norse, hence the simpler grammar and more Scandinavian-sounding pronounciation

[@nickparkes8462]

Doric is now taught in Moray and Banff,apparently Northumbrian is related

[@tylersullivan5043]

Scots and its dialects and variants are descended from Northumbrian

[@aboba5995]

Has Kentish some descendants like WS (Yola, Fingalian), Northumbrian (Scots), Mercian (English)?

[@hglundahl]

0:56 OK, Modern English was basically following Old Northumbrian, up to cyrice / kyrike. From then the last 3 words are English like West-Saxon and Scots like Northumbrian.

[@hglundahl]

In the last words, it's probably Northumbrian nasal vowel ending that gets weakened to -e in Late Middle English or Early Modern English.

[@benw9949]

Isn't it possible, deducible, that a voice velar fricative, blurry gh, occurred in Old English, with -w or -y following in some situations, labialize or palatalized? Compare modern Spanish and Greek, which have this blurry gh in at least medial (between vowel) situations like haha, agua, saguaro. Old English may have had this blurry gh varying with y- in things like yellow, yard, and so on. Meanwhile, it also developed the /dj/ sounds like in modern judge, in things like ecg (edge). My understanding is the gh went to harder g or to j, w, or y in given environments.

[@marshallwilliams3531]

If anybody wants to hear old English pronounciations, all you have to listen to any West Indian, that was born on the islands. They still have a lot of these pronunciations to this day.. The accent is different but way they say words like cold and old etc is exactly the ssme as standard old English

[@zero_gravity5861]

the northumbrian reconstruction somewhat sensibly sounds more like a general american accent than the standard reconstructed one [sounds like a general american accent], perhaps due to less southern influence(many early english settlers of north america being poorer and therefore as a whole having interacted less with learned/high society accents, perhaps).

[@trashkidd]

16:27 me whenever I forget how to spell a word in english for my papers

[@dolguth]

You don't round your /y/ vowels, they sound exactly like /i/ to me. My native language has /y/

[@simonroper9218]

I do round [y] a little bit, and I can comfortably hear the difference between [i] and [y] in most instances where I've used them in this video - but having looked at it in Praat, I definitely overlap the two in some cases (the /i/ in 'cirice' has very similar formants to the /y/ in 'brycg'). My [y] is also not as rounded as the [y] I've heard a lot of German speakers use, which is the modern language with an /y/ phoneme that I'm most familiar with. I'll try to make sure I round [y] more in future - thanks for pointing this out!

[@RobbeSeolh]

Many German dialects also drop final n's, other dialects metathesize e and n, so en becomes ne.

[@jonjohnson2844]

When did people start starting sentences with ‘so’…feels like it’s pretty recent

[@Preservestlandry]

Mark Zuckerberg talks like that, and people just started repeating it. That's the explanation I've seen.

[@shandyooo]

There was a programme about this in BBC Radio 4. Specifically with STEM speakers. It seems to be used in two ways. For the speaker, it prepares them for a difficult to articulate sentence and a warning sound to the listener, almost like “get ready”. It was really interesting.

[@SnabbKassa]

Have you made a conscious and right decision to drop the too modest "I am not a linguist" disclaimer?

[@LeonidasSthlm]

So it was even more similar to scandinavian languages! Cool!

[@Judesmood118]

Just over here, replaying Julian Smith's "Malk" sketch in my brain... (kzbin.info/www/bejne/qqqZY4ywfNesi5Y)

[@Cephlin]

How do you even find out about all of this?

[@oldplucker1]

Hi Simon, great vids. Can you pronounce this word in Anglo Saxon. ‘Sceatta’ the Anglo Saxon silver penny. I hear people pronounce it as Skeet. But I think that might be wrong. Can you pronounce it? Maybe we can get 1 Million historians and archaeologists to pronounce it correctly.!!

[@anselmpriest3920]

How close is the Black Country accent to Old English?

[@gedgar]

What is la'al?

[@noxiousdow]

I'm from Northumberland me like. 🤣

[@axisboss1654]

So Old Northern English took the fronted umlaut for plurals interesting.

[@wurzel9671]

5:35

[@sunwukong6897]

i knew a guy from Cumbria named Mark he was from "Cockermouth" lmao

[@lennutrajektoor]

Kirike or Estonian kirik has to be Estonian substrate in Old English. This is not the first time such observation is made, for instance, Estonian vald, valdan, is Old English waeldan which has the same pronunciation. There has been long suspicion Estonian has significant contribution to Germanic and Old English just the details and evidence are starting to emerge.

[@Afrologist]

Germanic substrate hypothesis holds serious water, but PIE fanboys are in denial of it. They are too in love with their conlang to listen to linguistic evidence.

[@mercianthane2503]

So dozens of words in all modern english dialects mostly come from the anglian regions of England, and not precisely from the West Saxon dialect. Even names like Edmund might come from an anglian Ēdmund and not from Ēadmund, right?

[@revolution1237]

Yes! I think it's so much so in fact that if you rewind the clock, you will see that it directly descended from that dialect, with other words from other Old English dialects. In a way, it's kinda similar to Standard German, which is based in Central German, with other words from other German dialects, including Low German, but the pronunciation of words is based in Low German, along with some sounds of the High German Consonant Shift.

[@mercianthane2503]

@@revolution1237 Correct. Which is why I kinda dislike when someone says that "rede" (counsel, advice) comes from ræd. Ræd is the WS form of the world, and we inherited the anglian form: réd. Sure, if you go back to the 7th century BC, maybe all dialects are quite similar, but not around the 9th century. West Saxon was the dialect we know the best because of all this vast corpus of books and writings we have avaible, but we shouldn't assume that all modern english words come from WS.

[@revolution1237]

@@mercianthane2503 Yeah! Like any other language, Old English had a lot of differences in terms of places in which native speakers were living, just like Modern English today.

[@FrancisCWolfe]

Experimental "fuck it"?

[@hazelroper4166]

💛

[@mats520]

Deutsch: Ich mag Altenglisch. Englisch: I like old English.

[@islaymmm]

Is the Old English "but" a cognate with "og" in Norwegian?

[@weonanegesiscipelibba2973]

no, it's cognate to Old English for "also" which was "eac"

[@islaymmm]

@@weonanegesiscipelibba2973 Thanks for the correction!

[@KING-FMJ]

wonder what Scandinavian accents were like

[@LimeyRedneck]

🤠💜

[@teongreen5254]

Northumbrian is more similar to german :)

[@wilkoufert8758]

Sounds a tad more continental

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

water become wōter is how I would show a vovel being rounded to english speakers. Its actually so funny that when I speak english with a latvian accent I say wōter but when I speak freely and you wouldnt tell me apart from an american I would say wāder. I think its do to the fact that at this point Ive learned english like 4 different times. First I learned english watching american cartoons as a kid. Then I whent to school and started to learn latian english from my teacher and classmates. Then I learned written american english from changing a word every time the US spellcheckers said it was wrong till it sayed everything checks out. Then I learned written british english because thats what my middle school exam was and I wanted a perfect score, I got it - 97%.

[@fourshore502]

northumbrian sounds a lot more scandinavian, was that because of norse influence or was it like that even before? they had the ö ä and å sounds for example.

[@Afrologist]

It was like that before, most Germanic languages were rather intelligible at this point in time. In fact, Anglo-Saxon came from West Germanic dialects with direct contact with Norse speakers; even in the 11th century they had few problems communicating.

[@Svensk7119]

Ow! Square word!

[@beepboop204]

🙃

[@riccardo363]

Phonetics we don't speak like that anymore the only accent that does is scouse not sure about Scottish but definitely Durham North Yorkshire Cumbria we still carry ee oo ack yackka reet hoose words

[@Ypsilion2]

The modern English phonetic is much closer to Celtic than to Germanic languages...

[@shlongerwilson1347]

fyrst

[@Vingul]

Sorry (not sorry), I was fürst.

[@NathanDudani]

@@Vingul nei

[@Vingul]

@@NathanDudani Jo. Refresh it often enough and you will come to see that I was first and you are wrong.

[@Vingul]

@@NathanDudani or just sort by newest ofc. NOT that it’s a matter of LIFE and DEATH.

[@ODKON93]

The northern one sounds better, hands down.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

I think you should have first spoken westsaxon and then northumberlandish, people who dont have memory probelms could then see the feel of everything pronounced slightly differently.