'Wiggle Room' in Reconstructed Old English Pronunciation

Three videos by Dr. Geoff Lindsey about aspiration: • ENGLISH ASPIRATION: ho...
• English ASPIRATION Par...
• Speech is really SBEECH!

[@marcasdebarun6879]

I appreciate how easily you're able to create such a personable, rustic feel to your videos. The talking about the weather, well wishes as if you're talking to a friend, shots of nature, the sounds of the birds, even your clothes (nice jumper, I have to say) really add to the discussions of such old-timey things as Old English phonology. Feels like you're almost talking to an academic from the 1950s. The best just a bloke on KZbin without a doubt.

[@andobtw8046]

I agree, though i got the vibe from the start of the video like I had just walked into class and the teacher just started talking (the kind of class id want to pay attention in)

[@ab1otic222]

Apologising for the potentially bad weather where you aren't has got to be the most British thing ever! 😂

[@valinhorn42]

I expected this video to feature you giving us the Old English pronunciation of the phrase "wiggle room", and was mildly confused when the explanatory tangent just kept on going. Not that I'm complaining.

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

I thought it would be some song or poem called "Wiggle Room" loooool

[@toastgod1276]

Weeg-gley rrohm

[@saddasish]

Regarding the use of the IPA symbols 'æ' and 'a', there's a difference between how these symbols are designated on the official vowel chart and how they're used in practice. On the vowel chart, both 'æ' and 'a' are considered front vowels, with 'æ' more raised than 'a'. In actual practice however, 'a' is more commonly used for the low *central* vowel in phonemic and phonetic descriptions of many languages (this vowel position does not have an official separate symbol for some reason despite being abundant in languages, although 'ä' is one alternative representation if clarification is needed), and 'æ' is generally used for any low front vowel. The reason for this is because differentiation between front, central, and back versions of a low vowels is more useful in languages than differentiation between front vowels that are low, near-low, and open-mid (which the IPA chart seems to disagree for who knows why). If one were to represent Old English Æ as [a], it would suggest that the sound is low central like the Spanish A [a]. Hopefully that clears things up.

[@jared_bowden]

I also think that the fact that we learn to read the symbols a and ɑ interchangeably as the same letter is a factor in why some linguists prefer using /æ/ instead of /a/, mentally eaiser to distinguish. Most people only use one form of the letter "a" (a or ɑ) in their handwriting, which they think of as the standard way of writing the sound - when doing fieldwork it becomes a pain in the ass trying to switch between the 2, æ becomes a lot easier.

[@aubemilagrosa6074]

I noticed that as well. When Simon says 'trap' at 9:20, I thought that I would transcribe his sound definitely as [æ]. But that would probably be because it just sounds so different from the default A sound of my native language, German, which I would transcribe as plain [a]. But just as with the examples you have provided, the A sound in German seems to be open-central, probably more exactly transcribed as [ä]. This, however, seems to be not very commonly used and I'm not sure if there is any language at all that contrasts [a] and [ä] so maybe that's why? Also, I don't like it because it looks quite unusual for me as a German speaker because in German orthography we use for another sound, [ɛ]. That being said I'm not completely sure if the distinction between the two A sounds is really just vowel backness or if Simon's trap A is also a bit more closed than the German A.

[@tonyf9984]

@@aubemilagrosa6074 I think your last point is right. The whole mini-discussion around the front open vowels seemed somewhat pointless to me, because when Simon modelled what he regarded as the most open front vowel it was much more closed than cardinal 4 - just a slightly more open [æ], in fact. I agree with you that the vowel in German 'Mann', for instance, is much closer to [a], as is the vowel in English 'man' in most of the dialects of Yorkshire, where I live.

[@timolson4809]

Here in Philadelphia most of our /i/ sounds are actually realized as a /ɪi/ diphthong, which seems very similar to this lax vowel. People make fun of us for our football team sounding like "Iggles", but noluwdc anyway.

[@stevenmontoya9950]

I quite like the light-dark quality of the nature shots, Simon! Here in Los Angeles springtime means unpredictable weather (we had a strong storm this week, last week we had a brief heat wave, and the pattern of marine layer clouds seems to be here to stay for now). I'm an architecture student, and your linguistics videos are my go to as a study/drawing/model-building companion. Cheers from SoCal!

[@JC-jv5xw]

in the UK March/April is also very volatile. Last week we had clear skies and daytime temperatures up to 19 deg C (66 F). This week much colder with wind and snow showers (only settling on the most exposed hilly areas in the north). Weird seeing a snow shower then an hour later no clouds to be seen in the sky!

[@H.J.Fleischmann]

I came here expecting to hear the phrase 'wiggle room' said in Old English pronunciation. I feel a tad silly now, but this is quite a nice video.

[@desanipt]

11:00 I found this part pretty interesting because in Portuguese (at least in my dialect of it, from northern Portugal, and I'm certainly not alone as I've seen videos aimed at Brazilians teaching how to distinguish the sounds in English) /æ/ is an allophone of /ɛ/. To this day I struggle distinguishing man/men, pan/pen etc. in American English

[@EgonSupreme]

That's interesting. I'm also from Northern Portugal, and I actually find my local accent _helps_ me distinguish them.

[@desanipt]

@@EgonSupreme A sério?? De onde és? Eu sou da Póvoa de Varzim, um pouco a norte do Porto. A verdade é que já tive pessoas a queixarem-se de pronunciar o "é" de forma estranha, e nem eram de muito longe de onde vivo, por isso pode ser algo muito local mesmo 😅😅😅

[@hangatsangat2400]

Wouldn't having allophones make it easier for you to distinguish those allophonic sounds from one another? Using myself as an example, when I tried to learn German, it was pretty much impossible for me to differentiate the German 'ch' from the English 'sh'. But when I found out that that sound in German is actually the same as the initial consonant sound in the English 'huge' (the /ç/ sound), suddenly, distinguishing those two sounds became much, much easier for me.

[@NixinovaMC]

Im a native speaker and I can't even make [æ] lol

[@desanipt]

@@hangatsangat2400 Well, not quite, no. At least for me, I simply freely variate between the 2 sounds when pronouncing an open E sound in Portuguese. There's really no pattern as there is with English actually differentiating the /ç/ in words like "huge" and the in "shine", idk. I really just interpret these 2 vowels as the same sound and will use them interchangeably for the same word without noticing it 😵 (as far as I can tell, because I even need to really focus to be able to understand which one I'm articulating 😓)

[@IntelVoid]

Perhaps the choice of æ over a is to distinguish it from ɑ, and avoid a bit of the confusion that a/ɑ would introduce. (Then at least if you forget to use the special character and type a instead of ɑ, you're still not conflating it with æ)

[@greggapowell67]

Simon... I continue to have a great appreciation for your work. Thank you.

[@riptidemonzarc3103]

Am I the only one who first thought that 'Wiggle Room' referred to some English play or work of literature?

[@denisripley8699]

In the 'Fiddle Factor' and 'Guesstimate' category I suspect.

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

Yeah, I thought it'd be a song or poem

[@danieladams4561]

How can you not have a qualification in linguistics 🤯

[@jordanschriver4228]

NGL I actually thought that you would be reciting a story entitled "Wiggle Room" in Old English.

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

Same

[@carlinberg]

This was super interesting, although I really expected the video to be about how to reconstruct the words "wiggle" and "room" as if the expression existed in Old English 😂

[@CraftsmanOfAwsomenes]

I think videos like this are really important because it highlights exactly what we do and don't know for the sake of visualization for those who think reconstruction is impossible.

[@miguelalbarracin9077]

Your content is fascinating and you’ve inspired me to study linguistics. Also I love your voice!

[@lagomoof]

A heavy RP (perhaps parodied or a reflection of an older form) has the trap vowel as being very like an e sound, and "trap" could sound like "trep" to an untrained ear. Purely guessing, but perhaps some purists are alluding to this when using æ. i.e. an a that sounds like an e. When attempting to (poorly) imitate this pronunciation myself, I find that the tip of my tongue ends up behind or pressed into my lower teeth. The word "cat" is even clearer because the mouth isn't constricted by an 'r'. In the same idiom, the word "bet" places the tongue tip between the teeth (or hovering behind the between position) rather than behind any. In my natural accent (Yorkshire), saying "trap" puts my tongue tip somewhere behind my upper teeth, which is notably different.

[@rachelbrooksy]

Thank you for your enlightening (and comforting!) videos!

[@buckbell7784]

Always brightens my day when you post. Hope you’re doing well!

[@12wen]

Birds, butterflies, bees, clouds.... what a beautiful afternoon :)

[@zhongsense]

If I recall correctly there was (is?) a similar question regarding long and short 'i' in Sanskrit. Today I always hear the short vowel pronounced /ɪ/ rather than /i/, and my teacher told me that an early grammarian (maybe Pāṇini?) noted this difference in quality long ago. BUT still most inventories I see simply distinguish between the two in terms of length, /i/ and /iː/. I stopped with Sanskrit after one semester, but maybe one of you all has some idea!

[@riley02192012]

Here in CT, the weather changes so much this time of year. It's still cold here. But there are a few Crocuses starting to pop up, which is the very first sign of Spring. The birds are coming back. It's lighter out, which is nice. There's a lot of rain and strong winds. I'm playing with my puppy listening to the rain and wind tonight. 😊❤🐶

[@herrfister1477]

Uh huh What did you have for breakfast?

[@strafrag1]

Thanks, Simon. Great video. Cheers.

[@BlackHayateTheThird]

Really enjoyed your video! Having taken linguistics and an interest in Old English, I really appreciate learning through your insights. Also super enjoy the nature shots and hearing the birds in the background, it's very relaxing. Hope you have many fair days and are able to enjoy the outdoors as much as possible!

[@vampyricon7026]

I think one thing to note, regarding the use of /æ/ for written æ, is that I have not seen a single linguist use /a/ to describe a low-front unrounded vowel. I've only ever seen it used for a low-central unrounded vowel, which is contrary to what is prescribed by the IPA, but a clearly superior choice in my mind, as very few languages distinguish low unrounded vowels from each other. If one wants a low-front unrounded vowel, one uses /æ/ to represent it.

[@WestlehSeyweld]

Always love the videos on Anglo-Saxon history

[@ad61video]

Very informative Simon, thank you for posting. Certain variations will never be solved, the question remains when a variation is worth while, like the ae and a question. In dutch the a sounds quite different than in english when it is long, but less so when it is short.

[@AnnaAnna-uc2ff]

Thank you.

[@Yan_Alkovic]

I thought this would be a video _in_ reconstructed OE pronunciation…. Oh well. Still fun. Also I’ve heard that the palatalisation of was not uniform, and Northumbrian dialects most likely used velar as opposed to palatial version, hence Scots words like “kirk” for “Church”

[@brunozimmermann8017]

I'd say that short /æ/ had a more open pronunciation, towards [a], while long /æː/ had a more close pronunciation, towards [æː ~ ɛː] Meanwhile, short /ɑ/ had a more open pronunciation, towards [ɑ], while long /ɑː/ had a more close pronunciation, towards [ɑ̝ː ~ ʌː], perhaps slightly rounded [ɒ̝ː ~ ʌ̹ː] Why? short OE /æ, ɑ/ > short MidE /a/ long OE /æː/ > long MidE /ɛː/ long OE /ɑː/ > long MidE /ɔː/ A few weird things about this: 1. Those doesn't seem like a lax-tense pair, e.g. [æ] seems to me more lax than [a] (or it is not?) 2. There is no evidence for roundedness of long /ɑː/ during OE period, while short /ɑ/ has; but the one that gets rounded in MidE is the long version, not the short one Also, I'd say short /e, o/ had true-mid pronunciations [e̞ ] and [o̞ ], while /eː, oː/ had close-mid pronunciations [eː, oː], based on MidE reflexes (which are uncertain) and on ModE reflexes For short close /i, y, u/, I'd say the same as you: lax near-close [ɪ, ʏ, ʊ] (and long /iː, yː, uː/ had close-mid [iː, yː, uː] pronunciations)

[@saymyname218]

Fascinating (y)

[@ruawhitepaw]

Concerning the laxness of short vowels, you must also consider the process of homorganic lengthening. This process, which took place at the very end of the Old English period, lengthens vowels when they are followed by mb, ld, nd, rd and possibly other combinations. Since this is the process that produced the diphthongs in "climb", "child", "bind", "bound", "hound", we can be pretty certain that these were long ī and ū in Middle English, and that the short vowels they arose from were tense, phonetically similar to their long equivalents. At the same time, the words "field" and "old" were also affected, but their vowel merged with long open ɛ̄ and ɔ̄. So we can also say with reasonable certainty that short "e" and "o" were different in quality from their long counterparts at the time. According to Wikipedia, homorganic lengthening occurred a few centuries earlier than open syllable lengthening (although there are no words that could have underwent both). So it seems that either the short high vowels became lax in the intervening centuries, or there was tense-lax allophony in Old English and the tense allophones were the ones that lengthened and merged with the original long vowels.

[@Jere-cj6mb]

You could make a video about the etymology of other, or, whether, either and their cognates, especially the german ones.

[@niqpal]

love you, simon

[@dayalasingh5853]

On the topic of these short lax vowels Punjabi has three /ɪ/ /ʊ/ /ə/ and I was reading a paper that seems to call them "omnipotent" which is a term I've never heard of before.

[@charliebewsey6872]

Not relevant particularly to the video, but I just moved countries and don't have much vocal contact with people back home and it is almost a soothing tie to home to watch you talk about linguistics in your lovely British garden

[@cykkm]

As a general rule, the vowel system of a language is trending to contrast them by distancing F1 and F2 as far as possible. This indeed supports your proposition that /æ/ was rather [a] than [æ], which would put it to the lowest and the leftmost position in the IPA chart, lower than [æ].

[@AutoReport1]

I think it is the other way around, IPA characters are often taken from Old English orthography expanded with letters from elsewhere as needed. e.g. /y/ rather than upsilon

[@bonesf200]

Absolutely love these vids. I've just noticed you have a look of Robert Shaw. Ridiculous question I know but, I don't suppose you have any ideas if Quint's accent in Jaws is actually close to anything that exists? Jaws fans have discussed it for years but only ever come up with "Robert Shaw's sea salt accent".

[@finolaomurchu8217]

I know who you mean, the man of the sea, the wisdom sea man. Yes.☘

[@TheAsharedhett]

Your content is quite interesting, but I'm curious: do you focus on Germanic linguistics and anthropology exclusively? Much of your material is concerned with the early medieval period, when Latin would of course be the dominant written language. Have you done much work with or about Latin?

[@jdonland]

It might be interesting to hear you read some Old English with the long and short vowels distinguished only by literal length and then again but with the additional tense/lax distinction so we can hear the difference between these two reconstructions.

[@willf5768]

The weather in the northeast is doing its roller coaster ride between almost 60F to 12F but the snow is finally loosing and spring is sneaking in the robins are running about flipping leaves in hope of finding a sluggish insect but it isn't officially spring until I see and hear the Black bird or the Grackle and its terrible noise they make😁

[@randallgordon3995]

I enjoy your videos immensely and am very impressed with your skill in reproducing the IPA sounds accurately and consistently. I am a little curious as to the reason for your more fronted u: in the alternative pronunciations of mūs. My assumption was that it would have naturally retained a further back pronunciation in order to maintain maximal distinction from the front vowel of the plural mȳs.

[@clerigocarriedo]

Idea for a video: the syllable-timed stress-timed spectrum and in Germanic languages and in the history and varieties of English.

[@MartaRzehorz]

the thing with a vs æ is something I have bit noticed and I think it might be a convention of using letters for the vowel systems or vowel polygons as in if there is opposing back and front vowels æ and ɑ regardless of what is the actually realization in height, they are open vowels contrasting in backness x frontness, thinking about it I have never really seen IPA for a front vowel really? only an open vowel not contrasting anything in it's height level? (I am not a linguist, just noticing the same thing and wondering about it as well)

[@finolaomurchu8217]

I'll have to listen to this tomorrow. I still haven't recovered from the two men discussing buying work shoes 1950's up to 1970's chat. Cockney accent through the ages my personal favourite. The part of England your dad is from Northumberland was it? You did a great vid on that too☘

[@philroberts7238]

Cumbria, I believe: NW as distinct from NE.

[@codemanticism]

11:00, I suppose it could be something close to [ɜ] (it could maybe be realized as [ə] and\or [ɐ], while I can tell them apart, that doesn't mean they could _specially in rapid speech where sound shifting takes place_ since they have a same\smaller _depending in the exact quality_ difference as [o] to [ʊ] which was a shift in French "Why French sounds so unlike other Romance languages" by NativLang) because was defined as between \ɑ\ "ierdlingA" and \e\ "iErdlinga" like said in a video called "10 Letters that were dropped from the alphabet"

[@fuckdefed]

Snowing here for the first time in ages today, which is odd really as Spring is on its way.

[@samcadwallader2899]

I'm a native English speaker with a Welsh heritage who is from the NW of England. However I've lived in the NE, SW and SE of England as well as speaking French, Dutch and a smattering of German. It's amazing how easy these Old English phrases are to understand if I Iisten carefully. I don't think we've moved that far away.

[@kikidee23]

I think you probably understand it because you speak Dutch and some German! I honestly can make out a word or 2 here and there just because I have some basic German knowledge. I would say we have moved very far away. Old English sounds to me like a mix of Danish, Dutch, German, maybe with some Norwegian thrown in.

[@dustinpatsios554]

the birds in your videos always sound so nice. in florida where i live its all crows and seagulls making awful noise and shitting everywhere lol.

[@kharris3352]

It’s sad that this is all lost. But, the video that made me really sad was the one about the stark difference between casual speech and the written word. How there’s endings and beginnings. Changing topics mid-sentence. Stuttering. Filler words. Idioms. These just didn’t make it into writing. In AAVE, a linguist I like pointed out that “done been” is a past marker but it has a subtly different meaning depending on how you stress it. And this is lost to time in reconstructed language. Just breaks my heart that we’ll never be able to hear how people who spoke these beautiful old languages truly talked will be lost

[@user-pk9qo1gd6r]

Somehow I thought it would be a reconstruction of the literal phrase "wiggle room" backwards into Old English

[@conspiracy_risk7526]

One thing I find interesting about the monophthongal vowel inventory of Old English is that it's the same as in Modern Finnish, with the exception that it doesn't have /ø/. Both languages are also typically analyzed as having /æ/ but not /a/! Also, you put a piece of text up saying you would link to a Reddit post in the description, but it doesn't seem to be there?

[@daniellecward5400]

Thanks for another interesting video! Out of all the British accents I’ve heard, your accent sounds the most similar to my own (Australian). Have your spent any time in Australia or NZ?

[@SirDeathDark]

The letter æ is named ash/æsc because similar to characters like thorn and wynn, it was used to replace the Futhorc rune of the same name, in this case ᚫ. This is relevant to note because the name of a rune contains the sound of that rune, so we can reasonably assume that ᚫ/æ is pronounced with the "a" sound in "ash", which is /æ/.

[@user-un7gp4bl2l]

Simon is talking about its exact phonetic realisation. "Ash" is Modern English, and this is a discussion about what the first phoneme in "æsc" sounded like in Old English, not Modern English. Also, "ash" has [æ] in some places, [a] in some other places, and [α] in yet some other places. On top of that, the modern [æ] is due to a fronting and raising process that happened in Middle English, and it didn't even happen in some places, like Scotland, so I don't see how some Modern English speakers saying [æ] has any relevance to Old English seeing as it is an innovation. For the reasons Simon gave, the likeliest articulation for this phoneme is [a], and it's actually what reconstructions say, even if it's customary to use /æ/ to represent the phoneme. And of course the rune name contains the phoneme, but why are you assuming that its realisation is [æ]? Knowing the name of the rune isn't really going to help you pronounce its phoneme. It's the other way around: you need to know what the phonemes sounded like to pronounce rune names. And considering the descendant of the Modern English "æsc" isn't more helpful than considering the descendant of any other word containing .

[@telephonebear21]

The "ea" diphthong is the one I've seen the most disagreement on even in the "standard early west saxon" pronunciation all of the textbooks I've read assume. The initial tongue position varies greatly from the lowish æ to mid e book to book.

[@therat1117]

To answer your question on /æ/, it's partially an evidential problem. Essentially, why would you write a character for /a/ as æ, when /a/ is identical to the sound of the Latin character a? The implication of something midway between /a/ and /e/ and similar to Late Latin /ɛ:/ which was written with the same digraph æ, and the fact that this sound re-merged with /ɑ/ during Middle English makes /æ/ the most likely candidate as opposed to /ɛ/ or /a/ which are the other possible options, given a was assigned to /ɑ/. It is also implied that æ should have been a front vowel, which /æ/ is in almost all cases, but /a/ in all Germanic languages is so frequently realised as central [ä] rather than front [a] that /a/ is often considered a central vowel, which circumstantially makes /æ/ a more likely prospect as the phoneme.

[@JourneyLT]

11:00 - I do this in my accent. Words like "cat, bath, tap" have the "a" sound. - However words like "trap", "that", "bad" have more of an "ɐ" sound. I have no idea why I do this, or where it comes from.

[@bob___]

Someone should get funding to develop techniques to use something like the auto-tune and pitch-correction software that music producers use in order to take a single recording of an Old English performance and adjust the sound to fit different views on Old English pronunciation. That would make direct comparison of different views possible. At some point, the software will exist to completely synthesize Old English and Middle English speech, and it would then be possible to produce performances based on different views of Old English and Middle English, partly to determine which alternative sounds more likely to the subjective ear. For example, it is not controversial to think that many English diphthongs developed because a long vowel developed a breaking quality in which it came to be followed by a neutral vowel in pronunciation and later the long-vowel-neutral-vowel combination became a diphthong ("hoos" to "hoo-iss" or "hoo-uss," to "hih-oos" and/or "huh-oos," to house, where oo=/u:/, i=closed central vowel, and u=mid central vowel). But we don't know when the breaking pronunciation of the long vowels emerged. Personally, I think a slight breaking of long vowels could have been a feature of late Old English, but this is completely subjective. (The result yields a more Scandinavian feel to Old English pronunciation rather than the more standard Teutonic feel.) The existence of a digital model of Old English pronunciation could make it possible to test ideas like this against an accepted model of the human speech apparatus -- for example to see how stable a breaking pronunciation of long vowels might be. But, alas, I suspect this is a project for the 22d century.

[@Wolf-hh4rv]

Simon a couple of questions: I live in South Africa and can speak Afrikaans. I think there are some less obvious relationships between the languages (and Dutch I guess) and would like your opinion, looking for links via Old English. The first word is the Afrikaans word for a farmer ‘boer’ the oe bit like oo In the English word room. in English we have the word boor… do you think a connection? The Afrikaans word for spring (the season) is lente (pronounced lenter) currently in the Anglican calendar we are observing lent. Link? Finally the Afrikaans word for walk is loop (the oo pronounced like the oo in moor) I thought of the English word lope … link? If these links are there, the English word seems to have moved.

[@desanipt]

I strongly recommend using Wiktionary for checking these relations between languages. It's open source (so it might have its reliability issues as any open source material) but it is so, so complete and easy to navigate!!! Checking there, I can tell you that "boor" in English is a direct loanword from Dutch. So it is indeed related to Afrikaans "boer". Meanwhile, the actual inherented word (as opposed to a loanword) in old English that has the same origin is "būr" hence Modern English "bower" (which can also mean farmer). Lent in Afrikaans and English have the same origin, from Proto-West-Germanic "*langatīn" (which, in turn, is simply composed from long + day [Lang+tin]). If you go to the etymology section of a word in Wiktionary, and click on the word in the proto language you can check for the descendants in modern languages. You can even go to proto-indoeuropean words to check for its descendants (it's really interesting going to check, idk, which word in Russian has the same origin as X word in English or Latin xd). "Loop" in Afrikaans and English do have the same origin. However "loop" in English is a loanword from old Norse. The inherented word in English would be "leap" (it is really common for words that in German/Dutch have o sounds, to have ee/ea/i sounds in English).

[@Wolf-hh4rv]

@@desanipt thanks for the comments and WOW I had no idea about Wiktionary thanks ! Really interested in early medieval history

[@desanipt]

@@Wolf-hh4rv You're welcome! Have fun!

[@desanipt]

@@oscarj0231 Are you sure? Wiktionary lists "būr" for old Frisian

[@petermsiegel573]

One theory: boor is from French bovier , cow/ox, but had interference from the similar looking gebur, OE for peasant, farmer, etc. The latter (OE gebur) is cognate with Boer (< Middle Dutch Gheboer ), but not the former (ModE boor). Gebur didn’t make it to modern English.

[@Fummy007]

Spring hit me the other day, now its snowing! (in the North East)

[@redpillsatori3020]

3:00 - This explains German "Zimmer" (room) and English "timber".

[@iceomistar4302]

Yes High German consonant shift

[@michaelfisher9267]

Would you be able to communicate with someone speaking Frisian using Old English?

[@mlambrechts1]

Hi Simon. I'm from Belgium, and I speak "dutch" (people from the Netherlands would not always agree :-) ) . I speak standard Dutch, but I know a lot of variations (local dialects) that sometimes aproach old English. Would you be interested in exchanging some of these words/ways of pronounciation? Eg. I almost understood all of your sentences that you put on the Ecolinguist challenge, better than the people who were native English speakers, although I had some difficulties too. I'm not a linguist, I'm a medical doctor :-) . I'd like to help, find out how language evolved. PS our dialects still have old inflectons that do not exist anymore in official (modern) dutch.

[@ikbintom]

Hey Marc, als het je leuk lijkt, zou je een keer bij een van de Ecolingist livestreams kunnen inbellen! Norbert is van plan om in de toekomst ook livestreams te doen voor alleen Germaanse talen, en in zijn algemene livestreams zoals die van gisteren is ook iedereen welkom 😀

[@faramund9865]

Waarom zouden wij het daarmee niet eens zijn? Het Vlaams heeft een hele grote invloed uitgeoefend op de stedelijke Hollandse talen en daarmee het 'standaard Nederlands' wat we nu kennen. Beetje onzin wat je zegt dus. Verder zijn er in de lage landen ontzettend veel streektalen, zowel in Nederland als in Vlaanderen, en dat is allemaal Nederduits. Als mensen het er niet mee eens zijn moet je ze een tik op de vingers geven of pak op de broek.

[@vampyricon7026]

I can't find the link in the description so FYI, the title of the reddit post by u/SavvyBlonk is "Could Old English have actually been unrounded?"

[@alexandrashvydun8726]

9:20 i think i have a fundamental misunderstanding of vowels because that's what the near open front unrounded vowel sounds like to me

[@cecilformby894]

I could be called Cecil Formby..The reason I use the name 'Formby' is my Dad from Sweden loved seeing George Formby movies. My Dad told me that there were a bunch of 'Swedes' who got kicked out of England Circa 1235AD and were told to 'go back to Sweden'. I say this because you look like my Dad. Anyway, my dad was born in Hallstahammar, north of there he said there was the 'clan' who spoke 1200's English.

[@rw42000]

Anyone have the link to the reddit thread he mentioned?

[@Smitology]

Who else thought this would be the OE etymology of the English phrases "Wiggle Room" lol

[@DisinterestedHandjob]

How would one say "wiggle room" in Anglo Saxon?

[@dgbjackgibson]

12:43 Hahaha I'm glad I'm not the only one whose brain self-interrupts him to make a completely unrelated observation about something interesting 😂

[@deborahsutcliffe8438]

I should like you to do the same for reading "Chanson de Roland" aloud.

[@Ptaku93]

8:15 I'd really like to read that thread, can anyone share a link?

[@whitie5142]

I would like to learn old English where I can learn it?

[@HenkLangeveld]

"De kat at/eet de muis" doesn't even sound that much different.

[@getrealroleplaying7427]

As to [æ] for trap in America (as opposed to in old fashioned RP i.e. young Queen Elizabeth II), impressionistically I'd say it's going the way of the dodo in most of the country. For a lot of speakers in the upper midwest, as well as parts of the south i.e. Texas, the vowel is diphthongal in all positions (this is the case with me although I'm a non native speaker). For Michiganders and monophthongal southerners it's [ɛ]. And for west coast urbanites, especially Californians, it's [a] or even [ä] (and this latter quality is spreading nationwide among certain segments of the population, possibly owing to ideological/tribal affinities patterning with accent convergence).

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

F in the chat for the TRAP vowel

[@flyesenmusic]

Hello Simon! Looks like you forgot to put the reddit post by SavvyBlonk in the description, and I'm not sure what post are you speaking of exactly. Could you please link it?

[@blakewinter1657]

Ok, based on the title, and the quotes therein, I was expecting to learn how to pronounce the phrase 'wiggle room' in Old English, and now I feel somewhat cheated! Although in fairness, my first thought was 'Why would he bother reconstructing this phrase?'

[@goodlookingcorpse]

15:34 I realize that you're not leading up to saying "wiggle room" in Old English.

[@christopherellis2663]

Gea, so hit wæs.

[@brexitgreens]

My condolences for getting a regular job.

[@beepboop204]

👍🙏

[@bendthebow]

You could do an Anglo-Saxon degree after you've finished your current studies

[@pastyuscricketer]

I’m starting to research and learn Middle English. Any tips?

[@faithlesshound5621]

Start with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, then go on to Langland's Piers Plowman and finally blow your mind with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

[@jamesburke2094]

a linguistics related poem it's ok, if they got word it wasn't misheard and it's no slur together we've been stirred every hour, Sirs before I'm interred inside my world echo the sweet surds of my bird

[@k4keko]

Interesting how the vowels are almost identical to those in Finnish, only ö is missing.

[@diogenesstudent5585]

Is this guy getting more handsome with every video?

[@ytrogergt]

You're looking older... you're changing

[@thomashernandez8700]

Would you say Scottish pronounciations are a rough guideline?

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

No, Scottish English has changed quite a lot from Old English, just like all other Modern English dialects

[@fjlkagudpgo4884]

omg dude i love you so much, you're gonna peak in your 40s

[@kirbywaite1586]

I think the original word was " wriggle", not " wiggle".

[@clerigocarriedo]

Another idea: pidgins and creoles

[@rikatan]

I can't really hear a difference between your /æ/ and /a/, and I'm also more familiar with /a/ being used for a different sound that doesn't really appear in English much but appears as "a" in most Romance and Germanic languages. As someone who doesn't really study linguistics intensely, who uses IPA mostly to figure out how to pronounce things, it's quite annoying that a scientific tool like this is so imprecise and leaves room for interpretation. There's probably some value in it that I can't figure out, but all I see is a system that tries to assign one symbol to one phoneme but leaves me guessing as to which one it's referring to on a case by case basis. Wiggle room shouldn't really be tolerated in IPA, should it? I especially end up having issues when trying to use IPA to help me with English, since the wide variety of dialects makes it really difficult to tell from context whether something is an error on my part or whether someone out there actually pronounces "goose" as /ˈɡuːs/... or how I could find out what the IPA is for the way my dialect pronounces that word.

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

The slashes indicate phonemic transcription, whereas brackets indicate phonetic transcription. I think this is the source of some of your confusion. Simon has a video on the difference between phones and phonemes.

[@HalfgildWynac]

/a/ is a SLIGHTLY more open sound, the one he and a lot of modern English speakers use naturally. This is the way Simon usually pronounces the vowel in words like "bat", "man" etc. in his videos. The classic RP you can hear in old recordings uses the vowel /æ/, which was closer to the vowel in "red". But it opened up over the decades. On the other hand, the realisation of this phoneme in American English tends to become more CLOSED, especially before nasals (in words like "man", "damn", "bank"), which didn't make my life easy at all. The pronunciation was just too similar to "e" for a non-native speaker who did not focus on one particular accent. In the end, broad transcriptions always make a compromise between being precise and useful. Do you really need to know "potato" is [pə̥ˈtʰeɪtʰəʊ] and that M in "comfort" is different from M is "come"?

[@rikatan]

@@HalfgildWynac I often feel like I need to know that, yes. I use IPA to be able to pronounce things properly in different languages and dialects. If there is additional information alongside a broad transcription, it can allow me to imagine the same set of sounds that a narrow transcription would, but if there is insufficient data then I'm supposed to guess information. If it's aspirated vs non-aspirated t in English I'll be able to tell, but with vowels it's much harder since their values migrate in all sorts of ways.

[@Stelios.Posantzis]

Hands up anyone else that came to this video because they thought he was going to say how "wiggle room" was pronounced in Old English.

[@Jordannnnnnnjones]

An English Dylan o Brian

[@wilkoufert8758]

Do you think that the ipa-transcription choice is due to some exoticism in regards to the past?

[@faithlesshound5621]

Yes! The IPA was devised by a group of late 19th century language scholars who started out as historical linguists. The original symbols were based on Romic, a scheme for phonetic transcription of English devised by Henry Sweet (Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady) whose Anglo-Saxon textbooks are still in use. He had the idea of extending the alphabet without the printers' having to cast new letters by turning some of them upside down.

[@zebragoboom]

beep

[@sickjuicysjamshack3580]

I thought you were going to take the phrase 'wiggle room' and go backwards in time and pronounce it in Old English

[@isaacelliottsloman4276]

lmao same

[@TheoStuss]

To "whit" and "wicce" there is a Bavarian equivalent or at least a cognate, "die Waiz" or in plural "die Waiz'n". The word was used by the seer Mühlhiasl a prophet and contemporary character in Napoleon's times in the Bavarian Forest close to Bohemia.. He was a simple man and the word "die Waiz" means an evil spirit or demon.

[@brexitgreens]

@15:15 I'm pretty sure Old English pronunciation didn't entail making a duck voice 🦆 😆. A common problem in people trying to emulate exotic phonetics. Compounded by the fact that some languages do seem to employ specific voice timbres, such as Spanish and Russian. It's an eternal puzzle of mine why, since my first years on Earth. You could pretend to speak Spanish or Russian by only changing the timbre of your voice.