Old English just has some wonderful words and kennings. I mean, really:
Their word for sea? It was often swan-rad or “road of the swan.” Spider was gangelwaefre, literally “the walking weaver.” They had the simple and now-obsolete word uht, which describes that time just before sunrise when mist still hangs heavy over all the fields and lakes and the last few stars are still out.
…Also, they didn’t say body. They said ban-cofan, which means “bone-cave,” and if you don’t think that’s some hardcore shit right there then you need to get out of my face before I turn your skull into a mead-cup.
this is awesome!
In the commentary on his translation of Beowulf, Tolkien argues that translating ‘rád’ as ‘road’ in the context of kennings for the sea is incorrect. On the subject of ‘hronrád’, which is often translated as ‘whale-road’, he says:
“rád is the ancestor of our modern word ‘road’, but it does not mean ‘road’. Etymology is not a safe guide to sense. rád is the noun of action to rídan ‘ride’ and means riding – i.e. ‘riding on horseback; moving as a horse does (or a chariot), or as a ship does at anchor’; and hence ‘a journey in horseback’ (or more seldom by ship), ‘a course (however vagrant)’. It does not mean the actual ‘track’ – still less the hard paved permanent and more or less straight tracks that we associate with the ‘road’…The word as ‘kenning’ therefore means dolphin’s riding, i.e. in full, the watery fields where you can see dolphins and lesser members of the whale-tribe playing, or seeming to gallop like a line of riders on the plains. That is the picture and comparison the kenning was meant to evoke. It is not evoked by ‘whale road’ – which suggests a sort of semi-submarine steam-engine running along submerged metal rails over the Atlantic.”reblogging again for the comment
Tag: languages
i hate when people in movies/tv are reading ancient languages and they translate everything really smoothly and poetically, as if when people who study ancient languages aren’t consulting three different commentaries and sobbing profusely when we read
ok so like…. it says
“come you all into the deepest cavern, or maybe that’s fireplace, depends on usage, and having come may you give your…. treasures? Skin? Pants? I don’t know, something…. to the….. about-to-be-adored guy, that one who…. okay, he either causes earthquakes or sleeps a lot, I think this might be an idiom….”
“ok, sorry that took so long and i hate to disappoint but i’m still not entirely sure what it means, like, it could be something about a religious ceremony or it could be a dick joke. leaning towards dick joke, might be both. knowing the ancients, probably both. this could very well be an ancient dick temple and we should probably leave.”
spanish and italian:So THESE words are feminine and THESE words are masculine, and you ALWAYS put an adjective AFTER the noun.
french: haha i dont fuckin know man just do whatever
german: Oberweserdampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenabzeichenpoliermittelkanisterdeckelherstellungsverbandsvorsitzendenausweishüllenschneidemaschinenmotorwartungsplanaktualisierungsbeauftragtenzertifikatsausstellungsbehördenbeamtenkrawattenknotenbindeanleitungsautorenbürocomputertastaturanschlusskabelumhüllungsreparaturdienstfahrzeugsvorderreifengummibeschichtungsfabrikgebäudeheizungsrohrverlegungsmechanikerwerkzeugkastenverschlussklappensicherungsschlossfunktionstestverantwortlichenprüfungsfragebogenfragenentwicklerqualifikationsurkundendruckentintenpatronennachfüllpaketbestellformularankreuzkästchendesignerausbildung
english: *shooting up in the bathroom*
gaelic: the pronounciation changes depending on the gender and what letter the word starts and ends with and hahah i dont even know good fucking luck
polish: here have all of these consonants have fun
japanese: subject article noun article verb. too bad there’s three fucking alphabets lmao hope your first language isn’t western
welsh: sneeze, and chances are you’ve got it right. idfk
chinese: here’s a picture. draw it. it means something. it can be pronounced four different ways. these twenty other pictures are pronounced the same but have very different meanings. godspeed.
arabic: so here’s this one word. it actually translates to three words. also pronouns don’t really exist. the gender is all in the verb. have fun!
latin: here memorize 500 charts and then you still dont know what the fuck is happening
sign language: If you move this sign by a tenth of an inch, you’ll be signing “penis”
russian: idk man its pronounced like its spelt but good fucking luck spelling it
Greek: so basically we’re going to add 15 syllables to every word you know and assign it one of 3 genders at random. Also good luck figuring out where to put the accents you piece of shit
Czech: so there is a word. there are 14 fucking forms of that word. also there are actually 42 forms. and here’s a verb. there are actually only 3 tenses but who am i kidding, there is more and i don’t even fucking know how many. the verb changes depending on one’s gender. also you can change verb into a noun. that noun has its own gender. you can change any word into a noun and that noun will have its own fucking gender because who cares, only 10 milion people can speak with it. also you have to inflect all words. adjectives. names. pronouns. idefk. when you call someone, you fucking have to inflect that name. we also have a letter that almost no foreigner can pronounce. and good luck, even we don’t friggin know how to write. also you can say a completely innocent sentence and it could be understood sexually beacuse our slang doesn’t fucking make sense. good fucking luck fuckers.
fýrgebræc
(noun) An Old English word, fýrgebræc is defined as the distinct crackling and breaking noise blazing fire makes. Oftentimes this sound connotes a pleasant sensation, which makes humanity both fond and fearful of the beauty of fire. (via wnq-writers)
ephal ephalak idon hi-akallabeth 