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Post by lordoffools on Sept 19, 2004 20:12:28 GMT -5
Gee sorry. I don't remember any Italian if it makes you feel better. All I know is mi chiamo Cecilia, fa freddo. comi ti chiami? And the spelling's atrocious. So was my spelling of that. Stupid computer, ruining my english language skills! What languages to you learn/ did you learn/ do you want to learn?
Oh yeah, and Ophelia-- OLD ENGLISH!!! WOW!!! I wanna do that!!
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Post by Ophelia on Sept 21, 2004 9:12:48 GMT -5
*blinks eyes with the sheepish grin not leaving her face* Old english ? Moi ? o.O But the main point of me posting here - EARTHQUAKE!!!!!! The very first in my life , not to mention And for Latvia it is really an event for the people who were hand writing at that time . Though this quake was coming from Kaliningrad . Still - an EARTHQUAKE !!!!! That`s about my day ... Oph
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Post by Lossentilien on Sept 21, 2004 12:05:02 GMT -5
Hehe, wow, a real earthquake. My day was all hyped up (1st day of Uni) and ended up being totally uneventful. I hate it when that happens. I was all nervy that everyone there would be amazingly cool or smart etc etc etc, but I got there no trouble (the fact that I knew where I was going is nothing to do with it *ahem*) did all the forms and stuff with minimum hassle, and then left. Greeeat. The girls were all weirdly quiet, but there were two friendly guys who I might end up hanging about with purely cause the girls don't seem to have much to say. Hmph. ^I bet they're just jealous of my beauty and wit. ^
~Loss, who is too sarcastic for her own good.
PS. Old English is hoooorrible, just wait till they make you study Chaucer.
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Post by Ophelia on Sept 21, 2004 12:10:32 GMT -5
Aaaaaw , Loss ... Guys are better friends mostly anyways And are you talking of Goefry Chaucer or am I simply uncompitent in these things ? Ophie , who had an eventful day ^.^
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Post by Lossentilien on Sept 21, 2004 12:19:07 GMT -5
Hehe, yeah I guess they are. And you're right, Geoffrey Chaucer. Oh what fond memories.
~Loss, who had an uneventful day but is amusing herself with sarcasm.
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Wren
Meldielto
Not all who wander are lost
Posts: 170
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Post by Wren on Sept 21, 2004 17:18:04 GMT -5
Old English does sound cool! But it sounds difficult too. Speaking of Chaucer, didn't Tolkien read Chaucer? If so, then he can't be all bad, can he? *thinks she needs to read Chaucer for herself*
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Post by lordoffools on Sept 21, 2004 19:03:32 GMT -5
We read the Wife of Bath in Language and Literature, and also the intro to Canterbury Tales and translated it. I have a poem from TTT soundtrack that's apparently written in old English. It's one of my favourites: Héo naefre wacode dægréd Tó bisig mid dægeweorcum Ac oft héo wacode sunnanwanung Thonne nihtciele créap geond móra And on thaere hwile Héo dréag tha losinga Earla thinga the héo forléas. Héo swa oft dréag hire sàwle sincende Héo ne cúthe hire heortan lust. She never watched the morning rising Too busy with the day’s first chores. But oft she would watch the sun’s fading As the cold of night crept across the moors. And in that moment she felt the loss Of everything that had been missed. So used to feeling the spirit sink, She had not felt her own heart’s wish Uni sounds a little scary, but then I'm only in year 10. In the southern hemisphere the year's divided differently, so we actually change levels in the new year. But I guess the europeans and americans have to have summer holidays somehow. :halo:
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Post by Dragoneyes on Sept 22, 2004 12:30:35 GMT -5
Not much to say except...
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Elentari the Second
Meldielto
A laita Atar, ar Yondo, ar Ainasule. Ve nes i yessesse na sin, ar yeva tennoio. Nasie.
Posts: 221
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Post by Elentari the Second on Sept 22, 2004 15:54:31 GMT -5
It was my brother's birthday yesterday. And Tom Felton's. And Bilbo's. And Frodo's.
Chaucer wrote in the 13th century, which was after Old English had been simplified a fair bit. It had lost its declensions, for one thing - the spelling is totally different of course, and the pronunciation is even further from the way it looks. But it had lost a lot of its inflection by that time. Also, did you know that the dialects around England at that time were so diverse travellers from London could not be understood by a housewife in Kent?
The London dialect won through because it had Oxford and Cambridge universities there.
Although it's extremely difficult, Old English is still fascinating.
There's this book by Bill Bryson about English. Very interesting. Forgotten the title but it's something like "Our Mother Tongue".
Meh.
Cheers,
~ Elentari II
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Post by Dragoneyes on Sept 22, 2004 16:09:10 GMT -5
Ooh, I want to read that book, I like Bill Bryson.
'Tweren't the London accent that won out, 'twere the southern one. I was always led to believe it was because of the English bible. It could only be translated into one dialect of English and southern was the chosen one (being the royal one and all).
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Elentari the Second
Meldielto
A laita Atar, ar Yondo, ar Ainasule. Ve nes i yessesse na sin, ar yeva tennoio. Nasie.
Posts: 221
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Post by Elentari the Second on Sept 22, 2004 19:24:12 GMT -5
Mother Tongue: The English Language by Bill Bryson. I quote: "A century later [16th century] the poet George Puttenham noted that the English of London stretched not much more than sixty miles from the city. But its influence was growing all the time. The size and importance of London guaranteed that its dialect would eventually triumph, though other factors helped - such as the fact that the East Midlands dialect (its formal if somewhat misleading name) had fewer grammatical extremes than other dialects and that the East Midlands area was the seat of the two main universities, Oxford and Cambridge, whose graduates naturally tended to act as linguistic missionaries." If this is wrong...then I was misled. But that's why I said it was the London dialect. As an interesting point between the Kent and London dialects, however: "Chaucer's was the language of London - and therefore comparatively easy for us to follow. We may not instantly comprehend all the words, but when we see the prologue of The Canterbury Tales we can at the very least recognize it as English: [glow=green,2,300]Whan that Aprille with its shoures sote The droughte of Marche hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour.[/glow] Compare that with this passage in the Kentish dialect written at about the same time: [glow=red,2,300]And vorlet ous oure yeldinges: ase and we vorlete oure yelderes, and ne ous led na[z]t, in-to vondinge, ac vri ous vram queade.[/glow]
The letters that I've interpreted as 'p' and 'z' are characters which I cannot reproduce on my keyboard but look similar to those. The 'z' also looks like a 3, but a hard one, not rounded like this.
Do you recognize the Kentish passage? I'll tell you what it is next time I post.
Chaucer was Early Middle English....the Old English I want to learn is the language of Beowulf.
Cheers,
~ Elentari II
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Post by lordoffools on Sept 22, 2004 22:42:06 GMT -5
My favourite letter (or character) in old english is that little 'd' thing with the star at the top. It's so cute, but I don't know how to pronounce it.
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Wren
Meldielto
Not all who wander are lost
Posts: 170
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Post by Wren on Sept 24, 2004 1:48:01 GMT -5
There's this book by Bill Bryson about English. Very interesting. Forgotten the title but it's something like "Our Mother Tongue". Meh. Cheers, ~ Elentari II That book sounds good to me too, but probably over my head. Ah well, I just need to spend a little more time around you folks.
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Post by GaladrielOlden on Oct 1, 2004 17:36:32 GMT -5
Growl. Dunno where to post this, but my comp is so horrible, not letting me post once again. So appearances will be limited to times when I sneak onto mum's.
-Menelien
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Post by Istawen Aeros on Oct 1, 2004 19:39:19 GMT -5
Whoa...I'm sorry Goty --- *shrieks* YOU HAVE A PIC OF TINK AS YOUR AVVIE? *shakes head* *whispers* I never know what to expect from you... On topicly, I have a raging headache, I've been wearing my dad's old bifocals so that I can see the TV without it looking as if someone put the DVD in Photoshop and blurred it slightly, and so that I can see the school boards.
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