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Comment by mklyachman | Hacker News Reader

Does it matter? Genuine question-- does this (mis)translation change anything

>According to the historical linguist, rather than reading: “Listen! We have heard of the might of the kings” the Old English of “Hwæt! We Gar-Dena in gear-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!” should instead be understood as: “How we have heard of the might of the kings.”

So semantically... no difference.

Do you know the joke about the priest who died, and discovered God meant priests to "celebrate", not "celibate"?

It matters to those who care about this piece of literature. Maybe not as much as a lifetime of coital bliss missed, but who's to say?

Not really. It does however help drive home the point that such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale. (On the other hand in Latin and Celtic traditions, interjections were widely used in story-telling, eg. "Ecce!" and "Féach!" respectively). Old English speakers would have been more inclined to used interjections in a responsive context. For example, to the statement "The boat is taking on water!", one might respond "How?!". But to begin a conversation with an interjection, that just isn't consistent with what we see in any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse.

> that just isn't consistent with what we see in any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse.

What's up with the phrasing? Old English isn't a language that developed from Old Norse.

When the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons arrived in England around fall of Rome in the early 400s, the "official" language was Latin (as Britain had been a Roman colony since 43 AD) whereas locals spoke various Celtic dialects. The newcomers brought with them Scandinavian tongues and for the next 500 years or so Old English developed with minor changes (with sparse inclusions from Latin and Celtic influences). That all changed in 1066 with the Norman Invasion where Old Northern French became the new official language. (French also began as a Nordic language, but over time only a few hundred or so words remained, with the rest being mostly Latin-based.) As far as Modern English is concerned, while only ~20% is based on Old Norse, those words form more than 80% of what is most commonly used on a day-to-day basis.

English and Old English are West Germanic, Nordic languages and Old Norse are North Germanic. Very close cousins, but neither descends from the other.

You are a crackpot.

I think they're just confusing Old Norse with Proto-Germanic, i.e. the common ancestor of both Old Norse and Old English.

>> French also began as a Nordic language, but over time only a few hundred or so words remained, with the rest being mostly Latin-based.

Oh haha I missed that, thanks. That's quite the theory!

> It does however help drive home the point that such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale.

Beowulf was written in Old English, which is not a Nordic language.

> ... any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse.

Similarly, Old English didn't develop from Old Norse.

Beowulf has a Scandinavian background to the story. Shortly after "hwæt", it mentions "gar-Denas" or spear Danes. (Old English had become heavily influenced by Norse by the time of the Norman invasions, especially in ita northern dialects.)

There may be a Celtic influence upon it as well, as with some of the Icelandic sagas, but you would have to dig much deeper for that.

Actually, the introduction of Old Norse in Britain began in the early 5th century and by the time of Beowulf, Old English was still more than 90% a Nordic language. The Norman invasion of 1066 changed that dramatically (as Old French became the "new" official language) and to this day Modern English could reasonably be considered mostly French, then Latin, and only in small part Nordic (although the most common words used are by majority derived from Old Norse counterparts.) Oddly enough, only a few Celtic words made it into the language.

Old English is not considered to have evolved from a Nordic language.

Old Norse was a North Germanic language. Old English was a West Germanic language. They were mutually intelligible to a significant degree, since both were Germanic languages that evolved from the hypothetical common ancestor Proto-Germanic, but saying Old English was "90% a Nordic language" is like saying that humans are 90% chimpanzees. Both evolved from a common ancestor, one did not evolve from the other.

Germanic and Celtic languages have been in contact for at least two thousand years. Probably longer. There are Celtic loanwords in English which predate the Anglo-Saxon invasions. After the invasion, English took centuries to expand into areas which spoke P Celtic, and it seems to have profound influences on its verbal structure. Another wave of Celtic loanwords entered English via French.

As for modern English, there are numerous Celtic loanwords and calques in American, Canadian and Australian slang and dialect.

The language and style of Beowulf is Old English, though. Old English was a West Germanic language, already closely related to the North Germanic Old Norse and mutually intelligible to a high degree.

But it doesn't make sense to say "such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale" without some sort of explanation for the focus on "Nordic" languages. Subsequent comments have made it clear that the commenter is under the mistaken impression that Old English was a Nordic language. It was not.

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