Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 July 19

Language desk
< July 18	<< Jun | July | Aug >>	July 20 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 19

Fake Old English

This is completely fake, right? It's from a Harry Potter fanfic:[1]

Þis man, clepid Mundre of the Brook, seiden to Merlin, “How shal we stopje þis end?”

And Merlin ondswered in his drede, “Þat we may not come to the fate of Atlantis, which has passed out of þis world to nouȝt, I shall seal alle away. Ac even þis lechecrafte, pestilence and blessyng both, shall not suffice. Manne moste wax in kunnynge.” And whanne þei hadden herd the princeps incantatorum speke þus, þei were trublid.

Harry Lowe, The Transmygracioun, passus duodecimus

Does the author appear to have any clue at all about actual Old English or is it just regular English with some of the letters changed ala "ye olde novelty shoppe"? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 05:29, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Clepe was an actual word in Middle English that meant to be called. It's really modern English with a few archaicisms thrown in to make it sound like Old or Middle English. TFD (talk) 06:38, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You can check Wiktionary for most of the words, for example wikt:þis or wikt:this.

Fate is a Romance word and wouldn't appear in old English. I think they conjugated seide wrong. This suggests to me that they were attempting Middle English (even if they imagined it was Old English). Although wikt:andsware only gives it as old English, wikt:answer does say that andsware was a middle English noun. They should have gone with answerede for middle English. Old English would (to the best of my demiautodidactic ability) look more like:

Þis mann, clipiende Mundre of þe brōc, sægde to Merlin, "Hū sċylen wē stoppiġen þis ende?" *^{I think ƿyllan is more appropriate than sċylen. Will = would, shall = should.}

And Merlin ondrædanfullic andsƿarode "Þat ƿē meaht to þe ƿyrd of Atlantis

I can't be bothered to go through the rest of it (and I go to Chaucer's translation of The Consolation of Philosophy when I want to read it and have also read My Immortal (fan fiction)). Harry should really be Henry.

Oh, by the way, "Ye olde" is actually a result of sloppily writing the letter we used to have for the th sound. Ian.thomson (talk) 06:41, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed answers! It didn't specifically say Old English anywhere so maybe fake Middle English was intended. I had forgotten about the distinction. Significant Digits (the fanfic in question) is a spinoff of HPMOR, which is more of a freestanding science fiction novel that uses Potter characters. HPMOR is not much of a Potter fic at all, and it's unpopular in the HP fanfic world, but it has its own good and bad points. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 07:11, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's sloppy calligraphy, just that the average Briton, if she encountered the letter thorn, wouldn't know how to pronounce it. Much as when I was looking for a particular Jewish institution and asked a bystander for advice he went up the steps to read a building's address plate and retired baffled because it was printed in the Hebrew alphabet. 2A00:23C5:E117:6100:6900:274:458:F067 (talk) 13:38, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, our Thorn (letter) article notes that; "Y existed in the printer's type fonts that were imported from Germany or Italy, while thorn did not" and "The first printing of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 used the Y form of thorn with a superscript E in places". Alansplodge (talk) 17:43, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

As others have alluded above, it would be pointless to use actual Old, or even Middle, English in a piece of fiction written for modern readers, because ≥99% of them wouldn't understand it. The art of fiction in written and performed arts (e.g. the theatre) is to create an impression which is convincing while the reader or onlooker is immersed in the work and suspending their disbelief.

If you were presenting a stage play set in WW2, you wouldn't, for obvious reasons, drive a real Panzer on to the stage, and the audience wouldn't really expect you to, but by clever use of props, sound and lighting you could create an acceptable illusion of one.

In the fanfiction quoted above (completely unknown to me before now, so I have no partisan involvement with it), the writer has, as far as I can judge, created a passable suggestion of archaic English by using some real archaic forms and vocabulary (though perhaps not optimally) without becoming unintelligible to the reader. Arguing about their "correctness" for a given era is in my opinion pointless, because the legend they're employing is, and was never, set in a "real time". The underlying historical events (assuming there were any, which by the way I do think likely) took place in the 5th–6th century (when all characters actually portrayed would have spoken Latin or Brythonic, not Old English), but the earliest extended texts on the matter were written centuries later, and the most influential version was composed in the late Middle English of the 15th century (itself already hugely influenced by Latin and Norman French), drawing on Latin, English, French and Welsh sources and portraying a hugely anachronistic fictional world that had never existed.

[This rant is brought to you by courtesy of extreme covidboredom.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.41.197 (talk) 14:33, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I think you mean "without becoming unintelligible". Oxford University is getting on quite well with virtual lectures. 2A00:23C5:E117:6100:6900:274:458:F067 (talk) 14:51, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, thank you! I've corrected it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.41.197 (talk) 22:31, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I think you also mean "is not, and was never, set in".--Khajidha (talk) 01:35, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I meant what I wrote, though your inversion is equally acceptable. Put it down to personal style. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.41.197 (talk) 15:03, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I guess that makes sense. The book's chapter headings have quotes in various other languages, with translations supplied. But those are mostly real quotes from real other authors, rather than something the fanfic author made up. The fanfic author must not have been able to back-translate to Middle English. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 19:24, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Note too that Merlin lived before there was an English language or English people, but (I am relying on the Harry Potter fan wiki) the books place him in the Middle Ages. TFD (talk) 18:21, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

The setting for the Arthurian legend is generally agreed to be Sub-Roman Britain and the Old English speaking Anglo-Saxons were the bad guys in that scenario. Agreed though that Merlin himself would have spoken Common Brittonic, the ancestor of Welsh and Cornish and Breton. See also Myrddin Wyllt. Alansplodge (talk) 18:51, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

In this book there is a scene (chapter 4) set in the year 1238 that refers to something that Merlin did five centuries earlier, so that would have put Merlin in the 8th century, a little bit later than the sub-Roman era, but close enough. Thanks! 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 19:24, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

The figure of Merlin seems to be a combination of (at least) two different legendary figures with varying names, possibly living a century or more apart in (what is now) Wales and Scotland, who were variously confused with one another over time until Malory deliberately combined various sources to create his single literary character. The earlier and contradictory accounts by Geoffrey of Monmouth (alluded to by Alansplodge above) have helped to muddy the waters. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.41.197 (talk) 22:50, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

The best fake-time joke is Shakespeare's, when the Fool in Lear says: 'This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.' Djbcjk (talk) 06:44, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Is it meant as a joke? Leir of Britain supposedly lived long before Merlin supposedly did, (and Holinshed was taken seriously at the time) so it actually accords with the supposed chronology of the play. I suspect too that many in Shakespeare's contemporary audiences would have taken prophetical powers seriously (c.f. Thomas of Ercildoun), so it may have reinforced the Fool's credibility as a paradoxically wise councillor. Of course, Shakespeare being Shakespeare (and a pox upon the Baconists!), the same element may have had multiple meanings designed for different sections of the audience. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.41.197 (talk) 15:28, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

My favourite character from Geoffrey's Historia is Leir's dad, King Bladud, who guided by the spirits of the dead, made himself a sort of proto-hanglider and jumped off the roof of the temple in London, which didn't go very well. Now that would have made a much better play than Leir's tiresome family squabbles. Alansplodge (talk) 15:16, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

An early Prince Valiant strip has our lead character see something on the coast that alarms him, ride like mad to Arthur's court and cry, "The Angles are invading England!" (Or at least that's how it was in a French translation that I read long ago.) —Tamfang (talk) 00:58, 22 July 2020 (UTC)