Karmic-Dragonfly

I'm totally going to start calling my nostril, my 'nose hole' 😀

In Old English class, we are reading Ælfric's preface to his translation of Genesis (as as aside, I think he was a bit too proud of his own skills -- 'ofermod' I might even say. )

Anyways, he uses some words for body parts, so I thought I would start exploring the names for body parts.


Nose hole. Ear hole. 😃

Wyrd biþ ful aræd - Fate is fully determined -- a line from the poem known as The Wanderer. Not sure I agree with the sentiment, but the line stood out to me.

Friends and family struggle to comprehend why I am taking Old English classes. And I get it lol! It's definitely a niche interest! By the way, I signed up for class #3, starting next week!

Here are my list of answers to the voiced or implied 'why' question 😅:
1. I have an interest in languages generally. But not necessarily all languages — only certain ones seem to draw me. Sometimes I describe this as having flashbacks to previous lives, meaning maybe in a previous life, I spoke the language that attracts me now.

2. Studying something that has no monetary value seems like a nice fuck-you activity to late stage capitalists. What better way to spend my time than on something they can't capitalize on?

3. It gives me a happy place to get me out of the drear of the current news. I mean, there are worse ways to drown your sorrows! Not meaning to say I will give up my wine though.

***
I have been spending time working around the house -- cutting hedges, mowing the grass, stuff like that. I don't mind saying that the older I get, the harder those chores become!

I have also been reconnecting with friends that I haven't seen in a while -- 1 couple had me over for dinner the other night, and I hadn't seen them since before the pandemic! Lunch with a couple other friends I hadn't seen in a few months. And a birthday dinner for friends, some of whom I hadn't seen since Thanksgiving! I had another couple friends over for dessert the other night. And of course the weekly Friday wine with another friend.

In our current time, it's good to keep people close.

***
I wanted to go to the river trail I favor today, but I was pretty sore from the last hedge clipping, so I chose an easier walk at a park. Got to see this cute green snake!

For a long while, I struggled to figure out how to learn in the Old English class I am taking. I like the class a lot, and I'm going well, but I still struggled to figure out what I needed to do to prepare for class.

This is probably the first time I have really had to create a process for myself for learning.

Most classes have tests, etc. which force you to study a particular grammatical form or reading, but this class does not have tests. It consists of reading your parts of the chapter aloud as you are asked to each week. Then being asked questions in and responding to the questions in Old English.

There are also grammar workbooks provided for many class sessions, with selected points discussed in class, but again no tests. I am doing fine in class, but at first I struggled with exactly how to learn.

And also I wondered how to get what I wanted from the class. Actually, other than the idea of reading Beowulf faster than the 1 page an hour (oy, that was about how much time it took me when I sat down with Beowulf the first time to 'self' teach myself), I still don't completely have an idea of what I want from the class.

In the end, I settled on this process:

1. During class, I take notes on any grammar the instructor discusses, any etymology, any word meaning nuance, etc. One reason I do this is that I can later search all the notes to find that 1 particular time when she talked about, for example, which grammatical case to put after the verb 'to need.' (It's genitive by the way).
   
   
2. I take Thursdays off.
   
   
3. I read the chapter every other day other than Thursday.
   
   
4. I hand-write the answers to the questions that accompany each chapter. I find handwriting helps me remember better. And yes, I write in my books.
   
   
5. I make up additional questions for a chapter, to which I also hand-write answers.
   
   
6. Before each class, I review my handwritten answers, and transpose many of them into my Note taking app. I usually do that just before class, so my answers are fresh in mind (on mode).
   
   
7. I do the grammar workbook exercises at some point during the week.
   
   
8. And 1 other thing I do. Have you ever started something, and realized it was probably too much effort. But you had put so much effort into it that you don't want to stop? Well, that's where I am.
   
   I was used to learning in the 'grammar-translation' method of studying an ancient language. So early on, I found a site out of the UK where I could find grids of verb forms. I was used to that, and so I started copying those into a spreadsheet, printing the verbs for each chapter, and keeping them in a binder.
   
   Um, I'm up to 240 or so verbs now 🙄 -- but I hate to stop now that I have invested so much time into this. I also found a script online that presents a dialog box of all the tabs and lets me quickly change to any tab.
   

So there we are -- my time intensive study method for the class. It works for me. It's a lot more than I figured it would take when I first signed up for the classes!

***
One thing I find pretty cool is that one of the guys in the class consulted with the instructor to create a Discord chat for the class. It's turning out to be useful to practice just saying things in Old English.

For a bit, there were only 2 of us using it, but a 3rd has started to join in. And it's pretty cool and also mildly discordant to see a modern chat tool used with Old English!

Here's a screenshot with names and icons blacked out --

So Mom made it through the pneumonia. But I consider this a reprieve, mostly for my youngest sister and her husband, who are her caregivers. To say that Mom's death will obliterate my youngest sister is an understatement. So I am happy for the reprieve for now.

Old English is getting ever so slightly easier as I progress through this 2nd semester. I really do enjoy doing it, although it has been a lot of work.

It's winter, and as usual I am generally hibernating. We got some snow and ice (or should I say, "snaw and is") this week. I'm already ready for February to be over! The spring time change will be happening in a just a few weeks!



Snow crocus were blooming. Here's a pic of them under the snow ("under þam snawe")


I am looking forward to just being able to go walking down at the river again!

I don't believe I ever read the children's book, Peter Rabbit, as a child. I vaguely knew the names of Peter's bunny siblings -- Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail -- so I must have seen a cartoon or something some time.

I received an Xmas gift of the book translated into Old English, which is a fun diversion for me!

Imagine my surprise when I am reading only the 2nd page of the text, and Mother Rabbit is warning her kids to NOT go to Farmer MacGregor's farm because it was their dad's fate to be turned into a cake by MacGregor's wife!



She told them they could go to the fields or around the lane, but "not at all into Farmer MacGregor's enclosure: for the fate of your father was to be made by MacGregor's wife into small cake."

Having a lazy start to Christmas Day -- planning to head to the museum for a bit (kind of my normal routine when not traveling today).

Gift exchange w/ friends yesterday afternoon was fun, as was Christmas Eve dinner w/ friends last night. Wow, I am STILL stuffed -- I could have skipped the side dish or the dessert and been better for it!

I'll see family tomorrow, and then I think that Christmas 2024 will be a wrap!

"The queen is back in the house!"

I moved the lemon tree (the aforementioned queen) back into the house for winter. When I'm working, I've taken to sometimes practicing Old English in my head, and the "queen back in the house" phrase came to me as something I knew how to say!

She looks bad because she's a hefty gal, so I have to starve her for water to lighten the weight before I can move her.

Always the language nerd, I've been interested in learning Old English for a while.

At one point, I bought a copy of Beowulf with Old English on 1 side and Modern English on the facing page. But it was exhausting looking up every grammar item and every word meaning.

So I signed up for a once a week class! This class is moving faster than I have ever known a language class to go, but it's been fun -- reading and answering questions in Old English in class, and it's fun for me to see the origins of most of the short, everyday words we use in English! The grammar is pretty similar to most Proto Indo-European languages -- nouns declined, verbs conjugated, and the like. But the point of the class is not to drill on grammar, but to read and speak and understand.

And it hasn't been too hard to adapt to reading with the unusual letters - þ and æ -- haven't seen any ð yet, so maybe they are just using þ. They both represent the "th" sound, 1 voiced and the other not. But as i understand it, there wasn't a consistent use of both of the letters in OE.

Reading g as y in some instances is not hard because the text uses diacritics to give us the info of when the sound is y. And reading the c as hard c or 'ch'/'sh' is also indicated by diacritics.

The first couple semesters are from a text written by one of the instructors, leading up to a semester where Beowulf is the text.


I always found it unusual that Portuguese (and Spanish as I understand) have 2 verbs for 'to be' -- one more permanent, and one more transient.

It sort of surprised me that Old English had 2 verbs also. But beon seems to be more for universal or perhaps pithy ("gnomic") truths, and wesan is used for everything else. So it's not exactly the equivalent to the 2 verbs in Portuguese.


English now or then has no dedicated, specific future tense and uses helping verbs to indicate future tense, e.g. "I will go".

It seems beon can be used to indicate future tense in Old English.
Iċ eom sē cyning = "I am the king" from wesan
Iċ bēo sē cyning = "I will be the king" ("I be the king" in the future) from beon