[HN Gopher] Benjamin Thorpe translated almost all Old English te...
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Benjamin Thorpe translated almost all Old English texts (2016)
Author : stareatgoats
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-06-22 12:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thijsporck.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thijsporck.com)
| kazinator wrote:
| So productive, we could call him Octathorpe.
| ggm wrote:
| So, little to no major works of anglo-saxon or old english were
| found after his lifetime? I'm surprised that there are no
| palimpsests or binding materials yielding new writing.
| boddu wrote:
| He did this translation as a part of his job or out of passion?
| usrnm wrote:
| _Apparently aided by his talented stepdaughter, Thorpe started
| to earn his living as a translator of, mostly, Anglo-Saxon
| texts..._
| usrnm wrote:
| _In 1826, at the age of forty-four, Thorpe studied early English
| antiquities at the University of Copenhagen_
|
| And here I am, in my late 30s, thinking that my productive age is
| far behind me
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| i bet this person was an aristocrat with a bunch of servants to
| rear their children.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Most likely. But what was your point? It's surely well known
| that free time is what you need to get anything done.
| krisoft wrote:
| > But what was your point?
|
| The point is that usrnm shouldn't compare their own
| productivity if their circumstances are different.
| Angostura wrote:
| According to Wikipedia he started off as a banker, before
| switching to scholarship.
|
| He was then granted a 'civil list pension' - basically a
| government annual grant in recognition of his valuable but
| unpaid work
| ZaoLahma wrote:
| I guess if money wasn't such a limiting factor, more of us
| would be productive in different ways later in life. Instead of
| implementing already invented ideas, we could invent now that
| we are at the peak of our knowledge and mental capabilities.
|
| It's really hard to justify the financial loss required to
| (full time) pursue novel ideas when you're middle aged. It's
| much easier to just put in the 8 hours per day and collect the
| paycheck.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Money is rarely a limiting factor as much as the desire for
| more money.
| ZaoLahma wrote:
| How do you figure?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Need vs. want.
| krisoft wrote:
| Is a health insurance a need or a want?
| ninininino wrote:
| Strictly speaking, it's a want. The classic needs are
| food (and water), shelter, clothing.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_needs
|
| I personally have gone uninsured for a few years at a
| time and there was no instant calamity, just an elevation
| of risk.
| ilinx wrote:
| Wouldn't that vary from person to person? I have several
| medications that I objectively need in order to remain
| healthy. The cost of those would be prohibitively
| expensive without a good job and/or health insurance.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I think they're trying to suggest that since they
| survived a period in their life without health insurance
| and did not experience calamity, that everyone else who
| needs to live must also be able to do so.
|
| And thus, by extension: Those who cannot live without
| health insurance needn't remain alive.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Given that there are parts of the world where health
| insurance is not tied to employment, there may be more
| relevant axes that the one you're considering.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's going rather beyond the spirit of OP here:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40773726>
|
| But looking at this another way: some societies
| effectively transfer needs into wants by making them
| contingent on other factors. In the United States,
| healthcare coverage remains difficult to obtain _even if
| you have significantly above-average wealth or income_ ,
| unless you have access to an employer's coverage. This
| has improved somewhat under the ACA, but there's a
| significant variance on a state-by-state basis.
|
| More generally, though "if money wasn't such a limiting
| factor" and "Money is rarely a limiting factor as much as
| the desire for more money" both suggest that it's the
| pursuit of wealth itself that ZaoLahma and dr_dshiv
| meant. And there are certainly people, particularly
| amongst the ultra-wealthy, who seem motivated in this
| way, with wealth at which access to healthcare simply
| isn't an issue: they could hire their own doctors, pay
| out of pocket, or travel to where healthcare access isn't
| an insane torture device of its own.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I think you'll find that those who pursue anything in mid
| life are not lacking in what you might deem wants. In no
| one's value judgement would they jeopardize reliable
| income, when there's a mortgage and kids that need
| providing, unless it made no difference. Plus, pursuits
| _themselves_ often cost money.
| jnsie wrote:
| Live in the US (not a native) and my health insurance is
| tied to my employment. Coupled with my mortgage, kids'
| education costs, etc. sustaining what we have is far more
| pressing than the desire for more money.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Money may not be a limiting factor in that you might
| actually need a very small amount of money to live on to do
| something similar to what Benjamin Thorpe did, but Money in
| the form of existing obligations and the inability to get
| out of those obligations is very much a limiting factor for
| just about everyone who reaches that age.
|
| The age of mental peak is also generally the age of most
| obligations accrued.
| Suppafly wrote:
| > Money is rarely a limiting factor as much as the desire
| for more money. reply
|
| Posted by someone whose apparently always had enough.
| scandox wrote:
| Modern life does not make it easy or very safe to live
| modestly. Obligations are often long term and costs are
| unpredictable. I don't think most people are kept from
| pursuing their dreams due to greed...more so by fear.
| szundi wrote:
| Nice achievement while being a SPOF in this field is interesting.
| cm2187 wrote:
| It's amusing that his translations might need their own
| translations to modern english in a century or two, like he uses
| forms that already aren't really used anymore (like _ye_ ).
|
| XVIII century French for instance, while probably being the peak
| of the language in term of sophistication and elegance, is hard
| to read without a lot of footnotes. So many words disappeared,
| changed meaning, or the grammar itself changed.
| netdevnet wrote:
| Makes you wonder what future generations will call our English.
| "Old" is taken and "modern" is always the English of the living
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Modern English is the English that followed the Great Vowel
| Shift that occurred between the late 14th century and the
| 17th century. So not necessarily modern in the colloquial
| sense.
|
| That is, Modern is also taken :-)
| usrnm wrote:
| That's assuming that the language will still be called
| English anything. It might as well split into American,
| Australian, British, etc. We don't call French or Spanish
| modern Latin, do we?
| kombookcha wrote:
| There's also an interesting split occurring with
| continental Euro-English, which is primarily being spoken
| by non-native speakers as a lingua franca. The divergence
| is presumably going to accelerate after Brexit, now that
| there's even fewer native speakers around to anchor it to
| British English.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English
| wirrbel wrote:
| It's an interesting page, but I think at the moment it
| only summarizes common errors of english-as-second-
| language speakers of other European languages. But there
| might be a pattern there.
|
| Also I doubt that there is a continuity between the
| mentioned Erasmus students and staff in the European-
| union for example. I would assume that's a later addition
| to the wikipedia article when the most likely subject of
| Euro english is about patterns of the use of english-
| language in the EU bureaucracy. Maybe a better title
| would be EU-administrative English or something of the
| like.
|
| What's not so often talked about is of course that the
| pronunciation of english by non-native speakers is
| different and I do think there is tendency for some
| convergence among some aspects of pronunciation that I
| observe in meetings and zoom calls at work. Aspiration of
| consonants, clearer separation of individual words. The
| result is that native-speakers - while being more
| eloquent in English which puts them at some advantage -
| sometimes have a disadvantage because their advanced use
| of language is not understood well. IIRC MTV Europe
| realized that british hosts wouldn't be understood across
| europe, when english-speaking french/german/italian hosts
| would.
| kombookcha wrote:
| I think that's about right, yeah - in my experience
| international gatherings in Europe tends to converge on a
| sort of continental pidgin English where you shave off
| all the difficult aspects and end up with this very clear
| and crisp shared language that's more mutually
| understandable for everyone involved than any of the
| ordinary 'native' variants of English.
|
| I think what's less clear is how consistent these
| convergences are. Certainly I have noticed colloquialisms
| and alterations to better fit romance and germanic
| languages that pop up again and again, but at what point
| does it get consistent enough to be its own 'thing' and
| not just a handy linguistic tool fashioned for the task
| at hand?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _at what point does it get consistent enough to be its
| own 'thing'_
|
| Traditionally, when it has its own army. (navy optional)
|
| [several years ago I was told the peacekeeping operations
| in Kosovo were all organised in "bad english"]
| wirrbel wrote:
| I would say if German english (Denglish) would pick up
| French english Idiosyncracies and vice versa, so if the
| speech patterns aren't just a result of making mistakes
| in a foreign language, but if they are acquired by other
| speakers. The Euro-English article gives as an example of
| Euro-English "Planification" for "Planning" which seems
| to stem from french / spanish
| https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/planification . So if the
| Germans start using planification they would have learned
| it from the french/spanish Euro-english speakers (I never
| heard "Planifikation" in German although its actually a
| word in the dictionary, I looked it up). And that would
| mean that certain Euro-English features propagate
| throughout Europe and are more than just
| Denglish/Frenglish/Swenglish and more than just English-
| learners messing up vocab/grammar.
|
| While we are talking about language, there definitely are
| also those folks who move abroad and after a few years
| when they return they have picked up peculiarities of the
| language of their host country. The daughter of a
| neighbor moved to Paris for example and after a few years
| she started to sound more french. Still spoke perfect
| german but with an accent. Similarly a coworker who is a
| US expat in Germany told me he caught himself using some
| Denglish constructions.
| troad wrote:
| As a linguist, there is no such dialect of English as
| 'Euro English'. The idea is borderline non-existent
| outside of Wikipedia.[0]
|
| In order for there to exist a dialect there must exist
| some kind of stable distinguishing features, and 'Euro
| English' has none. The errors that a French speaker makes
| in English are completely unlike the errors a Greek
| speaker makes in English, which in turn are completely
| unlike the errors Czech speakers make in English. What
| are the stable realisations of the usual English lexical
| set words (e.g. KIT, DRESS, TRAP etc.) in 'Euro English'?
| What is the internal grammatical system of 'Euro
| English'? What are its tenses? What is its syntax? No one
| has any answers for these questions, which should be
| trivial to answer for a living dialect.
|
| The highest evidence that the Wiki article can point to
| is a few items of jargon in European bureaucracy, but
| this for a dialect does not make. Any random larger
| organisation is going to have its jargon, particularly a
| legal one. A staffer on the Hill might have good
| scuttlebutt about Tuesday's pen and pad, but that doesn't
| mean there's some kind of emerging dialect of English
| forming in the halls of US Congress.
|
| It's fine to use 'Euro English' to refer to the few
| lexical items used in the European bureaucracy, but a few
| items of jargon are neither unusual, nor sufficient to
| constitute a dialect.
|
| [0] It's worth noting the most frequently cited source on
| that Wiki page is a click-baity newspaper article from a
| British tabloid ( _Brexit could create a new 'language'_
| ), and that, of the three (!) articles in the
| bibliography, one treats it solely as a legal jargon, and
| the other two (Mollin 2006 and Forche 2012) actually
| _reject_ the idea that Euro English is a dialect. Someone
| 's just on a bit of a frolic on Wikipedia.
| keybored wrote:
| > , based on common mistranslations and the technical
| jargon of the European Union (EU) and the native
| languages of its non-native, English-speaking population.
| It is mostly used among EU staff, expatriates and
| migrants from EU countries, young international
| travellers (such as exchange students in the EU's Erasmus
| programme) and European diplomats with a lower
| proficiency in the language.
|
| This sounds niche, scattered and irrelevant as far as
| language making goes. Erasmus students and expatriates?
| EU staff?
|
| It seems that you need some sort of concentration
| (virtual or geographical) to make a supposedly second-
| rate variation of some language. I don't see how people
| from all across "continental" Europe which are also so
| scattered domestically (Erasmus students?) could make
| something cohesive enough to call it Euro English.
|
| - A Spaniard might say "how you say" but would a Polish
| person do that?
|
| - A Polish person might drop a lot of articles but would
| a Spaniard do that?
|
| I'm from Scandinavia and a supposed mistake that people
| from the Nordic countries commit is to use "blue-eyed" to
| mean "naive". And sure that's a direct translation of the
| "naive" expression but I have never heard anyone from
| Scandinavia say that in English.
|
| I see the footnotes for the opening paragraphs are The
| Independent, the Financial Times and a British linguist.
| I don't know what the deal is with the British (similar
| to Americans but their distance from Europe excuses them
| IMO) and their insistence that Europe (really
| "Continental Europe" i.e. Europe which isn't a bus drive
| under the English Channel away from the mainland)
| consists of this uniform blob of non-Anglos who drive
| scooters, eat baguettes and go to raves. And speak the
| same pidgin apparently.
|
| > The divergence is presumably going to accelerate after
| Brexit, now that there's even fewer native speakers
| around to anchor it to British English.
|
| That's a laugh. Language isn't spread by way of EU
| diplomats. Regular people are more likely to be
| "anchored" to American English.
|
| One Czech guy I was talking to recently sounds like he
| moved to California at the age of nine.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > That's a laugh. Language isn't spread by way of EU
| diplomats. Regular people are more likely to be
| "anchored" to American English.
|
| American English is the best variant of English because
| we stole it. Nobody cares if somebody messes with it
| because, eh, it isn't ours anyway. Let's drive this
| language like a stolen car.
|
| > this uniform blob of non-Anglos who drive scooters, eat
| baguettes and go to raves. And speak the same pidgin
| apparently.
|
| Sounds awesome, maybe they are just envious!
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Since the rise of the web, and tv and movies before it,
| regional language divergence is decreasing instead of
| increasing as it did in the past. Future English will be
| more globally unified but with more online text chatting
| influences.
| usrnm wrote:
| Romans probably thought so too
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The difference is that education is now ubiquitous and
| almost everyone who matters is literate. The reason why
| Latin diverged into Romance languages is that literacy
| among the secular class died out, and both the elite and
| the peasants had no knowledge of formal Latin. (The
| Church did, but it was relatively weak in Early Middle
| Ages, certainly not strong enough to push the society to
| use a certain standard of language.)
|
| Sure, if the educational system today collapses and we
| revert to pre-industrial state like around 500 AD,
| English will spontaneously develop into a family of
| mutually unintelligible languages.
|
| I sincerely hope that this won't happen, though, because
| 95 per cent of humanity would die. We cannot feed 8
| billion people with pre-modern technology.
| Macha wrote:
| Art and architecture have had this problem already.
| Linguistics still has post-modern to use.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Controversial opinon: linguistic evolution is slowing down
| considerably.
|
| 1. Ever wondered why English spelling is so stupid? It's
| because it's based on an older version of language, but we
| never decided to update the spelling, so we just roll with
| it. How is that supposed to change in the future if it hasn't
| changed so far?
|
| 2. At first, text used to be a representation of spoken
| language. Nowadays communication is mostly via text, so it's
| more like "speech is acoustic representation of written
| language" and written language, as per example of Modern
| English, is not likely to naturally evolve once it's rules
| have been set, at least not as likely as spoken language,
| which can strongly vary from generation to generation.
|
| 3. Smaller languages, which potentially could be a source of
| new words and grammar, are quickly dying out due to
| popularity of English. Icelandic didn't evolve much through
| last thousand of years because its speakers had little
| contact with speakers of other languages. English will do the
| same by simply eliminating other languages.
|
| I don't think we're there yet, but at some point in the
| future English will reach its "final form" and from there on,
| only minor changes here and there will happen. Just like the
| entire world has almost collectively decided to use arabic
| numerals, or the metric system, and we don't expect any
| revolutionary changes there anymore.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Controversial opinon: linguistic evolution is slowing
| down considerably.
|
| (Brit here) Multicultural London English [0] and others
| like it suggest that language continues to evolve rapidly.
| I can't even do an MLE accent in the way that I could
| yorkshire, scouse, etc.
|
| > written language, as per example of Modern English, is
| not likely to naturally evolve once it's rules have been
| set
|
| Look at the rapid emergence of txt speak, emojis, etc,
| creating written forms that again rapidly evolve and may be
| unintelligible to an older generation
|
| > English will do the same by simply eliminating other
| languages.
|
| Look at the variety of English used in India. This
| continues to evolve independently of, say, British English
| and US English.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English
| OJFord wrote:
| I find Indian English fascinating as a tangent to my
| learning Hindi. From grammatical/auxiliary word 'errors'
| or quirks that you can relate to Hindi (and probably
| other Indic languages, I'm just not familiar) to
| vocabulary or usage that's not incorrect at all, it's
| just extremely quaint sounding or rare in British
| English, but for whatever reason so much more common in
| IE.
|
| (I can't think of a good example for the latter at the
| moment, for the former I mean things like 'I myself have
| noticed this' or 'it's common in Indian English only'.)
|
| It also provides one of my favourite words/concepts
| (which isn't quite an example of the second point as I
| meant it): _timepass_. Something you do to pass the time,
| or a (not exactly positive, nor negative) review of
| something that served that purpose.
| Suppafly wrote:
| I always wondered if the, common in IT, phrases like 'do
| the needful' and 'do the necessary' that you hear from
| Indian English speakers evolved from Hindi phrases.
| delecti wrote:
| Interestingly India got "do the needful" from Britain,
| but then it dropped out of use there, while India kept
| it.
|
| There are things like that idea though. I hear "different
| different" from Indian coworkers pretty regularly, which
| is apparently a direct translation of a common Hindi
| expression.
| keybored wrote:
| > Controversial opinon: linguistic evolution is slowing
| down considerably.
|
| Borg hivemind convergence is a bog-standard HN opinion.
| Although still controversial enough to elicit replies. ;)
|
| > Smaller languages, which potentially could be a source of
| new words and grammar, are quickly dying out due to
| popularity of English. Icelandic didn't evolve much through
| last thousand of years because its speakers had little
| contact with speakers of other languages. English will do
| the same by simply eliminating other languages.
|
| Mainland Scandinavian languages have plenty of foreign
| borrowed words from decades ago, long before most people
| had a reason to know English (or Latin or French or). Today
| though English in particular should have penetrated Iceland
| as much as mainland Scandinavia, but Icelandic (according
| to Icelanders) has plenty of neologisms instead of
| loanwoards (apparently eschewing lame polysyllabic words
| like "helicopter").
|
| Other Scandinavian languages (language communities) could
| have chosen the same route as they become more influenced
| by English than even somewhat mutually intelligible
| neighboring language communities. But they don't. Proving
| that language communities can choose to take different
| routes even in an American Western World Order.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Maybe something like Singlish. There are already more english
| speakers in China than the US.
| pessimizer wrote:
| "ye" is just "the." The "y" is being used to represent the
| letter thorn.
| euroderf wrote:
| FWIW I note that Google Translate offers no Old English, or even
| Middle English.
| jhbadger wrote:
| There may not be a big enough corpus for adequate training. The
| problem with both is that the main people writing would either
| prefer Latin (or later, French). The number of people who could
| write and used the vernacular to do so, were small.
| euroderf wrote:
| Point taken. Altho I'm sure an AI could take a stab at
| building a corpus. Accuracy maybe better than 90% ?
| chx wrote:
| I do not think I have seen a better example of a post being
| so drunk on the LLM kool-aid.
| kogus wrote:
| English today is a delightful, expressive train wreck of grammar
| and spelling madness. But Old English really was not. It was a
| much more earthy, simple, and consistent language. Old English
| had a total of about 40,000 words. Today's English has almost
| half a million.
|
| I'll take the opportunity to plug a fantastic podcast on the
| history of English, creatively named "The History of English
| Podcast".
|
| https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
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