Open Thread - 20 August 2026 - English, Then and Now
English, Then and Now
I happened across a really interesting video on youtube the other day and I want to share it, of course 
. This is a young man, from England, presenting a monologue in English ranging from the language spoken in 450AD or so, to that spoken in modern northeastern America. It is very cool! It's interesting how the farm animal names haven't changed so much over time, how much, unsurprisingly, English sounds like German, Danish, etc, throughout much of time, and so much more! The rabbit hole beckons!
Some Modern Stuff:
This might be why I'm ignoring a lot of political stuff lately. Fake polls in Wisconsin and Los Angeles, California were released as part of a 'social experiment'? (Here's a link to an LA Times article about this) I know one could never trust a lot of this crap in the past, but this is ridiculous. Just ridiculous. Who's doing this experiment, and why? As my very elderly mother says, 'I just don't understand or know the world anymore, and how it works...' I'm starting to feel the same way.
Ok, Here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!
Comments
Thursday!
Hope it's a great day for everyone. What's up? Whatcha doing? Here I will be doing the usual gardening, some computing and wev. I need to can some fruits and veg, maybe. I would like to make some crabapple chutney. I love that stuff and crabapples are getting close to ripe here (and yes, it's early for that). In the garden, some of the roses are still blooming. Yay!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
The many flavors of English lingo
.
A favorite story of verbiage slaw comes from high school biology class.
We were paired-up to dissect pickled frogs. Yuck. My partner looked on
in horror as the dead reptile was being exposed under scalpel. I forget which
organ we were tasked with removing. Aghast, she queried in her typical hick
talk "Ain't ja gotta take the bonses out?" Ha, no. we were not going to eat the thing.
Thanks for the OT.
Zionism is a social disease
Making a sloppy joe batch
.
for the cookers group tonight
may even get fancy and toast the buns.
Next up is the cuke salad.
The theme this month is farmers market.
The beef is local, as are the cukes, onions,
peppers and snowflake rolls. Yumm.
Zionism is a social disease
Yes of course
"Old English" should probably just be called "Anglo-Saxon," since we who speak Modern English don't recognize it as our language. Anyway, the maker of this video, it seems, wants to go back to before the time when Anglo-Saxon absorbed a lot of words from "Old Norse," similar to Danish.
An English we would recognize as English would be any of the four versions of Middle English that were used from 1100 to 1400, after the Norman Conquest had spread a lot of wonky French into the language. Chaucer wrote in an English we would recognize; it wasn't our English, but it was still an English.
"What they are trying to to is prop up the deteriorating conditions of capitalism with fraud and, if that doesn't work, with violence.." -- Indrajit Samarajiva
Oh, Christ, spare me, High School Senior "English"
Nature is a prick? Whut? and fookin' Beowulf too; arrrgh!
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Beowulf was in Anglo-Saxon
I always found those letters "eth" and "thorn" distracting, the ones we don't use in our language... Middle English is a drag because there are four different types of it...
"What they are trying to to is prop up the deteriorating conditions of capitalism with fraud and, if that doesn't work, with violence.." -- Indrajit Samarajiva
Yep, Icelandic still has ’em !
> those letters "eth" and "thorn"
I’ve heard that Icelanders can read Beowulf in the original and have no problems understanding it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language
Icelandic state broadcaster / public TV and radio:
https://www.ruv.is/
Chaucer's spelling is weird, but
the attentive reader can still get the gist of what he's saying. He's setting the stage for his bunch of tale-telling pilgrims traveling to Canterbury, to the (then existing) shrine of St. Thomas Becket (Henry VIII had it demolished in 1538).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Some of the Americanized versions
.
of the lingo I've had to deal with -
afro ghetto
southern drawl
cajun-french peppered with english
yankee New England esp. Maine, NH & VT
midwestern twang
southwestern Spanglish
Cali-cool
NY Bronx
Yiddish terminology
Each region have their own emphasis and intonations.
All I have to do is open my mouth and invariably the response is
"not from around here, eh?"
Zionism is a social disease
I was in London
in front of our embassy, waiting for my friend to get some pages added to her passport ahead of our flight to South Africa. A young woman walked by, smoking, and I asked if I could please borrow her lighter. She sad, "Yes, of course. You are from Texas, aren't you?"
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
If we could re-organize the states
.
into cultural regions by accents TX, NM, AZ would be one.
RI, MA, VT, NH, ME would be another. MN, WI, MI with northern
sections of IN, IL, and OH definitely together. LA, MS, AL, GA are
kinda clumped. In the PWN OR, WA and maybe western ID and northern
CA? Hard to say. Midwest is pretty homogenized. NY metro, NJ and CT are their
own zones. As are the Atlantic coast states SC, NC, TN, KY. FL and CA are outliers.
Some exceptions apply.
Zionism is a social disease
No “pidgin,” brah / tita?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Pidgin
https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/english-standard-school/
A lot of SoCal folks or my era sprinkled bits of
da kine pidgen into casual conversations
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
maidin mhaith e1, Saxon I am not. Heh.
It appears that the Rus hit Kiev with hundreds of airborne weapons, drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, but I haven't watched anything to get a read on what they targeted and/or hit.
It's a bad day for helicopters (or was, SCMP's news is probably yesterday's.) Anyway a small plane plowed into a police helicopter in Pennsylvania, and a 'copter went down in Kenya killing Ecuador's Intel Chief and 5 USians.
Maybe more later after I get my morning together,
Tabhair aire agus bíodh lá maith agat
edited to close a parenthesis
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Update on Rus Strikes
https://sputnikglobe.com/20260820/massive-russian-barrage-targets-defens...
They also obliterated an underground Ukrainian command post near Dobropolye
be well and have a good one
edited to add info on command post
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Will any of this RUS offensive
.
make the Ukronazis think twice about more
terrorist strikes? Kinda doubt it. It has become
their reason for being (what's left of it).
Zionism is a social disease
Don't think so, but it will somewhat hurt their ability to
launch terrorist strikes and, more importantly, impair the ability of their troops to hold ground and launch counter offensives. The SMO's original goals will maybe need to be extended or expanded, but the real question is whether the Rus will be able to stop once its goals have been achieved of will they be forced to destroy Ukraine as a state in order to stop it's thirst for terrorism.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
This popped up on my feed
A Bruce Cockburn concert from 1986!
"What they are trying to to is prop up the deteriorating conditions of capitalism with fraud and, if that doesn't work, with violence.." -- Indrajit Samarajiva