You guys...

[highlyeccentric]

This language is going to drive me mad¹. I think modern German may have been designed to bamboozle whatever weird people learn Anglo-Saxon first.

Consider the matter of first person pronouns:

1. Anglo Saxon: Ic - pronounced "ick" or "ich", there might even be a rule to which one you use, but I've forgotten it (Sorry, Venerable Alex.)
2. Middle English: Ich - pronounched "ich" or "i-ch", depending on who you're listening to.
3. German: Ich - prounounced some way I can't possibly reproduce, but which is most definitely not "ich" or "i-ch".

And then tonight, because I'm weird, I was reading the grammar at the back of my dictionary, and discovered that the past participle is formed by whacking 'ge-' onto the present tense. I HAVE BEEN TRAINED TO IGNORE RANDOM GE- prefixes, people!
... although, glod, what wouldn't I give to know what this wandering ge- thing did in Proto-Germanic...

~

1. For those new to the world of Me Learning New Languages, this is my battle-cry and expression of glee.

Comments

[tea-fiend.livejournal.com]

How are you having trouble with ich? The ch is the same as the Russian letter x, if that helps.

And why did you used to ignore the ge- prefix? I found it dead handy whenever it cropped up. But then, I learnt German first, and in Middle or Old English or wherever I was coming across it, I could use it as an indicator of tense. It does make sense, really.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I found it dead handy whenever it cropped up. But then, I learnt German first, and in Middle or Old English or wherever I was coming across it, I could use it as an indicator of tense. It does make sense, really.

No, it really really doesn't, because it's NOT an indicator of tense in English of any form. No idea what it IS - sometimes the ge-form of the word is completely different in meaning to the regular, sometimes it might be an intensifier but mostly my teachers seemed to think it was a decorative flourish.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

It's occasionally a tense indicator in certain forms of Middle English -- it's not always, but it happens frequently enough that when I see the ge- or ye- or ȝe- prefix I automatically check whether it's a past participial or other past tense form.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

It DOES? *snorts* well, I got through two years of messing around with ME by just ignoring it.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

Þ = alt+0222
æ = alt+0230
ð= alt+0240

My advice is twofold:

1. Install Junicode, it's by far the best font for medievalists
2. Find your characters in the word insert character menu, and set yourself some simpler shortcuts for them (mine go alt-t-h and ctrl-alt-t-h, I believe). (http://junicode.sourceforge.net/)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Junicode is spectacular for Old English, but I'm not nearly as fond of it for Middle English, and the sizing's awkward for general usage. My new favorite medievalist font is Andron Scriptor Web (http://www.mufi.info/fonts/).

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)