The serious thoughts and silly behavior of A.Z. Foreman
Beowulf is an early poem out of a lost world. In a very important way, that was already true in turn-of-the-millennium Wessex. By the time the Nowell Codex was produced around 1000 AD, written Old English itself was probably a somewhat more "artificial" language than it had been in the pre-Alfredian period. The language of Old English verse in particular was rather removed from anybody's everyday…
Stiernmód nú wæs Éomer, and eft ferhðclǽne. Bebéad hornas tó bláwenne, tó gegadrienne ealle menn tó his fanan þá þe cúðon þider cuman, for þæt hé áþóhte tó wyrcenne gréatne bordweall in ende, and standenne, and þǽr on fóte feohtenne oþ þæt ealle féollon, and wóþlíc gúþweorc tó wyrcenne on Pelennores Feldum, éac gif nán Westan cwicra nǽron to gemunenne þone endenéhstan Mearccyning. Swá rád hé oþ…
The Matter of Principle The period of principles can last No more than winking years, or a decade. Soon we must count our way to first from last. Narrow your comprehensions of the past As if in our grand-throated gasconade The period of principles can last. Though ballots will continue to be cast, Though cheers yell honestly at the parade Soon we must count our way to first from last. Only when…
(an earlier draft of this poem appeared in Word's Faire ) "Of god-ſent men embattail'd under ſtarres That bent the shaken earthe to sund'ring warres, Of their deeds, goddeſſe, ſing; of tryumphe ſtrucke To make heartes wonder What The Actual Fuck... " Grope lofty language showing the true modes of the Epic Muse of Rome, and weird explodes. No cute sweetheart, this Muse. It took Her keen cold throat…
Twinkle, twinkle, little star. I don’t wonder what you are. Quite beyond medieval ken You are largely hydrogen. When the blazing sun is gone Bringing someone else's dawn, I can see your faint far light Twinkle, twinkle through the night. But the traveller in the dark Needs no more your puny spark. Compass, map and satellite Superannuate your light Blurred out in the urban pitch. (Light pollution…
(This sonnet first published in Grand Little Things ) History offered her no hiding place From where the fingers of a ghoulish God Upon the throat of her red bloodied race Had tried to break her neck into a nod. Far from the grassy ghetto called a home The merciless clichés make her their own, Cruel and insipid. She sings broken rhyme, Casts the die rolling like a dead man's bone. And still the…
I've just got to get this out there, after seeing so many people make terrible assumptions about what rhymes can tell you about the English pronunciation of the past. Did pre-modern English poets' verse always rhyme perfectly in their own speech? Not so much. No. They didn't in the 16th century. They didn't in the 17th. Nor at any later point. This becomes obvious when we get the rare chance to…
Just a couple thoughts on the possible phonetic values of some English vowels in the transcriptions of the 17th century spelling reformer Alexander Gil The PRICE Vowel (modern /aɪ/) There is some disagreement in the field about how this vowel developed in Gil's period. Probably the most generally held view is that the process of diphthongization went /iː/ → [ɨi] → [ɘi] → [əi] before 1500 and…
Ex "Tragoedia Iulii Caesaris" Excerptum Scripsit Anglice Gulielmus Shakespeare (sive Hastiquatius) Vertit in senarios Latinos A.Z. Foreman Mihi ignōscās Ō mōlēs terrae sanguināns Quod clēmēns atque blandus sum laniīs tuīs. Heu, rūdera es virōrum nōbilissimī Umquam quī vīxērunt lūstrīs lābentibus! Vae manuī, quae hunc cārum effūdit sanguinem! Ego hīs apertīs vulnere extīs auguror Quae mūta hiant ut…
Carmen De Humpti Dumptii Obitu Sedebat Humptus Dumptius Olim in summo muro Cecedit Humptus Dumptius Casu damnose duro Cui Caesaris praefecti tum Equique adfuerunt Sed lapsum Humptum Dumptium Sarcire nequierunt
Vates Bellator Scripsit Anglice Thomas Morus ("The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone) Vertit Latine A.Z. Foreman Puer vates vasit in prœlium, Ad mortis agmen cessit, Qui patris induit gladium Lyramque tergo gessit "Carminum" ait "regio! Etsi te mundus fraudat Te servat unus pugio, Et fida lyra laudat." Perivit at haud spiritum Catena hostis clausit, Nec dedit lyra sonitum Nam chordas cunctas hausit…
In 1617 one Robert Robinson, a kid who matriculated pensioner from Trinity Hall two years before, composed one of the most original works of early English phonetics in "The Art of Pronuntiation" in which he used a script deliberately unrelated to the Roman alphabet to sidestep its limitations. He lived as a schoolmaster in London and apparently fourty years later impressed Charles Hoole (teacher…
The English language in the 16th century was a bit like Icelandic or Danish in the early 21st, in that very few people outside the British Isles had much practical reason to learn the language, and of those foreigners who bothered trying, fewer still ever really learned it well. Why, after all, would you need English when anybody in England of real importance would know French and/or Latin? As…
"Some people labor under the impression that their language is superior to all others. This makes no sense. The aspects of superiority are known: things are superior either by the work they do or by selection. But languages do not actually do work, and there is no scriptural testimony about the preference of one language over another. The Almighty says: “We have not sent a prophet except using the…
One thing I never understood about stories set in universes where vampires are real: why can’t humans just set up a bloodbank to meet vampiric needs? Our bodies are capable of producing so much blood, much more than if you just kill us and drain it all in one go. A single human can produce huge amounts of the stuff if they just give a tiny bit every day. The whole “vampires need blood and…
(Translation by yours truly) "The poet should avoid not only obscure and arcane words, but also those vernacular words banalized by common overuse. This undermines the poem's eloquence. He should also avoid tropes that have become banalized in common knowledge, as this too undermines eloquence, the poem itself becoming banal and approaching the insipid, as when one says "the fire is hot" or "the…
In illo uultu ab odio philosophie uastato conspexi primum imaginem Antichristi, qui non uenit de tribu Iude sicut simulauerint annunciatores eius, nec de regione ulla longinqua. Antichristus nasci potest ex ipsa pietate, de amore Dei uel ueritatis excessiuo, sicut hereticus nascitur de sancto et indemoniatus de uidentibus. Timeto tu prophetas, Adso, et omnes paratos mori pro ueritate, quia…
Narrationem "Bellorum Stellarium" si recoquere numeris Latinis velim, huiuscemodi initium faciam. Utrum aliquando plura scribam necne haud scio. Interpretationem soluta oratione Anglicam adieci in extremo. Quo haud serio animo hos vaniverbosos vermifluos versiculos scripserim nihil, ut spero, attinet dicere. (If I should want to recast the story of "Star Wars" in Latin verse, I'd begin it like…
Sunt qui dicunt linguam latinam emolumentum habere quo carent aliae linguae, videlicet quod non mutatur. Hanc linguam, quia multa per saecula et hominum aetates tradita et exculta est, aptissimam putant ad humanitatem specie tradendam. Egomet cum istis qui absurdas huiusmodi notiones perhibent, nullatenus consentire possum. Nam nempe mutata est. Sed — inde ab initio mediae ut dicitur aetatis —…
1) Proper motivation is key. Ideally there should be something in the language you really want to read. Note I said want, not need. If you just need to read something to satisfy external requirements, that is one thing. If you want to read something, that is another. 2) Do not memorize vocab lists or recycle flash cards. Get used to looking up words as needed. But inasmuch as you need to memorize…
Just a few readings of Latin poetry to illustrate my most recent thinking on the sound of Latin verse in the Late Republic and Early Empire. I follow the standard "Allenian" analysis of most features, though I follow Sihler and Adams on a few things like the distribution of the allophones of /l/. Virgil: Aeneid 1.1-34 Horace: Ode 1.11 Horace: Ode 4.7 Seneca: Troades 371-408 Martial: Epigram 3.6
A little Old English poem that I found myself writing about the burial of King Alaric of the Goths in the Busento river. The central section is based on — and loosely paraphrases — Von Platen's famous poem, which I read as a kid, long before I read Von Platen's source in Jordanes' Getica, (where, among other things, the Goths are actually described as forcing their enslaved war-captives to dig the…
Ben Jonson's son died in the London plague epidemic of 1603 . On My First Sonne Ben Jonson Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy, Seven yeeres thou’wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. O, could I loose all father, now. For why Will man lament the fate he should envie? To have so soone scap’d worlds, and…
The pronunciation of Old English used in teaching it is essentially a spelling pronunciation, with the regularized graphemes of Late West Saxon mapped onto sounds that English-speaking academics are able to pronounce. This I think contributes to the sense — already fathered by the pervasive Winchesterization of most surviving texts from the period— of linguistic homogeneity and stasis. It is also…
The language of literature is not the same thing as that of ordinary speech. The two have been confounded by modern scholars for far too long. Students of Latin and Greek know about the rule that a long syllable is equal to two short ones in versification. Here are some parallels from round the world: When Luganda poems and songs are accompanied on the drums, a single drumbeat is assigned to a…