Hie Mec Beswickened
In my own discombobulated translation of Old English, I think that means They Tricked Me.
I put myself in a course on Old English this semester. Why? Why, why, why, why, why? Supposedly we'll be able to read it by the end of the semester. But there are 19 different ways to write the word "the", based on gender, number, and insanity. I took it, instead of something more reasonable, because I have to have something old and something British. I'm afraid of what I'll be forced to take in my last semester if I don't take it now. But I have a midterm and a stinking final in this class, and I wasn't bargaining on that. And it's really bad form to drop/add a graduate class. Worse, the class is full of linguistics-nerds from other disciplines, making it about the most boring class on earth.
I try to study this at home, trying to balance my study for the Italian translation test coming up soon with my need to speed learn this OE stuff. I read it out loud, and the cat has a meowing fit. Then she attacks my book. I'm not kidding. It's as though I'm reading an incantation made specifically to piss off cats.
Pas sycanes. This sucks.
-- Virgil, Beswickened
posted by contemplator at Saturday, August 25, 2007
2 Comments:
he, he. Well I know who to call. Boy is about to start Heaney's translation of Beowulf and it has the old english next to his translation.
If Boy decides he wants to know how to say something, you may be hearing from us.
Beowulf is *tough* in the OE. It's hotly debated, partly because in OE there are multiple words that mean roughly the same thing, and Beowulf makes use of all of them. There doesn't seem to be much consistency, from what I can gather. Heaney's translation, really, though, is supposed to be without parallel.
I can tell him how to pronounce it, though, probably. And it's full of good old Saxon words that are just fun to say.
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