The Loaf Guardians: Parsing the Early History of the Anglo-Saxons | Hacker News Reader

The Loaf Guardians: Parsing the Early History of the Anglo-Saxons

laphamsquarterly.org

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Fun fact: Just like "Lord," the word "lady" is also etymologically related to dough via hlæfdige, or "one who kneads dough"

https://www.etymonline.com/word/lady

And lord is "one who guards the loaves."

This event in 530 is one of the reasons I'm so optimistic about our ability to cope and survive in the face of disaster. A decade of no crops, and year-long winters. It changed the history of England, possibly the world. It created what we now refer to as "the Dark Ages". But we survived, and bounced back.

If you're interested in the development of English, I recommend The History of English podcast by Kevin Stroud. It considers the Old English Anglo-Saxon period (and much before and after) in depth.

https://historyofenglishpodcast.com

I love this podcast. It just hits all the buttons for me. It's well-researched and addresses language, daily life, and national history. The pacing is kind of frustrating in the earlier episodes, but it improves over time. 3 episodes hinting at the region where the original proto-Indo-European-speaking people lived and then all of the movements and migrations glossed over in 15 minutes. I about lost it. Had to listen to the episode that covered the migrations twice because he went so fast after I spent 3 episodes yelling at him to just say they originated in the Caspian steppe. 3 hours tap-dancing around saying that they had horses and so we need to look at what areas had domesticated horses and where were horses domesticated and.... apparently I'm still mad about it.

Anyway, I stuck it out and I'm glad I did. I'm on episode 67 and still loving it. It is so thorough. He's just now getting to middle English in the 67th hour-long episode for reference.

I do wish he knew more about languages besides English, Latin, and Greek. He tries to discuss declension and case and it's hard to do that without some experience with languages that use a lot of different cases. If he had some knowledge of Slavic languages, it would have been much easier for him to demonstrate the utility of that grammar. You can definitely tell that he's explaining something he's unfamiliar with himself. But he's not a linguist by trade or education and he makes that clear early on and I'm damn impressed with how much he knows.

Dang that'sa lot of words for "if you're interested in English language history, listen to this show", so I'll stop here. Seriously it's excellent.

Yes, I should have put more effort into saying how excellent it is. It's a masterful demonstration of how good podcasting can be as a medium for explaining history. I really have only one minor gripe with it: I wish he'd stop saying "cantaberry" when he means Canterbury (but that's only likely to bother Brits).

I actually never noticed that. He's got a very standard American dialect/accent. You can't really place where he's from.

I'd dare say if you're interested in almost any aspect of western European culture, you should check out that podcast. It is like linguistics, culture, history and more all mixed together. The quality of the podcast is just incredible.

Another recommendation for this podcast. He does such a good job covering not just the language changes but the events and social changes that influence the language. It really helps illuminate past lives and societies in a very approachable fashion.

Fascinating article. I had not heard of this proposed 5th century social upheaval in England before. I wonder if this could explain the apparent disappearance of the Britons from most of the island and their replacement by Anglo-Saxons. Old English has very, very few recorded British (Celtic) loanwords which is inconsistent with a conquering people having assimilated another. Yet, no mass graves sufficient for the Britons to have been slaughtered have been found.

I will likely have to get the full book.

http://pegasusbooks.com/books/the-anglo-saxons-9781643133126...

I'm reading The Monsters and the Critics and other essays. Tolkein's scholarship is just collosal. The result is a distillation of the experience of a man in love with language, the peoples who spoke them, and a true appreciation of time, culture, and the loss of both.

We have virtually no knowledge of these people, and the millions of other peoples who met the same fate. There is simply nothing left of them. And as their descendents became us, so too shall we pass on into the unknown.

You should look at his translation of Beowulf. Not because it's an especially good translation (it isn't), but because it's really just a framework for a series of mini-essays on how much you can learn about the culture from that poem (and supporting material).

He examines the poem on a nearly word-by-word basis, and each one teaches something about how they thought about the world. That requires an absolutely encyclopedic grasp of every single fragment of knowledge we have: archeology, sagas, descendant languages, religion, etc.

You really read it for the footnotes rather than the (unremarkable) prose. Having read it gives you a much greater appreciation for other translations, and the way they translate the 6th century for today.

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