Comment by sudobash1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudobash1 | Hacker News Reader

The use of the word wer as "man" (male) can be read in Beowulf. For example, when people are eulogizing a dead king. It says "ymb wer sprecan"[1] meaning "speak about the man." Same with the word wif: "wíggryre wífes" means "war-violence of women."

The development of the modern word "woman" is interesting. It descends from the word combination "wif" + "man". The "i" gradually changed to an "o". However the plural (women) retains the original "i" sound. The word "wif" on its own changed to our modern word "wife"[2].

A lot of our modern words which contain "-man" or "man-" in them developed in Old English. The word "mankind" for instance is present in Beowulf. It is spelled "manna cynnes" or "mancynn".

One last note, the word "wer" predates the English language. It dates back to Proto-Indo-European, and shows up in many different languages. For example in Latin it is "vir"

If you want a Beowulf side-by-side translation: https://heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html

[1] Cool to see the word "sprecan" and it's similarity to modern German "sprechen".

[2] Which has always made me wonder about the phrase "I pronounce you man and wife". What meanings of "man" and "wife" were common when that phrase originated.

Now that I am rambling about etymology, another cool thing: We spell and say the plural of "wife" as "wives". This is because of how the voiced "e" changed the pronunciation of the unvoiced "f" to a voiced "v". ("v" and "f" are the same sound with the only difference being if you are engaging your vocal folds or not. Same with "z" and "s", "b" and "p", and some others).

The same happened with "knife" and "knives", and the pronunciation of "path" vs "paths" (the "s" sound is voiced, and caused the "th" to be voiced as well).

Though curiously not 'roof', despite all being Germanically rooted.

Or “dwarf”, aside from Tolkien.

Tolkien actually wanted for the pural of "dwarf" to be "dwerrows", but compromised to the neutral "dwarves".

It's probably due to what the parent said--the letters f and v were allophones in OE. Same reason why they are pronounced the same in German.

Are you saying not "rooves" in spelling, or in pronunciation, or both? I spell it "roofs" but pronounce it "rooves". With "dwarfs" and "dwarves", it depends on context for both spelling and pronunciation I think.

My favorite part is where Grendel's mother is referred to as an "aglæc-wif", which could mean "monster-woman" or maybe just "fearsome woman". Whatever the case she was even more fearsome than her son, and I like formidable female villains.

The word wer lives on to this day, as part of werewolf.

“Wer” is also where our word “werewolf” comes from; presumably a female werewolf would be a “wifewolf”?

And sprecan is even closer sounding to the Dutch "spreken" which retained the long middle /e/ and /k/.

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