An unsatisfactory day for me, although Lois manages to take part in her sect's 2 worship services on zoom, and also make a chocolate cake, of which she's iced half so far. We eat 2 pieces each with our 4 pm session of Earl Grey tea on the couch.
a lovely chocolate cake, a bit half-iced but
just as delicious as always haha!
we try it out on the couch - it passes the test!
So a good day for Lois, but what have I myself managed to achieve? Not much. I can only say that I've done the exercises that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist has scheduled for me today, which is a small achievement.
But apart from that I've only managed to write about 2 more paragraphs of my so-called "presentation", a talk I've agreed to give on zoom to members of Lynda's U3A Middle English group, all about the influence of the Scandinavian languages on the history of English. Oh dear! And there are only 5 more days till I have to give it - yikes!
At the moment I'm trying to figure out what might have happened to the English language after about 450 AD when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes migrated to Britain, after which time they became separated from their previous neighbours in Holland, north Germany and Denmark. There was a bit of trading that went on, but not much apparently - just high-end stuff.
How much did the English language change after these guys arrived in England? It's hard to be sure, because they didn't write anything down for 200 years or so - the lazy buggers! I know they were mostly illiterate, but that's no excuse! They continued to carve a few rune stones, and so did their old neighbours in Scandinavia, but that doesn't really amount to much in the way of evidence.
flashback to 2013: I showcase a typical medieval rune stone
at the Viking fortress at Trelleborg, Denmark.
After, say, 200 years of separation, would the Anglo-Saxons in England still have been able to understand their old neighbours on the Continent, for example? Almost certainly they would, but we haven't really got any parallels in the modern world because of the increased level of communications we have now, compared to 1500 years ago.
The USA split off from Britain in 1776 but we've stayed in contact ever since, so it's not really the same. There are pronunciation differences: British speech has generally changed more that American speech - and the US East Coast accents which in the 19th century stayed more in synch with changes in British accents because of the maritime trading links, are not really the standard accents over there.
There have been numerous innovations in vocabulary in the US and a few in the UK, but generally, in Britain, we've tended to copy the American expressions more often than not.
Are there any grammatical differences? The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are that we can say "Either will do", but they have to say "Either one will do". And there are some past tense differences: we say "spit, spat, spat" (verb, past tense, past participle) and they say "spit, spit, spit" for example. I think that we tend to say "the committee think..." whereas they would say, "the committee thinks". Not much, though, is it! Are there any more? I don't know, but I think we should be told!
One of Lois's male friends, who's now moved to a different part of the country, had a girl-friend from the small volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha, a remote British territory in the South Atlantic, first settled a couple of hundred years ago by just a small number of British families - and there are still only a very limited number of family names there, descended from the original pioneer settlers.
When the volcano erupted in 1961, the population was evacuated to Britain, although most returned home 2 years later.
The island hit the headlines again recently (May 2001) when the UK Government pointlessly added the place to its official "green list" of holiday destinations. Nobody goes on holiday there, that's for sure. It's too remote, and transport links are too difficult. As soon as you get there it's time to come back!
For a couple of hundred years, the islanders had little contact with Britain, and I remember that when the islanders arrived in the UK in 1961 after the volcano erupted, there was enormous press interest in them and their quaint way of speaking.
As I remember, they don't put 's' on the end of any verbs, for example, so they would equally say "I go" and "he go". Nouns starting with a vowel have an unhistoric 'h' slapped on the front, so that the words 'highland' and 'island' sound exactly the same. Also many 'z' sounds tend to be normally pronounced as a 's'. So "season" is pronounced like "sea sun". What madness !!!!!
All very interesting perhaps, but I'm not sure that it brings me any further forward with my presentation - damn !!!!
Personally I don't think the English language changed very much for a few hundred years or so after the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the country.
When Ottar (sometimes called Ohthere), the distinguished Norwegian sailor, visited the court of King Alfred the Great in London in about 890 AD, he was able to give a speech to the king's court talking about his travels to Russia etc. And he seems to have delivered his speech in Old Norse, which the English court could still understand without the need for an interpreter, which was nice.
Ottar, the Norwegian sailor, and his travels, which eventually
brought him to London for an audience with King Alfred the Great
Ottar confused his English audience once or twice during his speech, with one or two classic errors. He used the word 'kirtle' which by this time meant a woman's dress in English. In Old Norse it still meant a man's jacket.
Oops!!! I bet there were a few red faces and some stifled guffaws round the table at that one!
the boat Ottar took to the White Sea
(artist's impression, not an actual photo)
20:30 A phone call with Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11).
Ali works as a teaching assistant at a local primary school, and she's been enjoying the fact that her working day has been finishing at 1pm and she has the rest of the day to herself. This wasn't going to last however, and the school have asked her if she will work on till the first part of the afternoon, and this new schedule started on Wednesday this last week.
Our younger daughter Sarah has been living in Perth, Australia, for about 6 years, but she and Francis have been thinking of moving back to the UK with their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessie.
our 8-year-old twin granddaughters, Jessie (left) and Lily, pictured here
with their tropical-style drinks, by the swimming pool
in the garden of their house in Perth, Australia
Sarah is worried that if they do move back, that the twins will be behind their peers when they start attending school here. She's afraid that the Australian liking for "learning through play" has set the twins back educationally - oh dear! So we ask Ali if she can find some typical teaching materials that children in the 8 to 9 age group use over here at the moment, so that we can send them to Sarah for comparison purposes.
one of the possible routes the family could take if they decide
to move back to the UK
And Ali thinks that in any case that the learning through play approach has taken root here too - oh dear!! Lois and I think that if the twins are bright enough - which they are in our humble opinion - that they will cope with any changes. They love to read books, which is half the battle, isn't it. Let's hope so anyway!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
