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By Seinte Loy!
June 7, 2009 9:50 AM Subscribe

After falling silent for nearly a year, Geoffrey Chaucer is back and blogging.

Read his thoughts on internet abbreviations, movie reviews, spam mail, and how to pick up chicks at medieval conferences.

posted by orrnyereg (50 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite

My wyf just got her forehead done.

Oh come on. The construct "Get [X] done" is surely not Middle English.
Props on the spelling, though.
posted by dunkadunc at 9:57 AM on June 7

Sorry, no. I'm currently following the Dracula blog.
posted by SPrintF at 9:58 AM on June 7

dunkadunc: "The construct "Get [X] done" is surely not Middle English."

Blog, on the other hand, dates to Henry IV, Part 2:

FALSTAFF. Kiss me, Doll.
PRINCE. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! What says th' almanac to that?
POINS. And look whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping to his master's old tables, his blog, his counsel-keeper.
FALSTAFF. Thou dost give me flattering busses.
DOLL. By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart.

posted by Plutor at 10:06 AM on June 7 [2 favorites]

I roghte nat a bene of all this blogge
posted by Phanx at 10:12 AM on June 7

elle oh elle, it liketh me well
posted by Countess Elena at 10:14 AM on June 7

The construct "Get [X] done" is surely not Middle English.

You got him. This is not really the blog of a man dead for over 600 years.
posted by DU at 10:14 AM on June 7 [16 favorites]

Siþþens ich þa ule and niȝtinggale rede,
Damnede middele english ni leven mi hede.
Swa an blogge ywryt in swich noyson lede,
For trow, riȝt nu, is þa last þing ich nede.
posted by Sova at 10:29 AM on June 7 [19 favorites]

This Chaucer fellow lives in kalamazoo. I'll try to hunt him down.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:30 AM on June 7

Went a little too far back, Sova. This is Chaucer's blog; not Alfreþ's.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:33 AM on June 7 [2 favorites]

What a queynte he is.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:35 AM on June 7 [5 favorites]

Went a little too far back, Sova. This is Chaucer's blog; not Alfreþ's.

Hey, I'm a maximalist! Everything from the Peterborough Chronicle to the Paston Letters is fair game. Or, [insert various ranty rants about how Sweet and others misperiodized English so badly as to make Middle English a complete and utter shambles].
posted by Sova at 10:46 AM on June 7

My wyf just got her forehead done.

Oh come on. The construct "Get [X] done" is surely not Middle English.

for reals. everyone knows it's "My wyf just got her forehead did."
posted by shmegegge at 10:51 AM on June 7 [3 favorites]

Best of þe webbe.
posted by grouse at 10:55 AM on June 7 [3 favorites]

You could combine Chauceresque writing with the Tom Swift thing, if you were bored and heavily caffeinated.

"Cheete at cardes I haste not!" saythe Tomme tenaciousleye.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:01 AM on June 7 [2 favorites]

Swedish too, for example "drag" is the sign on a door i.e "pull" and this is very helpful when its a second language in Finland else I'd be finnished

actually, its worse, I once sat through half hour of waiting for clothes to be washed in a dryer (don't ask)
posted by infini at 11:06 AM on June 7

All I remember was that the Old English word for "great" as in size was "micil" or something like that; in Icelandic, "mikill/mikil/mikið" means much the same thing.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:09 AM on June 7

Baby_Balrog: I don't think he lives in Kalamazoo, I think he was just there for the recent medieval conference.

Marisa...: This is (a simplified, mock version of) Middle English, not Old English; ME is not too hard to read for people who read modern English; OE is basically impossible to read without training (for us and for Chaucer).
posted by Casuistry at 11:14 AM on June 7

Chaucer, is Middle English, not Old English.

I know that; hence this.

I was responding to Sova, but neglected to quoet him. Sorry bout that.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:15 AM on June 7

My bad, I see now you're talking in response to Sova there.
posted by juv3nal at 11:15 AM on June 7

jinx.
posted by juv3nal at 11:15 AM on June 7

how much of it Icelanders are able to understand.

Yiddish helps, too - it was what enabled me to tell my English teacher that a gnof was surely not, as he suggested, a churl, but a gonoph, a thief. (Not that I speak Yiddish, but I have read Damon Runyon)
posted by Phanx at 11:17 AM on June 7

And notice I even used the Middle English spelling of "quoet"?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:17 AM on June 7 [1 favorite]

The divide between Old and Middle English is much larger than that between Middle and Modern- so German (or any other East Germanic language) is incredibly helpful in understanding OE.
posted by dunkadunc at 11:21 AM on June 7

I know it's too far back, but I can't resist linking to Beowulf vs. Godsylla:

Wicced Godsylla...wæld on his asse.
Monstær moppe fleor wyþ...eallum men in hælle.
Beowulf in bacceroome...fonecall bamaccen wæs;
Hearen sond of ruccus...sæd, "Hwæt ðe helle?"
posted by jquinby at 11:24 AM on June 7 [7 favorites]

Hands down, my favourite Chaucer post ever: I wolde I knewe how of thee I might be quitten!
posted by pised at 11:30 AM on June 7 [3 favorites]

Since you can probably read Old English this might not be as fascinating to you, but I can't read a word of it and am consistently amazed at how much of it Icelanders are able to understand. There are words in Old English that have more in common with Old Norse than modern English apparently.

I can understand the reasoning behind that, in the sense that given Icelandic is quite conservative, and Old English is a thousand years old, then the similarity is likely to increase due to their relatedness. Though I wonder how it compares to slightly later. It's likely that some midland or northern dialects of early Middle English are maybe(?) more comprehensible due to some Danish influence being represented in the language but without the case system vanishing completely.

Of course, by about 1250-1300 and on, the number of lexical/grammar/sound changes build to a point where there's kinda a break with the past. Chaucer was particularly keen on lexical innovation (though otherwise conservative), way out of proportion to even his literary contemporaries, nevermind those less than a century earlier (say, Robert Manning/Brunne). My opinion, even amateur as it is, happens to be that Middle English is a bad construct, with the differences between the beginning and end stupendously and unbridgeably vast.

All I remember was that the Old English word for "great" as in size was "micil" or something like that; in Icelandic, "mikill/mikil/mikið" means much the same thing.

Yeah, there's a saying in northern England, 'many a little makes a mickle.' Still perfectly understandable for some, though many others get it wrong.
posted by Sova at 11:38 AM on June 7 [2 favorites]

Yeah, there's a saying in northern England, 'many a little makes a mickle.'

Wow. God I love this kind of thinge.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:47 AM on June 7 [1 favorite]

I remember when I first read Chaucer's blog some time ago, and I thought it was fantastic. Thanks for reminding me! Though it does make me wish that I had pursued a degree in linguistics and/or medieval studies rather than the engineering that I'm working on now. Oh well.
posted by malthas at 12:35 PM on June 7

I don't think it's safe to subscribe to the RSS feed for Dracula's blog. the sunlight...it....burns...I'm sleepy.... /derail
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 12:36 PM on June 7

All right, I give up. I thought I knew all kinds of keyboard tricks, but how are y'all typing the eths and thorns?
posted by ancientgower at 2:23 PM on June 7

many a little makes a mickle

Also reflected by Tolkien in his name for the largest town in the Shire, Michel Delving.

Every time I read Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog I think of Andre the Giant Has a Posse.
posted by dhartung at 2:26 PM on June 7

Never mind--I did my research like a smart person. þ ð and also ō!
posted by ancientgower at 2:30 PM on June 7

I think he was silent for over a year because it's ONE JOKE repeated every entry. It's not funny, but people with pretensions concerning how well-read they are like to fawn over it: "Get it? No you couldn't. It only appeals to someone as literate as me!"

This is as good a place as any to point out that I made an incorrect literary allusion twice here. I thought that in Ulysses, Buck Mulligan referred to Stephen's mother as "ghastly dead," but I'm re-reading Ulysses like I try to do every June, and I noticed that Mulligan says "beastly dead." I've misremembered it twice here. So for the record, Pat Tillman is beastly dead and my oven was beastly dead.

Of course, the subtext is that I'm very familiar with the works of James Joyce. So I want everyone else who reads more Joyce more than People Magazine to think that we're both part of some new, virtual Algonquin Roundtable. And I want you to buy my t-shirts-- one has a line drawing of an ash plant; the other is black with white Helvetica text reading "What is Home Without Plumtree's Potted Meat?"
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:38 PM on June 7 [1 favorite]

By Seinte Loy, what ane weepy queynte.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:09 PM on June 7

Yeah, there's a saying in northern England, 'many a little makes a mickle.' Still perfectly understandable for some, though many others get it wrong.

I live in Northern England and I've never heard it. Though I have heard the (related) Scots use the saying, 'Many a mickle maks a muckle.'
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:46 PM on June 7

ME is not too hard to read for people who read modern English; OE is basically impossible to read without training (for us and for Chaucer).

It's still pretty hard, you'll need a glossary at the very least for the many archaic terms and spellings used throughout which are quite alien to someone who could, for example, read Shakespeare quite easily. The link is faux ME, though amusing. Try this from the opening of Pearl and Sir Orpheo and see how you get on.

Traciens, withouten no.
The king hadde a quen of priis
That was y-cleped Dame Heurodis,
The fairest levedi, for the nones,
That might gon on bodi and bones

You can get a vague sense, but I'd say it's hard to read for understanding without significant backup.
posted by Sparx at 3:55 PM on June 7

Chaucer was a London-based writer who spoke English in the latest mode for his time. As such, his English was much closer to our modern English than anything by Northern authors like the Pearl-poet, Langland and the Wakefield Master-- who are all easier than Scots like Henryson (unless you are Scottish.)

Northern Middle English of Chaucer's time is a dialect much closer to Old English-- possibly because Norman French influence took longer to filter through to the North; possibly also because that part of the country had been the Danelaw, so people up there had been speaking a more Norse-influenced English for generations.

Sparx, Sir Orfeo dates to the late 1200s or early 1300s, and so is at least 50 years older than most of Chaucer's work. English was changing so rapidly that that 50ish years makes a real difference. Check out the last poem of Chaucer's tryptych "Merciles Beaute", which is not only understandable but awesome:

Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.

He may answere, and seye this and that;
I do no fors, I speke right as I mene.
Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene.

Love hath my name ystrike out of his sclat,
And he is strike out of my bokes clene
For evermo; ther is non other mene.
Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.

posted by Pallas Athena at 6:01 PM on June 7

Yeah, this is definitely mocke myddle Ynglisch - I can't read Middle English at all (maybe heavily glossed, but I don't know), but to read this you just read for the phonetics and its perfectly clear modern English with a little cute ye oldeness about the phrasing.

That seyd, it's graet mockinge. I love the Richard 2 jokes, and the general making fun of medievalists and medieval history. I was reading it outloud to my husband, and we were both chortling - and neither of us are medievalists.
posted by jb at 6:24 PM on June 7

Also, I'm so going to have my forehead done now. And get one of those fashionable double pointed hats.
posted by jb at 6:24 PM on June 7

Love hath my name ystrike out of his sclat

That's awesome- they were still using the ge- (or y-) prefix for past participles, even 50 years after Chaucer- compare to German "Liebe hat meinen Namen gestrichen".
posted by dunkadunc at 6:45 PM on June 7

Pallas Athena: I was trying to give some scope as to what ME actually encompasses. By the same token, and again looking at only the first bits becase I am very lazy - from the prologue of Canturbury Tales

That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
posted by Sparx at 9:37 PM on June 7

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

Actually, that could be interesting. Anyone without a background in Eng. Lit. care to give those lines a try in translation? Googling is cheating, mind!
posted by Sparx at 9:47 PM on June 7

Going by his awesome Allen's Coffee Brandy ad [that was your site, right? archive.org since aeroflot.tk is down] the most rockin' song ever is Mötörheäd's Ace of Spades.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:45 AM on June 8

Sova - many a mickle makes a muckle. And I'm pretty sure its Scottish. (Which, yes, technically is Northern England, but the Scots do get a teeny bit upset about referring to it as such.)
posted by Jofus at 5:40 AM on June 8

Sova - many a mickle makes a muckle. And I'm pretty sure its Scottish. (Which, yes, technically is Northern England, but the Scots do get a teeny bit upset about referring to it as such.)

Google 'many a little makes a mickle', seriously.
posted by Sova at 12:16 PM on June 8

I HATE BEING WRONG!!!
posted by Jofus at 8:31 AM on June 9

Also, there's more than one joke going on, if you know medieval stuffs (or medieval studies stuffs); there are a lot of in-jokes.
posted by Casuistry at 10:42 PM on June 10

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By Seinte Loy! June 7, 2009 9:50 AM Subscribe

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June 7, 2009 9:50 AM Subscribe