Monday, January 14, 2013

The Old English Wordhoard (The Old English Vocabulary)

One of the most frustrating things about comparing Germanic vocabulary between various languages and English is just how much Old English was jettisoned over time. Also, many words that did survive from Old English had one meaning then, but came to mean something else entirely, and now no longer match their foreign cognates semantically. Had English developed in a straight line, the modern language would have so much more lexical similarity to all of the other modern Germanic languages.

Some of the words that came from French and have been fully adopted into English have torn this lexical similarity to shreds. I will include several examples below:

Cream
Old English: rēam
Dutch: room
German: Rahm
Norwegian: rømme
Icelandic: rjómi

Eagle
Old English: earn
Danish: ørn
Swedish: örn
Icelandic: örn

Poor
Old English: earm
Dutch: arm
German: arm
Swedish: arm

Pour
Old English: scencan
Dutch: schenken
German: schenken
Danish: skænke
Swedish: skänka
Norwegian: skjenke

Revenge
Old English: wracu
Dutch: wraak
German: Rache

Salmon
Old English: leax
German: Lachs
Danish: laks
Swedish: lax
Norwegian: laks
Icelandic: lax

Stomach
Old English: maga
Dutch: maag
German: Magen
Danish: mave
Swedish: mage
Norwgian: mage
Icelandic: maga

Voice
Old English: stefn
Dutch: stem
German: Stimme
Danish: stemme
Swedish: stämma
Norwegian: stemme

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