I have finally published the lyrics to the trilogy of songs that I co-wrote with a good friend of mine. The themes in the songs will probably be of interest to AWers, especially those in Germania, so check out The Bitter Scroll.

Silver Scroll Productions is the name of our collaborative efforts.

Wordfylle Wynn, which began as a little journal of random musings on my AW homepage, has graduated to the level of full-fledged blog (so, a slightly bigger journal of random musings). Under my other net handle, King Alfred, I somewhat recently began The Bitter Scroll, with various posts on Tolkien, Old English, Gothic, and other language topics. Read if you wish.

The next order of business is to reveal the source of this journal's title. Literally it means something like "Word-ful joy", in other words: reveling in words. (Wynn survives today in "winsome".) The line I took it from was in Beowulf: wistfylle wen, or "hope of full-feasting", "expectation of a full meal," referring to what Grendel felt in Heorot when he saw all of Beowulf's warriors sleeping on the floor.

Since studying words and languages are pretty much the only thing that can make me forget to eat, it seemed appropriate to have a title that suggested "feasting" on words.

This entry isn't related to Old English, except insofar as Old is related to Modern English. I just took this little quiz which purports to tell you whether you're more Yankee or Dixie based on what you call things or how you pronounce certain words. Since it's only for entertainment purposes I felt like getting down my comments and corrections. Go take a look at the questions and possible answers, and see what you get.

1. 'Aunt' like 'want': also sometimes in NY, not just New England. And I have a cousin from Virginia who says it that way, while I grew up saying it like 'ant' in NY.

2. I'm sorry, but these answers are completely opposite my experience. I only ever heard caramel as 3 syllables in NY, so when I came to Virginia I didn't understand why people were dropping the middle vowel. What does Mount Carmel have to do with candy?? :-)

Anyway, many similar observations have led me to a generalization (and there are always exceptions): Northeasterners tend to preserve vowel sounds at the expense of consonants, whereas the rest of the US tends to pronounce consonants at the expense of vowels. Mary, marry, and merry are pronounced, as far as I can tell, all as 'Mary' in most of the US, but with three separate sounds in the Northeast. Bostonians and New Yorkers all find various ways of dropping final r's to keep the vowel sound (so 'other' is pronounced as 'uh-thuh' or even 'uh-thø'), while most other Americans will say 'uh-thR' with a very pronounced 'r' and essentially no vowel.

4. Also opposite of my experience. I heard both pronunciations in NY, but more often the "father" version. I hear both in Virginia as well.

6. Actually, they aren't pronounced the same anywhere in the northeast. They're two different vowel sounds. The short 'o', which sounds much like the long a in 'ah', exists in hot, pot, lot. Much more closed is the au/aw sound in caught and talk (and, in NY, in 'coffee'); this is very close to the Scandinavian 'å'.

7. Missing a major option, 'you guys'. This is much more common in the northeast than 'youse' which is, correctly, labelled 'very localized in NY and NJ'. Used in this way, guys simply means people. For anyone out there who might care, this is technically the most grammatically correct since it takes two existing words in apposition without creating a new contraction. This is also true of 'You all', but this almost never avoids being contracted in speech to y'all. You'uns, from 'you ones' is a little more of a stretch, and youse (like 'you' plus the plural noun ending '-s') is just plain silly.

8. Garage sale vs. yard sale stems originally not from any kind of north-south thing, as much as from the fact that the north is simply more urbanized, so people have garages more often than yards. The south is bigger but has less people. Cities, anywhere, are their own creature, of course. Oh, and I don't remember hearing 'tag sale' growing up in NY.

9. 'Hero' is only used in Maine?? Sorry, wrong. We said that in NY, too. It's from Greek gyro (pronounced 'yeero'), and there are certainly more Greeks in NY than in Maine. We also said sub in NY, though.

10. I think we pretty much said Crayfish in the northeast. When I moved south, I learned that while this the correct spelling, it is to be pronounced 'crawfish'. Fine. And my name is spelled Eirikr Knudsson, but it's pronounced 'Johann Gambolputty'.

12. As I understand from my mother, who was an excellent cook, frosting and icing are determined by whether you heat one in preparing it, not by geography. Not that regional differences are always bothered by facts or precision, of course.

14. A poke? Oh, my. That's a new one for me.

16. Pretty much right on. I say soda; very many of my friends say pop; some elite few go the extra mile and specify a brand name. My friend from Louisiana sees nothing wrong in being brought a Pepsi (or even a Sprite!) after she orders a "Coke".

A penultimate note. The test is very Dixie-biased. I mean in the coding somehow. I chose every New York option available and got the result of 45% - Barely Yankee. Now I wouldn't mind if it considered Yankees as New Englanders as opposed to New Yorkers, but NYers are no more Dixie than Canadians. Oh, and if you change your answers mid-test, or hit the Compute button twice, it increases the Dixie score no matter what option you choose.

Finally, I just noticed the following comment: "Be aware that television entertainment has a lot of northern dialect in it. This will have more of an influence on you than you expect." Actually, most of the media in the US is generated in California, and half our evening news anchors are Canadian, and regardless, all go through some form of speech training to remove any trace of accent. The result of this is a common-denominator kind of generic American accent, not a northern accent. What the author of the quiz is most likely perceiving, therefore, is simply a lack of a southern accent. Having said that, of course one must be aware of the location and setting of any show or movie. There are shows set in Providence, Atlanta, New York, LA, etc. Sure, the NY accent is particularly well-known for the relatively small area in which it's spoken, but then again, there are more people in the five boroughs of NY than in most entire states in the South.

For the record, I’ve been trying to gather into one place as many as I could think of, of the Old English words that lurk in Tolkien’s writings. Some you’d expect; others might surprise or delight you. Also, some of these might seem more intentional on Tolkien’s part, while others may seem only slightly related to how Tolkien used the word. Just remember that as an Anglo-Saxon scholar, he would at the very least have been aware of their meanings, and therefore aware (and perhaps glad) of the “coincidence” (if such it be) between the meaning and his use. In some cases Tolkien has explicitly noted the connection (either in the LOTR appendices, his letters, or elsewhere). I have excluded all but the most interesting or relevant or original to Tolkien of the names of people of Rohan. Most are simply historically documented Anglo-Saxon names anyway. By the way, I should probably specify that the abbreviations I use are the standard ones: OE=Old English, ON=Old Norse, ModE=Modern English, OHG=Old High German, ROTFLMAO=well, you get the picture.

Beag: ‘ring’. In the Mercian dialect (which Tolkien used for the Rohirrim), I think this would have been spelled bag; either way, pronounced almost like modern English ‘bag’. Remind you of the last name of any hobbits you know?
Beorn: ‘man; noble, hero, chief, prince, warrior’; however, this is also how OE would render ON bjorn, ‘bear’.
Brego: ‘ruler, chief, king, lord’.
Deagol: diegol, deagol, ‘secret; hiding place; grave’, akin to diegan, ‘to die’. So if Smeagol is one who digs (see below), Deagol recalls all sorts of aspects of his relationship to Smeagol: the death he caused, the grave he dug, and that which he kept hidden and secret (this last meaning is referenced by Tolkien in LOTR, Appendix F).
Dwarrowdelf: dweorg, ‘dwarf’ (akin to German zwerg, Old Norse dvargr) + ‘delf’, an archaic noun formed from ‘to delve’, hence, ‘the delving of the Dwarves’, or ‘dwarvish digging’.
Dwimorberg: dwimor, ‘phantom, ghost, illusion; error’ + beorg, ‘mountain, hill’.
Dwimordene: dwimor + dene, ‘valley, dale’.
Dwimmerlaik: dwimor (see above) + loga, ‘liar, deceiver’ (akin to ‘warlock’).
Emnet: ‘[geographic] plain’.
Ent: ‘giant’.
Ettenmoors/Ettendales: eoten, ‘giant, monster, enemy’ (sometimes confused with Eotenas, ‘Jutes’) + mor ‘moor, morass, swamp’ or + dæl, ‘dale, valley, gorge, abyss’.
Grima: ‘mask, helmet; ghost’. Perhaps Wormtongue was a mask or ghost of his former self; or perhaps he was a mask for Saruman’s influence in Rohan.
Hasufel: hasu, ‘dusky, grey, ashen’ + fell, ‘skin, hide’.
Isengard: isen, ‘iron’ + gard, geard, ‘place, realm, ward, enclosure, yard, garden’ (hence middangeard, “middle-earth”).
Mathom: maðom, ‘treasure’; although ironically in the Shire they were no longer seen as treasures but as useless oddities to be given away (like fruitcake today, I suppose * g *).
Meduseld: medu, ‘mead’ + seld, ‘hall’. As we know from Beowulf and elsewhere, the meadhall is the standard place for the king to feast with his kin and dole out gifts and entertain guests.
Michel Delving: micel, ‘great, big,’ hence Scottish ‘muckle’. So the name signified a great digging or dug area.
Mirkwood: mircwudu, ‘dark forest’, referred to the vast expanse of primeval forest in Germanic areas of the Continent.
Mordor: ‘murder’
Mundburg: mund, ‘protection, trust, security, the king’s peace’ (hence names like Edmund) + burg, byrig, ‘fortified dwelling, walled city’ (hence the –burg, –bury, and –borough endings of English place names). So Mundburg would be the city that symbolizes safety and security, with a royal connotation.
Orthanc: ‘intelligence, understanding, cleverness, skill, mechanical art’ (akin to OHG urdank). Isn’t this precisely the (downward) progression that Saruman’s mind underwent?
Quickbeam: cwicbeam, ‘aspen, juniper’.
Riddermark: mearc, ‘mark, sign, line of division; an area thus defined: boundary, district, province’ (possibly akin to the name Mercia). So the Riddermark is the district of the Riders.
Rivendell: reofan, ‘to rend, break’ (akin to ModE ‘rift’) + dell, ‘vale, hollow, dale’. So, a valley formed from the rending of stone (either naturally or otherwise).
Saruman: searo, searu, ‘clever, cunning’.
Scatha: sceaða, scaða, ‘criminal, assassin; fiend, devil’.
Shadowfax: sceadu, ‘shadow’ + feax, ‘hair’.
Simbelmyne: simbel, simle ‘ever, always’ + myne, ‘mind, remember’.
Smeagol/Smials: smygel, ‘retreat, burrow’. Hence, a ‘smial’ could be a modern descendant of this word, while *smeagol might indicate one who burrows or digs.
Smaug: Could be related to either (or both) of smygel (see previous entry) or smoc, ‘smoke’.
Theoden: þeoden, ‘king, ruler’, akin to þeod, ‘people’; Þeoderic (Thiudareiks, Thidrek, Dietrich), name meaning ‘ruler of the people’; and þeodisc, ‘of our own people’, whence comes teutisch, the old form of deutsch, ‘of the German(ic) people’.
Thrihyrne: ‘three-cornered’.
Warg: wearg, ‘wolf, outlaw’, akin to Norse vargr.
Withywindle: wiðig, ‘willow’ + windel, ‘basket’. So the Withywindle river valley was like a big basket of willows. (And imagine trying to climb out of that!)

[The bulk of what I originally wrote for this entry ended up at the point where I need to make it an article of its own, so the result is more work resulting in a shorter journal entry. :-P Oh well, c’est la vie.]

Doom. When I deem something to be true (or false), I judge it to be so. Doom is a judgement, so Doomsday is Judgement Day. Technically, judgement, and doom, can be good or bad, and in OE both were common: the word dom had an incredible range of meanings: judgement, ordeal, decree, justice, opinion, free will, authority, reputation, glory, assembly, interpretation. Nevertheless, the connotation ended up overruling the denotation here, so that doom has become a synonym for bad consequences. I just saw the word fordeman in my OE Dictionary and noted that the compound is close to being a synonym for its root, meaning “condemn, sentence, doom.” It’s interesting to see that even back then, the verb “deem” (deman) had a form that had the modern connotation of negative consequence, but what really got my attention was seing the root dem in the OE word next to the Latin root demn in “condemn”. Hmm. Does anyone know if these two roots are related? Proto-Indo-European perhaps?

Doom 2. Another aspect of this word, which I seem to find in many OE words, is that it sounds like its meaning. I don’t mean onomatopoeia, where a word’s meaning is the sound. I mean that if doom is bad, then the sounds in the word DOOM! really seem to fit. It starts explosively (d), has a heavy vowel sound in the middle (oo), and has a lasting effect (mmm). I wonder if this even played a role in making people think, or even feel somehow, that the word meant something bad. I first noticed this about this “doom” in particular when Tolkien used it in the Mines of Moria. From shortly after Pippin drops the pebble down the shaft, until the moment the fellowship leaves the Mines, their flight is constantly interspersed with the drums: doom-boom, boom-doom. The drums have started, and the fellowship knows it must flee and escape—doom. Whose doom? Their own? Gandalf’s? The Balrog’s? Tolkien doesn’t use the word doom in the text of the chapter (as in, “their doom was upon them” or something), and yet thanks to his interposed drum sounds, he makes you feel—and correctly—that the chapter is all about people (or balrogs) trying to escape their doom and thereby meeting it. What genius.

Hring!! Did you hear the sound of my ring resonating as it fell on the tesselated floor of my lord’s meadhall? It’s not just the sound, it’s the OE word for “ring”. Modern English has managed to preserve the connection of this word’s sound with its meaning. (So has the German, kling!)

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. I’ve sometimes thought that “twinkle” just sounds like the visual effect it designates. Never out, but never steady, the light of a star seems to dance around the little line of sight we get of it from our far away vantage point on earth. Just like someone on a piano, up at the high keys, dancing around a melody—“twinkle” almost sounds like it could mean that, too. So the OE word for “to twinkle” is, happily, twinclian: it has the light, rattling plosives of 't' and 'c' (rather than the heavier 'b' and 'd'), with a hint of the ringing 'ng' sound (cut short by the second plosive, just as those piano keys resonate for an instant then immediately give way to the next key-strike). And what did the Anglo-Saxons call that thing that twinclode in the night sky? Why a tungol of course. This noun may not sound as light and pretty as the verb, but comparing the ‘w’ with the ‘u’, and the ‘cl’ with the ‘gol’, we see that they clearly are related. Say tungol with -ian at the end, as if to make it a verb (stress on the first syllable), and you'll hear how easily it became twinclian. So, twincle, twincle, lytel tungol . . .

This is weird. Speaking of sounds and meaning, there are two English words that vaguely mean “luck” but with the admixture of the implication of a higher power: Fate, which comes from Latin fari, ‘to speak’, and Doom, which as I mentioned also has to do with what is spoken about someone (by a judge, or by the Judge; by a god, or God). It is interesting then that the Anglo-Saxons’ word for all this, Wyrd, seems to be related to word. (Compare andwyrdan, ‘to answer’, or literally ‘to give a word in answer to someone/something’.) And since stuff they couldn’t explain was attributed to wyrd, this led to the modern adjective ‘weird’. In contrast, the modern word ‘strange’ was a French import that simply meant ‘foreign’. Of course, for a people living on an island, foreigners were often weird enough. So, for example, if it was fated that William should conquer England in 1066, then we can correctly say that the French were both ‘strange’ and ‘weird’. ;-)

Sometimes single words just amaze me. Looking through Clark Hall’s Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary always seems to yield up at least one gem each time. For example, I don’t know why, but I had to laugh when I came across the word elleoht--“elision of the letter ‘l’”. Clearly they thought about the patterns of change in their language a lot more than I used to think. Anyway, I think I do this with words often enough to supply provender for a journal all its own. Btw, 10 points to the first person to tell me what this journal’s title is a play on.

Wary. OE often had two words for things, and when they had dealings with another Germanic tribe that only had one, the Englisc would use whichever of their own word their cousins would most likely understand. For example: OE words for ‘wolf’ included wulf and wearg (whence Tolkien’s ‘wargs’). Old Norse had vargr, a cognate of the first. Well, in OE and I believe ON (though I would love to be corrected--or confirmed), outlaws were figuratively called wolves, I think because they were outside the bounds of civilization, and maybe because they preyed on others or some such thing. Anyway, the predominant characteristic of such people, being on the run and never knowing when the king’s men would catch up with them, is to be wary--simply a modern spelling of wearg. (Remember the ‘g’ at the end of OE words was pronounced like modern ‘y.’) So since OE had two words originally meaning ‘wolf’; they kept wulf for that purpose, and allowed wearg to take on a different meaning. Hence, Clark Hall, “wearg: (wolf) accursed one, outlaw, felon, criminal, Rood,” as a noun, and “wicked, cursed, wretched” as an adjective.

Bairn. Another example of the above principle. OE has cild and bearn for “child.” ON only had barn, so it is in places like Scotland where OE had the most lasting contact with ON that ‘bairn’ has lasted as a regularly used dialectical variant for the more standard “child.” (Incidentally, the Latvian word for ‘child’ is berns. I’m guessing this must be a Norse or Swedish influence.)

Answer. Again one of two synonyms in OE, this time reminding me of the somewhat intermediate place OE has between English and German. In OE the concept was expressed either as supplying words toward or against someone’s question or statement, i.e., andwyrdan, or as swearing on or against something, i.e., andswarian. The latter became English ‘answer’ and the former survives in its modern German cognate antworten.

“Clearing of the throat”. This one just kills me. Keep in mind the correct pronunciation of West Saxon diphthong “ea”—i.e., the æ sound in ‘hat’ + the vowel sound at the end of ‘nation’. The word for this process is ... hræcea! (Don’t forget to pronounce the h nice and heartily.) I haven’t had this much going on in my throat since Arabic class. That rates right up there with the ancient Greek work for “to spit”—ptuo.

“To laugh”. In the spirit of the previous item: the OE verb is hliehhan. This is both onomatopoeia and the origin of the modern word “laugh”, which for some reason keeps the last ‘h’, adds a ‘g’, and pronounces both together like an ‘f’. (English is not for the faint of heart.) Seriously, the ‘h’ section of the OE dictionary is one of the most interesting and down-to-earth. They knew exactly what RL sounds it sounded like, and they used it with gusto. :-)