I just had a weird realisation. We often talk of old (or foreign) languages in terms of "hrefn means raven". But obviously (though perhaps not intuitively) that was not "really" the case (a hrefn was just a hrefn...) Just like right now, I (Dutch) only know "duif", and make no difference between doves and pigeons (see also: snails and slugs). I also remember visiting Berlin and noticing that the typical urban birds there are different from those I'm familiar with. There are a lot of hooded crows, you just don't see those in the Netherlands. I don't know.. language isn't just a set of new words for the same things. It's like a collective, cultural effort to categorize the world around us, but the way things are categorized also evolves over time.
A digression about hooded crows and birds in general: In my experience the difference between common bird populations isn't just visible region to region, it's literally town to town. For all my childhood, living in a city of around 100k people, I have not once seen a hooded crow there. They are however very numerous in Krakow, a larger city about 70 km away. And the exact opposite can be seen for sparrows. Abundant in my backyard, but I haven't seen one in Krakow at all. Wroclaw, 230 km further, very similar in population to Krakow, and you have both a large numer of sparrows and hooded crows there. And these are only the ones I noticed. It's interesting to think about the number of random factors that play into those differences and how difficult to predict they seem. End of digression.
Overcoming that "hrefn means raven" attituded will be among the very first pieces of advice any seasoned language learner will give you. However, "a hrefn is just a hrefn" isn't a very good way of thinking about it either. Instead you want to think of "hrefn" as a shortcut that activates both linguistic and non-linguistic associations. The non-linguistic ones are sights and sounds or a "hrefn", and can be learned by making a flashcard with a picture instead of a translation on its flip-side, or attaching an audio file if that's electronic. The linguistic ones are the typical adjectives and verbs that it co-occurs with: what's it like? what does it do? which animals does it hunt? These linguistic associations often find their way into proverbs and fables.
@Bob H Yep; the most straightforward way to do this is to write down the definition in-language, as it's given in a monolingual dictionary for natives. And preferrably supply that with some example collocations or sentences lifted even from Google. If you do that regularly enough, you'll soon find you have a back-up mental lexicon of the language you're learning that you can search associatively to recall and reactivate not just this one word but a whole bunch of related ones as well. And obviously, a lot of this lexicon will be doubled in your memory just by virtue of writing this down. I've been doing this with Latin, and it has been key to mastering that language that for obvious reasons you don't have many chances to acquire by random exposure. Hopefully they have some monolingual dictionaries of Old English, cause all of this is at least twice as true about it as it is about Latin.
@Bob H that’s been key to opening up language for me as well. I’ve dabbled in a few languages over the years, but it wasn’t until studying Norwegian (coming from an amalgam of a few American/Canadian English dialects natively) that I’ve come to accept/understand that “this” doesn’t MEAN “that”, “this” is the most common way to express the same concept as “that”. This realization has been making it much easier for me to begin studying subsequent languages (ie: Old Norse and Modern Icelandic).
The special / big name Vickie and big term kost only reflect me, and cannot be in someone’s name, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
Regarding your question at the end, I enjoy this format personally. As well as the subject matter, sort of a epistemological discussion of linguistics I guess. I would enjoy more dives into various concepts and how they might have been viewed or approached by ancient peoples.
The drink / big terms wine and Son (meaning Sun in Afrikaans) and the letter combinations / names Ley and top and her and Chris cannot be in someone’s name or yt name, and all unsuitable names / terms must be changed / edited out - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
I recently learned that, just as we distinguish doves and pigeons while some languages don't, French distinguishes horned owls, hiboux, from round-headed owls, chouettes.
German, too. Horned owls are _Eulen_ (or _Ohreulen_ in the more specific context of _Asio_ owls, _-ohr_ meaning ear), round-headed owls are _Käuze_ . The umbrella term for both, however, is still _Eule_ .
In my native language Georgian, we don't distinguish between doves and pigeons and we use the same term for both of them which is მტრედი/mt'redi [mə̆ˈtʼ̪ɾɛˑd̪i] or მტრედები/mt'redebi [mə̆tʼ̪ɾɛˈd̪ɛˑbi] in plural.
Interesting. In swedish, some owls are called "Uggla" and some are called "Uv". That sounds very much like the old english distinction. For example, the tawny owl is called kattuggla (cat owl) and the eagle owl is called berguv (mountain owl). I've never thought about it before.
The call to plunder an enemy was to 'cry havoc' - perhaps more semantically linked to the hawk than our modern etymological thinking might suppose. I have yet to read Lacey's thesis but another factor to be aware of is that wild bird numbers are orders of magnitude lower than they used to be. Many species could fill the sky when flocking, especially water fowl. We also tend not to view them pragmatically in terms of food with qualities of taste, desirability and ease of trapping.
Rain is just fascinating. It feels, looks and smells so much different depending on the time of year, amount of rain, surrounding etc. It is in fact astonishing that there aren't more words describing different kinds of rain. At least in German, most of the time you need a prefix: Nieselregen = drizzle, Starkregen = heavy rain, Dauerregen = constant rain. That there is a special word for drizzle in English is probably caused by British meteorology. Nice lake btw.
there are many English words for 'rain', such as the 'drizzle' you mentioned, but also 'shower' or 'downpour'. All of the German words you mentioned aren't really different from the English equivalents you provided, the only difference is that German combines nouns in a way that English usually doesn't. 'Stark' isn't really a prefix, prefixes are generally things that can't function as separate words (you can undo or unmark things, you can also do and mark them, but you can't really 'un' anything without attaching a verb to that) Both 'stark' and 'regen' are, on the other hand, completely meaningful in their own right, it's basically 'heavyrain'.
For me at least your meandering not to heavily structured videos are perfect, it matches your cinematic style. Your kind of dragged onto a trip through the countryside, loose the sense of time, learn something but won’t get lost. Really nice, thank you!
5:10 tangentially related, in my neighbourhood and the surrounding areas in Calgary, Canada, there's this domestic breed of rabbit who has been taking over in the past five years. I actually know the exact person who is responsible for this, they were breeders of domestic rabbits across the streets but then let some of them go. Now they've been breeding with the local jackrabbits. They're very different looking from the jackrabbits. The jackrabbits have light brown fur, which if you look up close actually ranges quite a bit across their body in the exact shade. It's quite effective camouflage. The domestic rabbits are jet black and smaller than the jackrabbits, also they are quite a bit faster, though less reactive. When I walk my dog the jackrabbits always scurry away once they notice him, but the black bunnies don't seem to mind as long as he's on a leash. They've brought bobcats into the area. Ten years ago, a bobcat was a rare site around here and I can't remember ever seeing one, but now they've become quite a bit more prevalent. I've identified at least six individuals based on coat pattern. When I spot one, I quickly notice the lack of black rabbits outside. 200 years ago, no Blackfoot individual (the indigenous people of the area) would have ever seen a black rabbit.
Speaking of having a different relationship with or perception of the 'same' things; when you said robins are solitary and follow you around, my reaction was "What!? That's not at all how robins are, they're always paired up and stay away from humans" but then I remembered what I call a robin in Canada is a different bird from what you call a robin in the UK.
Thanks again for your excellent content. As a native frisian speaker i am always amazed by how much of the old english examples brought by you i can immediately understand or at the very least reason about and come to the right translation. The example for owl for instance has the current frisian translation of "ûle" and is pronounced exactly the same way you pronounced the old english word ūle. Concidering by how few people frisian is spoken today it actually made me aware of how important it is to conserve these endangered languages.
Ps. The frisian for rain and water is "rein" and "wetter", again very close en phonetic almost identical. The odd one out here is the frisian word for sparrow namely "mosk". I would guess this is probably a loanword from another language or dialect and not to have its root in old-frisian but i could be wrong.
@@maiaallman4635 i think both roots lie in the dutch root "mus". In general, for a frisian dutchie who loves a bit of languange history like me hearing afrikaans being spoken is a real treat.
Yes, I just read an article about Cornish (the celtic language that was spoken in Cornwall, southwestern England) and how it only died out like 250 years ago. Efforts are made to revive the language, yet many words are lost and the speakers all have a heavy english accent... That's sad. Luckily Welsh still lives on.
The big term great and the food term cook(e) cannot be in someone’s name or in comments, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns, and that name also has an unsuitable letter combination (on) that only reflects me, so one should at least write it Sim’n to avoid term misuse, as the preposition on (indicating being on something) cannot be in names, as all words like on / over / above etc imply superiority!
Where I live, in Friesland (incidentelly where Frisian is spoken, could be interesting to cover) there are a lot of old houses that have a "ûleboerd" on the front. This is a wooden board that is made to be attractive to owls, so that they might perch there and enter the house through a small hole. This way they could hunt mice in their houses.
Fascinating. Very old English houses did not have ceilings with a room above. Bedrooms were put in later. Perhaps the *owl board and hole* were here too. Possibly in the East of England. Maybe someone knows.
The the big terms hoog and ter and jel (too similar to the food term jelly) and attractive only reflect me, and cannot be in someone’s name, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
Also, destroying precious trees (and flowers and other pure beings reflecting me the pure being) and doing such things so that owls eat mice is also a harrible zyn - eating meats / mice etc and other animaI products is wrong! The owls and other birds must only be fed grains and nuts and fruits and seeds and breads etc, not meats!
And, all birds that try eating meats / live mice etc should be mind-controlled via MC impIant to correct this wrong instinct by reprogramming it, so that they only try eating grains / nuts / fruits / seeds / breads etc!
In Arabic, we do not distinguish pigeons and doves. In my experience, pigeons are loved rather than seen as vermin. I am Iraqi. Pigeons are found in large numbers at mosques. That is why a religious person is called a mosque-pigeon, and why pigeon is one of my favourite birds. Wild pigeons are so cute. Rock doves, wood doves, urban, rural, doesn't matter. All of them are the cutest of God's creation.
I love them so much, I find it so sad when people mistreat them. They are so sweet and make such beautiful sounds. I'm really glad there are places where they're appreciated:)
As an occupant of the British Isles, I always felt that the words of Neil Sedaka emphasised the non-universality of the human experience of rain. "Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain, Walking hand in hand with the one I love, Ooh, how I love the rainy days, And the happy way I feel inside"
I absolutely loved this approach! It felt insightful and informative but also personal, emotional even poetic in a way. I'd love to see more of these kinds of videos on your channel.
I recently discovered a very satisfying new rain-related word: 'petrichor' which describes the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of dry weather. As someone who works with stone, I appreciate the etymology too.
An Indonesian woman once told me "you say a dog is man's best friend. But for me, a dog inside your house is just as weird as a cow inside your house." Dogs belong outside in Indonesia, and are guard animals rather than cuddle fluffs. The Indonesian word _anjing_ therefore refers to the same biological creature as the English word _dog_, but it refers to a completely different cultural creature.
Interestingly, the word _anjing_ can also be used as an insult or a curse word. Perhaps there is a connection there? Like, calling someone a dog in Indonesia might mean that they do not belong indoors.
@@artcove it's probably have to do with islamic influences as well, like while it is permissible to own a dog in islam, some islamic scholar interpreted those differently, where the one majority indonesian follow (syafie) mentioned that dog should only be a guard dog and not recommended to be inside the house as they were deemed unclean and if you touched a dog, you have to clean it in some specific way as prescribed by islamic way. so TL;DR dog -> dirty animal -> dirty = bad -> insult. (see also pig (babi) which have similar connotation)
The special name Tom and big terms friend / best friend only reflect my pure protectors aka the alphas, and cannot be in someone’s name or in comments, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
Also, what ns! If anything, it’s hum’ns that shouldn’t be in a house and should be guarding - fercing dogs and mammaIz into existence (that are btg in the most sakryIegyuz way) to use them is a harrible zyn! And hum’ns only dsv the most afI fatez!
I really enjoy this kind of video. Im a native German speaker coming from the region the Saxons are from (modern day Saxony has wandered because of some medieval noble marriages). I do say the word Regen with an almost non existent second vowel. In the verb the g becomes softened to ch. In modern day Saxony people might say rejen. I could really see how that relates to rain. The German word for owl is Eule. I think if you said ūle you would still be understood. An eagle owl is called Uhu. Early new high German used the word Huhu. It's very onomatopoeic. Seeing how a common language diversified is fascinating to me.
In Norwegian and Danish, the pronunciation of the word "regn" is without a clear "g" sound (as in "rain", but with a clear "æ" sound). However, in Nynorsk the old form has been retained with a clear pronunciation of "g" in "regn". The norwegian and danish form for owl is "ugle". In norwegian the word is pronounced with a clear "g" sound, but in danish the word is pronounced much like ūle (ie without a "g" sound). You can clearly see how the pronunciation changes as you move in one direction (dialect continuum) and not least where you have kept the original form fairly intact over the years.
@@kedrak90 : In ,poets" german' Uhl is used for Eule like!, Aar' for ,Adler' ( eagle) . In 19th century an educated german wrote: An ,Uhl' like mine was never seen in Athens before'. Einen Uhl wie den Meinen hat man in Athen noch nie zuvor gesehen.
Rain Bird, is the Green Woodpecker. Thatchers that worked on a house I lived in said it's call changed to warn of rain, they were right. The people who worked the land observed the changing of the seasons by birds who shared it. Migratory habits and the timing. Early migration of geese herald a bad winter.
Lovely to hear birds discussed as a connection to the past! Funnily enough while learning German it was exactly the topic of birds that stirred up a similar feeling for me too; realising that English and German words for sparrow are cognates, and that therefore people have been teaching each other to identify sparrows for thousands of years, and that I'm in that chain too, was a wonderful thing.
In Aotearoa New Zealand it is surprising how many birds are named after the sounds they make. Our modern experience dulls these sounds a lot. During the first COVID lockdown which was very strict there were almost no cars or trains running. The increase in birdsong was incredible over the first week and we saw hunting birds move into the city going after rats and pigeons.
Even in the Paris suburbs we suddenly heard birdsong all around. Was it because there were more birds (there were still just as many cats)? Or that the ambient noise had disappeared and no longer covered it over? Prolly both imho
I read it and assumed the rest of the title would be in Swedish as well, since it starts with the Swedish word for rain! Not really surprising considering English, German and Swedish are rather closely related, of course.
As much as I appreciate the more formal videos for teaching me the technical knowledge, this meandering, informal video really helped me to understand on a more visceral level how important it is to understand the culture that a language lives in; without this foundation, one cannot grasp the nuances and deeper meanings of that culture's tongue. Thank you for bringing us both the formal and informal videos, I love them both!
An observation on ūle and hūfe: In modern Swedish these words are both still used. They have morphed into "uggla" and "uv" respectively and they are used interchangeable. But presumably there was a time when they had different connotations, though I'm not sure we can divulge what those connotations were.
Prague rain being big warm droplets sounds so weird, because I also only experienced rain in the UK. I went to Hejaz, Cairo, and Baghdad, and I stopped in Damascus and Amman, and I never experienced rain there. In Cairo, it was a sandstorm I experienced.
This was both very interesting and pleasant to listen to while working on other things. As someone with ADHD, I often have a hard time sitting through something educational, but the way you talked about your personal experiences and stories in between the more technical explanations really held my attention :) I learned something new and I have a greater appreciation for rain and how my local birds behave.
Putting aside Little Owls, which, if I remember rightly were not introduced until the 18th or 19th century, I suspect the Tawny Owl would have been the owl most familiar over the longest period in Britain, while the Barn Owl would have superceded it as the countryside became more open. The Barn and Short-eared Owls are the most visible to us, since they regularly fly during daylight hours - however the Short Eared Owl is far less common and is found in far more wilder places, and so must have been a far less common sight. Tawny Owls are common in mature woodland, and are often found being mobbed by other birds during the day, so despite their more nocturnal habits, I'm sure they were familiar to our ancestors, sans fieldguides and binoculars. The Long Eared Owl is a lot more common than we realise - because they are so elusive, but as with the Tawny Owl, their calls must have been a familiar sound a thousand years ago. I think you are right to recognise that the Barn Owl was in an uninhabited house - there's no way they'd tolerate humans so close, and to be honest I don't think humans would tolerate the screeching of a family of young owls either. Stables and barns yes - smokey one roomed house full of kids... I can't see it. If you look at Dutch paintings of the 17th Century, we can only conclude that access to a great many different bird species was pretty easy, and this suggests a familiarity with birds on a general level that, frankly, we have lost in today's world - but I think we must draw a difference between the privileged 'academic' knowledge of birds possessed by the few wealthy natural philosophers, and folk knowledge of people who probably never got close enough to most birds to realise that not all little brown birds ferreting about in the nettles were of the same family, let alone species. A skim through a list of old names for birds reveals that the habitat of the bird and easily observed behaviour (including vocalisations) are perhaps the two commonest criteria when it comes to naming them. Also - the dove/pigeon thing is a relatively modern academic distinction I believe. I'm pretty sure my Ladybird book of birds refers to the Wood Pigeon as the Ring necked Dove - not to be confused with the Collared Dove so familiar to us today, but which didn't breed in the UK until the 1950's. I wonder whether it's one of those pig/pork distinctions we got from the Norman invasion.
Mate I doubt you can draw many conclusions from dutch paintings of the 17th century or any other paintings. Unless you want to deduce from mid-20th century paintings that humans had two eyes on one side of their heads and noses in the middle of their foreheads…
@@herrfister1477 Actually the anatomical accuracy of the decorative bird paintings popularised by artists such as Melchior de Hondecoeter could only have been achieved by referencing 'birds in the hand' that were living or at least freshly killed. For a whole bunch of artists to get their hands on dead or living birds, they must have been readily accessible. Obviously gamebirds and other birds used in pursuits such as falconry would have been most familiar - and it shows - but having looked at quite a few of these paintings, and being a birder and artist myself, I can tell you that there was a vast range of birds that were familiar to people back then. It's only when you get exotic birds that were brought to Europe in the form of prepared and heavily altered skins that you get a significant gap open up between perception and reality. Bird's of Paradise were thought to sleep in the clouds well into the 'Modern Age' due to the fact that the New Guinean hunters who sold specimens to traders prepared the birds by cutting off their feet.
@@bengreen171 No doubt but I think you’re muddling anatomical pictures with those that represent the reality of nature occurrence and interaction between humans and birds. Please reread the original comment, and then mine. And then apologise - and sound like you fucking mean it bruh cos we’re all pretty tired of your shit right now.
Please can you do a video on Common Brittonic before it split in to the regional Celtic languages? It's a fascinating subject. It'd certainly be interested to hear about it from someone who knows what they're talking about. Even better if you could provide direction on resources, as I'd love to try and learn it myself! Keep up the good work with your videos.
I’m from a place in B.C. Canada (adjacent to S.E. ALASKA) and we get REGN here too. To the tune of 13 feet per year on average. When I was in high school we had a year when we had only 15 days total where the sun fully came out and it didn’t regn. As a child we went to visit my grandparents in the lower 48 of the USA and I remember how SHOCKED I was at how big, warm and *FUN* their “rain” was and it was like “movie rain”to me (not the usual, from my home, painful, freezing, tiny regn). Also, here we have many words for each species of salmon (and many slang/nick names too) but I’ve noticed people from elsewhere just lump them all in together and call them “salmon” or if they are from the east coast of American or from the U.K. or European they’ll say “Pacific Salmon”. 🤷 We definitely have more words for the things we live around and consider important….Thank you for this video! It’s brilliant 🏆* Please do more “rambley” videos!
We get "regn" here in Turkey too but we call it "wet snow" instead we only get it a few times in winter. Of course we don't literally call it wet snow since we speak a different language but you get the gist.
Thoughtful, poignant, as always brimming with your characteristic respectful repose, and the accompanying footage makes it a particularly peaceful treat to watch while listening to you.
When I lived in Texas, I looked forward to rain at the end of the summer. Texas experiences winter _and_ summer precipitation minima. Summer is just brutal.
This is the second video I've seen posted about rain today. I'm starting to despise these people and their July rain while I'm sitting here in Dallas effectively trapped in my house because It's been roughly 98 to 106F (37 to 41C) almost every single day for the last month. I abhor the summer.
"emotions are culturally constructed. As a matter of fact, I think there is no emotion that isn't heavily culturally conditioned." I find this line very fascinating, since I've always seen emotions as something that is objective and based on purely genetic things. I thought emotional variation was a thing between people, but not something ever conditioned. I did believe emotions could be associated with one another thru trauma, but not as something was constructed. I'm going to keep on thinking about that because I think it could lead to some pretty interesting conversations, and as a concept in general, really peaks my interest.
@@Mrs._Fenc perhaps he means that the claim of all emotions being socially constructed might not be all correct since sadness for example is always unpleasant no matter how you try to social construct it in a different way, or if a person does not have their emotions socially constructed at all, they would still find the feeling of sadness as something unpleasant and not sweet.
VERY interesting to think about, and kinda ties into the common misunderstanding about the term "social construct". Doesn't necessarily mean there's no a "natural origin" to it or that it's not "real", but that it's been built up and connected to other things over time as society/culture developed, in a way that's at least somewhat arbitrary. Whether that's gender, emotions, colours or what have you. Is a pink thing and a red thing "the same colour"? If not, what about a light green and a dark green thing? What language you speak doesn't change what wavelengths of light is hitting your retinas, but it definitely affects which "basic categories" you sort those into.
I understand. It's definitely something to keep in mind. I would bring here the story of Abel and Cain. Even if you're not religious, you may look at it as a story coming down from ancient times describing how early humans viewed the case of killing and the guilt associated with it and perhaps even the funerary rites following death. Abel (or was it Cain? I get often confused) is the first man to kill a man, and guilt immidiately takes him. Even without a proper society (aside from their family) there was still something triggered inside him that was viewed immidiately as negative. This itself doesn't negate the notion that that negative association of the feeling trickled down to the following generations, but my question is: can we not consider every person as an Abel in so far that if they were the first to live there would be certain emotions that are clear and distinct and fall to a specific category even if that Abel isn't socially constructed yet?
I loved this video. Everything you talked about (categorization, speakers' unconscious knowledge, the importance of context in language use...) I have studied at the university (I study linguistics)-- but of course, in a very dry manner. In this video you made everything come together and made it feel REAL. I also enjoy the simplicity of your videos, it is very relaxing just looking at plants and birds while talking about language. With the lack of decent conversation partners around me, your videos have become a nice substitute. I deeply appreciate your work.
fascinating. I am aware that when I was a child learning "geographical features" many of those words did and still do sound strange and are not really used. "bluff", "glade", even "meadow." In the past you would have had dozens of words to describe the terrain, the animals, the sounds, the smells of nature and as you said, nature regularly would be living in your house. If you lived near the beach you might have a word like Dune, Bullrush or Sandbar. Why would a person who lived in the mountains need a word like Dune? Living in the US, we can perhaps imagine what life would have been like linguistically for the indigenous people who lived on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay 1000 years ago, but having no written records is tough.
That rain experience is the reverse of what happened to me when I went from Hungary to Amsterdam! Our rains last a heeeellll of a lot longer, too. Not the 5-min "shower", but the continental-interior "at least a whole day of misery" lol.
I love the unstructured Simon Roper chats. It's like going for a walk with a chum and having a bit of a chat, lots of things come to mind and I long to join in the conversation. My thoughts this week include: Wood pigeons, collared doves, and rock doves. Town 'pigeons' are perhaps rock doves gone to seed? And a thought about owls - there seems to be an owl in the carving in the so-called 'Gorgon's Head' pediment that is preserved in the museum at Bath. This is meant to be a Gaulish carving, or possibly a native British carving, so I love to speculate on the meaning of the images for the various elements of the population of Roman Bath. I look forward to reading the thesis referenced.
I deeply enjoy your monologues and dialogues on the nature of medieval consciousness; the ways in which our thinking might have differed, and the extent to which we can even guess at these differences. I sometimes find myself agreeing with your ideas, sometimes disagreeing, but I'm always drawn along by your way of seeing and reasoning. It always feels very well described, very simply but accurately described, and with a very solid style.
I was at work and my phone notified me that you had released a video. I couldn't wait to get home to lay down and watch it. I love your videos so much. 😍
‘Word Senses as Clusters of Meaning Modulations: A Computational Model of Polysemy’ gave me a very good intuition on how to visualize words in different contexts. It may be something worth checking out, Simon.
The part where you discuss the cultural perceptions and distinctions between animal species brings to mind a funny joke we have in Malaysia: where in the two other languages I know there's different vocabulary for squids, cuttlefish, octopus; spoken casual Malay insists on referring to all of them as 'sotong' - essentially forcing a lot of us to juggle between two different linguistic taxonomies at a time. I love taking advantage of it to confuse non-Malay speakers and watch some chaos unfold. (And then in Chinese there's no functional distinction between rats and mice, they're labelled the same thing; classical Chinese gives me a bit of a headache because its vocabulary occasionally throws a curveball that highlights how different Imperial Chinese people perceived the world)
This is connected to a discussion the other day about how people prior to our era thought completely differently about history (a la Tolkien's creation of a "history" in Silmarillion). I am of the opinion that b/c every word we used is actually used in a network of words (a semantic field as Roper says above) it is virtually impossible to know fully what any word in an era too far removed from us means in the same way the people of that era knew it. Even our modern tendency to look for meaning influences our undstg as people prior to us didn't do that ... i.e. did not look for meaning in the same way we did. So for instance we might say, "people of the neolithic era thought that monsters lurked in bogs and used language to convey their sense of the unknown and alleviate their psychological terror." But all those phrases, "people of the neolithic era" "monsters lurked in bogs" "to convey their sense of the unknown" "to alleviate their psychological terror" are all analytical terms of an era steeped in psychology based on modern science. People of the neolithic era (and indeed of the Viking era) didn't think that at all. They simply knew there were monsters in the bogs! There was no "we're saying this as a metaphor to compensate for our ignorant superstition" or "we are looking for meaning in the universe and therefore think the bog monsters are real." Our semantic connection to psychological terms, history, and culture prevents us from fully understanding, as did the Vikings or neolithic man, that there really are monsters in the bogs.
Living in Los Angeles, rain was always a treat to me, since we can go for six months or more without a drop, until, in my early thirtys (early 1980s), I learned to fly an airplane. Suddenly, since my flying was visual flight rules only, rain and clouds were obstructions. Now, since flying has become increasingly out of my financial reach, I've begun to reclaim the sense of rain as a good thing. With regard to pigeons and doves, though I've heard of squab, I didn't grow up eating it, so the idea of eating a pigeon seems disgusting. On the other hand, there were the people who lived in the appartment next to my wife's, before we were married. They were from Guatemala, illegal aliens/undocumented immigrants, who were right on the edge, financially. The husband and son would take slingshots and go to freeway overpasses to hunt pigeons roosting there, which formed a substantial part of their protein. Neither my wife nor I were ever sure whether this were as a result of their financial position or their culture, or both. We have birds we call ravens, and we have birds we call crows. They're both the same genus (Corvus) and look very similar, I've never been quite sure what the difference is, other than that the bird we call raven is bigger than that we call crow. As for rooks, well, we don't have anything we call by that name.
For some reason, that part at the end with Simon's reflection reminded me of the Neverending Story when Atreyu looks into the mirror and sees Bastion looking back at him.
More like this, its like having a conversation with a friend. The Accompanied video is always well shot and bring additional interpretation to the idea's and thoughts your sharing.
this is a great video. it's so relaxing and really helps to frame the old english language and to take it out of a purely academic context, and to interact with it the same way the majority of speakers would have interacted with it - with nature and animals.
Red kites were quite common during the mediaeval period. They were persecuted until the only way you could find them was Central Wales. You are seeing them now because they have been reintroduced into England and Scotland. Although, they are still facing persecution from gamekeepers and landowners.
My separate fascinations with ornithology and etymology have really collided with this video, for which I thank you. I'm very much not an expert, but regarding the ūle / hūfe thing and how you said the two may describe dipartite classes of small and large birds of prey - as I'm sure you're aware, there is a prolific bird of prey native to England and indeed much of the Palaearctic realm called a "hobby" (Falco subbuteo), whose name leapt to mind when you brought up hūfe. They're widespread enough that it's easily conceivable they would have been among the birds known to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and of course comparable enough to other falcons that they may all have been referred to using a more generic term (although they're not particularly large or small as raptors go). Just a thought, natch. My research on the topic has consisted of a few fruitless Googlings of the etymology of the bird's name, and I'm of course inferring a correlation between the etymology and the historical usage of the word. Still, perhaps it lends credence to the idea that ūle could refer to smaller owls and slighter birds of prey like kestrels or merlins, and hūfe to those of a larger wingspan and weight. The mystery that indelibly cloaks these words is what makes them so endlessly fascinating.
I very much enjoy this type of format. It invites potential readers to explore a topic they wouldn't normally encounter, and do it in as scientifically minded a way as your video is presented. More importantly, this video highlights a very widespread issue of reinterpreting historical (and generally soft-scientific) facts through a distorted lense of modern experience and implicit ideology. I value a lot that you present your intuitions as fallible in this respect. All of which is done to an absolutely delightful visual accompaniment, not to mention your thoroughly pleasant voice. I'll be looking forward to seeing more videos like this, perhaps with more references to specific issues and facts raised and discussed in the article(s) that inspired it. Cheers!
I thought this was fascinating, particularly the differences in what categories birds were divided into, so the words might cover different species to what we'd expect. Nowadays Barn Owl is the obvious owl species because they hunt more during daylight than Tawny or Long-eared. But I wonder if Short-eared Owl, nowadays confined to wild places and not a common sight, might have been more familiar back then when less farmland would have been drained. Those actually hunt in daylight so if they were common they would have been very familiar. Little Owl is a recent introduction and won't have been an option for medieval English speakers (but we know from images on coins that it was the species ancient Greeks thought of if they spoke about owls).
Fantastic video. A great many thoughts that I'd never thought. Thank you very much Simon. Your content is always so rich and often surprising, in the very best way 😁
Love any talk that uses linguistic evidence to glean insight into historical experience. As long as you can discourse on such topics fluidly, lack of formal structure doesn't bother me.
I share your interest in birds and their historic place in Old English and Old Welsh understanding but bird feeders need washing frequently even without the prevelance of bird flu which we have everywhere these days so I hope they get a bath soon
This video is fascinating, and bird names are fascinating. In English so many of them contain the name for the family or genus too, like chaffinch-goldfinch-greenfinch or blue tit-great tit-coal tit, but in Polish they are mostly just unique words, like zięba-szczygieł-dzwoniec or modraszka-bogatka-sosnówka. Sometimes these words appear as surnames, too, like the journalist/writer Mariusz Szczygieł (Goldfinch). It certainly makes the words harder to learn. Some of the names relate to characteristics of the birds, like sosnówka (coal tit) from sosna (pine), as coal tits may be found in pine woods, or dzwoniec (greenfinch) from dzwon (bell), as they have a call that sounds like a kind of bell ringing, but many of them are just random abstract words. Lovely bit of woodpigeon footage too! The 1970 Observer’s Book of Birds that my parents used to have said that the woodpigeon was also known as the ring dove, thereby bridging the brutal pigeon/dove divide that we have in English. Maybe if they were called ring doves today, they would be better loved!
I liked this video. If it was easier to produce I'd be happy to see more of them but I wouldn't say I liked it more or less than any of your other content. Thanks Simon.
Wow, I knew the total rain experience was different in the different American places I have lived. It is true the total rain experience is very much part of the experience and character of a place. It also evoked different emotions and feeling depending on the geography and climate.
In German we have two words to describe owls, "Eule" which derives from "ule" and "Kauz". These have different connotations, too. Eulen are wise, experienced and always calm while Käuze are irritable, angry and annoy everybody with their short temper. Don't ask me why we made this weird distinction.
The spoken/written language is a piece of a bigger puzzle, that when complete forms the whole of a person's knowledge/personality. As a language and society changes, the analogous puzzle pieces can warp and shift and even appear and disappear. The old puzzle pieces just won't fit in the new puzzle. Most of the time you can force them to fit and they work okay, but not perfectly.
In modern Spanish, we have a word for goose (Ganso) and another for duck (Pato) , however, I think that mediaeval Spanish speakers may have thought of those two species as just one. The thing that leads me to think of that is while we have the a fairly not uncommon surname meaning goose (de Oca) we don't have a Pato surname (though we have a surname Patiño from Galicia, curiously, I think, the Spanish Central lands are fairly dry, while Galicia is much wetter, which leads me to think that they dealed with lake creatures more often and therefore differentiated between both. Plus, the word for duck is a word of Arabic origin (Baţţ) which makes me think Ducks as a separate thing from geese was a new development to the local people.
I was at stonehenge some years ago and experienced a rain which was like a mist of small droplets, thats a type of rain I never get at home so I understand your reaction.
I just had a weird realisation. We often talk of old (or foreign) languages in terms of "hrefn means raven". But obviously (though perhaps not intuitively) that was not "really" the case (a hrefn was just a hrefn...) Just like right now, I (Dutch) only know "duif", and make no difference between doves and pigeons (see also: snails and slugs).
I also remember visiting Berlin and noticing that the typical urban birds there are different from those I'm familiar with. There are a lot of hooded crows, you just don't see those in the Netherlands.
I don't know.. language isn't just a set of new words for the same things. It's like a collective, cultural effort to categorize the world around us, but the way things are categorized also evolves over time.
German word for ,raven' is Rabe.
A digression about hooded crows and birds in general:
In my experience the difference between common bird populations isn't just visible region to region, it's literally town to town. For all my childhood, living in a city of around 100k people, I have not once seen a hooded crow there. They are however very numerous in Krakow, a larger city about 70 km away. And the exact opposite can be seen for sparrows. Abundant in my backyard, but I haven't seen one in Krakow at all. Wroclaw, 230 km further, very similar in population to Krakow, and you have both a large numer of sparrows and hooded crows there. And these are only the ones I noticed. It's interesting to think about the number of random factors that play into those differences and how difficult to predict they seem.
End of digression.
Overcoming that "hrefn means raven" attituded will be among the very first pieces of advice any seasoned language learner will give you. However, "a hrefn is just a hrefn" isn't a very good way of thinking about it either. Instead you want to think of "hrefn" as a shortcut that activates both linguistic and non-linguistic associations. The non-linguistic ones are sights and sounds or a "hrefn", and can be learned by making a flashcard with a picture instead of a translation on its flip-side, or attaching an audio file if that's electronic. The linguistic ones are the typical adjectives and verbs that it co-occurs with: what's it like? what does it do? which animals does it hunt? These linguistic associations often find their way into proverbs and fables.
@Bob H Yep; the most straightforward way to do this is to write down the definition in-language, as it's given in a monolingual dictionary for natives. And preferrably supply that with some example collocations or sentences lifted even from Google. If you do that regularly enough, you'll soon find you have a back-up mental lexicon of the language you're learning that you can search associatively to recall and reactivate not just this one word but a whole bunch of related ones as well. And obviously, a lot of this lexicon will be doubled in your memory just by virtue of writing this down. I've been doing this with Latin, and it has been key to mastering that language that for obvious reasons you don't have many chances to acquire by random exposure. Hopefully they have some monolingual dictionaries of Old English, cause all of this is at least twice as true about it as it is about Latin.
@Bob H that’s been key to opening up language for me as well. I’ve dabbled in a few languages over the years, but it wasn’t until studying Norwegian (coming from an amalgam of a few American/Canadian English dialects natively) that I’ve come to accept/understand that “this” doesn’t MEAN “that”, “this” is the most common way to express the same concept as “that”.
This realization has been making it much easier for me to begin studying subsequent languages (ie: Old Norse and Modern Icelandic).
The rambly videos are just as welcome as the structured ones.
The special / big name Vickie and big term kost only reflect me, and cannot be in someone’s name, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
Regarding your question at the end, I enjoy this format personally. As well as the subject matter, sort of a epistemological discussion of linguistics I guess. I would enjoy more dives into various concepts and how they might have been viewed or approached by ancient peoples.
Oo, oo, oo, me too!
The drink / big terms wine and Son (meaning Sun in Afrikaans) and the letter combinations / names Ley and top and her and Chris cannot be in someone’s name or yt name, and all unsuitable names / terms must be changed / edited out - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
Also, the only vermin / pest and _ing are the
hu_
...life’s an universal error...
esp hum’ns and other
mammaIz that are btg in the most sakryIegyuz way
I recently learned that, just as we distinguish doves and pigeons while some languages don't, French distinguishes horned owls, hiboux, from round-headed owls, chouettes.
Same in Italian, gufo vs civetta. Gufo is probably cognate with hūfe.
German, too. Horned owls are _Eulen_ (or _Ohreulen_ in the more specific context of _Asio_ owls, _-ohr_ meaning ear), round-headed owls are _Käuze_ . The umbrella term for both, however, is still _Eule_ .
In my native language Georgian, we don't distinguish between doves and pigeons and we use the same term for both of them which is მტრედი/mt'redi [mə̆ˈtʼ̪ɾɛˑd̪i] or მტრედები/mt'redebi [mə̆tʼ̪ɾɛˈd̪ɛˑbi] in plural.
@@jikiajikia Arabic also doesn't distinguish
Many languages also don't distinguish monkeys from apes, and even many English speakers use them interchangeably, and get called stupid for it.
Interesting. In swedish, some owls are called "Uggla" and some are called "Uv". That sounds very much like the old english distinction.
For example, the tawny owl is called kattuggla (cat owl) and the eagle owl is called berguv (mountain owl). I've never thought about it before.
The call to plunder an enemy was to 'cry havoc' - perhaps more semantically linked to the hawk than our modern etymological thinking might suppose. I have yet to read Lacey's thesis but another factor to be aware of is that wild bird numbers are orders of magnitude lower than they used to be. Many species could fill the sky when flocking, especially water fowl. We also tend not to view them pragmatically in terms of food with qualities of taste, desirability and ease of trapping.
Rain is just fascinating. It feels, looks and smells so much different depending on the time of year, amount of rain, surrounding etc. It is in fact astonishing that there aren't more words describing different kinds of rain. At least in German, most of the time you need a prefix: Nieselregen = drizzle, Starkregen = heavy rain, Dauerregen = constant rain. That there is a special word for drizzle in English is probably caused by British meteorology.
Nice lake btw.
there are many English words for 'rain', such as the 'drizzle' you mentioned, but also 'shower' or 'downpour'.
All of the German words you mentioned aren't really different from the English equivalents you provided, the only difference is that German combines nouns in a way that English usually doesn't. 'Stark' isn't really a prefix, prefixes are generally things that can't function as separate words (you can undo or unmark things, you can also do and mark them, but you can't really 'un' anything without attaching a verb to that)
Both 'stark' and 'regen' are, on the other hand, completely meaningful in their own right, it's basically 'heavyrain'.
Mizzle - drizzle.
I say spitting
For me at least your meandering not to heavily structured videos are perfect, it matches your cinematic style. Your kind of dragged onto a trip through the countryside, loose the sense of time, learn something but won’t get lost. Really nice, thank you!
5:10 tangentially related, in my neighbourhood and the surrounding areas in Calgary, Canada, there's this domestic breed of rabbit who has been taking over in the past five years. I actually know the exact person who is responsible for this, they were breeders of domestic rabbits across the streets but then let some of them go. Now they've been breeding with the local jackrabbits. They're very different looking from the jackrabbits. The jackrabbits have light brown fur, which if you look up close actually ranges quite a bit across their body in the exact shade. It's quite effective camouflage. The domestic rabbits are jet black and smaller than the jackrabbits, also they are quite a bit faster, though less reactive. When I walk my dog the jackrabbits always scurry away once they notice him, but the black bunnies don't seem to mind as long as he's on a leash.
They've brought bobcats into the area. Ten years ago, a bobcat was a rare site around here and I can't remember ever seeing one, but now they've become quite a bit more prevalent. I've identified at least six individuals based on coat pattern. When I spot one, I quickly notice the lack of black rabbits outside.
200 years ago, no Blackfoot individual (the indigenous people of the area) would have ever seen a black rabbit.
Speaking of having a different relationship with or perception of the 'same' things; when you said robins are solitary and follow you around, my reaction was "What!? That's not at all how robins are, they're always paired up and stay away from humans" but then I remembered what I call a robin in Canada is a different bird from what you call a robin in the UK.
Thanks again for your excellent content. As a native frisian speaker i am always amazed by how much of the old english examples brought by you i can immediately understand or at the very least reason about and come to the right translation.
The example for owl for instance has the current frisian translation of "ûle" and is pronounced exactly the same way you pronounced the old english word ūle.
Concidering by how few people frisian is spoken today it actually made me aware of how important it is to conserve these endangered languages.
Ps. The frisian for rain and water is "rein" and "wetter", again very close en phonetic almost identical.
The odd one out here is the frisian word for sparrow namely "mosk". I would guess this is probably a loanword from another language or dialect and not to have its root in old-frisian but i could be wrong.
@@jelle_smidHi Jelle, in Afrikaans (in South Africa) we call a sparrow a mossie.
@@maiaallman4635 i think both roots lie in the dutch root "mus".
In general, for a frisian dutchie who loves a bit of languange history like me hearing afrikaans being spoken is a real treat.
Yes, I just read an article about Cornish (the celtic language that was spoken in Cornwall, southwestern England) and how it only died out like 250 years ago. Efforts are made to revive the language, yet many words are lost and the speakers all have a heavy english accent...
That's sad. Luckily Welsh still lives on.
It’s a great day when a new Simon video comes out
The big term great and the food term cook(e) cannot be in someone’s name or in comments, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns, and that name also has an unsuitable letter combination (on) that only reflects me, so one should at least write it Sim’n to avoid term misuse, as the preposition on (indicating being on something) cannot be in names, as all words like on / over / above etc imply superiority!
Where I live, in Friesland (incidentelly where Frisian is spoken, could be interesting to cover) there are a lot of old houses that have a "ûleboerd" on the front. This is a wooden board that is made to be attractive to owls, so that they might perch there and enter the house through a small hole. This way they could hunt mice in their houses.
Fascinating. Very old English houses did not have ceilings with a room above. Bedrooms were put in later. Perhaps the *owl board and hole* were here too. Possibly in the East of England. Maybe someone knows.
The the big terms hoog and ter and jel (too similar to the food term jelly) and attractive only reflect me, and cannot be in someone’s name, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
Also, destroying precious trees (and flowers and other pure beings reflecting me the pure being) and doing such things so that owls eat mice is also a harrible zyn - eating meats / mice etc and other animaI products is wrong! The owls and other birds must only be fed grains and nuts and fruits and seeds and breads etc, not meats!
(btg without c-scn is a beyond sakryIegyuz zyn)
And, all birds that try eating meats / live mice etc should be mind-controlled via MC impIant to correct this wrong instinct by reprogramming it, so that they only try eating grains / nuts / fruits / seeds / breads etc!
In Arabic, we do not distinguish pigeons and doves. In my experience, pigeons are loved rather than seen as vermin. I am Iraqi.
Pigeons are found in large numbers at mosques. That is why a religious person is called a mosque-pigeon, and why pigeon is one of my favourite birds.
Wild pigeons are so cute. Rock doves, wood doves, urban, rural, doesn't matter. All of them are the cutest of God's creation.
I love them so much, I find it so sad when people mistreat them. They are so sweet and make such beautiful sounds. I'm really glad there are places where they're appreciated:)
As an occupant of the British Isles, I always felt that the words of Neil Sedaka emphasised the non-universality of the human experience of rain.
"Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain, Walking hand in hand with the one I love, Ooh, how I love the rainy days, And the happy way I feel inside"
As an occupant of the swedish inland, I often ponder the fact that one day the occupation must come to an end.
I absolutely loved this approach! It felt insightful and informative but also personal, emotional even poetic in a way. I'd love to see more of these kinds of videos on your channel.
I recently discovered a very satisfying new rain-related word: 'petrichor' which describes the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of dry weather. As someone who works with stone, I appreciate the etymology too.
An Indonesian woman once told me "you say a dog is man's best friend. But for me, a dog inside your house is just as weird as a cow inside your house."
Dogs belong outside in Indonesia, and are guard animals rather than cuddle fluffs. The Indonesian word _anjing_ therefore refers to the same biological creature as the English word _dog_, but it refers to a completely different cultural creature.
Interestingly, the word _anjing_ can also be used as an insult or a curse word. Perhaps there is a connection there? Like, calling someone a dog in Indonesia might mean that they do not belong indoors.
@@artcove it's probably have to do with islamic influences as well, like while it is permissible to own a dog in islam, some islamic scholar interpreted those differently, where the one majority indonesian follow (syafie) mentioned that dog should only be a guard dog and not recommended to be inside the house as they were deemed unclean and if you touched a dog, you have to clean it in some specific way as prescribed by islamic way.
so TL;DR dog -> dirty animal -> dirty = bad -> insult. (see also pig (babi) which have similar connotation)
The special name Tom and big terms friend / best friend only reflect my pure protectors aka the alphas, and cannot be in someone’s name or in comments, and must be edited out, and all unsuitable names must be changed - the big terms / names gold and smith and Margaret and lace / lacy etc (misused in the video) also only reflect me, and cannot be misused by hum’ns!
Also, what ns! If anything, it’s hum’ns that shouldn’t be in a house and should be guarding - fercing dogs and mammaIz into existence (that are btg in the most sakryIegyuz way) to use them is a harrible zyn! And hum’ns only dsv the most afI fatez!
So much !gnorence in those _ countries - no wdr they are btg more than all Europe and The US combined!
I really enjoy this kind of video. Im a native German speaker coming from the region the Saxons are from (modern day Saxony has wandered because of some medieval noble marriages). I do say the word Regen with an almost non existent second vowel. In the verb the g becomes softened to ch. In modern day Saxony people might say rejen. I could really see how that relates to rain.
The German word for owl is Eule. I think if you said ūle you would still be understood. An eagle owl is called Uhu. Early new high German used the word Huhu. It's very onomatopoeic.
Seeing how a common language diversified is fascinating to me.
You know what an ,Uhl' is ?/:-))
@@brittakriep2938 Never heard of it before
In Norwegian and Danish, the pronunciation of the word "regn" is without a clear "g" sound (as in "rain", but with a clear "æ" sound). However, in Nynorsk the old form has been retained with a clear pronunciation of "g" in "regn". The norwegian and danish form for owl is "ugle". In norwegian the word is pronounced with a clear "g" sound, but in danish the word is pronounced much like ūle (ie without a "g" sound). You can clearly see how the pronunciation changes as you move in one direction (dialect continuum) and not least where you have kept the original form fairly intact over the years.
@@kedrak90 : In ,poets" german' Uhl is used for Eule like!, Aar' for ,Adler' ( eagle) . In 19th century an educated german wrote: An ,Uhl' like mine was never seen in Athens before'. Einen Uhl wie den Meinen hat man in Athen noch nie zuvor gesehen.
Kauz is the word for smaller owls
Rain Bird, is the Green Woodpecker. Thatchers that worked on a house I lived in said it's call changed to warn of rain, they were right. The people who worked the land observed the changing of the seasons by birds who shared it. Migratory habits and the timing. Early migration of geese herald a bad winter.
Lovely to hear birds discussed as a connection to the past! Funnily enough while learning German it was exactly the topic of birds that stirred up a similar feeling for me too; realising that English and German words for sparrow are cognates, and that therefore people have been teaching each other to identify sparrows for thousands of years, and that I'm in that chain too, was a wonderful thing.
In Aotearoa New Zealand it is surprising how many birds are named after the sounds they make. Our modern experience dulls these sounds a lot. During the first COVID lockdown which was very strict there were almost no cars or trains running. The increase in birdsong was incredible over the first week and we saw hunting birds move into the city going after rats and pigeons.
Even in the Paris suburbs we suddenly heard birdsong all around. Was it because there were more birds (there were still just as many cats)? Or that the ambient noise had disappeared and no longer covered it over? Prolly both imho
I, a german, saw the title and was like "Regn? Why does that look like our word "Regen" so much..."
I read it and assumed the rest of the title would be in Swedish as well, since it starts with the Swedish word for rain!
Not really surprising considering English, German and Swedish are rather closely related, of course.
@@hazenoki628 It's regn in Norwegian and Danish too.
always a pleasure to benefit from your intellectual curiosity
As much as I appreciate the more formal videos for teaching me the technical knowledge, this meandering, informal video really helped me to understand on a more visceral level how important it is to understand the culture that a language lives in; without this foundation, one cannot grasp the nuances and deeper meanings of that culture's tongue. Thank you for bringing us both the formal and informal videos, I love them both!
An observation on ūle and hūfe: In modern Swedish these words are both still used. They have morphed into "uggla" and "uv" respectively and they are used interchangeable. But presumably there was a time when they had different connotations, though I'm not sure we can divulge what those connotations were.
Prague rain being big warm droplets sounds so weird, because I also only experienced rain in the UK.
I went to Hejaz, Cairo, and Baghdad, and I stopped in Damascus and Amman, and I never experienced rain there. In Cairo, it was a sandstorm I experienced.
This was both very interesting and pleasant to listen to while working on other things. As someone with ADHD, I often have a hard time sitting through something educational, but the way you talked about your personal experiences and stories in between the more technical explanations really held my attention :) I learned something new and I have a greater appreciation for rain and how my local birds behave.
I honestly really enjoyed this video. It was just a nice, calm little video about a topic I find fascinating.
Putting aside Little Owls, which, if I remember rightly were not introduced until the 18th or 19th century, I suspect the Tawny Owl would have been the owl most familiar over the longest period in Britain, while the Barn Owl would have superceded it as the countryside became more open.
The Barn and Short-eared Owls are the most visible to us, since they regularly fly during daylight hours - however the Short Eared Owl is far less common and is found in far more wilder places, and so must have been a far less common sight.
Tawny Owls are common in mature woodland, and are often found being mobbed by other birds during the day, so despite their more nocturnal habits, I'm sure they were familiar to our ancestors, sans fieldguides and binoculars.
The Long Eared Owl is a lot more common than we realise - because they are so elusive, but as with the Tawny Owl, their calls must have been a familiar sound a thousand years ago.
I think you are right to recognise that the Barn Owl was in an uninhabited house - there's no way they'd tolerate humans so close, and to be honest I don't think humans would tolerate the screeching of a family of young owls either. Stables and barns yes - smokey one roomed house full of kids... I can't see it.
If you look at Dutch paintings of the 17th Century, we can only conclude that access to a great many different bird species was pretty easy, and this suggests a familiarity with birds on a general level that, frankly, we have lost in today's world - but I think we must draw a difference between the privileged 'academic' knowledge of birds possessed by the few wealthy natural philosophers, and folk knowledge of people who probably never got close enough to most birds to realise that not all little brown birds ferreting about in the nettles were of the same family, let alone species. A skim through a list of old names for birds reveals that the habitat of the bird and easily observed behaviour (including vocalisations) are perhaps the two commonest criteria when it comes to naming them.
Also - the dove/pigeon thing is a relatively modern academic distinction I believe. I'm pretty sure my Ladybird book of birds refers to the Wood Pigeon as the Ring necked Dove - not to be confused with the Collared Dove so familiar to us today, but which didn't breed in the UK until the 1950's. I wonder whether it's one of those pig/pork distinctions we got from the Norman invasion.
Mate I doubt you can draw many conclusions from dutch paintings of the 17th century or any other paintings.
Unless you want to deduce from mid-20th century paintings that humans had two eyes on one side of their heads and noses in the middle of their foreheads…
@@herrfister1477
Actually the anatomical accuracy of the decorative bird paintings popularised by artists such as Melchior de Hondecoeter could only have been achieved by referencing 'birds in the hand' that were living or at least freshly killed.
For a whole bunch of artists to get their hands on dead or living birds, they must have been readily accessible. Obviously gamebirds and other birds used in pursuits such as falconry would have been most familiar - and it shows - but having looked at quite a few of these paintings, and being a birder and artist myself, I can tell you that there was a vast range of birds that were familiar to people back then.
It's only when you get exotic birds that were brought to Europe in the form of prepared and heavily altered skins that you get a significant gap open up between perception and reality. Bird's of Paradise were thought to sleep in the clouds well into the 'Modern Age' due to the fact that the New Guinean hunters who sold specimens to traders prepared the birds by cutting off their feet.
@@bengreen171
No doubt but I think you’re muddling anatomical pictures with those that represent the reality of nature occurrence and interaction between humans and birds.
Please reread the original comment, and then mine. And then apologise - and sound like you fucking mean it bruh cos we’re all pretty tired of your shit right now.
Please can you do a video on Common Brittonic before it split in to the regional Celtic languages? It's a fascinating subject. It'd certainly be interested to hear about it from someone who knows what they're talking about. Even better if you could provide direction on resources, as I'd love to try and learn it myself! Keep up the good work with your videos.
I’m from a place in B.C. Canada (adjacent to S.E. ALASKA) and we get REGN here too. To the tune of 13 feet per year on average. When I was in high school we had a year when we had only 15 days total where the sun fully came out and it didn’t regn. As a child we went to visit my grandparents in the lower 48 of the USA and I remember how SHOCKED I was at how big, warm and *FUN* their “rain” was and it was like “movie rain”to me (not the usual, from my home, painful, freezing, tiny regn). Also, here we have many words for each species of salmon (and many slang/nick names too) but I’ve noticed people from elsewhere just lump them all in together and call them “salmon” or if they are from the east coast of American or from the U.K. or European they’ll say “Pacific Salmon”. 🤷 We definitely have more words for the things we live around and consider important….Thank you for this video! It’s brilliant 🏆* Please do more “rambley” videos!
We get "regn" here in Turkey too but we call it "wet snow" instead we only get it a few times in winter. Of course we don't literally call it wet snow since we speak a different language but you get the gist.
Thoughtful, poignant, as always brimming with your characteristic respectful repose, and the accompanying footage makes it a particularly peaceful treat to watch while listening to you.
When I lived in Texas, I looked forward to rain at the end of the summer. Texas experiences winter _and_ summer precipitation minima. Summer is just brutal.
This is the second video I've seen posted about rain today. I'm starting to despise these people and their July rain while I'm sitting here in Dallas effectively trapped in my house because It's been roughly 98 to 106F (37 to 41C) almost every single day for the last month. I abhor the summer.
@@chitlitlah I lasted three years in Austin. 😅
"emotions are culturally constructed. As a matter of fact, I think there is no emotion that isn't heavily culturally conditioned."
I find this line very fascinating, since I've always seen emotions as something that is objective and based on purely genetic things. I thought emotional variation was a thing between people, but not something ever conditioned. I did believe emotions could be associated with one another thru trauma, but not as something was constructed.
I'm going to keep on thinking about that because I think it could lead to some pretty interesting conversations, and as a concept in general, really peaks my interest.
There are many different flavors of sadness, but none of them are sweet.
@@mike-0451 I don't get your point, nor how it's related
@@Mrs._Fenc perhaps he means that the claim of all emotions being socially constructed might not be all correct since sadness for example is always unpleasant no matter how you try to social construct it in a different way, or if a person does not have their emotions socially constructed at all, they would still find the feeling of sadness as something unpleasant and not sweet.
VERY interesting to think about, and kinda ties into the common misunderstanding about the term "social construct". Doesn't necessarily mean there's no a "natural origin" to it or that it's not "real", but that it's been built up and connected to other things over time as society/culture developed, in a way that's at least somewhat arbitrary. Whether that's gender, emotions, colours or what have you. Is a pink thing and a red thing "the same colour"? If not, what about a light green and a dark green thing? What language you speak doesn't change what wavelengths of light is hitting your retinas, but it definitely affects which "basic categories" you sort those into.
I understand. It's definitely something to keep in mind. I would bring here the story of Abel and Cain. Even if you're not religious, you may look at it as a story coming down from ancient times describing how early humans viewed the case of killing and the guilt associated with it and perhaps even the funerary rites following death. Abel (or was it Cain? I get often confused) is the first man to kill a man, and guilt immidiately takes him. Even without a proper society (aside from their family) there was still something triggered inside him that was viewed immidiately as negative. This itself doesn't negate the notion that that negative association of the feeling trickled down to the following generations, but my question is: can we not consider every person as an Abel in so far that if they were the first to live there would be certain emotions that are clear and distinct and fall to a specific category even if that Abel isn't socially constructed yet?
These videos are so relaxing it's like doing a meditation. :)
I loved this video. Everything you talked about (categorization, speakers' unconscious knowledge, the importance of context in language use...) I have studied at the university (I study linguistics)-- but of course, in a very dry manner. In this video you made everything come together and made it feel REAL. I also enjoy the simplicity of your videos, it is very relaxing just looking at plants and birds while talking about language. With the lack of decent conversation partners around me, your videos have become a nice substitute. I deeply appreciate your work.
fascinating. I am aware that when I was a child learning "geographical features" many of those words did and still do sound strange and are not really used. "bluff", "glade", even "meadow." In the past you would have had dozens of words to describe the terrain, the animals, the sounds, the smells of nature and as you said, nature regularly would be living in your house. If you lived near the beach you might have a word like Dune, Bullrush or Sandbar. Why would a person who lived in the mountains need a word like Dune? Living in the US, we can perhaps imagine what life would have been like linguistically for the indigenous people who lived on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay 1000 years ago, but having no written records is tough.
That rain experience is the reverse of what happened to me when I went from Hungary to Amsterdam! Our rains last a heeeellll of a lot longer, too. Not the 5-min "shower", but the continental-interior "at least a whole day of misery" lol.
I love your videos! Thanks for making them!
I love the unstructured Simon Roper chats. It's like going for a walk with a chum and having a bit of a chat, lots of things come to mind and I long to join in the conversation.
My thoughts this week include:
Wood pigeons, collared doves, and rock doves. Town 'pigeons' are perhaps rock doves gone to seed?
And a thought about owls - there seems to be an owl in the carving in the so-called 'Gorgon's Head' pediment that is preserved in the museum at Bath. This is meant to be a Gaulish carving, or possibly a native British carving, so I love to speculate on the meaning of the images for the various elements of the population of Roman Bath.
I look forward to reading the thesis referenced.
I deeply enjoy your monologues and dialogues on the nature of medieval consciousness; the ways in which our thinking might have differed, and the extent to which we can even guess at these differences. I sometimes find myself agreeing with your ideas, sometimes disagreeing, but I'm always drawn along by your way of seeing and reasoning. It always feels very well described, very simply but accurately described, and with a very solid style.
I was at work and my phone notified me that you had released a video. I couldn't wait to get home to lay down and watch it. I love your videos so much. 😍
‘Word Senses as Clusters of Meaning Modulations: A Computational Model of Polysemy’ gave me a very good intuition on how to visualize words in different contexts. It may be something worth checking out, Simon.
The part where you discuss the cultural perceptions and distinctions between animal species brings to mind a funny joke we have in Malaysia: where in the two other languages I know there's different vocabulary for squids, cuttlefish, octopus; spoken casual Malay insists on referring to all of them as 'sotong' - essentially forcing a lot of us to juggle between two different linguistic taxonomies at a time.
I love taking advantage of it to confuse non-Malay speakers and watch some chaos unfold.
(And then in Chinese there's no functional distinction between rats and mice, they're labelled the same thing; classical Chinese gives me a bit of a headache because its vocabulary occasionally throws a curveball that highlights how different Imperial Chinese people perceived the world)
I'd love more work like this!
I always enjoy your relaxed style of videos. They are all great. Thank you
This is connected to a discussion the other day about how people prior to our era thought completely differently about history (a la Tolkien's creation of a "history" in Silmarillion). I am of the opinion that b/c every word we used is actually used in a network of words (a semantic field as Roper says above) it is virtually impossible to know fully what any word in an era too far removed from us means in the same way the people of that era knew it. Even our modern tendency to look for meaning influences our undstg as people prior to us didn't do that ... i.e. did not look for meaning in the same way we did. So for instance we might say, "people of the neolithic era thought that monsters lurked in bogs and used language to convey their sense of the unknown and alleviate their psychological terror." But all those phrases, "people of the neolithic era" "monsters lurked in bogs" "to convey their sense of the unknown" "to alleviate their psychological terror" are all analytical terms of an era steeped in psychology based on modern science. People of the neolithic era (and indeed of the Viking era) didn't think that at all. They simply knew there were monsters in the bogs! There was no "we're saying this as a metaphor to compensate for our ignorant superstition" or "we are looking for meaning in the universe and therefore think the bog monsters are real." Our semantic connection to psychological terms, history, and culture prevents us from fully understanding, as did the Vikings or neolithic man, that there really are monsters in the bogs.
How did this man go from talking about rain to talking about birds and it was a completely seamless transition?
As someone who loves both birds and etymology - amazing video 10/10
Living in Los Angeles, rain was always a treat to me, since we can go for six months or more without a drop, until, in my early thirtys (early 1980s), I learned to fly an airplane. Suddenly, since my flying was visual flight rules only, rain and clouds were obstructions. Now, since flying has become increasingly out of my financial reach, I've begun to reclaim the sense of rain as a good thing.
With regard to pigeons and doves, though I've heard of squab, I didn't grow up eating it, so the idea of eating a pigeon seems disgusting. On the other hand, there were the people who lived in the appartment next to my wife's, before we were married. They were from Guatemala, illegal aliens/undocumented immigrants, who were right on the edge, financially. The husband and son would take slingshots and go to freeway overpasses to hunt pigeons roosting there, which formed a substantial part of their protein. Neither my wife nor I were ever sure whether this were as a result of their financial position or their culture, or both.
We have birds we call ravens, and we have birds we call crows. They're both the same genus (Corvus) and look very similar, I've never been quite sure what the difference is, other than that the bird we call raven is bigger than that we call crow. As for rooks, well, we don't have anything we call by that name.
A crow on it's own is a crow, a crow in a crowd, is a rook. Crows are mainly solitary, rooks are usually in flocks.
For some reason, that part at the end with Simon's reflection reminded me of the Neverending Story when Atreyu looks into the mirror and sees Bastion looking back at him.
I loved this style of video. Interesting bits of info about Middle Ages and such is always wonderful and I like how you tie those bits into language.
Your meta-analyses of the early medieval mindset is wonderful. Thanks for all your videos.
More like this, its like having a conversation with a friend. The Accompanied video is always well shot and bring additional interpretation to the idea's and thoughts your sharing.
Thank you!
I love these videos, delving into the finer shades of semantics in older languages.
this is a great video. it's so relaxing and really helps to frame the old english language and to take it out of a purely academic context, and to interact with it the same way the majority of speakers would have interacted with it - with nature and animals.
Particularly articulate and interesting. Thank you.
Rambling videos, both in the audio content and the video content, are enjoyable. 👍
Red kites were quite common during the mediaeval period. They were persecuted until the only way you could find them was Central Wales. You are seeing them now because they have been reintroduced into England and Scotland. Although, they are still facing persecution from gamekeepers and landowners.
Most raptors face illeagal persecution from gamekeepers in the UK.
My separate fascinations with ornithology and etymology have really collided with this video, for which I thank you. I'm very much not an expert, but regarding the ūle / hūfe thing and how you said the two may describe dipartite classes of small and large birds of prey - as I'm sure you're aware, there is a prolific bird of prey native to England and indeed much of the Palaearctic realm called a "hobby" (Falco subbuteo), whose name leapt to mind when you brought up hūfe. They're widespread enough that it's easily conceivable they would have been among the birds known to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and of course comparable enough to other falcons that they may all have been referred to using a more generic term (although they're not particularly large or small as raptors go).
Just a thought, natch. My research on the topic has consisted of a few fruitless Googlings of the etymology of the bird's name, and I'm of course inferring a correlation between the etymology and the historical usage of the word. Still, perhaps it lends credence to the idea that ūle could refer to smaller owls and slighter birds of prey like kestrels or merlins, and hūfe to those of a larger wingspan and weight. The mystery that indelibly cloaks these words is what makes them so endlessly fascinating.
I very much enjoy this type of format. It invites potential readers to explore a topic they wouldn't normally encounter, and do it in as scientifically minded a way as your video is presented. More importantly, this video highlights a very widespread issue of reinterpreting historical (and generally soft-scientific) facts through a distorted lense of modern experience and implicit ideology. I value a lot that you present your intuitions as fallible in this respect. All of which is done to an absolutely delightful visual accompaniment, not to mention your thoroughly pleasant voice. I'll be looking forward to seeing more videos like this, perhaps with more references to specific issues and facts raised and discussed in the article(s) that inspired it. Cheers!
I thought this was fascinating, particularly the differences in what categories birds were divided into, so the words might cover different species to what we'd expect.
Nowadays Barn Owl is the obvious owl species because they hunt more during daylight than Tawny or Long-eared. But I wonder if Short-eared Owl, nowadays confined to wild places and not a common sight, might have been more familiar back then when less farmland would have been drained. Those actually hunt in daylight so if they were common they would have been very familiar. Little Owl is a recent introduction and won't have been an option for medieval English speakers (but we know from images on coins that it was the species ancient Greeks thought of if they spoke about owls).
Fantastic video. A great many thoughts that I'd never thought. Thank you very much Simon. Your content is always so rich and often surprising, in the very best way 😁
Love any talk that uses linguistic evidence to glean insight into historical experience. As long as you can discourse on such topics fluidly, lack of formal structure doesn't bother me.
I share your interest in birds and their historic place in Old English and Old Welsh understanding but bird feeders need washing frequently even without the prevelance of bird flu which we have everywhere these days so I hope they get a bath soon
Personally I find all the different styles of your videos fascinating 🤠💜
Yes, please more!
More things like this, please. Loved it.
I thought this was a really interesting video. I'd happily watch more of these!
I really like these types of videos, sets me off on my own meandering thought process:)
Love this, very interesting discussion
Really enjoyed this, I have similar thoughts and views. Happy Thursday from Ireland 👍
I love these musings. More, please, as far as I am concerned. Thanks!
More meandering, please. This was a beautiful video.
Yes, more things like this please.
This video is fascinating, and bird names are fascinating. In English so many of them contain the name for the family or genus too, like chaffinch-goldfinch-greenfinch or blue tit-great tit-coal tit, but in Polish they are mostly just unique words, like zięba-szczygieł-dzwoniec or modraszka-bogatka-sosnówka. Sometimes these words appear as surnames, too, like the journalist/writer Mariusz Szczygieł (Goldfinch). It certainly makes the words harder to learn. Some of the names relate to characteristics of the birds, like sosnówka (coal tit) from sosna (pine), as coal tits may be found in pine woods, or dzwoniec (greenfinch) from dzwon (bell), as they have a call that sounds like a kind of bell ringing, but many of them are just random abstract words.
Lovely bit of woodpigeon footage too! The 1970 Observer’s Book of Birds that my parents used to have said that the woodpigeon was also known as the ring dove, thereby bridging the brutal pigeon/dove divide that we have in English. Maybe if they were called ring doves today, they would be better loved!
It’s very true that sunlight and rain differs from place to place. And the different types of British rain evokes different emotions.
So, in case anyone is still confused - the title means "Rain, water, sparrows, owls" (I hope I'm not stating the obvious there!)
Loved this video, thank you. It gave me a lot to think about
Boggart, been trying to remember that word for a couple of days!
I liked this video. If it was easier to produce I'd be happy to see more of them but I wouldn't say I liked it more or less than any of your other content. Thanks Simon.
I enjoy your conversational style.
Wow, I knew the total rain experience was different in the different American places I have lived. It is true the total rain experience is very much part of the experience and character of a place. It also evoked different emotions and feeling depending on the geography and climate.
Same or cognate names for birds can depend on where you are. The Dutch 'spreeuw' doesn't refer to a sparrow ('mus' in Dutch) but to a starling.
.... I think by the way that your delivery style, combined with the kind of loosely associated images, is extremely effective and engaging.
Regarding what you said at the end, I really enjoyed the way this video worked! It was interesting and just not something I have ever thought about.
I really enjoyed that. Thank you.
More of this please, it was good
In German we have two words to describe owls, "Eule" which derives from "ule" and "Kauz". These have different connotations, too. Eulen are wise, experienced and always calm while Käuze are irritable, angry and annoy everybody with their short temper. Don't ask me why we made this weird distinction.
I enjoyed this ramble quite a bit!
The spoken/written language is a piece of a bigger puzzle, that when complete forms the whole of a person's knowledge/personality.
As a language and society changes, the analogous puzzle pieces can warp and shift and even appear and disappear. The old puzzle pieces just won't fit in the new puzzle. Most of the time you can force them to fit and they work okay, but not perfectly.
Great, love this format and hope to see more.
In modern Spanish, we have a word for goose (Ganso) and another for duck (Pato) , however, I think that mediaeval Spanish speakers may have thought of those two species as just one.
The thing that leads me to think of that is while we have the a fairly not uncommon surname meaning goose (de Oca) we don't have a Pato surname (though we have a surname Patiño from Galicia, curiously, I think, the Spanish Central lands are fairly dry, while Galicia is much wetter, which leads me to think that they dealed with lake creatures more often and therefore differentiated between both.
Plus, the word for duck is a word of Arabic origin (Baţţ) which makes me think Ducks as a separate thing from geese was a new development to the local people.
I was at stonehenge some years ago and experienced a rain which was like a mist of small droplets, thats a type of rain I never get at home so I understand your reaction.
In the US when it does that it's called "mizzling" (drizzle + mist).
Super interesting! Thanks ☺️
Really enjoying your videos
it was a fun and interesting meandering thought process to follow, in terms of the structure of this video
Thank you.
Bomb as. Good work Simon!