| ▲ | spyrja 16 hours ago | |
Not really. It does however help drive home the point that such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale. (On the other hand in Latin and Celtic traditions, interjections were widely used in story-telling, eg. "Ecce!" and "Féach!" respectively). Old English speakers would have been more inclined to used interjections in a responsive context. For example, to the statement "The boat is taking on water!", one might respond "How?!". But to begin a conversation with an interjection, that just isn't consistent with what we see in any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse. | ||
| ▲ | antonvs 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
> It does however help drive home the point that such interjections were unlikely to be used by speakers of Nordic languages in order to begin a tale. Beowulf was written in Old English, which is not a Nordic language. > ... any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse. Similarly, Old English didn't develop from Old Norse. | ||
| ▲ | thaumasiotes 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
> that just isn't consistent with what we see in any of the speech patterns found in languages which developed from Old Norse. What's up with the phrasing? Old English isn't a language that developed from Old Norse. | ||