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Post by hansoo on Aug 23, 2014 2:25:41 GMT
Hi guys. I want to discuss about the riddles we tried to solve during class in this thread. I was really surprised and impressed by the level of the medieval literature. The riddles included literary devices such as metaphor or similes as well as some sense of sarcasm. When I saw the translated version of each riddle after trying to guess ourselves, I was just overwhelmed by their insight. To be honest, I underestimated them beforehand. So that's my thought on the riddles. What are your thoughts on them?
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Post by brandonina on Aug 23, 2014 3:08:11 GMT
I was shocked by the existence of certain language although it is claimed to be English. And it was extremely hard to guess what the words meant even though we heard audio and discussed the poem together as a group. I learned that English also evolved over time like the way how Latin evolved and became like Spanish or French (I might be wrong with this). And the riddle that I got was pretty interesting because the Anglo Saxons were creative and metaphorical and based the riddle on nature.
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misato
Junior Member
Posts: 97
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Post by misato on Aug 23, 2014 10:18:35 GMT
When I saw the poem first, I really could not understand anything what each words mean. After my group discussed we could find similarity from some words. Theme of the poem which we guessed was totally different but this poem proof that Anglo Saxon's language(old English) and English have similarity.(This was my pretension topic)
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Post by nerdira on Aug 23, 2014 16:52:28 GMT
The riddles were pretty hard to solve. The Anglo-Saxons as a whole must've been a really clever, quick thinking group of people. I think the main reason that a lot of us didn't figure out the riddles was because a lot of the answers were objects that were common in that time but not so much in modern times. For example, the horn, or the honey mead. I'm also glad we had the translations, because Old English and modern english are so different they might as well be different languages altogether, instead of the latter being an evolved version of the former. I think English might've had roots in German, because Old English reminded me of how modern german sounds. Which now raises the question, how come the English language changed so much, but German didn't?
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Post by jmoon234 on Aug 24, 2014 6:48:47 GMT
It is hard to say that those were poems because to me they were like nonsense phrases or it sounded like an enchantment of an ancient spell that wizards use. I was puzzled just by hearing each word that was presented. Even though I couldn't understand a word that it said, it seemed like a fun challenge to trying to guess what each of those phrase exactly means. The sound of some of the words were similar to the sound of the words that are used today, so we could have made a good estimate on the words, but all of those estimates ended up turning entirely wrong.
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Post by James on Aug 24, 2014 7:47:00 GMT
Man when I first read and heard them speaking, I seriously thought it was german. I mean, as you said it was pretty impressive for people back then to be using such literary devices, but it really sounded weird. My overall thought on this medieval english is that it is just "weird" nothing else to describe it. i just thank god we don't use that english anymore. I never felt that the whole language itself was puzzling despite the fact that it was "english" we were dealing with
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Post by sergeyfen on Aug 24, 2014 9:09:44 GMT
The riddles were well thought and hard to solve. I never could have possibly imagine that anyone could have done such a great job so many centuries ago. Most importantly riddles made perfect sense, they were written with a good flow and interesting word choices. Even though some words were similar to a modern english, still it was pretty hard to solve them. Poets must have been very well educated to use literary devices such effectively. Overall it was hard to solve the riddles, but i got to give them credit for how they were written, those were some hard riddles to guess.
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Post by jooyoungparkyesbaby on Aug 24, 2014 12:24:02 GMT
Overall, I think the riddles were very interesting. I liked how all the riddles represent one thing or the another, they are very straightforward om what they represent. I also like how the whole riddle is a huge extended metaphor, and its sort of like a big puzzle to solve. They were very creative in their descriptions and it kind of surprised me how they were creative enough to think of such metaphors to describe a certain object or action. Another thing about this was the Old English. It sounded German, and if I were told that the recordings were German, I would have believed it. Old English had mostly nothing in common with pronunciation and spelling of Modern English.
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Post by elisalee on Aug 24, 2014 12:54:17 GMT
To me, the riddles were very interesting since it sounded nothing like the present English. At first, it was really hard to figure out the words, but as I read through and heard the riddle over and over again, I kind of solved some of the words, but not the whole riddle. When my group saw the translation and commentary, we realized that the riddle was so much different from what we thought the riddle would be about. I got curious in the middle of translation if the people in this time period really talked like how it sounded like from the radio too. Generally, it was fun figuring out the whole meaning
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Post by jasmin on Aug 24, 2014 13:29:56 GMT
First impression about the riddle was like 'oh jez its gonna take forever to get this' but but we all solved it! I wonder how the old english has changed this much and it was pretty interesting and fun at the same time trying to figure out what the meaning of the riddle!!
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Post by chrishong on Aug 24, 2014 13:46:21 GMT
I was so shocked when Ms.Boyd said that Shakespeare's language is not actually the "Old English". When I first read the first line of the riddle, I felt like I was in the world of maze, struggling to find the way to escape the maze.
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bachle
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by bachle on Aug 24, 2014 14:21:11 GMT
I think racism and metaphor is just a normal thing that they use in medieval literature because i think it's too rough to say your idea directly. And for riddle, if you just say it directly, it will be easy and it won't be fun for the people who try to guess. Also, i don't know if an old English uses alliteration or some methods like that because i don't understand it and i don't think the translation is closely translated it with all the methods.
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Post by justink on Aug 24, 2014 15:12:03 GMT
My first impression of the assigned riddle was the same as yours. I was expecting english that i read in Julius Caesar or Romeo and Juliet; however, it turned out to be something completely different! Our assignment on the riddles was tough in the beginning as we had to try and figure out what the riddle is. I was able to barely pick out a few words that resemble english words or ones that produce familiar pronunciations. Even after reading the translated version, i still had trouble figuring out what the riddle was. I can't reveal the answer to my riddle now (i didn't share with class yet), but i do have to admit that the answer is completely different from my initial guesses. This riddle that i got sounded a bit inappropriateā¦ However, once the answer is given, it was reasonable and it gave me a different view of the riddle~ I assume the Anglo-Saxons made riddles out of daily items (as "invaluable" as they were). Usually riddles would result in idioms or words that mean a lot to a certain culture.
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woojong
Junior Member
Come to the darkside...we have cookies 8D
Posts: 85
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Post by woojong on Aug 24, 2014 17:10:25 GMT
At first, in groups we listened to the riddles. Frankly they sounded hilarious. Of course they would because the riddles were in old english, which sounds very foreign to our tongues even though the root of language is same. After translating and interpreting the riddles, I thought we thought too much about them. Actually, the meaning inside riddles were not too hard to find, but we tended to put ourselves into maze by thinking too much. Lastly, somehow the riddles makes sense to the present world. For example, the bookworms from riddle 45 resembled couch potatoes today
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Post by lins on Aug 25, 2014 12:07:37 GMT
I agree with you guys that Old English was thought to be related to Shakespearean languages, like Julius Caesar we did last year and Hamlet, which we will do in future. However, I was surprised to find out that was a Modern English, not an Old English. To me, that sounded definitely like an Old English. But When I saw and listened to the real Old English, I was surprised at its strong accent; it sounded like Germanic Indeed. This must be true in that English is really from a Germanic branch, rather than Latin branch. It was hilarious to listen because it sounded like a song, even though it was a poem.
When compared to Middle English, Old English is definitely more hard to understand and pronounce. It was really interesting that Anglo-Saxons used this "language" that claims to be English, as Brandon said. Another interesting fact is that their riddles are mostly based on their basic lives, such as onion (this one was very unexpected; I thought that the idea was great, and how they described the onions.), honey mead (I can totally understand the meaning now, how mead saps strength from people.), horns and such.
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