Indeed: I would (if I may æmulate the pastiche) obtestate the author to perrect composing such oblectant commentarioles.
(From "pergō" (to continue, keep doing) with hypothetical English form on the model of "direct"; "oblectō" (to entertain, interest, amuse); "commentāriolum" (a short treatise or commentary, hence a short article like this).)
The use of the long ſ within words and s only used at the end of a word is like the two different forms of the Greek sigma: σ within a word and ς at the end of a word.
Notable that of the three words you single out, "obtestate" is entirely gone, "annihilate" is now in regular (though not exactly common) use, & "fatigate" has been replaced by the shorter form "fatigue".
Also, your hypothetical writer (or, perhaps, whoever they're complaining about) evidently does not understand the phonology of Latin, if they write "annihilate" as "adnichilate", thereby preserving both the ancient Roman (but, AFAIK, entirely un-English) convention of often writing "ad-" even when the "d" was assimilated to the following consonant, & the medieval confusion or merger of "h" & "ch". Nor can they be excused by general ignorance in 1553, since (IIUC; I'm not very familiar with Renaissance linguistics) the reconstruction of classical Latin pronunciation was established at the latest by Erasmus in 1528.
My UCLA English Literature degree — awarded during the Dark Ages — means I had to read works like this — Beowulf? Canterbury Tales? James Joyce's Ulysses? :-)
I muſ t agree with Sir Thomas about "obteſtate, fatigate, adnichilate". Particularly the firſt.
If you were ever an American schoolchild, you might have at some point read one of the words in the first line of the Declaration of Independence as CONGREFS.
We all knew what it meant, but you can't expect children not to laugh.
This must have been a challenge to accomplish. Loved reading it! I felt taken back to those times, reading the document under the flickers glow of beeswax candles
I have been trying to work out which of Sir Thomas’s three tests I would fail first, and I think it is the fishmonger one, since the man who sells me halibut on Saturdays already regards most of my vocabulary as a personal affront. What gets me is that frivolous and celebrate were once on the reject pile, which means a sixteenth-century grump was, for a while, perfectly correct, and then simply outvoted by everyone else carrying on talking. The “How I dight this” postscript is my favourite part, because it turns out that apologising for your word choices at the bottom of a post is not a modern Substack habit at all, just a very old one in a new typeface. I am keeping obtestate for the next time I need to ask a neighbour to move their bins.
It's a tangent, but the long-s did ſurviue into the 20th century, in the Kurrent and Sütterlin handwriting taught in German schools. The 's' there is a long-s, and there's a final-letter variant 's'. There are distinct 'u' and 'v' letters, but I don't know about how they were distributed. The Wikipedia page is tantalisingly brief.
There's clearly a story about this script. Sütterlin was a modernised Kurrent, developed as late as 1911, and it was The Standard until the Nazis banned it in 1941, at the same time they banned Fraktur typefaces, as one end point of a doubtless complicated argument involving nationalism vs. traditionalism vs. modernity (and practicality). I don't know (but I can suspect) what residual valences it might carry in Germany today.
Another data point is that I've seen a copy of a talk Einstein gave, in english, in 1933. His marginal annotations are detectably in ‘ordinary’ handwriting, though he would _presumably_ have been taught something Kurrent-like at school (b.1879). Why? Was it because he was adjusting an english-language text? Was he being ‘modern’? Would he have written this differently a few years previously? When (to the extent it was) did handwriting become political enough to be bannable?
Excellent stuffe, as ever.
Indeed: I would (if I may æmulate the pastiche) obtestate the author to perrect composing such oblectant commentarioles.
(From "pergō" (to continue, keep doing) with hypothetical English form on the model of "direct"; "oblectō" (to entertain, interest, amuse); "commentāriolum" (a short treatise or commentary, hence a short article like this).)
The use of the long ſ within words and s only used at the end of a word is like the two different forms of the Greek sigma: σ within a word and ς at the end of a word.
At least the sigmas are easily diſtinguiſhed.
They don't look like ſomeone didn't finiſh their "f".
Notable that of the three words you single out, "obtestate" is entirely gone, "annihilate" is now in regular (though not exactly common) use, & "fatigate" has been replaced by the shorter form "fatigue".
Also, your hypothetical writer (or, perhaps, whoever they're complaining about) evidently does not understand the phonology of Latin, if they write "annihilate" as "adnichilate", thereby preserving both the ancient Roman (but, AFAIK, entirely un-English) convention of often writing "ad-" even when the "d" was assimilated to the following consonant, & the medieval confusion or merger of "h" & "ch". Nor can they be excused by general ignorance in 1553, since (IIUC; I'm not very familiar with Renaissance linguistics) the reconstruction of classical Latin pronunciation was established at the latest by Erasmus in 1528.
Reading this was fatigating.
But such fun!
My UCLA English Literature degree — awarded during the Dark Ages — means I had to read works like this — Beowulf? Canterbury Tales? James Joyce's Ulysses? :-)
I muſ t agree with Sir Thomas about "obteſtate, fatigate, adnichilate". Particularly the firſt.
If you were ever an American schoolchild, you might have at some point read one of the words in the first line of the Declaration of Independence as CONGREFS.
We all knew what it meant, but you can't expect children not to laugh.
Good work!
Colin- do you know where I could find Aelfric's complaint against the unwriteras?
This must have been a challenge to accomplish. Loved reading it! I felt taken back to those times, reading the document under the flickers glow of beeswax candles
They would be lucky to have beeswax -- more likely smoky, smelly tallow!
Yes tallow for sure. I was trying sophisticated
I have been trying to work out which of Sir Thomas’s three tests I would fail first, and I think it is the fishmonger one, since the man who sells me halibut on Saturdays already regards most of my vocabulary as a personal affront. What gets me is that frivolous and celebrate were once on the reject pile, which means a sixteenth-century grump was, for a while, perfectly correct, and then simply outvoted by everyone else carrying on talking. The “How I dight this” postscript is my favourite part, because it turns out that apologising for your word choices at the bottom of a post is not a modern Substack habit at all, just a very old one in a new typeface. I am keeping obtestate for the next time I need to ask a neighbour to move their bins.
It's a tangent, but the long-s did ſurviue into the 20th century, in the Kurrent and Sütterlin handwriting taught in German schools. The 's' there is a long-s, and there's a final-letter variant 's'. There are distinct 'u' and 'v' letters, but I don't know about how they were distributed. The Wikipedia page is tantalisingly brief.
There's clearly a story about this script. Sütterlin was a modernised Kurrent, developed as late as 1911, and it was The Standard until the Nazis banned it in 1941, at the same time they banned Fraktur typefaces, as one end point of a doubtless complicated argument involving nationalism vs. traditionalism vs. modernity (and practicality). I don't know (but I can suspect) what residual valences it might carry in Germany today.
Another data point is that I've seen a copy of a talk Einstein gave, in english, in 1933. His marginal annotations are detectably in ‘ordinary’ handwriting, though he would _presumably_ have been taught something Kurrent-like at school (b.1879). Why? Was it because he was adjusting an english-language text? Was he being ‘modern’? Would he have written this differently a few years previously? When (to the extent it was) did handwriting become political enough to be bannable?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sütterlin
'Abstergify', 'to cleanse', was condemned as an inkhorn term and vanished without trace. The word for cleaning was too dirty for English to keep.
interesting the effect this had on the next stack read
That was fun, though I disagree with good Sir Thomas. I haven’t fancied reading Virgil since GCSE Latin!
But consider his options!
I thoroughly enjoyed this article!