Tiffany's Biblio-blog

My dear classmates,
Here is my Biblio-blog. I think this was my favorite assignment of the term. I always had so many questions about the history and the people that influenced English so much. Therefore, in my twelve hours of study I had for this class each week, I would search online and in the HBLL to learn more about the things that interested me so much. You will see my interest in names and their meanings in Old English, my interest in the wars and political happenings, and my interest in the religious reformations of the English language history. I learned SO MUCH, but the articles that I included are the ones that I think were the best to hand on to others who wish a good reference to learn about these things. Thanks for teaching me this semester as well. Tiffany


General

http://www.krysstal.com/english.html

This website is a fabulous resource for a detailed overview of language families and especially for Indo-European languages. I found this site at the beginning of the term when I was intimidated and overwhelmed by all the information and how it all connected. I am still learning from this website and all it has to offer. It restates all that we learn in class from Sister Hallen.


Proto-Indo-European

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans

I hope that it is okay that I am using a Wikipedia source, but this article was amazing. I really think it is the best one that I have found about the Proto-Indo-European people. I think that it is very important to learn the historay because then we can more fully understand why language has changed. It is fascinating to see the maps of the migratory people who are our ancestors and to see where the roots of English are. The Proto-Indo-Europeans were a diverse and hearty people who spread all over the world. Their influence on the history of the world is immense.


Indo-European

http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/haudryreligion.html

I found this article very interesting. It is about the Indo-European people and aspects of their religions. I think that everyone would agree that religion has a huge impact of cultures, peoples, and languages. To truly understand a language, we need to investigate and study the religion of the people who practiced it. The religion of the Indo-Europeans was polytheistic and their gods had absolute power and interest in their lives. They often lived in fear and superstition and practically worshiped nature. We learn that these characteristics, although common of other religions throughout history, had an impact o the Indo-European language and the many languages that stemmed form it.


Germanic

http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm
http://www.rollintl.com/roll/germanics.htm

I looked through several different articles and these two were the most interesting to me about the Germanic peoples, tribes, and their impact on the world then, and their impact on the world now (because of their influence on English). I really thought that these articles were interesting. I was fascinated about the story of the battle in the Teutonburg Forest and how that really impacted the history of the rest of the world. The first website listed is an incredibly resource for learning more about the history of the English language in general. The section about the Great Vowel Shift helped further clarify some question I had, such as about the length of the process and more information about the trend of those vowels that changed. These might be my favorite two articles in the whole biblio-blog.


Old English

http://www.beowulftranslations.net/

Oh, my goodness! This website is amazing. It is all about Beowulf and the time period of about A.D. 1000. It talks about the language, the culture, the dress, the political mess, the traditions and mythology, and about Beowulf! This website is fantastic to all who want to learn more about Beowulf and the people of the time.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html

This is a website about the Brothers Grimm. One day in class, when we were discussing the sound shift in Old English, Sister Hallen mentioned how fascinating these men were and what good and decent people they were. Even better, they were intelligent linguists who discovered a very important change in language. She invited us to learn more about them. After reading several websites, I think this one is the most comprehensive and interesting about these two men, their lives, their convictions, and their interest in language.

Personal Names in Old and Middle English Poetry
By Allen, Mark Edward, PhD., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1982

I have always been interested in names and I was curious to learn about how names were viewed in Old English. Whenever we study names, we need to discover why the namer gave the name, or how the name fits the one given the name. In literature, personal names suggest authorial assumptions and literary purposes. The article discusses names from Beowulf to Robert Henryson, studying patterns in names, the philosophical results from names, and the literary significance of these names.
There are four different types of names. The first to be explained is the denotative or etymological name. These are prevalent in Old English literature and show the Anglo-Saxon influence of “linguistic naturalism”- the name is the thing, of nomen est omen. The next type is personifying names, which appears more in Middle English poetry. There are many examples of this type of onomastic personification.
The next type is called allusive names. In Old English, the poets have a single true story and the allusions are literal. In Middle English, the poets focus more on connotative names that capture more of the satirical rather than the Old English spiritual.
This article was really long and didn’t really get into the meanings of names, which is the most interesting part, I think. However, it was interesting to see the influence of the Anglo-Saxon views of life and how that impacted onomastics. >

The Name Tadzio in Der Tod In Venedig
By Lee Stavenhagen

This article was mostly about a piece written about a boy named Tadzio. Tadeusz, or in the Roman form of Thaddeus, is one of the first twelve Christian Apostles, who was also called Lebbeus. These names are derived from the Syriac nouns thadi> (“breast”) and the Hebrew leb (“heart”), “thus both connoting ‘beloved’ or’ compassionate.’” In the story, the boy has a
powerful attraction and pulls a solid, dignified, and self-disciplined person into a vulnerable and insolent position. The article mainly just gives an example of how the author used onomastics to enhance the story. It is not only a name, but a name which gives layers to the character who wears the name.

Ivarr-UnferÞ?span>

class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">By F. Stanton Cawley
>
class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">PMLA, Vol. 45, No. 1, (Mar., 1930)

This article is about and instructive parallel in an Icelandic source to the story of Hrnthric in Beowulf. There is a close connection between the Icelandic and Old English versions of the tale. Professor Kemp Malone believes that the name
UnferÞ, who is the evil counselor in Beowulf, has a connection with the name of the corresponding person in the Icelandic version, which is Ivarr. Professor Malone then gives linguistic evidence for how the names were changed into the other name. However, Dr. Cawly gives, in the article, linguistic criticism of this name connection. This article was interesting because it shows that names were very important and had deep meaning even in Old English, and in literary masterpieces of the time, like Beowulf.

Old English ODDA
By John Insley.
Notes and Queries. London: Mar 1999. Vol.46, Iss. 1

This article was simply a criticism of work by Carole Hough. Dr. Hough examined the Old English personal name Odda. She says that the name of occurs in the “genitival formation Oddan beam in The Battle of Maldon.” She goes on the show how all the names similar to Odda were in fact derived from the head-form of Odda. Dr. Insley disagrees with this assessment because he sees no correlation between the differing forms.


Middle English

http://www.dot-domesday.me.uk/hastings.htm

I looked up this article because I wanted to learn more about the Battle of Hastings. I have always heard so much about the Norman Conquest, but I wanted to learn more, especially since I knew how much it affected England and the English language. I learned a lot from this article about the Battle of Hastings and what led up to it. This paragraph was particularly interesting.

"The courageous leaders mutually prepared for battle, each according to his national custom. The English, as we have heard, passed the night without sleep, in drinking and singing, and in the morning proceeded without delay against the enemy... On the other hand, the Normans passed the whole night in confessing their sins, and received the communion of the Lord's Body in the morning."
William of Malmesbury

http://www.librarius.com/chauchro.htm

After reading 8-9 articles about Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, I found this website to be the most informative and educational. This shows the historical and political context of Chaucer and how his Tales were influenced by the cataclysmic events of his lifetime. These influences can be seen in his themes and his use of the language.


Early Modern English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses

I really found that this was the best resourse for a comprehensive and intelligible explanation of the War of the Roses. In class, we discussed that this war had a big impact on the language of the then beginning Early Modern English period. After studying the war, I can see how it had a dramatic effect on the time period. It was a long, and confusing war. Treachery decided several battles. I think the things that specifically influenced the language were that England further alienated themselves from France and the French. After the Hundred Year’s War, obviously there was not as much French contact, but the War of the Roses only intensified the alienation. Also, after the war, the nobles were not allowed to raise their own armies anymore; therefore, there was a national army instead of regional armies. Also, any time there is such widespread a long lasting turmoil, the language will be affected. It was very interesting, but also very confusing. What a scary time to live.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
Fire in the bones by S. Michael Wilcox
Okay, never mind. This might have been my favorite article to read. I love learning about the Bible translations into English and the people who were so moved by the Lord to make it happen. I learned a lot of Tyndale in the winter because I read a book called Fire in the Bones by S. Michael Wilcox which was all about William Tyndale and the amazing impact he had on the English language because of his work on the Bible translation. He has such an amazing impact on common words that we use today in religious settings. From the book and the article, I learned :
In translating the Bible, Tyndale introduced new words into the English language, and many were subsequently used in the King James Bible:
• Jehovah (from a transliterated Hebrew construction in the Old Testament; composed from the Tetragrammaton YHWH and the vowels of adonai: YaHoWaH)
• Passover (as the name for the Jewish holiday, Pesach or Pesah),
• Atonement (= at + onement), which goes beyond mere "reconciliation" to mean "to unite" or "to cover", which springs from the Hebrew kippur, the Old Testament version of kippur being the covering of doorposts with blood, or "Day of Atonement".
• scapegoat (the goat that bears the sins and iniquities of the people in Leviticus, Chapter 16)
He also coined such familiar phrases as:
• let there be light
• the powers that be
• my brother's keeper
• the salt of the earth
• a law unto themselves
• filthy lucre
• it came to pass
• gave up the ghost
• the signs of the times
• the spirit is willing
• live and move and have our being
• fight the good fight
All of the above is taken from the website.
World English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English

I am writing this on the last day of the term. We talked about World English today and I thought that it was an interesting discussion. We talked about why English is used so much in the world and where it is used. It really is amazing how English has seeped into the everyday necessary life all over the world. It is also interesting how languages are created and pidgins and creoles are formed. I now know that pidgins are not formed from simply TWO languages. They are formed from MORE THAN TWO.  I looked at several different articles, but I thought that this article was the best to recommend to my other fellow students who would want to learn more about World English, or also known as International English.