Kennings

[Chrysophylax Dives]

... the principal means by which colour was given to Old English verse, ... sometimes called by the Icelandic name 'kenning' (description), the compound offers a partial and often imaginative or fanciful description of a thing, and the poets may use it instead of the normal 'name'.

He who in those days said and who heard flæschama 'flesh-raiment', ban-hus 'bone-house', hreðer-loca 'heart-prison', thought of the soul shut in the body, as the frail body itself is trammelled in armour, or as a bird in a narrow cage, or steam pent in a cauldron. There it seethed and struggled in the wylmas, the boiling surges beloved of the old poets, until its passion was released and it fled away on ellor-sið, a journey to other places, 'which none can report with truth, not lords in their halls nor mighty men beneath the sky' (50-52).

This from Tolkien 'On Translating Beowulf' (1940). I don't really understand this. Two questions.

(1) Is flæschama 'flesh-raiment' akin to 'Fanuilos' and the whole Ainur deal we have discussed before?

(2) Some people say that they prefer their kennings noun-noun rather than noun-adjective. That just seems really stupid to me and i cannot make head nor tail of why a normal human being would take such an attitude. I'm not being judgmental - i really am open to understanding such a weird preference.

Any illumination on either would be most welcome, good plaza folk.

Admins. i'm putting in these whips just to test the waters. I'd prefer if you tell me to delete them if whips are illegal in this PG13 happy house (rather than step into the thread and delete yourselves, which i regard as breaking and entering, and it has happened to me before in the plaza, though not the nu one). The whips are not for anyone in particular, i think, which is because nobody has asked me for the whip. So does this mean it is a non-consensual whip and so prohibited? Help please. I am deeply confused. I mean, if we are not allowed to use the whip and the lash, why are the icons placed so temptingly just to the right of my typing hands?

To be clear, i'm much more interested in the top part of the post. but feel free to engage on the real issues of censorship etc etc if that is your fancy.

Edit: when i said to you (admins) above that i'd prefer that you don't step into this thread and delete yourselves, i meant, of course, you delete the whips in the thread. to be honest, i'm not sure if you have the admin powers to delete yourselves. if you do, please don't use them. at least, not yet.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

The problem is with not understanding the nature of the old tongues, it is synthetic not analytic. It is a normal matter that to the compound word adjectives and/or verbs, adverbs and/or nouns can be added as prefixes and suffixes. It is a literally phonetic play with words, a description of a subject that is normally used by another word. It calls on feeling what it is about, not what the mind can make of it. Why would you not otherwise call yourself a skald?

For example, a 'screeching write-wood' (schrijfhout in Dutch) tells you the sound, the material and the use... makes a pencil together.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

i was just woken to these big booms every few minutes, and the earth shakes. for a few moment i hoped it was thunder but i knew it was rockets. and my second thought, as i lay listening to those familiar BOOMS, was 'damn! i pushed those admins up one stair too many!' but just to be explicit: now i hear the sirens and the booms with my cup of coffee, i am 99% sure this is not admin retaliation. (Btw, please don't ask about safety. if i stop replying u can assume a missile fell on our house. but the odds are not much different to crossing a busy street.)

Aiks. I am gonna ask you to explain that to me again slowly, please. Please bear in mind that i went to school in a day in which grammar was not fashionable, and unlike you i do not have fluency in a second language. so i know you know what you are talking about, but can you go slowly?

What do you mean by the old tongues are synthetic and not analytic?
And, well, could you unpack this a bit for me please? Just repeat what you already said but slowly. assume i have an admin-mind.

"It is a literally phonetic play with words, a description of a subject that is normally used by another word. It calls on feeling what it is about, not what the mind can make of it."

[Aikári Salmarinian]

It is not this hard to understand. Before our today language rules, it was the way to write down exactly what you said. That is phonetic, everyone based on accent and background can speak a word differently. They put down in how they speak. It is also why the Egyptian hieroglyphs were so hard to crack, till they found the Rosetta stone. Synthetic means only you cannot analyse the language construction as we are used to do in the languages we speak anno 2023. I get back later about this to riddle it out for you, because I have an excursion today to the coast and will make photos.

In basics it is also how young children construct language when they learn to speak in the first years of their lives. 'write-wood' was one of my own inventions from my time as toddler.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I get back later about this to riddle it out for you, because I have an excursion today to the coast and will make photos.

Thank you very much! I look forward to it very much. Enjoy your excursion.

[Arnyn]

I think Aikari brings up an interesting topic with the synthetic languages vs analytic languages. And so I couldn't stop myself. Sorry!

Analytic language 'analyses' one concept into one, separate word. Or, differently put: The ultimate analytic language would be that every word would consist of only one morpheme. One unit of 'meaning'. One unit of the language that cannot be further divided.

"Forest" is one morpheme. "You" is one morpheme. "Do" is one morpheme.

Synthetic language 'synthesises' different concepts into one and the same word. Or, differently put: a very synthetic language tends to combine many concepts, many units of meaning, many morphemes, into a single word. The more information you get from one word, the more synthetic a language becomes.
Synthethis can come in different forms.

Derivational synthesis takes two (or more, but let's keep it simple) morphemes with their own meaning and combines these two different unis of meaning to make a new unit - a compound, that has it's own, more specific meaning. There you have your kennings: weorðmyndum > worth/deserving + shape/form/image/etc > honour -- although of course it must be admitted that the additional artistry of poetry is added to the kenning, elevating it from the more commonplace compound as we would know it today. A much more lackluster example of derivational synthetic could therefore be "bedroom", or "dishwasher". It still takes two separate meanings to combine it into a new one, but boy are they uninspired, right? "Friendship" lies somewhere in between, I would say. ^^

Then we also have relational synthesis. That would be the combination of different morphemes to indicate grammatical properties. A morpheme could be added to indicate plural, gender, but a morpheme could also tell you what the subject or object of a sentence is and replace word order.
"Silva" in Latin is one morpheme. But 'silvam' - still means forest, but the ending 'am' tells you the case, the accusative, and that would indicate it could never be the subject of the sentence. It can be the object of a sentence, or it could follow a certain preposition that requires the case. Therefore 'silvam' could be place anywhere in the sentence. Unlike in English, where you need the word or pragmatism to tell you which nous is the object and which is the subject.

"Hagas" in Spanish combines "you" and "do" into one word, one concept, which makes Spanish more synthetic than English.
"Teacher" is more synthetic than "teach" - because "teacher" consists of two morphemes.
The above are very simply examples; in some synthetic languages one very long word can contain the information of basically a whole sentence in English. Yowza.

What is interesting is that English is considered analytical today, but it was once more fusional. Now English isn't purely analytic of course - certain composite elements still exist today. So whether you put a language as analytic or synthetic comes down to the degree a language is more or less one or the other, and the idea of what is less or more analytic may change over time, just as the language itself changes and evolves (or disintegrates, depending on your personal stance) over time.

I hope I could explain it to some degree of satisfaction. I only have an admin-mind, after all.

[Arnyn]

Also, @Chrysophylax Dives , the use of the whip has never been forbidden! Surely no one has told you that it is. But just like booze, sugar, coffee, and even fruit and water (even too much water will kill you) - the wise would suggest (never advise, of course, but suggest) the employ of moderation, as well as consideration. The latter in the sense that not everyone will joyfully engage in lashings! It may be a bizarre world, but it is what it is.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

I think Arnyn stole my momentum.

Arnyn: Cool you explained it this far.

Chrys: Back to the example of "screeching write-wood', is screeching the sound of the point of the pencil on paper. Write is what you do with the pencil, and the wood is what it is made from. So instead to use 'pencil', as poet or skald, you use a combination of words to express something in often more heraldic way. It is a way of give colour to a text, as a painter uses colours to express his artwork.

Ya should know, the dialect I speak isn't the standard Dutch at all, what we used to write at school. What it though allows me, in phonetic sense, accessing what was spoken in 16th century and later. Analytical languages are easier to learn as is said, but the trap behind it is that learning a language comes more to feeling also than knowing all the rules by mind. Synthetic languages got something more exciting, it is the amalgation of words into a single unit. Linguistically what you speak isn't what you write down or read in a book.

Flaesc-hama means flesh-covering, which is the hide I feel rather than clothes.

Noun-noun is a normal use to me, as noun-adjective, especially in Dutch or German. It doesn't bother me.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Moderation was never my thing.

Aiks, this is wonderful! I need to read a few times because i see that you are showing me something that i do not quite see (as yet).

I read a lot and often read way past my understanding. So i recognize these linguistic categories of 'analytic' and 'synthetic' as - i am actually quite certain - the fundamental professional context of Tolkien's thought. The key counterpoint here is a Danish philologist/linguist named Otto Jesperson. (Keep in mind, the facts i give you are correct, but i don't fully understand what they mean - maybe you can help me tease it out.)

Jesperson made this revolution around 1900, which knocks them for six in Oxford - they spend three decades trying to answer Jesperson. The stable ground is the longstanding pressuposition of the philologists that the older forms of the European languages were synthetic but that over time they had become analytic. This (if i recall) was bewailed as a loss. Jesperson proclaimed it an almost Darwinian evolution towards efficient communication. Analytical language became the ideal, and Jesperson was one of the philologists who made common cause with the professional logicians of the day, who were seeking a pure analytical language of logic, and he invented various 'more efficient' machine languages (that Tolkien really, really hated).

On the one hand, Tolkien appears as a reactionary, a lover of the Old Entish and the speech of Rohan. But on the other hand he appears to have seized in the kenning and the 'fairy-element' a method of analysis that, on the one hand, subverted Jesperson's linguistic analysis into a fairy-story, and on the other was always at the heart of the English language.

That is about as good as i can put it without your help.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Flaesc-hama means flesh-covering, which is the hide I feel rather than clothes.

Ooo! That is really good. i glimpse something.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Take your time to read and process it. I am convinced you know it more than you are aware off. See it how a compound word of today can sound:

Ruin (correct word)
Ru'win (speak out)
Ruw'n (speak out)
Ru'wen (speak out)

It differs so much if you are British, Irish, Scottish or from the mainland, or even Canada and Australia. I have heard English spoken by many nationalities they change English into a half synthetic language and happens under the influence of accents. Linguistic rules are cute for what we write down, so we can read all works from around the globe. But speaking, we throw them happily out the window.

[Arnyn]

Sorry, Aiks Sometimes my interest in linguistics sort of takes over.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Arnyn: That interest is splendid and always welcome. I would like it very much to learn more of your insights. Please, drop by more often, if you can spare the time.

I have too some interest what etymology in languages is. How it is structured. Where they come from. It is an interest that was originally my mother's and she stuffed my sister and me with it what did not work out as she had in mind. But yes the more technical and evolving side in differences, in synthetic and analytical and other forms is enlightening to me. I was always good with grammatica.

Least but not last, linguistics is also in smaller or larger context part of the personal identity: "Who are you?"

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I think Aikari brings up an interesting topic with the synthetic languages vs analytic languages. And so I couldn't stop myself. Sorry!

I only have an admin-mind, after all.

i do apologize for any acid admin-comments. i have very much appreciated your being a good sport.

also, i somehow missed your post (Sunday was an extremely bad day here, so i was not fully focused). please, never (ever) apologize for writing long posts on this kind of thing. specially not now, when i have times when i need to lose my mind in something just like this.

i'll be honest, both of you talk in ways i find hard to follow. i appreciate that i am getting the good, serious linguistics. but i need to digest the concepts you set out. in the meanwhile, i will post below something from Jespersen and ask you and Aiks (and any one else reading) how it relates to all this (if at all).

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Post has 3 parts: The Hobbit, Jespersen, Kenning question.

The Hobbit

"Good morning! " said Bilbo, and he meant it.

"What do you mean? " he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I wanted or not; or that you feel good this morning;or that it is morning to be good on?" "All of them at once," said Bilbo.

"Good morning! " he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water. " By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.

"What a lot of things you do use 'Good morning' for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off."

"I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business."

"Indeed for your old grand-father Took's sake, and for the sake of poor Belladonna, I will give you what you asked for."

"I beg your pardon, I haven't asked you for anything!"

"Yes, you have! Twice now. My pardon. I give it to you. In fact I will go so far as to send you on this adventure.

Jespersen
The Philosophy of Grammar (1924) identifies a 'formula' as a linguistic phrase that, while it may be analyzed into distinct words, "is felt and handled as a unit, which may often mean something quite different from the meaning of the component words taken separately."

He explains that a formula has a fixed word order. So, e.g. one may say 'some + good + thing' but when 'some + thing' = a formula, one can only say 'something + good'.

A formula may be a whole sentence or a group of words, or it may be one word, or it may be only part of a word, - that is not important, but it must always be something which to the actual speech-instinct is a unit which cannot be further analysed or decomposed in the way a free combination can.

And Jespersen's examples:

 Good morning! Thank you. Beg your pardon.


Question
Tolkien was surely playing with Jespersen when he wrote this first chapter (1930). He seems to me to be taking 'formulas' as Jespersen accounts for them into somewhere else. Does it even make sense to start to think of 'Good morning' as a kenning?

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Goodmorning? As a lone standing compound word, yes it is a morning with a positive sense of the word, adding by good, use of adjective and noun. It is a greeting. We could also say: Badmorning! Then it is a morning with a negative sense of the word, adding by using bad instead of good. In the wishing context, for this is combination of two words in placed, you give a wish for the hours ahead, good or bad. In each other's company. But agitated as the Hobbit is by the all sudden arrival, the Hobbit switches to polite tactics to get rid of the wizard. The wizard is only welcome with a proper invite.

Bilbo/Gandalf text comes to me in a literal sense of the text, rather stretched out to make a conversation for the need of making a conversation. I don't know about some sort of formula. I find it bit far-fetched to search for such things. What it comes down to is what emphasis is used on the word "goodmorning'. If you say good-morning, with the accent on the first part, then it get an automatically merit sense to it. But if the accent falls on the second part, good-morning, then it shifts that the morning is not subjective to being good. It makes you uneasy, if it is said to you like this.

Goodmorning is a kenning, without no doubt. It is in the Germanic language as a single compound word written, 'goedemorgen' (Dutch). The Germans go for two words: Guten Morgen. Way I feel how it is across the pond. But Arnyn might shine a clearer light over this than me?

Jespersen is a scholar I never heard before now. But aye, I accessed the Hobbit to read through the whole text where these lines were coming from.

"Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning! But please come to tea - any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow! Good-bye! (Bilbo)"

The finishing end to this conversation is another goodmorning, where the use is meant, to bide a goodmorning as a goodbye.

"I beg your pardon." It is by means not really meant to be taken literally, but Gandalf does it on purpose to what I feel throw Bilbo off and confuse him and then brings up the adventure thing. I have no idea if Tolkien was thinking about Jesperson while writing this passage for the Hobbit and started a children's book. In a children's book matters are taken literally, as kids do younger than 12 years. It is recognisable for them. I think there is not more to the words than their literal sense they are written. Gandalf replies: "Yes, you have! Twice now. My pardon. I give it you." As an adult this gives a light airy sphere to the situation to me, in the same sense as it would have been if I was a child. It is humour.

The whole conversation got this refined, correct politeness to refusals than was common in the years before the war, but what has gone out of fashion ninety years later. We are rather blunt these days with our refusals.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, @Arnyn, et al.

First, The Hobbit as story: Gandalf is a master of distraction here, and 'i beg your pardon' is funny but we should maybe forget about it. 'Good morning' is also distraction (the real thing is the invitation to tea, which allows the mark on the door); 'Good morning' is just another element in the wizard's befuddlement of poor Bilbo's wits. But i think is offered as a foretaste of what is to come: 'magic ring' and 'hidden door' and the like.

Second, the language-theory at work here.

"Good morning! " said Bilbo, and he meant it.
"What do you mean? " he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning;or that it is morning to be good on?"

One point we can take from this, surely, is that 'Good morning' (a kenning) is revealed to mean far more than we ever thought it did, and one is left suspecting more meanings yet untapped. Now consider this notion of a well of meaning as yet untapped in relation to this long paragraph from the 1940 'On Translating Beowulf':

I have called this the poetic class, because there is a poetic intention in their making. But compounds of this kind are not confined to verse: not even those which are poetic and fanciful. We find 'kennings' in ordinary language, though they have then as a rule become trite in the process of becoming familiar. They may be no longer analysed, even when their form has not actually become obscured by wear. We need not be led astray in our valuation of the living compounds of poetry by such current 'kennings' as the prose lichama = body, or hlafweard = master. It is true that lichama the 'raiment of flesh', discardable, distinct from the sawol or 'soul' to which it was intricately fitted, became an ordinary word for 'body', and in its later form licuma revealed the evaporation of feeling for its analysis and full meaning. It is true that hlaf-weard 'bread-keeper' is seldom found in this clear form, and usually appeared as hlaford (whence our wholly obscured lord), having become among the English the ordinary word for 'lord' or 'master', often with no reference to the bounty of the patriarch. But this emptying of significance is not true even of the most hackneyed of the 'kennings' of the poets. It is not true of swanrad 200, beadoleoma 1523, woruldcandel 1965, goldwine 1171, banhus 2508, and the host of similar devices in Old English verse. If not fresh, in the sense of being struck out then and there where we first meet them, they are fresh and alive in preserving a significance and feeling as full, or nearly as full, as when they were first devised. Though lic-hama faded into licuma, though there is now 'nothing new under the sun', we need not think that ban-hus meant merely 'body', or such a stock phrase as hæleð under heofenum 52 merely 'men'.

So what i read here is a method of reading Old English kennings - and maybe formulaic expressions of everyday language today - in which it is suggested that we do not settle for the empty, obvious meaning but rather dig deeper down seeking nuggests of long-forgotten wisdom.

Does that make sense?

(5)

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: I have real intention to skip everything that is written about and restart by the foundations. Analysing a pure synthetically written text is trying compare pears with apples. To me, it takes a more practical approach. It is not as much the verse, but as the verse comes to you and the creation of your own images about it. That is different for each person. Legends told of heroism, but also sense of tradition, culture, judgment, battle, courage, kitchen, rights and rules. Beowulf is not a poem to forget when it is finished. It is a song that the bard or skald gives to you, and stays with you long after he said his farewells.

This summer I was in the Norwegian Church in Rotterdam, where a course in Norse Poetry was given. And we heard for an hour long what seemed to me a cobbled together poem about Thor and Loki, in the old style, but modern word told. Three months on, I recall not the literal text the women told, but what stayed with me was the drum played and the accents in their voices, that created in return an ambiance that with reciting a piece of text rarely lingers. In that course there was no analysing, but just telling on feeling. In the end I had to tell a story myself orally for a group of eight people. It was fun for me, but it is a fact this is really difficult to do, sure when you have stagefright.

Words today, even in our vocabulary, can have different meanings in different settings. It is not strange to me that goodmorning has different meanings, but yeah I got a lot handed down in my youth from my parents and grandparents, which were all born prior 1945AD. I find it quite difficult to understand that there are people out there, for who a word as goodmorning know in lesser contexts than I can. But yeah I love figuring out there is more to a word than a single meaning.

In that aspect, we are all different peas in a single pot.