Language and Magic for Merlin

[nyxelestia]

I've been seeing a lot of people interested in translating spells into the Old English that is often used on BBC Merlin for their fics, but mostly relying on random, crappy Internet translators that ultimately don't do too much good in terms of translating.
 

So, the language geek in me clawed its way out and decided to help.

If you use this page to translate something, please credit and link back to it somewhere in your entry.

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Merlin uses Old English for their spells. The funny thing is that around the 6th century - the vague era of when the show would probably take place - the actual language would've been Old English, with the "old/ancient" language being Latin, Proto-Celtic, and Old Welsh. (As a general rule, I, myself, tend to just refer to the language as "the Old Tongue" in my fics to save myself the trouble of dealing with the historical realignment of languages).

This is basically just a little ditty on translation, really, taken straight from my post on Old English on my website. At the end, though, I've added in some extra stuff specifically for Merlin writers.

First off, let's start off with a brief history of Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon):

Englisc was a language spoken across England and parts of Scotland from about the 5th-12th centuries AD. It is a West Germanic language that had a very light influence from Celtic, and some heavier influences from Latin and Old Norse.

 

There were periods of sharp Latin influence due to Christian priests running around - especially since scholars and priests, who made up the most of the literate/educated population, were usually also well read in Latin - but the biggest influence was near the end of Old English's reign, wherein we see a slow change towards Middle English coming in with the heavy Latin influence of the time. Celtic influence is mostly just some loan words, and Old Norse has a bit of a grammatical influence along with a considerable amount of loan words. (Because as any linguist knows, English gets most of its own words by robbing other languages :P).

The actual history of the language is far more nuanced than that, but that would be the general gist of it.

Now - on to the main article!

So, to start with, quick basics of Old English:

 

It has declension - the changing of nouns to fit the role in the sentence.

 

It has conjugation of a weird sort - conjugation, meaning the changing of verbs based on tense and person.

 

Those two links above are useful for basic understanding of conjugation and declension in Old English. If you don't know what declension is at all, go here, and if you don't know what conjugation is at all, go here. However, these are, admittedly, best read with the above links, to give you an idea for how they work.

 

Got that?

 

A Few Quick Tips:

 

- þ/ð = th, for anglicizing purposes

 

- Old English is like Modern English we use, today, in terms of Word Order:

-In statements, it is SVO - Subject-Verb-Object. ("The cat is on the bed.")
-When it's a question, it's VSO - Verb-Subject-Object. ("Is the cat on the bed?" 
***Old English is a very complicated language. The word order does get much more complicated than that. But for basic statements - which most spells are usually in - then this word order will work.***

 

- And here's the IPA (Interntional Phonetic Alphabet). Helpful with some of the Wiki stuff below.

 

Now, that being said...

 

Links!

 

Old English Translator

 

My favorite translator. Simple, basic. It has two functions, Old English >> Modern English, and Modern English >> Old English. If you type in a word, then use ME >> OE, it will give you the nouns, the verbs, and the adjectives - in that order - that have your word in it.

 

And not just that, either!

 

For the nouns, it will give you the declension tables, for the singular and plural of each case. For the verbs, it will give you full conjugation tables - singular, plural, for 1st/2nd/3rd persons, for past and and present indicative, subjunctive, and participle modes, along with singular and plural imperative, and inflectived infinitive. For the adjectives, it will give you how to decline/conjugate the adjectives for singular and plural masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.

 

In other words, it will it will give you a basic rundown of everything.

 

So, to be honest, you're almost completely set with this one...

 

...almost.

 

Before you get into that, you'll want to read into this:

 

Old English Pronouns - Wiki

 

Because obviously, this is how the verbs will come into play, in conjugation. Whatever word you typed into the translator, just compare the verbs you get with the pronoun chart, and you should be able to match what goes to where pretty quickly.

 

Old English Prepositions - Wiki

 

Because the translator above doesn't really do prepositions well. *shrugs* Go figure.

 

Aaaand...

 

Old English Made Easy Dictionary

 

It doesn't have much, as the site is unfinished, but what little there is, is quite useful as a back-up dictionary. Not something you need, but good to have on hand. Though still, the above translator linked at the top should cover it.

 

When you get to the dictionary, just click on the letter of the word you want to look up under "Modern English" and then use the Find funtion of your computer (Ctrl+F for Firefox and Internet Explorer, and you can usually find the Find function - and it's keyboard shortcut - under the "Edit" menu of your browser, if it has the function at all) to search a word on there. It's also useful if you want to double check a word's meaning. In addition, it has a "nouns" section which gives an explicitly in-depth explanation on Old English Declension, including irregular nouns and stuff, and expamples underneath. The other sections - verbs and whatnot - aren't done, so don't bother trying with those ones.

 

ETA:

Old English Lessons Online from the University of Calgary - thanks to waeter

 

If you have your browser configured to RealAudio, you can listen to pronunciations of the words and letters. And even if not, it's still an excellent and comprehensive course on Old English, including audio, and semi-professional and fully academic texts on the subject to read. It's like the class, for free! Being as comprehensive as it is, it's not that great for anyone who just wants their spells translated, and that's it - but for those fully interested in the language, this is the best place to go.

ETA 2: So, here are several more links courtesy of sineala.

Here (PDF) is an excellent one-page spread-sheet on the basics of Old English grammar. It's best used to after you've managed to get a good grip of the grammar from the Wiki's/other sites, as otherwise it makes no sense at all.

This is an electronic introduction to Old English - also much like having free lessons in the language, along with some accompanying exercises to get some good practice in the language if you're interested.

And here we have some texts written in Old English that, when you click on the word, will give you its meaning and case/tense and number and whatnot. Useful for getting the gist of the language as a whole, even if you don't understand it at all.

Now, writing!

 

Old English started out as being written in Elder Futhark, but then it switched over to half-uncial script midway through.

 

The Elder Futhark is a runic alphabet (early Germanic written language). It's the oldest form - hence the name - and used pretty much from the 2nd-8th centuries. Each rune also has it's own name, and many of these are day-to-day words, to which end some of the runes essentially have a definition as a "word"/'abstract concept' by their own right, to which end, when they are used in divination, their meanings are stretched dramatically.

For example, "othala" means estate, which has extended to inheritance, which has extended to possession, which has extended to property - and as such, in many rural areas of Europe, you'll still see it being used to mean "property", even though its name's meaning is "estate". But for the most part, it's used as an alphabet, rather than an abstract language. The system of meanings, and stretched meanings, is, for the most part, confined to runic divination. This is likely what the older magical texts in Merlin would be written in, and/or (depending on your personal preferences) what the very-magic-oriented Druids would likely use.

 

Half-uncial script is basically the Latin lettering we use today. What makes it special enough to be called what it is? Well, first off, you should know that uncial script is basically a type of Latin which uses all capital letters - proper nouns and sentence beginnings are distinguished by the first letters of the word being bigger than the rest, but the rest are still capital letters. Half-uncial script is basically a different form of it, wherein some of the letters more resemble their lowercase counterparts, but ultimately it's still largely capital letters. It was used from the 3rd-8th centuries, from where it then developed into insular script, which eventually evolved into the modern Latin alphabet we use, today. This is the script we see used in Merlin, and as the general time period of Merlin (~5th/6th century AD), this would be the most likely alphabet used for Old English, being the ending transition from Futhark to Latin.

So far, Merlin's spellbook is mostly written in generic medieval Latin script, half-uncial and similar. Some of Gaius's books also included Ogham. That, however, is an ancient Irish language, and so is historically irrelevant, but canonically useful.

 

Hope this helped!
 

 

Bonus Stuff For Merlin Writers

Tarahill's The Runic Journey is my favorite page for runes and magic. It not only gives a very brief but useful history of the language, it has the best definitions of the runes, especially for magic, showing each rune's divinatory meaning, magical use, and associated mythology, along with a nice analysis on each rune. She also includes a great resource list of links on runes. If you want to have one base site to work with, this is it.

Here is another page that gives details on the meanings of the runes. There're a bunch of paragraphs next to each rune. If you're skimming through, just read the last one-line paragraph at the bottom of each passage to make your way quickly through it. If you know what rune you're looking for, read the whole thing - the details are a bit dodgy, but the general idea is usually pretty good to work with in terms of magic and whatnot.

Also, a bunch of random rune charms. Mostly not useful, but quite fun. It includes charms for courage, justice, to quit smoking, to protect your computer, and a love charm from a man to a man.

The show makes frequent use of Ogham, the written language used for Primitive and Old Irish. Now, this could be used to indicate a stronger travel/bond/whatever with Ireland than is historically accurate for the general 6th century era Merlin largely takes place in. (Consider this a good thing: this gives you a much broader range of magic, mythology, and language to work with).

And, because of the complete lack of historical accuracy in the show (corn, anyone?), I also thought it would be a good idea to bring up Midieval runes. It's a descendent of futhark and acts as a bit of a bridge between the use of runes and Latin for writing in the English language, and has more characters that can be related to Latin alphabet and phonology.

And if those two alone aren't really that interesting, here's the article on runic alphabets in general, which gives you a brief rundown of all runic alphabets and links to the more detailed articles about them, as they suit your interest.

Utterly random: stav is a martial art in which the postures are often based on the runes. Might be of interest to some, especially those who like to have "Druid warriors" in their fics. There's also runic yoga in which the poses are based off the runes. (Hm...maybe this could eventually be stretched by Merlin to a midieval-English version of the Kama Sutra? ^_~)

I hope you all have enjoyed this post, and make frequent use of it. Please, if you do use this post, link back to it, or at least tell readers how to find it, so more people will be able to learn about Language and Magic for Merlin.

Last edited on March 3rd, 2011

Comments

[shinetheway.livejournal.com]

I am tremendously impressed. My scholastic background is all in Latin, so this was hugely helpful. Thanks for putting all this time and care into it--this is getting bookmarked for certain.

[waeter.livejournal.com]

- æ = ae/a'e, similar to "Kyle", or "child"

Or as /æ/ (like "a" in "cat"). I mean, my own Old English skills are probably much lower than yours (I adore OE, but so far, I haven't had an opportunity to learn it properly :/), but according to this website (http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl401/lessons/pronunc1.htm) (which, btw, has audio samples of pronunciation, and, well, I don't know how much of a geek you are, but I almost went hyper when I found them xDD), it depended on what letters stood before and after it (for example, you pronounce g as in "grape" if a vowel of one type stands before it, and like modern y in yes or yellow if it's a vowel of another type).

But aside from that, yay for this post. :)) I'm sure it's going to be really helpful for writers and also plain geeks and the fandom's OE wannabes like me. ;)

[archaeologist-d.livejournal.com]

Thanks for putting them all in one location. I've been using the translator site and the Old English made easy site but I'll have to give wiki a try. My big problem is that I have no idea what infinitives, indicatives, subjunctives, etc are. So on top of going to get a word translated, I have to go to modern English to figure out which word I should use. So I try and have as few spells as possible.

[meridian_rose]

Thanks for this; added to memories for future reference.
Here via merlinbbc but I have an interest in runes, folklore, etc, so this was pleasing on several levels :)

[i-claudia.livejournal.com]

This is a great resource! Definitely bookmarking for future reference; thanks for taking the time to put it together!

[ravenflight21.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for doing this. I studied Anglo Saxon once upon a time, but I can't remember any of it nowadays. This is a great help!

[prfctdaze.livejournal.com]

This will really come in handy. Thanks very much!

[mithrel.livejournal.com]

This is cool. I was a bit taken aback with them using Old English as well, since usually "magic" languages are different from the vernacular.

I just glanced over this, since I got my BA in Linguistics, and the History of English class I took went over Old English to some degree. (And I've been driving myself crazy trying to figure out the spells on Merlin. Nimueh I could understand, but not Merlin, o.O)

[jacketpotato.livejournal.com]

hey this is pretty ace! do you mind if I include a link to this post in the resource list I am building for merlin_betas?

[dragonmage86.livejournal.com]

Wow... this is excellent. :) Very interesting and useful. The writer/linguistics-fan in me heartily commends you for this.

[pinnedtoatree.livejournal.com]

Once I use your amazing resources to look up how to say 'thank you' in Old English, I will say THANK YOU in every language I know.

1. Thank you!!!
2. Merci beaucoup!
3. Arigatou!
4. That's all I got so far. ^_^

praise! ... and pedantry

[skalja.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent write-up -- I'm a deeply lapsed Old English geek and it sends me into paroxysms of geeky joy.

I do need to point out one issue, though, not with the language but with the history. You're absolutely right that Arthur lived in the 5th/6th century if he ever existed. However, Merlin apparently follows in the grand old literary tradition of setting Arthur's reign in an amorphous High Middle Ages setting. The knight's armor, the jousting, the clothing (especially of the upper classes), the castle (no castles like that in the 6th century!) ... what clinches it for me is that Geoffrey of Monmouth is a recurring character. Good ol' Geoff was a real person who we know lived in the first half of the 12th century, so that's a good indicator of the show's (highly fictionalized) timeline.

Anyway, by then people were speaking Middle English, so Old English was the old language and works for the creators' purposes.

I hope this doesn't come across as ripping apart your work or anything -- I think you did a fabulous job, and pooling our knowledge can only help, right?

[sineala.livejournal.com]

Nice of you to write this!

A couple comments: I'm positive that the sound ash makes is, well, [æ], as mentioned. Also I'm not really sure what you're getting at with þ/ð; as far as I know, OE uses the letters interchangeably for IPA [θ] and [ð], which like the rest of the fricatives have totally predictable allophony -- you get the voiced one between two voiced sounds, voiceless elsewhere.

I've only seen the acute accent used to indicate unpredictable (i.e., non-initial) stress; is that what you meant?

Also, OE word order is, uh, really not the same as ModE -- it is verb-second, like most of the rest of Germanic, and not straight SVO like ModE. So you definitely can't do word-for-word translation.

I'm not really a big fan of the online translator method for coming up with translations. I can't get the site you linked to load, but even if it does give you the full paradigms, I don't think that would help without knowing, say, what cases certain verbs require, or the word order. But, hey, it's at least as good as what the show comes up with, from what I can understand of it.

(I am teaching myself OE, very slowly, but I know way too much about linguistics anyway.)

[binglejells.livejournal.com]

Hey, just seen this post and am always happy to see more OE enthusiasts!



Just wanted to drop in a quick message to you, as I read in your discussion above about OE survival, because there actually are quite a few texts featuring survival of OE (I'm reading them and writing about them currently) but I do understand what you mean when you say that. Latin is a language used frequently in stationary texts, i.e religious texts, some which might actually not change for considerable periods of time (if ever) and so it remains constant. OE adapted (eventually) into what we speak today and so, yeah, it doesn't have the solidity of Latin, but that ends up being a kind of metamorphosis if you will of language and therefore survival.

There are some (though unfortunately too few) original examples, examples including the Finnsburg Fragment, Widsith, Beowulf (I don't mean in translation), which I am reading from original transcriptions resulting from aural transmissive and receptive traditions developing into secondary oral traditions (telling stories by mouth and ear developing into writing them down). OE originates from a predominantly pre-literatre time, unless you are the Venerable Bede, which is of course why there is so little evidence of it.

It's possible to learn it, according to my tutor (who speaks Icelandic, Latin, German, French Old English and of course Mordern English all fluently), in six months with an accurate level of fluency. I've been reading OE for about two and a half months now and the progress is truely amazing, it's very fulfilling to be using the books less and less when working :-)

Also, a quick (heh, I said quick the first time XD) note on origins of OE and Ð/ð (eth), Þ/þ (thorn) and Æ/æ (ash). They are different, not really by way of pronounciation, but by purpose/usage. Ð/ð is the softer sounding 'th' sound you might use for something like 'the' or 'these', whereas Þ/þ is the harder 'th' pronounced further forward in the mouth with the teeth in words like 'thought' or 'think'. It's almost like the distinction between 'ch' and 'sh' in ME when they are placed in a word and sound the same but with a small difference in strength, idicated by the spelling.

OE comes from, as you rightly said in your post, the Germanic languages owing to the Great Migrations from 3/400 - 6/700AD. This is also why the Icelandic language, mostly Old Norse but even today is in a more modern Nordic translation is so similar, in fact the modern Icelandic alphabet is the closest in use to OE, almost identical (though bit stress on almost) to how the OE was between 300-700AD. OE began as a mixture of Germanic languages including Gothic (now extinct), Swedish, Nordic, Norwegian, Danish, Faroese the list goes on, so while Latin is very important, it isn't the only 'true basis' as it were. Also, don't forget that OE is the language of the Anglo-Saxon who chased the remainng Romans out of 'Britain' (it wasn't really 'Britain' at this point). This is of course were the Celtic, Old Welsh, Roman and other pre-Germanic/Saxon variants roll into the equation, again as you said.

This probably has very little to do with the spells of Merlin fandom, which was the original points of your post, though I do GRIN every time Merlin incants something I recognise, but it's nice to see some enthusiasm and I hope you don't mind me commenting, I think your post is brilliant!

p.s sorry for geeking out all over your journal

?

[(Anonymous)]

Do you happen to know any of the spells he actually says, i wanna soin my friend abbey out if not do you know a website that does

[hobnailedboots.livejournal.com]

This post is fantastic, thank you! It's definitely being bookmarked.

[teecub.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful, thank you! I saw the link at the bottom of a fic, and had to check it out. OE is a huge love of mine, and this guide makes me squee! You've done an awesome job! <3