The bLogicarian

Beowulf is an early poem out of a lost world.

Stiernmód nú wæs Éomer, and eft ferhðclǽne.

The Matter of Principle The period of principles can last No more than winking years, or a decade.

(an earlier draft of this poem appeared in Word's Faire) "Of god-ſent men embattail'd under ſtarres That bent the shaken earthe to sund'ring warres, Of their deeds, goddeſſe, ſing; of tryumphe ſtrucke To make heartes wonder What The Actual Fuck..."

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

(This sonnet first published in Grand Little Things) History offered her no hiding place From where the fingers of a ghoulish God Upon the throat of her red bloodied race Had tried to break her neck into a nod.

I've just got to get this out there, after seeing so many people make terrible assumptions about what rhymes can tell you about the English pronunciation of the past.

Just a couple thoughts on the possible phonetic values of some English vowels in the transcriptions of the 17th century spelling reformer Alexander Gil The PRICE Vowel (modern /aɪ/) There is some disagreement in the field about how this vowel developed in…

Ex "Tragoedia Iulii Caesaris" Excerptum Scripsit Anglice Gulielmus Shakespeare (sive Hastiquatius) Vertit in senarios Latinos A.Z.

Carmen De Humpti Dumptii Obitu Sedebat Humptus Dumptius Olim in summo muro Cecedit Humptus Dumptius Casu damnose duro Cui Caesaris praefecti tum Equique adfuerunt Sed lapsum Humptum Dumptium Sarcire nequierunt

Vates Bellator Scripsit Anglice Thomas Morus ("The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone) Vertit Latine A.Z.

In 1617 one Robert Robinson, a kid who matriculated pensioner from Trinity Hall two years before, composed one of the most original works of early English phonetics in "The Art of Pronuntiation" in which he used a script deliberately unrelated to the Roman

The English language in the 16th century was a bit like Icelandic or Danish in the early 21st, in that very few people outside the British Isles had much practical reason to learn the language, and of those foreigners who bothered trying, fewer still ever…

"Some people labor under the impression that their language is superior to all others.

One thing I never understood about stories set in universes where vampires are real: why can’t humans just set up a bloodbank to meet vampiric needs?

(Translation by yours truly) "The poet should avoid not only obscure and arcane words, but also those vernacular words banalized by common overuse.

In illo uultu ab odio philosophie uastato conspexi primum imaginem Antichristi, qui non uenit de tribu Iude sicut simulauerint annunciatores eius, nec de regione ulla longinqua.

Narrationem "Bellorum Stellarium" si recoquere numeris Latinis velim, huiuscemodi initium faciam.

Sunt qui dicunt linguam latinam emolumentum habere quo carent aliae linguae, videlicet quod non mutatur.

1) Proper motivation is key.

Just a few readings of Latin poetry to illustrate my most recent thinking on the sound of Latin verse in the Late Republic and Early Empire.

A little Old English poem that I found myself writing about the burial of King Alaric of the Goths in the Busento river.

Ben Jonson's son died in the London plague epidemic of 1603.

The pronunciation of Old English used in teaching it is essentially a spelling pronunciation, with the regularized graphemes of Late West Saxon mapped onto sounds that English-speaking academics are able to pronounce.

The language of literature is not the same thing as that of ordinary speech.