18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 35

[cahn]

In the previous post Charles II found AITA:

Look, I, m, believe in live and let live. (And in not going on my travels again. Had enough of that to last a life time.) Why can't everyone else around me be more chill? Instead, my wife refuses to employ my girlfriend, my girlfriend won't budge and accept another office, my brother is set on a course to piss off everyone (he WILL go on his travels again), and my oldest kid shows signs of wanting my job which is just not on, sorry to say. And don't get me started about Mom (thank God she's living abroad). What am I doing wrong? AITA?

Comments

Re: Reading rec question

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, what dead Germanic language did you study?

All of them. Old English, Middle English, Gothic, Old Norse/Icelandic, Old High German, Middle High German--okay, not a lot of Old Saxon, but I did look at the Heliand once, just for completist purposes, when I realized I was missing Old Saxon. :P

showing it's relation with English/Scottish "brave/braw". and I found a word "fäj" which I didn't find even in the most comprehensive Swedish dictionary, but which the notes explained meant "fated to die". That is, it's the same word as English/Scottish "fey"!

Yay! I can also tell you that having a smattering of Scots* is tremendously helpful in my German studies, for exactly this reason! Just like you, I wouldn't have recognized "fäj", but once the notes told me the answer, knowing "fey" would have helped me remember it forever!

* Well, and Tolkien. Tolkien helps. :D (The man actually *knew* all the dead Germanic languages, and didn't just study them without actually learning them.)

Re: Reading rec question

[luzula]

I left this tab open and now our exchange about "ejaculate" reminded me of it. I admire your dedication to language studies!

I obviously know Swedish and English, and I took French in school, and also studied some Latin back then, and spent a summer studying Quenya. But that's about it!