Hey, I'm the translator. It was a pleasure working with Miracle Aligner on this one. I see there's some confusion about the English used. I mostly adhered to Orm's English, which is from the late 12th century. This is Early Middle English, only a few decades after the last Old English documents were written. Most people's perception of Middle English is heavily biased towards Chaucer, but many other Middle English writers existed, and Orm was one of them. They spanned several dialects and hundreds of years. Middle English is not a single definitive standard - it's a continuum of dialects within an approximate period of time. Different dialects could be quite distinctive. Orm's English does not look very much like Chaucer's English because it was several hundred years earlier, it had very little French influence, and Orm used his own phonetic spelling method for words (which is very convenient for modern linguists - we can know how it sounded!). But grammatically, Orm's English is much closer to Chaucer than to Beowulf. Referring to Orm's English as "Early Middle English", and Chaucer's English as "Late Middle English", does some justice to the difference. But it's worth remembering that terms like "Middle English" are convenient categories for modern scholars to use. Orm and Chaucer would not necessarily think of themselves as speaking the same language. I hope you enjoy the song!
Heyaa!!! The man himself haha. Thanks for clearing up the confusion dude :) I was struggling and doing a bad job of doing it myself XD Thank you so much again for all the work you put into helping me bring these covers to life.
@HrothgarLareow Thank you for explaining! :) (And for bringing Orm to my attention.) If you would be so kind, can you point me to more materials I can use if I want to learn?
My favorite part of these videos is the accounting for anachronisms, like swapping "bullet" for "arrow" to get "see how deep the arrow lies." Little changes like that really make these songs sound from an era long past.
... seems unnecessary though, since there's a word for bullet in Middle English, *bullet*, though it would at the time refer to a projectile for a sling, not for a firearm.
@@Atzya bow and arrow is closer to a gun and bullet to the intent of the song than a sling and shot, or early bullet. I'm wondering now if bullet, the word, comes from the use of bull metal as shot for a sling.
The 'bull' is colloquially still the centre of a target, often called 'the bull's eye' or 'bullseye', so perhaps bullet means 'the little thing that hits it's mark', or 'the accurate'?
@@stevetheduck1425 in this case it's derived from Old French 'boule', meaning 'ball' And your use of 'bull' there is really nonstandard. Nobody I know of has ever used it that way, anyway, and I haven't read of any such uses? Where are you from?
It's so cool seeing the words that have survived into modern English, such as "friend," "hill," and "little." Just to know that over 1,000 years later we're using the same exact words as our distant ancestors is chilling.
There’s a runic inscription in late Proto-Germanic/Early Proto-Norse, that when transliterated to the Latin alphabet has the word “after” totally unchanged.
You should check out the _History of English Podcast._ You will have that feeling over and over! I think it actually makes you more fluent to know the context and etymology.
Before these songs, I never knew the English language had its awkward teenage-phase, where it cosplayed its own fan-fic about shipping together Latin and Swedish.
Our language went through several changes, starting with Old English/Ėnglisc where it was a mish mash of a west German dialect, Latin, Celtic and Norse all the way to the language we speak now. In Yorkshire, we use a lot of words unique to our particular dialect of English, which have their roots in Old English.
As someone from germany who also speaks english and knows some middle high german (german literature studies in college ages back... don't ask), early middle english is really intriguing to me by account of how much I actually can understand. Also the interpretation of the song is awesome.
Yeah, it's amazing how similar the Germanic languages actually are despite surface appearances. I took a course in Old English in Grad school; those of us who'd studied German had a MUCH easier time of it than those who hadn't. One time we were stuck on a particular passage from Beowulf. Suddenly a girl let out a shriek and yelled, "Oh my god! It's German! Start from the beginning and pretend it's a funky dialect of German." We did that and suddenly we understood 3/4 of the text instead of 1/4. Later, when I was lucky enough to visit Iceland, Denmark, & Sweden briefly, I was surprised at how much simple text I could understand in context. Of course, that didn't help at all with understanding spoken language😅.
@ttaibe my native language is American English, but I'm in the early stages of learning Dutch. It was interesting that even with my limited Dutch, I saw/heard some commonalities.
I always love how much more similar the older versions of English sound to languages like Dutch. Unlike modern English I'd be able to understand quite a bit of this (spoken even more than sang) without being exposed to the language before. They always remind me of how close English and Dutch are related even though it might not seem that way (anymore)
This Englishman can say that modern Dutch or Nederlands is still similar to modern English, yet Danish somehow is closer in sound and 'cadence', for want of a better word. Knowing that many similar words exist and some sentences can be understood in many languages, such as 'the ship sailed up the stream', it shows were are closer than is often thought.
@@stevetheduck1425 As well as their shared roots and long history of linguistic exchange, English and Danish also have fellowship in that they are both the weird odd-ones-out in their respective branches of the Germanic family tree!
@@mortified776 What do you mean by “their respective branches”? They’re both part of the West Germanic branch. Unless you mean Ingvaeonic vs. Istvaeonic?
@@LEO_M1 I meant the West and North Germanic branches. OP was talking about English and Dutch but I was replying @stevetheduck1425's reply with respect to English and _Danish._
As a native Irish speaker I was fascinated by this. Middle English seems to have been a mix of all the inhabitants of Britain. There are many Irish (Gaelic in anglo, Gaeilge in my own) words here in use. I'm sure there would have to also be Cymric, Brittonic, Cumbric, Cornish etc. as well as the newly arrived Germanic languages. This is a real eye opener. Well done to all and I look forward to seeing more of your content.
@@MrRicehard Think of it as 'thou', the letter 'þ' (thorn) simply makes the 'th' sound. It was lost from English quite late due to the printing press, as European presses didn't have the thorn and so it was substituted with a 'y', thus 'you' (and in the case of 'þe' being spelt as 'ye', when it is simply 'the' and meant to be pronounced as such). You're not wrong with the Norse comparison, while 'þ' was retained in English due to its older Anglo-Saxon heritage, rather than later Norse invasions, the letter only still exists today in Icelandic which is the most archaic of the languages descended from Old Norse.
@@treeaboo Thanks. That's some great info. I enjoy to sing 'Þat mælti mín móðir' in the shower. Although I only know the first verse off by heart so far. :)
I agree. While all of his videos are great, this feels the most special just because it's in Middle English. The lyrics make me feel like I'm looking into an old, dusty mirror. It's incredible how different the language is now, and a little depressing.
Hey, I'm the translator. I'm curious to know which words you found in common? English and Irish are distantly related, both being Indo-European languages; but many word similarities between them have been obscured by change over time. Furthermore, Old and Middle English borrowed very few words from the Welsh-related pre-English language, or from Irish. Of course, both England and Ireland had some Norse settlement during the Viking age, and English at least borrowed many words from Norse. So there's a possibility for some of those words to be in common.
This is one of nearly 60 covers of Kate's masterpiece. This is the greatest cover - ever - of Kate's masterpiece. I love the graphic of Kate in period clothing. I believe she would be highly impressed. Bravo!
I. was. *waiting*. for someone else to reference that!! and, barring the song, perhaps riding into battle with the Eleventh Lady by your side shall be enough to save you
Once I was visiting England and as we crossed over into Wales suddenly Kate Bush came on the radio singing this song and I started singing along with her as I always do when I hear it. Well screeching along because I don't have her range. I might be able to sing t h is version but I don't know the words.
i'm so glad you work with actual translators and artists instead of relying on ai. really fun cover i loved your voice! instant subscribe after reading the intro to your video + the description box
@@averygroat4209 here is your evidence. The author uses the old romanization of their names so it says Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, but it is the same people I mentioned before: www.taoistic.com/fake-laotzu-quotes/fake-laotzu-quote-The_snow_goose_need_not_bathe.htm
Oh hell yeah this is brill. Kinda emotional anecdote: the night before this was released I properly sang in front of people for the first time after struggling for ages with being confident enough to, and I just wanna thank you for all that you sing here because I have loved listening to it all so much over the last 2 years.
Appreciate the title change, Early Middle English is definitely a neglected stage in the language’s development, so it’s cool to see more good videos highlighting it.
I'm blow away with this! I particularly love how some words have linguistically not changed ("God" and "angel") while other words are completely unrecognizable. Language is awesome!
Angel changed though, you pronounce the g like latins do. In spanish its Ángel and portuguese its Ango, pronounced like the modern english 'g' in angel. If you would say Angel with the same g as in fin'g'er, than it would sound more germanic imo.
This is my second listen to this song, it just gets better. More middle English covers please, the language is just so poetic. Full marks to you guys, this is just fabulous.
My wife and I, we watched this video so much, now we can read the characters in old English and sing the song, so we use it as a karaoke. That could only have happened in Taiwan.
It's weird to think that AS an English speaker, this is complete gibberish. I think etymology is fascinating and would love to hear how english has changed throughout the centuries.
There are bits that survive from every period. Check out the _History of English Podcast._ I think it actually makes you more fluent to know the context and etymology.
It's also funny which words have stay mostly the same. I was quite surprised when I listened to his cover of Never Gonna Give You Up in Old English and heard the word "understand". The evolution of language is so fascinating!
@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek While I recognize that this is a language, that is just as valid as any other. As a native speaker I recognize nothing from it. It sounds like a completely different language. Which is likley what the commenter meant.
This song was incredible in the original version, but your translation and performance gives it an incredible feeling of medieval fairy tale wonder. Stuff of legends so to say. Few will agree, but I actually like this more now than original.
As a German, hearing this is so interesting! I know English is a Germanic language and English and German have similar roots, but I could never quite grasp the concept. Hearing this and recognizing some words really helps. Lovely video!
The arrangement on this just blows me away. I was never a fan of the original's overproduced synth sound, and this version strips it down to something far more listenable to me. I especially like the way it makes the move from minor to major in the prechorus more dramatic - it sends shivers down my spine in a way the original never has.
Hauntingly beautiful. It’s like ghosts from the past are singing to us. The instruments are stunning. I’m so blown away, I can’t think of enough words to describe how much I love this. I’m listening to your other tracks since hearing this. Wow…..❤
hypnotic! the sentence structure in middle english is so fascinating. pulling it forward makes modern english sound so quaint. "will you hear of the agreement that i do"
@@the_miracle_aligner Astonishing, I was almost in tears! But are you sure it's Middle English and not Old English? From my schoolboy Chaucer, Middle English was not quite so impenetrable. I know they modernised the spelling and alphabet for school text books, but even so... {:o:O:}
@@the_miracle_aligner Ah, OK, that makes sense! Apparently, it's called Middle English not because it comes between Old and Modern English, but because Chaucer's dialect was Midlander English, rather than Northumbian, Kentish and so on. Any truth in that? Cheers! {:o:O:}
@@ansfridaeyowulfsdottir8095 don’t think so, Old/Middle/Modern is pretty standard way of periodizing languages, see for example Old/Middle German Old/Middle French, etc. People do refer to East-Midlands Middle English and West-Midlands Middle English dialects, but ‘Midlands’ is referring to the region and ‘Middle’ the era.
Thanks for putting this out there. This may sound stupid but listening to this makes me think of my ancestoral roots and where we're at now. A sense of our history, something that so many people seem to hate now. It's hard to explain.
i love the collaboration behind this, the translation is so impressive and poetic, the instrumentals are great, the illustration is stunning and the vocals are gorgeous, the runs on the o:s sound so lovely!
I truly felt like I disappeared into the middle ages when I heard this. It gives that vibe of standing near a stone circle on a hillside and hearing the voices of medieval ghosts around you
I think my favorite thing about this video is how the localization part of the translation (adjusting words and phrases to the equivalents or closest matches used in the older language) actually reveals a deeper interpretation of the original lyrics. by hearing/reading a particular phrase reworded in a new way, it makes you consider other possible meanings of those lyrics! I had always interpreted the "is there so much hate for the ones we love" line to be about an external force, but the translation turns that to "how *we* hate our dear friends," clearly defining it as a personal emotion, and specifically the struggle of warring emotions about that person. Personally I still hold a little bit to my original interpretation but I LOVE the added layers of this new one! All that to say, thank you so much to everyone involved with this piece, giving me new appreciation for one of my favorite songs after over a decade of loving it!
I just wanted you to know, I listened to this so much, I learned it, and now my daughter wants me to sing her to sleep with it; her favourite part is "ya, ya, yo". Thank you, this goes a small way for me to teach her old and middle English as she gets older.
It makes me wonder… Will people one day look back on our current English like we look on Middle English and think “Whoa! Is that what the earlier version of my language really sounded like?”
Interesting attempts have been done to 'future' the English language, based upon the things that have already happend, and for a while, it's still understandable. Arthur C Clarke believed that the recording and writing of modern English would slow linguistic drift, but it seems to accelerated, at least in some areas. Several languages now have an 'official' version and the one used on the streets. French and Norwegian for example.
@@stevetheduck1425 The situation in Norwegian is pretty interesting, but in short, all of the many different dialects ("street language") have equal standing; that is, you are expected to speak in your dialect in all situations, with two separate written languages: Bokmål, which modified danish writing to be closer to the Dano-Norwegian koine spoken in cities when Norway became independent, and Nynorsk, which was made by a linguist to reconstruct Norwegian writing by examining parts of dialects with minimal Danish influence. Importantly, nobody really speaks these written languages (skriftspråk). Despite the theoretically equal standing of all dialects, ones which lie closer to what is essentially spoken conservative/moderate bokmål can be perceived as higher status, but as far as I know this effect is lessening. Nevertheless, the unofficial standard spoken language taught to foreigners is essentially spoken conservative or moderate bokmål pronounced in the Oslo dialect. Also, using allowed optional ("radical") forms in writing which bring writing closer to some dialects can be a bit controversial sometimes. The whole situation has calmed down remarkably since the 1900's though, where the government was trying to merge Bokmål and Nynorsk into one "Samnorsk"; the language wars saga included a weatherman getting fired for saying sne instead of snø.
This is such a powerful thing. The song takes you on a journey to another place in yourself. I hope Kate Bush has heard this. I'm sure she would adore it
Just listened to this four times in a row and about to listen for the fifth time, i love it, i don't know why but i love the sound of old early english.
This cover sends shivers down my spine. It is beautifully haunting. I close my eyes and I am transported to medieval Britain. Your voice is amazing, and the work that must have gone into learning how to pronounce those words is impressive. You and your team have done an epic job!
Every once in a while, the algorithm throws me an absolute gem, and this is one of those times. I love everything about this. Instant subscriber. Thanks.
I love your channel, it's like connecting present and past. yes I copied and pasted this from the live chat. Edit: Can't wait till this comes out on Spotify.
OHHHH, I'm at a loss for words. This the most beautiful, haunting piece of music I perhaps have ever heard. It takes me into another realm. It's so heartrending, it makes me want to weep......
This makes my anglophilic little heart so happy. Very well done. Thank you for being that type of nerd who puts out incredible content like this that I absolutely never knew I needed but am immensely grateful to have experienced.
I very much appreciate that the (modern) English lyrics you gave were a translation of the early Middle English lyrics, rather than just Bush's original lyrics. I watched a Latin version of Smells Like Teen Spirit the other day and was deeply disappointed that they didn't provide a translation of the Latin.
I always find these Middle English things fascinating. I understand German and I definitely heard some German words, such as "anstiegen", "schon", "zwar", and "ich" as well as some modern English words like "with" and "hill." And yet, looking at the text, I have no idea where these words actually are.
Hey, what you are hearing is not "German" words exactly, but rather cognates of German words. German and English are both Germanic languages, meaning that the languages are derived from a shared ancestral population that is the "grandparent" language to both of them, maybe 3 000-2 500 years ago. Note that "ancestral" here means "linguistically ancestral", which is not exactly the same as "biologically descended". For example, many people today who speak English have no English ancestry. A cognate, then, is a "cousin" word that has survived in both languages. Some examples for Modern High German, and English, are "water" - "Wasser"; "winter" - "Winter"; "summer" - "Sommer"; "ice" - "Eis", "love" - "Liebe", and so forth. The cognate to "(an)stiegen" you are hearing is "stighenn". This word no longer exists as a standalone verb in Modern English. In Old and Middle English, it had the meaning of "to move vertically" (up, by default). It is related to the Modern English words "STIRrup", e.g. "a rope for going up (onto the horse)" and "stile" - "steps for going (up) over a fence". The cognate for "ich" is "icc" - pronounced like Modern English "itch". It still exists in Modern English as the word "I". Cognates of "schon" and "zwar" are not present, so that's just a case of mistaken identification.
Yes, it's a fascinating experience! I am German and speak some Swedish, which it somehow reminded me of from the vibe - I think the words are closer related with the German and modern English but from how it is pronounced it reminded me of how it sounds to listen to Swedish as a German - there are cousins of the words you know coming up and if you know what is being said you understand a bit which words might convey that meaning and recognise hints of the roots of words you still use, yet it is strange and beautiful and feels very raw in how it is pronounced. It's a wonderful experience to listen to. And yes a giant difference to modern English is how little french is involved, pre norman conquest I suppose but that's just a world of difference. This is the sort of thing to draw people into languages, what an absolute joy to listen to. I really admire the people who put this together and understand what makes people fascinated with old languages.
it’s very interesting to me how much of the middle english is similar to words i know in danish or german. makes sense linguistically i suppose but it’s still fun to notice!
First time I've ever heard any version of this song, and I love it so much that I had to look up the subject matter. I think this is definitely going to become a fixture of my personal playlist from now on.
Bro, you are so talented. I honestly don’t know how you pull these off, but I’m always vibing to your covers. Keep up the good work man, you helped me gain an interest in ancient languages and for that I thank you. Much love from the UK, wish we still spoke this awesome language 😭
I watched it three times. After another three times I will know Middle English. 😆 Some words are still the same even if there are some letters we don't use any more. 'Godd' and 'hill' are the same. The word for 'þatt' still sounds like "that" when pronounced. Anyway, that was very cool. I really liked it. It seems that song may have a predisposition for being compatible with Middle English. Perhaps Kate was tapping into that era?
This! Such a beatiful picture. She has an interesting expression, and her leaning on the hill is a really nice and creative way to add visual storytelling. : )
on a journey now. found this channel off the back of nerdrotic using the latin all star cover as an outro and this is sublime! oddly hilarious, captivating and really quite sublime. off to the tenacious d cover! thanks chaps (i'm going with chaps as no woman can really be daft enough, right?!). keep it up. bloody love it!
