I can't take credit for this - it is all Shu's finding, but so interesting! The first recorded sentence in English is: ‘this she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman’.
I wonder if it suggests that they didn't differentiate between wolves and domestic dogs. Or is this somehow connected to Romulus and Remus? Were wolves once revered as well as feared? I'd think keeping a wolf could rune your day.
Well, calling it "English" is a bit of a stretch. It's a translation from a dead language into English so how much sense it makes probably depends on the translation.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Indeed, Bob. And since there was more than one Runic alphabet, and, it seems, highly mythically imbued, one can't be sure that one comprehends whatever metaphor is being used. Here's a good article: https://www.sfu.ca/~ramccall/Runicalphabet.pdf
It's a translation from a dead language into English so how much sense it makes probably depends on the translation.
It is interesting that the British Museum (which has the object in its collection) says that the language is Anglo-Frisian.
ȝæȝoȝæ mæȝæ medu
While mægæ medu (literally 'mead for a male kinsman') is a pretty straightforward translation, not so the 'she-wolf'. It seems at best a magical formula, there are other translations: see the Wiktionary entry. (It was also pointed out that the word contrasts the 'æ' (ash) rune with the 'o' one.)
Even if the translation is accurate, without a context it's impossible to know if any of it is meant in some metaphorical sense or if it is all literal. Consider this. Imagine that you are a historian a thousand years from now looking at Churchill's letters. After so long the reality of the man is all but forgotten and the language has undergone considerable changes. You come across this fragment.
"this man might be useful to me – if my black dog returns"
How are you to interpret "black dog"? If you lack the knowledge that it is a metaphor for depression then you can't interpret it as anything close to its true meaning. Maybe Churchill is talking about a dog-walker or pet-grooming service. You would have no way of knowing. I suspect the so-called "first English sentence" might be something similar. Anyway, whatever it means, it isn't English in any sense that I would use the word.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
I wouldn't expect the first English sentence to be something that we'd really understand in this day and age anyway. Heck, we often don't even understand meanings from generation to generation.
Originally posted by Kalleh: I wouldn't expect the first English sentence to be something that we'd really understand in this day and age anyway. Heck, we often don't even understand meanings from generation to generation.
True, but as I see it this is a bit mor like taking a sentence in Latin and calling it the first Italian sentence.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
