For a long time, I have thought of rekindling my social networking online, but not been entirely sure in what form. I finally rid myself of Facebook (or, as they would claim, the other way around) last year, and if I ever return, I will make sure to use it sparingly - and in a different way than before (I might use it to link here). For the moment, I'm settling for a new blog, and a rather specific one at that; I have come to believe that sticking to a certain topic is simpler, and also more motivating to keep up, than ranting about your day-to-day life and habits. Is it really of any public interest what kind of tea I drink while writing an essay, or whether I bought cucumbers or tomatoes on the way home (and should I be concerned that both these examples are about food)? My problem with many social networking sites is that so many seem to feel the need to write about every single mundane thing that is going on in their lives, and I just end up asking myself: "Which one of us is it who is incapable of handling social networking, me or him?" On Facebook, I found myself reading what others wanted me to read, rather than what I was hoping to find out about them.
Substance, then, is key when I now reach out to "like-minders" online, and it brings me to the purpose of this blog. My studies in English at Lund University and meeting other people with similar interests has vastly increased my interest in modern languages - and not least in why they are called "modern languages", and why they look and sound the way they do now. I'm talking about the history of language, mainly from an English point of view, but any student of languages knows that languages, like people, are not islands - everything is connected. It's all an ancient and multi-cultural pattern, a print of how humans have lived, spoken and thought in the different ages of the world. Our languages tell us about our history themselves, and not just through people who have written it down. The idea of this blog came from being asked by friends about what we do in English studies on university level - and I never know where to begin! Even though there are so many people who can speak English (about 360 million natives and even more L2's), there is so much about English and its history, literature and linguistics that relatively few know about! I still have a long way to go before I can really call myself knowledgeable - but I possess an insatiable curiosity. The point of this blog is to emphasise problems, phenomena and interesting titbits that start creeping up everywhere once you immerse yourself in language studies.
My focus will be on northern and western Germanic languages, but nothing is safe. Hopefully, at some point, I'll feel comfortable enough in Old English to try and explain some of the basics. As you may already have suspected, the name of this blog is the ancient collective name of the tongue of the Anglo-Saxons - but, even though post-Roman Britain is probably my favourite part of English history, I will also make sure to blog about more recent events.
Wesað gé hále!
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