Hello everyone! I am new to this (great) forum, that I have anyway checked a number of times.

I am translating a book connected with the History of Homosexuality and come accross a word that simply can't understand nor find anywhere…

This is the sentence: "The spiritual guide for the nuns of England in the early thirteenth century, the Ancrene Riwle, mentions (although it says that it will not mention) ‘the scorpion of stynkande Leccherie’".

Does anyone know the meaning of "stynkande"? I gather it must be associated to some kind of same-sex relationship between the religious sisters of a nunery.

I really hope you can help me out of this bog…  

With a zillion thanks in advance for your help,

CM

It's in early Middle English... 'the scorpion of stynkande Leccherie', means simply 'the scorpion of stinking lechery'.

The full quotation from the "Ancrene Riwle" ie ancient rule, is (using original orthography including the old letters Þ and ȝ):


"Þe scorpion of stynkande Leccherie nyl ich nouȝth nempny, for Þe foule filÞe of Þe foule name for it miȝth done harme in to clene hertes."
 
ie, the scorpion of stinking Lechery I will not name for the foul filth of the foul name, for it might do harm to clean hearts.


PS: ¿Cómo está progresando la traducción?

Hi CM. I think you'll find this means "putrid". It's the old Noreen form of modern Norwegian "stinkende" (of stink) though has that marvellous trait of middle English in eastern counties of adding tense to the adjective ("wrong dunner in Teeside). The "ande" "ende" adjectival form was superseded by "ing" for everything later but you find a few examples of it in Chaucer.

Edit: mm answered it shorter  :)

Wow! That's a real problem-solver!

Thanks a lot for your info; it throws a bright light overshadowing my lantern… 

A big thanks from deep inside!

CM

Meles meles wrote:

It's in early Middle English... 'the scorpion of stynkande Leccherie', means simply 'the scorpion of stinking lechery'.

The full quotation from the "Ancrene Riwle" ie ancient rule, is (using original orthography including the old letters Þ and ȝ):


"Þe scorpion of stynkande Leccherie nyl ich nouȝth nempny, for Þe foule filÞe of Þe foule name for it miȝth done harme in to clene hertes."
 
ie, the scorpion of stinking Lechery I will not name for the foul filth of the foul name, for it might do harm to clean hearts.


PS: ¿Cómo está progresando la traducción?

Meles meles (and Comic Monster and nordmann),

for me it was so familal: "de schorpioen van stinkende likkerij" ("likken" from the French "lécher", "likker" lécheur")
https://www.etymonline.com/word/lecher

And in our local patois (dialect) we say still nowadays about such a man: " 't is ne lekker". And perhaps that is not that far from the reality in my imagination...as about that "likken, lécher, to lick...   Sorry to bring the level of discussion a bit down...

Kind regards to the three of you from Paul.

Hi, again!

Yesterday I didn't notice the kind question of Meles meles about the progress of the translation; I am really sorry; I guess I was so deeply plunged into the task, and so happy to have a solution, that I didn't have eyes for anything else.

The translation is going fine, it's terribly difficult sometimes, but really interesting in fact —and with your help I am certain not to screw it up at particularly laborious points.

PS.: Je pourrais dire aussi, que tout est bien qui finit bien, et pour l'instant j'ose croire que la version espagnole du livre ne me fera pas dupe… Un grand, grand merci du fond du coeur.

CM

I sent my message from a telephone yesterday and I see the spellchecker has changed Norren to an Irish lady. Apologies for the confusion, and to Noreens everywhere ...

It is fascinating to contemplate that during the period of early Middle English it was quite feasible for a Briton to wander around most of Scandinavia and Northern Europe and have no problem understanding or being understood when talking to locals (even without falling back on Latin as a lingua franca, an extremely useful exigency which the world could possibly do with at the moment). One wonders how the Brexit thing would have panned out if this had held true ...

EDIT: I add myself to MM's best wishes for your translation - converting Northern European into romance has its own challenges

Hi nordmann; it does, no doubt, and most of the time the challenge is more cultural than linguistic. There is an infinite number of places, topics, innuendos and nuances that may seem common for the native speaker that are simply a blank space in the mind of the tentative translator… But in fact this is good news; otherwise automatons would be making us redundant (and hopefully this will take some time…).

nordmann wrote:

It is fascinating to contemplate that during the period of early Middle English it was quite feasible for a Briton to wander around most of Scandinavia and Northern Europe and have no problem understanding or being understood when talking to locals ...

To a degree perhaps if they were from Cumbria or Yorkshire, but many English even in the 15th century had trouble understanding their own fellow countryman. Caxton writing in Middle English in the preface to 'Eneydos' tells the little story of some merchants going down the Thames. There was no wind so they landed on the Kent side of the river to buy food ... "And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel."

[And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.]

But there is undeniable similarities between the Middle English spoken in London, Kent, and East Anglia, and Flemish ... I'm sure Paul would agree the ME, eyren, for eggs is similar to the modern Dutch, eieren, or Flemish dialect, eiers.

The disappearance of the hard "g" in pronunciation is very common in Germanic languages (as well as the weird but common interchangeability between "g" and "v", and sometimes "g" and "r").

The way Middle English was explained to me once by a professor of linguistics in Oslo was that it was almost like a wave of amnesia had swept over the island at some point in the very early medieval period and forced everyone to re-learn their own language based on the written ciphers. Elsewhere more or less the same language had continued to develop and flourish as a purely oral phenomenon with a blissful disregard for the ciphers in which the English now placed so much faith and dependence for pronunciation. But as you say, within England the challenge was to maintain a "common language" in the face of what, by European standards, was a pretty static and fractured society, one in the process of splitting into extremely varied and mutually unintelligible dialects. The introduction of French big-time post-conquest changed the dynamic fundamentally, but one wonders how English - left to its own devices within England - actually would have developed over the next few centuries. The requirement for a commonly understood tongue as administration grew more central and all-encompassing could well have propelled English back into its mother tongue roots, ending up as a dialectic variant of basic German, just like Dutch and Norwegian etc, with very pronounced dialectic variation within its scope (even more than which actually prevailed) that would have seen Caxton's scene become a commonplace challenge to this day - just as Scandinavians face when moving even a few kilometres within their own countries at times (there is greater dialectic variation and difference within Norwegian regions for example than between Norwegian and Swedish, though these are considered separate languages based on the same assessment of variation and Norwegian is counted as one).

Wonderfully diverse, in other words, but with a basic intelligibility that would have retained its inclusion as a viable North European tongue without the requirement to "learn" a new language from scratch when leaving England. Fascinating stuff.

PaulRyckier wrote:

for me it was so familal: "de schorpioen van stinkende likkerij" ("likken" from the French "lécher", "likker" lécheur")
... as about that "likken, lécher, to lick...   Sorry to bring the level of discussion a bit down...

 
Being such a naive, innocent boy   I hadn't until then made the connection between lechery and the French, lécher, to lick. I suppose again it's a case that in English the word for the basic act derives from the Anglo-Saxon, while the descriptive legal term, the crime as it were, is from post-conquest French or Latin. So a bit like robbing and larceny, faking and counterfeiting, killing and murder, and all the other legal terms like simony, apostacy, blasphemy, perjury, treason etc.

Shows the difference maybe between the French and the Dutch mentality when it comes to prurience ...

Both began with imagining licking something/someone and - starting with more or less the same word - one ended up with "lechery" while the other ended up with "sumptuous, delicious, cool".

The spelling is slightly different in Old Scots:

Stinkand

nordmann wrote:

I sent my message from a telephone yesterday and I see the spellchecker has changed Norren to an Irish lady. Apologies for the confusion, and to Noreens everywhere ...

It is fascinating to contemplate that during the period of early Middle English it was quite feasible for a Briton to wander around most of Scandinavia and Northern Europe and have no problem understanding or being understood when talking to locals (even without falling back on Latin as a lingua franca, an extremely useful exigency which the world could possibly do with at the moment). One wonders how the Brexit thing would have panned out if this had held true ...

EDIT: I add myself to MM's best wishes for your translation - converting Northern European into romance has its own challenges

Beware, though - here's Caxton's story. At least the blank incomprehension so often exhibited between Northern and Southern denizens of England still remains.
And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understood hym we.

Meles meles wrote:

nordmann wrote:

It is fascinating to contemplate that during the period of early Middle English it was quite feasible for a Briton to wander around most of Scandinavia and Northern Europe and have no problem understanding or being understood when talking to locals ...

To a degree perhaps if they were from Cumbria or Yorkshire, but many English even in the 15th century had trouble understanding their own fellow countryman. Caxton writing in Middle English in the preface to 'Eneydos' tells the little story of some merchants going down the Thames. There was no wind so they landed on the Kent side of the river to buy food ... "And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel."

[And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.]

But there is undeniable similarities between the Middle English spoken in London, Kent, and East Anglia, and Flemish ... I'm sure Paul would agree the ME, eyren, for eggs is similar to the modern Dutch, eieren, or Flemish dialect, eiers.

 
Meles meles,

"But there is undeniable similarities between the Middle English spoken in London, Kent, and East Anglia, and Flemish ... I'm sure Paul would agree the ME, eyren, for eggs is similar to the modern Dutch, eieren, or Flemish dialect, eiers."

 Yes of course, ME is probably very near to Middle Dutch, but I think MD is closer to Middle German? As it is today...and I mean here only the Germanic words, not the Romance influence...Authun on the Historum forum seems to be an expert in it...and you have also the dialect continuums...and the vowel shift and all that...not that easy stuff...

"And specyally he axyed after eggys. And the good wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry for he also coude speke no frenshe but wold haue hadde egges and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel."


I will try to translate it in modern Dutch, not sure if it wasn't more similar in Middle Dutch...

En hij "vroeg" (here Dutch closer to German: "frug" (same pronunciation) speciaal achter "eggys". En het goede "wuf" (Middle Dutch) antwoordde dat zij niet kon Frans spreken (German: sprechen). En de "marchand" (French: also in Dutch, but also "koopman", German "Kaufmann") was boos (German "böse"), "wijl" (MD?) (aangezien (because, since, while?. German "weil") hij ook niet kon Frans spreken, maar dat hij wou "eggys" gehad hebben ("have had? hebben gehad) en zij verstond hem niet. En dan ten laatste een ander zei dat hij wou eieren hebben. Dan zei het goede "wuf" dat zij hem wel verstond.

Kind regards from Paul.