
The Exeter Book was used as a cutting board - MarlonPro
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/exeter-book-cutting-board-coaster-poetry
======
ggm
I lent two prentice-hall hardbacks from the 1990s to my co-worker as a monitor
stand. She has IP-Protocol-NG (it became IPv6) and Radia Perlman on Routing.
Maybe in 100 years, they can feature in Atlas Obscura with the outline of a
Dell monitor stand impressed in the binding?

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euler_
I couldn't make out anything on the pages. How different was the alphabet?

~~~
abecedarius
The lettering style is a little bit different, and there were a couple of
common letters that we don't use, for 'th' sounds. (When you see "ye olde
whatever", the 'y' is a corruption of the thorn letter: that was pronounced
"the".)

An interesting page about runes in the Exeter Book:
[https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-
studies/2017/02/17/reading-r...](https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-
studies/2017/02/17/reading-runes-in-the-exeter-book-riddles/comment-page-1/)
(I put some probable misinformation here before.)

~~~
nonbel
Does that mean "Earth" used to be pronounced "Thearth"?
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yearth](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yearth)

~~~
abecedarius
[https://www.etymonline.com/word/earth](https://www.etymonline.com/word/earth)
\-- see 'geard' there in 'middangeard' (Middle-Earth, Midgard in Norse
mythology). The 'ge' was pronounced like 'yay', iiuc. 'Yard' is cognate.

~~~
nonbel
It is difficult for me to follow.

It was spelled "yearth" in some cases and "geard" in other cases. Both "y" and
"d" had the sound of "th" sometimes and "ge" had the sound of "yay" sometimes.

~~~
asveikau
> Both "y" and "d" had the sound of "th" sometimes

No. There was an obsolete letter þ. It is sometimes rendered as Y. It is
totally unrelated to the letter Y.

There is also such a thing as ð, which I think is used in nordic languages?
This looks like a d but is a different sound. In phonetics this is used to
connote the voiced version of "th", like the th in "those" (as opposed to the
"th" you would say in "the" which does not use the vocal cords). According to
Wikipedia, the obsolete English letter þ was sometimes rendered as [ð],
sometimes as [θ], which sounds about the status quo for "th" in modern
English.

> ge had the sound of "yay" sometimes.

Ignoring the confusion of modern English vowels (note that pronunciation of
foreign words with "e" often get transcribed informally by English speakers as
"ay", eg. ¡olé! one might say is oh-LAY - that's half of what OP is doing
here) ... It's not surprising.

If you look at the history of European languages, what happens to a G followed
by i or e can get ... Flexible. A lot of Western Europe today decides that's
like an English J sound. A lot of Eastern Europe retains a hard G. It wouldn't
be shocking if older forms of English had that as similar to modern English y.
(By the way, the original pronunciation of the letter J was meant to capture
the times I was a consonant... I.e. more of a modern English Y sound)

~~~
asveikau
> (as opposed to the "th" you would say in "the" which does not use the vocal
> cords).

Too late to edit, but after saying this out loud a few times I think it's
almost always voiced, so maybe a better example is the "th" in "breath"
(contrasting with voiced as in "breathe").

~~~
pacaro
Even just the English names for the letters helps “thorn” and “eth”

IIRC welsh uses a doubled d for the eth sound, hence I once had a coworker
whose name was Dydd (pronounced deathe to rhyme with breathe) shortened from
Meredydd (usually rendered as Meredith in English)

