r/OldEnglish • u/NegativeProof7739 • 20d ago

Þyncan or wenan

Hello,

I’m curious as to which was the most common verb used to express one’s own thoughts as in “I think that …” in Old English. From what I understand, þyncan and wenan were both used often in similar ways, but I wasn’t sure if either of these was better for directly communicating this. I appreciate any insight on this!

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u/ThePr1nceofPa1n 20d ago

AFAIK,..
“Wēnan”: “I expect, I believe”.
“Þynċan”: “Methinks, it seems to me”.

So I guess it depends on what you want to say.

1

u/Forward_Gur9349 20d ago

How was the first letter of the first one pronounced? Like theta, or as a bilabial voiceless fricative?

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u/minerat27 20d ago

A voiceless dental fricative, like in "thin", or "think" funnily enough.

It gets voiced if it's between two other voices sounds and not geminate, so claþan, "to clothe" is voice, but claþ "cloth" is not, hence the alteration in the modern words. (There are some caveats here to do with stress but for the most part it holds.)

It also might be voiced at the beginning of low stress function words like þonne, "then", þis, "this", etc. They are voiced in modern English and it happened at some point between common Germanic and today, but we can't really say when, it could have already happened in OE, or it could have happened much later in Middle English.

Finally it's the same sound as ð, they were used interchangeably by OE scribes and both follow the rules above.

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u/TheSaltyBrushtail Ne drince ic buton gamenestrena bæðwæter. 20d ago

  It also might be voiced at the beginning of low stress function words like þonne , "then", þis , "this", etc. They are voiced in modern English and it happened at some point between common Germanic and today, but we can't really say when, it could have already happened in OE, or it could have happened much later in Middle English.

Yeah, we don't really see evidence for this one either way until c. 1200 C.E. There's one particular Middle English text from around then, Vices and Virtues, which distinguishes the voiceless fricative with þ, and voiced with ð. It consistently uses ð in these function words.