12. January, 2009. The Semester's Beginning; Thoughts on a Blogtitle.

As you'll soon understand, I have never kept a blog before. Please keep in mind that patience is a virtue.


For classmates struck addled by my blog's title, I will explain.

I have a deep love, as many of us probably have, for our English language. Its fullness; its rhythm; its beautiful comfort. What I love more than today's Modern English, that is, where English has ended up, is where English began: Old English. It is bewitchingly real to me; so much stonger than Modern English which hardly looks like its forebearer. I find it a great shame that we have lost English so much of its hearty, meaningful Germanic stock only in favor of weaker Romance loanwords. Old English has so much wealth, much of which we have forgone, but it's still wholly ours.

The blogtitle is easy. You may have guessed that Michaeles means Michael's. The second word is slightly trickier, and rightly so —it shows off the ever-useful, Germanic word-building tool: compounding. Ymbe is a preposition meaning here something close to about or along. þanc means a thought; put the two together and we have the notion of a serious thought about something -or the loanword reflection. Ærn is a space; any space. Altogether, we have an "about-thought-space." Beautiful.