# "may" from the OE mæg?



## Joelline

Hi,

What is the origin of usage of the modern English word "may," used to express a wish or hope or used in blessings or curses or in expressions such as "may he rest in peace"  I thought it was from the Old English "mæg," but I've been told that it is more modern when used in this way. 

Thanks.


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## Joannes

It's definitely from OE *mæg*. Historically, it's a subjunctive mood.


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## Joelline

Thank you Joannes; you've confirmed what I thought I had remembered.  Do you happen to know if it was used in the way that I described above?


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## modus.irrealis

According to my Old English grammar, _mæg_ was used as an auxiliary with meanings of "to be able to" or "to be permitted to", so it does look like the wish-meaning is more recent. The earliest quote in the OED with this meaning and form seems to be from 1521.



Joannes said:


> Historically, it's a subjunctive mood.


By it, do you mean the use that Joelline is asking about, i.e. that it goes back to the subjunctive?_ mæg_ itself is a past-indicative used as a present, with subjunctive _mæge_.


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## Joannes

Sorry about the confusion. The use of *mæg* (infinitive *magan* I guess?) conveying wish is historically a subjunctive. (I had no idea what the form would be;* mæge* certainly makes sense.)

So *may* on its own didn’t have a wish meaning, this was attributed by the mood. Same for these examples:
*God save the Queen!*
*Long live WordReference!*
*God bless you!*
... and most other subjunctives in main clauses (although I’m not sure if people still analyse them as subjunctive forms )

I think the subjunctive was well established when modal *may* evolved. When it did, it could quickly be used in the subjunctive to express a wish.

(The development of the usage of what are now English modals is pretty well described. Some googling should get you to more detailed information.)


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## vince

modus.irrealis said:


> According to my Old English grammar, _mæg_ was used as an auxiliary with meanings of "to be able to" or "to be permitted to", so it does look like the wish-meaning is more recent. The earliest quote in the OED with this meaning and form seems to be from 1521.



1521? That seems pretty late, basically in the Early Modern English period. What did they use before then?


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## modus.irrealis

Joannes said:


> Sorry about the confusion. The use of *mæg* (infinitive *magan* I guess?) conveying wish is historically a subjunctive. (I had no idea what the form would be;* mæge* certainly makes sense.)


Ah, thanks. (And it is _magan_.)
 


vince said:


> 1521? That seems pretty late, basically in the Early Modern English period. What did they use before then?


They would (or at least could) have just used the present subjunctive, like in the examples Joannes gave. For an Old English example, there's _abreoðe his angin_ "may his enterprise fail."


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## Forero

modus.irrealis said:


> According to my Old English grammar, _mæg_ was used as an auxiliary with meanings of "to be able to" or "to be permitted to", so it does look like the wish-meaning is more recent. The earliest quote in the OED with this meaning and form seems to be from 1521.
> 
> 
> By it, do you mean the use that Joelline is asking about, i.e. that it goes back to the subjunctive?_ mæg_ itself is a past-indicative used as a present, with subjunctive _mæge_.



I have heard this before about the present being the old past, but I am curious what the present indicative used to be and where the other past tenses came from (mighte, moghte).


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## modus.irrealis

Forero said:


> I have heard this before about the present being the old past, but I am curious what the present indicative used to be and where the other past tenses came from (mighte, moghte).


I don't know about the original present forms, but it's even possible that they never had them in the first place (at least with the same meaning). One of these verbs, _wat _"know", is cognate with ancient Greek οιδα which is a verb that is formally in the perfect tense but has a present meaning, also "know." Plus many of these verbs seem to occur throughout the Germanic languages so you'd have to go pretty far back to see how they came about, but I don't know any of the details.

The new past forms are weak pasts built off of the new present forms, but they don't seem to all that regular. At least I don't see any pattern in examples like (where it's 3rd singular present, plural present, 3rd singular past):

_ah agon ahte _"possess"
_cann cunnon cuðe _"know how to"
_ðearf ðurfon ðorfte _"need"
_sceal sculon sceolde _"be obliged"


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## Joannes

modus.irrealis said:


> The new past forms are weak pasts built off of the new present forms, but they don't seem to all that regular. At least I don't see any pattern in examples like (where it's 3rd singular present, plural present, 3rd singular past):
> 
> _ah agon ahte _"possess"
> _cann cunnon cuðe _"know how to"
> _ðearf ðurfon ðorfte _"need"
> _sceal sculon sceolde _"be obliged"


I would guess *ahte* is regularly suffixed as a past tense. The others are probably strong verbs requiring vowel change for the past tense. The last two seem to be of the same class, the second one of another (compare *begin*-*began*/*sing*-*sang* and *drive*-*drove*). *Cann* is probably a real irregular third person form; compare Dutch *kan* - *kunnen* - *kon* (same forms) of *kunnen* 'to be able to'.


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## Whodunit

I'd say that _mæge_ would be the correct subjunctive form for sentences like these:

May you find a good girl!
May all your dreams come true!
...

In German, we still use the subjunctive (Konjunktiv I) form of _mögen_ to express this idea:

Mögest du eine gute Magd finden! (I'm trying to make it sound archaic, hence it doesn't very good )
Mögen all deine Träume wahr werden!

The indicative _mæg_ would be expressed as _mag_ in German, which is wrong for such wishing sentences:

Magst du eine gute Magd finden! 
_I can't use the second example here, because it would be "mögen", too, but in the indicative_

______


By the way, the word _kennen_ (to know) has become semi-regular (there must be a better term for verbs like _kennen, brennen, nennen, rennen _etc.) in German, because it gets the typical regular forms _-te_ and _ge-t_, but changes the stem vowel:

kennen - kann*te* - *ge*kann*t*


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## modus.irrealis

Joannes said:


> I would guess *ahte* is regularly suffixed as a past tense. The others are probably strong verbs requiring vowel change for the past tense. The last two seem to be of the same class, the second one of another (compare *begin*-*began*/*sing*-*sang* and *drive*-*drove*). *Cann* is probably a real irregular third person form; compare Dutch *kan* - *kunnen* - *kon* (same forms) of *kunnen* 'to be able to'.



Yeah, the present forms are all old strong forms and my grammar even lists them according to their ablaut class (although it look like in some of the verbs like _ah_ the ablaut has been erased), but I was thinking that the new past forms, which I understand are all weak pasts, would be regular because the weak past is normally so regular, but I can't see the pattern, especially with _cuðe_. I mean, why does this have a fricative instead of a _t_ or _d_?


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## Joannes

modus.irrealis said:


> Yeah, the present forms are all old strong forms and my grammar even lists them according to their ablaut class (although it look like in some of the verbs like _ah_ the ablaut has been erased), but I was thinking that the new past forms, which I understand are all weak pasts, would be regular because the weak past is normally so regular, but I can't see the pattern, especially with _cuðe_. I mean, why does this have a fricative instead of a _t_ or _d_?


Yes, that's strange. Perhaps it has something to do with the loss of the /n/?

(By the way, the ending was regularised in the 14th c., apparently.)


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## modus.irrealis

Joannes said:


> Yes, that's strange. Perhaps it has something to do with the loss of the /n/?


I think you're right -- at least, I know about English-Dutch pairs like _goose/gans_ where the /n/ dropped out before a fricative, but that would mean that it was a fricative _ð_ from the get-go which is still strange to me. I don't know anything about the history of Dutch but do you know if was originally a fricative there in Dutch, or at least in the plural past forms which I saw were _konden_. And same question for the German _kannte_ that Whodunit mentioned.



> (By the way, the ending was regularised in the 14th c., apparently.)


Thanks -- and a _l_ added by analogy. I wonder if that was purely orthographical or did people pronounce _could_ with an _l_?


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## Forero

I don't understand either about the _nt_ becoming eth and then _ld_, but I remember this quote from Chaucer:

"To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes"  (To far-off shrines, known in various lands.)

In Middle English, _couthe_ meant familiar or known; _*un*couth_ was the opposite.

This is from the same Old English word as "could".  Also related are kith, know, and ken, as well as can (originally "to know how to").

One of the Greek words for "know" was _oida_, which also meant "to have seen".  (Explaining the use of a perfect as a present tense.)  I can't help but notice "gotta" as an auxiliary, which is the past tense of "get" being used as a present tense of "have".

But how do we know that maeg (related to mighty and O.E. magan "to be strong") was a past tense rather than a present subjunctive?


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## modus.irrealis

Forero said:


> I don't understand either about the _nt_ becoming eth and then _ld_, but I remember this quote from Chaucer:
> 
> "To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes"  (To far-off shrines, known in various lands.)
> 
> In Middle English, _couthe_ meant familiar or known; _*un*couth_ was the opposite.


That's interesting -- _uncouth_ has come a pretty far way from its original.



> But how do we know that maeg (related to mighty and O.E. magan "to be strong") was a past tense rather than a present subjunctive?


It can't be the latter since it doesn't end in _-e_, which is the ending of all sing. OE subjunctives. But more positively, it has to be the former because the 1st and 3rd pers. sing. are the same and the plural _magon_ has the _-on_ ending of the strong verb past. Although, I'm looking at its conjugation and there are many odd things about it, but it doesn't seem like there's anything else it can be.

And I'm sure that _mæg _is a form of _magan_ and not just related to it, but "to be strong" or "to prevail" was the meaning of _magan_ as an independent verb but this got weakened to "to be able to" and "to be permitted to" as it became used more and more as an auxiliary verb.


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## Joannes

modus.irrealis said:


> Thanks -- and a _l_ added by analogy. I wonder if that was purely orthographical or did people pronounce _could_ with an _l_?


 
Such an orthographical pronunciation would only be likely if *would* and *should* were still pronounced with /l/ at that time. I don’t think that was the case; pronunciation for both was /ud/ -- which caused to give *could* an analogue spelling in the first place. By the way, the phrase “where it is historic” seems to imply that it isn’t (and hasn’t become) for *could*.



modus.irrealis said:


> I think you're right -- at least, I know about English-Dutch pairs like _goose/gans_ where the /n/ dropped out before a fricative, but that would mean that it was a fricative _ð_ from the get-go which is still strange to me. I don't know anything about the history of Dutch but do you know if was originally a fricative there in Dutch, or at least in the plural past forms which I saw were _konden_. And same question for the German _kannte_ that Whodunit mentioned.


 
I can’t tell. Dutch and German lost þ (> d) between mid 8th c. and 11th c. There are only few pieces of text from that time that are considered Dutch. Could be interesting to note, though, that a past form with /s/ is sometimes found in Antwerp: *kan* - *kunnen* - *kost* (pl. *kosten*). I have no idea how that came to be.

Maybe I should also add the forms of *kennen* (*kent* - *kennen* - *kende*) ‘to know, to be acquainted with’, which are regular as you can see. *Kennen* is originally the causative of *kunnen* -- I’m pretty sure it’s the same for Ger. *kennen* (caus. of *können*), by the way.


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## modus.irrealis

Joannes said:


> Such an orthographical pronunciation would only be likely if *would* and *should* were still pronounced with /l/ at that time. I don’t think that was the case; pronunciation for both was /ud/ -- which caused to give *could* an analogue spelling in the first place. By the way, the phrase “where it is historic” seems to imply that it isn’t (and hasn’t become) for *could*.


Good point. It does look then like it was merely orthographical.



> I can’t tell. Dutch and German lost þ (> d) between mid 8th c. and 11th c. There are only few pieces of text from that time that are considered Dutch. Could be interesting to note, though, that a past form with /s/ is sometimes found in Antwerp: *kan* - *kunnen* - *kost* (pl. *kosten*). I have no idea how that came to be.


Interesting and makes things more confusing.




> Maybe I should also add the forms of *kennen* (*kent* - *kennen* - *kende*) ‘to know, to be acquainted with’, which are regular as you can see. *Kennen* is originally the causative of *kunnen* -- I’m pretty sure it’s the same for Ger. *kennen* (caus. of *können*), by the way.


Yeah, now I see that it's the causative. And I guess we can add English/Scots _ken_, which based on form and meaning, looks like the same formation.


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## tom_in_bahia

modus.irrealis said:


> _ah agon ahte _"possess"
> _cann cunnon cuðe _"know how to"
> _ðearf ðurfon ðorfte _"need"
> _sceal sculon sceolde _"be obliged"



I see the following:

ahte - ought
cann - can
cu_ðe - couthe --> could???
sceolde - should

But, what is the modern descent from the third row: __ðearf ðurfon ðorfte

This idea of "know how to" being related to can is very interesting to me. I researched the etymology of can versus know and they come from the same original PIE word. Interesting to me is the proximity (at least at first glance) of cunnon with konnen (the Haitian Creole adaptation of the French verb.
_


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## modus.irrealis

tom_in_bahia said:


> ahte - ought
> cann - can
> cu_ðe - couthe --> could???
> sceolde - should
> _


That's right, and there's also _ah_ > oweand_ sceal_ > shall.

_



			But, what is the modern descent from the third row:
		
Click to expand...

_


> _ðearf ðurfon ðorfte_


This word doesn't seem to have survived in English, but there is a verb _tharf/thar_ in the OED that's labelled obsolete. The word does seem to have survived in Scots, however, where it gave _thar_.
_ 



			Interesting to me is the proximity (at least at first glance) of cunnon with konnen (the Haitian Creole adaptation of the French verb.
		
Click to expand...

_Is _konnen_ from _connaître_? If so then it's probably a coincidence since the French word involves the prefix _con_-.


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## HistofEng

^^ Yes it is.

I think Tom was saying it was interesting because the Old English words used for "know how to" (cunnon) and "know" (cnawan) came from the same Proto Indo-European root word, and now in one of the PIE daughter languages (Haitian Creole) "know how to" and "know" are the expressed by the same word with the same roots as "cunnon" and "cnawan" 

*one PIE root* *-->* (word diverged into 2 with distinct meanings) *cunnon* _'know how to'_ + *cnawan* _'know'_ *-->* (the two meanings, still distinct, converge on a single word etymologically connected to the original root, although in a diff. lineage) *konn* _'know how to'_ + *konn* _'know'_


Sorry, it's a little confusing, I'm not sure I've made much sense.


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## Forero

But curiously the common root in _connaître_ is in the _nn_, not the _co_(_n_).  English can, ken, know; Greek gignosco; Latin cognosco, French connaître

The _co_(_n_) prefix in Latin and French is _co_gnate to the Germanic prefix for past participles (e.g. gekonnt).


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## tom_in_bahia

Interesting that before seeing this etymology path (which makes a lot of sense), I had always just assumed that however "know" got to its modern state, the vowel that used to be between /k/ and /n/ got sucked out along the way.

Strange that Spanish, Portuguese and Italian all have a related word for "to know a person/place". However, the "co-" in Portuguese and Spanish seems to almost not exist in other words. The Portuguese word: conhecer has a palatal nasal (-nh-) which would correspond, normally, to a "gn" in Italian (and sometimes to the ñ in Spanish: banho--baño--bagno, for example). So, either the -nh- in Portuguese is coincidence or it preserved the original phonetic idea of the -gn- in cognosc* while Spanish and Italian did not.

My French is rusty, would the double n in connaître be pronounced as a geminate? That would also show a related phonetic descent, wouldn't it?

(*I put a star after cognosc because I don't know the infinitive in Latin.)

My comment about Haitian Creole was purely about the sound of the word and the way "connaître", probably in one of its morphemes, like "connait" was reduced to a nasal "konnen" in Creole, which sounds like the words we were discussing for "to know how". 

And with this consonant plus nasal combo that seems to embody the idea of "know" in Indo-Euro languages, would the zna- words from Slavic languages be related...I assume so. I can see a z and a g having some path to one another through sound shifts and I vaguely remember a declension rule from Polish that a final g would go to z before adding the declension, or something to that effect.

Is palatal nasal the correct term for ñ in Spanish/gn in Italian and French/ nh in Portuguese??? Correct me, please.


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## Forero

tom_in_bahia said:


> Interesting that before seeing this etymology path (which makes a lot of sense), I had always just assumed that however "know" got to its modern state, the vowel that used to be between /k/ and /n/ got sucked out along the way.


Sometimes the vowel was missing in PIE - whatever "zero grade" means.





> Strange that Spanish, Portuguese and Italian all have a related word for "to know a person/place". However, the "co-" in Portuguese and Spanish seems to almost not exist in other words.


The prefix "co-" (Latin "com-"/"con-"/"co-" depending on next sound) is very common in all the Latinate languages.





> The Portuguese word: conhecer has a palatal nasal (-nh-) which would correspond, normally, to a "gn" in Italian (and sometimes to the ñ in Spanish: banho--baño--bagno, for example). So, either the -nh- in Portuguese is coincidence or it preserved the original phonetic idea of the -gn- in cognosc* while Spanish and Italian did not.


I think different speakers of Latin must have had different ways to handle "co(n)-"+"gno", some keeping (or adding) "n" as part of "co(n)-" and dropping "g" (or assimilating "gn" to "n") and others using "co-" and keeping their version of "gn".





> My French is rusty, would the double n in connaître be pronounced as a geminate?


It was (in OF), but no longer is, a geminate sound in French, but it may have an effect on the "o".





> That would also show a related phonetic descent, wouldn't it?
> 
> (*I put a star after cognosc because I don't know the infinitive in Latin.)


_cognoscere_ with the same issues as the inchoate verbs in -_escere_ (palatalized "c" right after "s" - keep "sk"?, drop "s"?, drop "c"?)





> My comment about Haitian Creole was purely about the sound of the word and the way "connaître", probably in one of its morphemes, like "connait" was reduced to a nasal "konnen" in Creole, which sounds like the words we were discussing for "to know how".


Is the "-en" ending common in Creole?





> And with this consonant plus nasal combo that seems to embody the idea of "know" in Indo-Euro languages, would the zna- words from Slavic languages be related...I assume so. I can see a z and a g having some path to one another through sound shifts and I vaguely remember a declension rule from Polish that a final g would go to z before adding the declension, or something to that effect.


I've read somewhere that "zn-" is the normal Slavic reflex of PIE "gn-".





> Is palatal nasal the correct term for ñ in Spanish/gn in Italian and French/ nh in Portuguese???


Yes.


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## modus.irrealis

I completely missed out on the actual link there that Forero pointed out. Very interesting.



tom_in_bahia said:


> So, either the -nh- in Portuguese is coincidence or it preserved the original phonetic idea of the -gn- in cognosc* while Spanish and Italian did not.


Just to add here, the pronunciation of -gn- in Latin was in Classical times like the _ngn_ of _wrongness_.


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## Forero

modus.irrealis said:


> Just to add here, the pronunciation of -gn- in Latin was in Classical times like the _ngn_ of _wrongness_.


 
I've heard the same about the -gn- in Classical Greek gignosco.


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## tom_in_bahia

modus.irrealis said:


> I completely missed out on the actual link there that Forero pointed out. Very interesting.
> 
> 
> Just to add here, the pronunciation of -gn- in Latin was in Classical times like the _ngn_ of _wrongness_.



I find that really fascinating. So it was a velar nasal? Doesn't Greek do something like that with a double g? The velar nasal is not very common in modern Romance languages, is it? I mean, I know it exists in -nc-(hard)/-nqu-/-ng- (hard) clusters in Spanish, but can't really exist in Portuguese because an n before a velar consonant would nasalize the preceding vowel and not be affected by the following consonant (Port. _pancada /pã-'ka-da/_ vs. Span. _tengo /'teNG-go/_). And, thinking about the example with 'tengo': Portuguese makes it tenho (see also vengo --> venho, pongo --> ponho)...maybe Portuguese had a trend of changing the velar nasal to a palatal nasal.

I derailed the thread, didn't I???


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## Forero

tom_in_bahia said:


> I derailed the thread, didn't I???


 
I'm afraid I did that, right after the original question was answered.  But this is all so intriguing.  Sorry, Moderator.  If I knew how to divide a thread, I would have.


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## modus.irrealis

Forero said:


> I've heard the same about the -gn- in Classical Greek gignosco.


And also about -gm- as well, although it seems there's much more evidence in favour of a nasal pronunciation of g in -gm- than in -gn-. But in Latin, the situation is the opposite where's there's more evidence of it in -gn- than in -gm-.



tom_in_bahia said:


> I find that really fascinating. So it was a velar nasal? Doesn't Greek do something like that with a double g? The velar nasal is not very common in modern Romance languages, is it?


A velar nasal, yes -- although it was rare in Latin as well (although you're right that it's gotten even rarer since), and the sound only occurred before other specific sounds and wasn't really "independent."


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## HistofEng

Forero said:


> Is the "-en" ending common in Creole?


 
Yes, it is a common ending (nasalized vowel) in Haitian-Creole (Kreyól Ayisy*en*), but I don't think there's a pattern as to the type of words that have it. Nouns, verb, adjectives, etc, sort of like the "er" ending in English.

"To know" can either be said as "konnen" or "konn" depending on the phonetic environment (and, secondarily, the preference of the speaker).


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