Simon Roper produces superb YouTube content on Saxon language and its place in English today.
A Conversation with Simon Roper
When I first came across Simon’s YouTube content I was completely captivated with the insights into the language of the past. Simon is very clear, quite rightly so, that his reconstructions of the sounds of Saxon are to be taken as approximations rather than being definitive. Nevertheless, there is something magical about the way Simon can conjure up a sense of language from a time so far away.
This is media content for the thinking person, web content for people who want to expand their understanding of the world beyond watching cute kittens falling off of tables. In a media world filled with the trite and insubstantial musings of a digital culture which does not just promote inanity but gloriously celebrates profound stupidity, Simon’s work is a breath of fresh air.
In a plain and simple style, devoid of gimmicks and absent of purpose other than to enlighten, Simon Roper considers history as something which he can breathe life into. He provides inspiration for the critical thinker and context for understanding the process of English history and the landscape in which it has evolved.
That I would want to have a conversation with him was an absolute no-brainer. On making contact, Simon agreed to a chat about language and mythology and we put it together in January 2021. The content is now being released across my mediacast platform and there is about an hour of looking at different issues. I have broken it down into roughly ten-minute segments to make it all reasonably accessible.
We start by talking about landscape and history as an easy introduction to where we want to explore. After that, we start to talk about the names of the days of the week and ideas around meaning. This leads us on to the issue of toponomy; the history of words in place names, and we discuss different mythologies of landscape.
I believe it is fair to say that we both hope this is just an initial foray into further discussions about more specific topics which we shall undertake at a later date. In the meantime, you will find a conversation with Simon Roper emerging on my mediacast page, on the Mythologies YouTube channel, the Mythologies Vimeo channel and podcasts across various platforms.
You can view Simon’s YouTube channel here.
