A lot of big words about a little word

Lá

One of those useful little words that is very hard to define but you'll come to know instinctively how to use and find it hard to do without. And even then, you'll find it hard to define.

Technically speaking, it's an enclitic particle, a word that has no specific definition in itself but expresses an attitude to what's being said. In layman's terms, though you'll hear it in a sentence, it doesn't mean anything specific but gives weight to what you're saying.

1. It can be negative, especially when used together with "wá" (either "lá wá", "wá lá" or a full-on "wá lá wá") meaning something like "alas!", "oh no!", or "man, this is really bad!", asf, though doesn´t need to be used with "wá" for this purpose and can be used on its own I guess depending on how intensely you want to emphasise.

2. Or, it can have no negative meaning at all -

a) it can mean something similar to "hwæt!" at the beginning of a speech (as in the initial "Hwæt!" in e.g. Beowulf), as a way of drawing attention, or summing up. Seamus Heaney translated this hwæt with "So!" which is in itself a good explanation to the modern ear (though a more traditional translation of 'lá' would be "Lo!" which is a descendent of "lá" - not that helpful to us as it's not used in the modern language). Care should be given to distinguish uses of 'so' here. There's a difference between saying "So. This and that happened, and here's where we are now", and "This and that happened, so here's where we are now". Maybe not an important difference, but a difference in attitude to what you're saying - the first is a definite 'summing up', a call to attention; the second links two things in a sentence, like 'therefore'. The first is 'Lá!', the second is 'swá'. Don't fret too much about the differences, they are subtle and you could probably get away with either in either case, but it's worth thinking about, more to get a feel of how they can be used rather than their actual definition.
    Lá! = "OK!", "So.", "Now.", "Listen to me!", "Summing up then,.." asf.
    Swá* = "..so,...", "..and so ..", "..therefore.." asf.

b) it can also be used, and this is an important use with as much potential to everyday speech, to emphasize something where we might say "of course" or "indeed", and maybe "really" and "then", in a sentence, e.g. "we came in from the rainstorm and took off our clothes which were, of course (lá), sopping wet"; "so you got half the day off work? That's (lá) good!". The second example here is not so natural in MnE, at least I wouldn't say "of course" or "indeed" in that instance (though maybe "really"), but the 'that's good' needs some emphasis or recognition that we're saying something obvious and understood, otherwise it sounds trite. It's a subtle usage, but the sort of thing you'll get used to very quickly**.


Try a few of these on for size -

1.
Lá wá! Ic sceal wyrcan eac nú on sunnandæge! - "Oh no, I've got to work this sunday too!"
    Note - 'sceal' while having shades of MnE 'shall' is also strongly obligatory, as in 'must, have to'
                    'nú' when discussing dates usually mean "this ..", or "the coming .."
Lá hú hé gremede mec! - "Jeez, he really irritated me/got on my nerves!"

2.
a)
Lá, ic út of húse cwóm and gelimpe métte ealdne fréond! - "So, I came out of the house and bumped into an old friend!"
    Note - métan is to meet, also chance upon, but I've emphasised that here with 'gelimpe' (see below)
                   'gelimpe' is a noun in the dative which is often a way of making adverbs. It means "what happens, chance", so here as an adverb it means 'by chance'.

b)
Þú móste healfne dæg æmtian? Þæt lá wæs gód! - "You got half a day off work? That's good!"
    Note - 'móste' looks a bit like MnE "must". Don't be fooled, it's from 'mótan' meaning "to get to, be allowed to"
               'æmtian' is a useful little verb, meaning "to be at leisure, free from work or engagement"
               'healfne dæg' is accusative which is normal when expressing how long a time something occurs
               'wæs gód' is in the past tense when in MnE we would use present. This is idiomatic and I'm not sure it's correct as it's probably a habit I picked up from Swedish where they tend to look back on things in the near past (like, a few seconds ago - "That thing we're discussing that I mentioned a few seconds ago, that was good") whereas in MnE we mostly bring them to the present discussion ("That thing we're discussing, that is good")

Þæt lá wæs fæger! - "Now that was nice/pretty!"
Is þǽr genóg lá? - "Is there really enough?"
Þá cwæþ ic, 'hwæt is ðæt lá?' - "Then I said, 'What's that, then?'"
    Note - these last three examples are real OE extant in the corpus


* - There's more to the word 'swá', much more, the sense I'm talking about here is just in relation to potential overlaps with 'lá'.

** - It's actually very similar in just this usage to a couple of Swedish words. The standard Swedish one is 'ju' and is used all over the place in pretty much all of Sweden (I believe). More interestingly, in the Gothenburg dialect they don't use 'ju' but have their own variant which is 'la' and pronounced the same as the OE 'lá'. This makes me wonder about the progenitors of the Gothenburgers, the Geats of Beowulf fame, and maybe some connection to OE.