Accents have diverged a lot over time and as I recall, American English (particularly the mid-Atlantic seaboard variety) is closer to what Shakespeare and his cohort spoke than the standard BBC accent employed in most contemporary Shakespeare productions).
I was also taught a bit of Chaucer (died 1400) in English at school. Although not any of the naughty bits.
I only learned recently that the vowel shift and non-rhotic R's in Britain happened after the colonization of America. Americans still talk "normally" whereas the English got weird. Also why Irish accents sound closer to American than British I think. Linguistics is cool
like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc ?
Are you sure this is because of their accent? I have the same experience with French (the non-native speakers are easier to understand), but I always thought that was because they use fewer and simpler words.
On the contrary, spelling is highly idiosyncratic until the 18th century, and until then it was tightly correlated to the sounds of spoken language. Shakespeare didn't even HIMSELF have one way of spelling his own last name. That's how non-conventional spelling was until pretty recently.
You can even see it in these examples, words like "maiſter" in IIRC the 1300s example. Which becomes "master" later in English, but remains Mäster in Frisian (the closest Germanic language to English) and is also mäster in Swedish.
In this particular case, there are several glyphs used in the older texts which we don't use any more today, which makes the older text both appear more "different" and, for most people, harder to read. But this is an artificial source of difficulty in this case. I acknowledge your point that some other spelling differences track pronunciation differences but this isn't always true.
As far as pronunciation changes that aren't captured in spelling changes, this is true most obviously for a lot of words whose spelling standardized during or before the Great Vowel Shift, like "day".
That said: phonetic spelling now. We have spent 500 years turning English into something closer to Egyptian hieroglyphs than a language with an alphabet.
People often say that the English spelling is weird or illogical. As a non-native speaker, I disagree. The English spelling makes perfect sense. It’s the English pronunciation which is really strange and inconsistent.
besides, pronunciation continues to evolve, so any phonetic spelling would continue to gradually diverge from the spoken language
I've created a Firefox Add-on for it as well.
Do you mean that since English isn't phonetically spelled, that which we call the alphabet is rather arbitrary?
Made a version with modern glyphs to help separate language familiarity from writing familiarity:
https://gist.github.com/terretta/5be1e14b42cf62ec9c235c7cd88...
All credit to original, just agreed with your point this munged two things as presented and preferred to focus on the language.
Where are you going to find the spoken word from centuries ago?
For the prurient, Chaucer's Vulgar Tongue is a great place to dip a toe into it:
https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2019/09/25/episode-129-c...
I absolutely agree. This has become my comfort podcast when I just want to decompress.
Around 1000, English and Dutch must have been mutually understandable.
https://youtu.be/OeC1yAaWG34?si=lkoQ--uZNN8Ntpqy
As a Norwegian who speaks English and school-German, Dutch is fairly easy to read but sounds like you're speaking a mix of English, Norse and German with a mouthful of gravel (similar to the Danish, who Norwegians like to say speaks Norwegian with a potato in their mouth)
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/english-to-dutch-translations
The connection between Dutch and English languages is far more minimal in comparison. In fact, when I first faced the language, I would have said it was a combination of ~80% German, 10% English, 5% French, +5% Others.
You may want lol into that, since you are realizing and noticing things, but you are seemingly still not connecting the dots correctly. Another hint, Dutch comes from Deutsche, how the “Germans” refer to themselves, which is also where the “English” came from, Angles and Saxony, the latter still being a region of “Germany” today.
In other words, you really should be referring to themselves Germans as the Deutsche of you wanted to differentiate them from the Dutch, which are basically the same Deutsche people who just live on the coast, the lowlands, i.e., the Nether-lands.
[0] Or at the time promised the post, I don't remember the details.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Anglo-Saxon_England
I felt like it helped to use an "old english" accent in my inner voice when reading.
Like does Dutch have anything like "cƿæð"? Or "Hlaford"? Or "soð"? "þeah þe"?
I know Dutch should be a little closer to Old English than German, but if you truly can pick up words like that leaning on Dutch, maybe I should learn to read it. (I can read the 1000 Old English sentence pretty well).
The orthography of Anglo-Saxon can make it look easier to read for a modern German or Dutch speaker, but to actually hear it could be confusing. Specifically around the words written with the past tense marker "ge" -- or other words using "ge", which is pronounced like modern English "ye" (hence English 'yester[day]' instead of German 'gestern'), not hard "ge" like in modern high German.
And yes Dutch (or modern Low Saxon dialects or Frisian) could be closer but the orthography is very different and also Anglo-Saxon had a palette closer to the front of the mouth than the back like Dutch.
Also other West Germanic (and North) languages lost the dental fricatives ("thorn" (þ) and "eth" (ð)) while English (and Icelandic) kept it. And Anglo Saxon used them heavily. Old Franconian and Old Saxon had this sound, too, but lost it (hence "the" vs der/die/das etc)
Which is interesting cause 1200 italian[0] seems pretty readable by everyone who can read italian (and likely every other romance language), you have to go further back to have a shift.
[0] E.g. Saint Francis' Canticle of the Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canticle_of_the_Sun
“Swie!” is interesting, I understood it somehow naturally. In Gheg Albanian we say “Shuj!”, which means “Be silent!”.
The unfortunate history of Europe is that the indigenous people of Central Europe are essentially all German people who have been divided and conquered by a ruling parasitic class that we all know moved around the continent, marrying into each other’s families and becoming the people’s aristocratic slave masters over centuries, which included linguistic divisions in things like naming, and even language “reforms”. Heck the English ruling class itself are Germans and they just changed their names when it was expedient to do so in order to continue filling the English people by not drawing attention to the fact that they were being set to fight their item bothers and sisters in WWI so that the British ruling class could remain their parasitic masters.
> ...all German people who have been divided and conquered by a ruling parasitic class that we all know moved around the continent, marrying into each other’s families and becoming the people’s aristocratic slave masters over centuries
...is a weasel-worded way of saying "Jews". That is, this is just a re-spewing of the same old racist talking points from the original Nazis (and earlier).
Just in case anyone didn't see this for what it (almost certainly) is.
Assuming that translation was done a while ago (100+ yrs?)... It is hard to read. I can understand it if I try. But the phrasing is not current. 100 pages will take double the time at the least.
Almost think AI needs to rephrase it into current English.
Probably has these double negatives, long sentences, etc.
The first chapter is like a book for toddlers in Old English (with questions and loads of repeated vocab), and each chapter gets a bit harder. Half way in its like a Young Adults Novel level of difficulty. But each step up is relatively small.
The actual story is great too. Æthelstān Mūs is my spirit animal.
Ørberg may be the best, though.
1300 is noticeably harder and needs some iterative refinement, but once you rewrite it, it's surprisingly not too bad:
> Then after much time spoke the master, his words were cold as winter is. His voice was the crying of rauenes(?), sharp and chill, and all that heard him were adrade(?) and dared not speak.
> "I deem thee(?) to the(?) death, stranger. Here shall you die, far from thy kin and far from thine own land, and none shall known thy name, nor non shall thy biwepe(?)."
> And I said to him [...]
1200 is where I can't understand much... it feels like where the vocabulary becomes a significant hurdle, not just the script:
> Hit(?) is much to saying all that pinunge(?) hie(?) on me(?) uroyten(?), all that sore(?) and all that sorry. No scar(?) is never hit(?) forgotten, not uuhiles(?) is libbe(?).
It gets exhausting to keep going after these :-) but this was very fun.
Probably beweep; lament, weep over.
> pinunge(?)
This is explained later on the page. "Where a modern writer would say he underwent torture, a 1200-era writer must say that he suffered pinunge instead."
I also couldn't understand this one although the word "pining" did come to mind, apparently not totally off, as that has apparently come from the same ancestor. Didn't help me figure out the intended meaning, though.
> No scar(?) is never hit(?) forgotten, not uuhiles(?) is libbe(?).
I guessed this meant something along the lines of "[?] shall I never [?] forget, not while I live". I didn't figure out that "uu" is actually "w" until that was explained, so it escaped me that "uuhiles" is "while[s]", though.
1300 started to get hard because I was missing the meaning of some words completely. 1200 was where I gave up.
Now, English is my 2nd language so I was surprised I could go that far.
Someone here needs to brush up on their Icelandic!
"adread", meaning afraid
Still a recognizable archaic word, constructed from a still-in-use root. Just the spelling is different.
The way to remember thorn: "Ye Oldee Shoppe". The "Ye" there is "þe" (the), written with "Y" standing in for þ - historically for typographic reasons, and in modern times just repeating that change.
> "ſ" is also easy to guess and I'd seen it before.
It's in use as a long s[1] in other languages too when using Fraktur style fonts in particular. One of Norways largest papers [2] still insists on using it in their header, which led someone I went to school with to insist the name was "Aftenpoften" instead of "Aftenposten" ("Evening Post").
My reading was "There is (too) much to say all that pain he wrought on me, all there sour and all that sorryness. Not shall I never forget, not while I live!"
> all there sour and all that sorryness.
"all those sores and all that sorrow"?
- rauenes: ravens
- “all that heard him were adrade”: I’m guessing it means “were filled with dread”, maybe “were adread”
- I think deme is actually a conjugation of the archaic verb “to doom”, as in “I doom thee to the death”
- “none shall thy biwepe” would be roughly “none shall beweep thee”
Aside: typing this is hard on my phone, it’s so close to modern English that nearly every word gets autocorrected.
Ravens
I really got into reading Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" (about 1497) about a year ago, and I suspect that really helped me with this exercise, since he uses some language that was archaic even back then.
I really wish there was an audio recording of this story. I found the spellings in the earlier years more and more confusing.
Do you know if there any other such language related eastereggs in other of Lovecraft's writing? should I chose to revisit them, in English this time around.
I'm sure S. T. Joshi might have a bit to say about the topic. Personally speaking from very limited exposure and knowledge of language games, and me not being from an environment which has European language roots, I might have missed quite a bit of such easter eggs in the atmosphere and writing. Like, for example, your comment prompted me to find out what "rue d'auseil" (from The Music of Erich Zann) meant, I didn't bother to find out until today.
I do recommend rereading Lovecraft in English either way, since you never know what gets lost in translation!
"From Olde English to Modern American English in One Monologue"
I remember my father and I having to enable the subtitles for Rab C Nesbitt when I was a kid. There are areas of Scotland (especially the isles) which are probably still unintelligible to most of the British population I would wager.
Anyway as I know from my reading history at 1400 it gets difficult, but I can make it through 1400 and 1300 with difficulty, but would need to break out the middle English dictionaries for 1200 and 1100. 1000 forget it, too busy to make that effort.
(function() {
const SKIP_PARENTS = new Set(["SCRIPT", "STYLE", "NOSCRIPT", "TEXTAREA"]);
const walker = document.createTreeWalker(
document.body,
NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT,
{
acceptNode(node) {
const p = node.parentNode;
if (!p || SKIP_PARENTS.has(p.nodeName)) return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT;
if (p.nodeName === "INPUT") return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT;
return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT;
}
}
);
let node;
while ((node = walker.nextNode())) {
node.nodeValue = node.nodeValue.replace(/ſ/g, "s");
}
})()To me, it is nearly like trying to look at a picture book of fashion but the imagery is degraded as you go back. I'd like to see the time-traveler's version with clean digital pictures of every era...
The author Colin Gorrie, "PhD linguist and ancient language teacher", obviously knows their stuff. From my experience, much more limited and less informed, the older material looks like a modern writer mixing in some archaic letters and expression - it doesn't look like the old stuff and isn't nearly as challenging, to me.
Of course that’s not limited to the 16th century. The Good News Bible renders what is most commonly given as “our name is Legion for we are many” instead as “our name is Mob because there are a lot of us.” In my mind I hear the former spoken in that sort of stereotypical demon voice: deep with chorus effect, the latter spoken like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Of course you do, not only to read but write: English still is a Germanic language.
I'd say around 2020
Great fun, and helped a little perhaps by the fact that I've visited Iceland and that language uses the thorn for the sound we make in 'thin' and eth for the sound we make in 'then' so I mimicked that.
Background: Fully understands Scandinavian languages (native), can read a bit of German and Dutch, proficient in English, and can read a fair bit of Icelandic. All of this seems to help.
English is cooked fam. Gen Alpha’s kids are going to get lost at the 2000 paragraph.
Lowkey though, let’s keep it 100 and check it. Back in the day Millennials got totally ragged on for sounding all extra like this n' usin all sort of txting abbreviations early on 2. Yet they can still peep oldskool English just the same - talk about insane in the membrane, for real.
- [1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2/enact...
For me 1200 is off a cliff, just like the author describes. I can get a few words here or there but comprehension is just gone.
P1: Unclear, but I think it's basically saying there is much to say about all that happened to him.
[Edit: the more I stare at it, the more sense it makes. "There is much to say about all that ? was wrought on me, ???. I shall never forget it, not while I live!"]
P2: Unexpectedly, a woman ("uuif", wife) appeared at "great speed" to save him. "She came in among the evil men..."
P3: "She slaughtered the heathen men that pinned me, slaughtered them and felled them to the ground. There was blood and bale enough and the fallen lay still, for [they could no more?] stand. As for the Maister, the [wrathe?] Maister, he fled away in the darkness and was seen no more."
P4: The protagonist thanks the woman for saving him, "I thank thee..."
On first reading, I didn't know what "uuif" was. I had to look that one up.
Only for this the font stays the same size, and it gets harder to interpret as is deviates further from modern English.
For me, I can easily go back to about when the printing press got popular.
No coincidence I think.
___
[*]: I guess, from what I've understood -- absolutely no expert, just interested.
I'm expecting that's true of a lot of people who meet my description, and my guess is university graduates not in STEM can read 1300 without issue (same as me), and certainly every native speaker with a college degree can read 1400. (Edit: FWIW I'm thinking here of how I can read Chaucer, and how I couldn't in 9th grade when I was introduced to him)
1200 I had to focus insanely hard and make guesses and circle back once I'd gotten more context to the words I couldn't read.
This is generous to his readers. Most American college students majoring in English can't read Dickens, according to a study discussed here last year [0].
People reading a post on a blog about dead languages are self-selected to be better at this task. But so are people who've decided to spend four years of their life studying English literature.
In some sense, it's better these days, competition has led to care for the reader that probably didn't exist as much then, since so few people can read.
To those who enjoyed it so much as to come here and read these comments, I'd suggest to fetch a copy of David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas", and appreciate the multiple style changes between the various sections.
It's spoken by about 50,000 people in the Faroe Islands, which are between Iceland and Scotland. The isles were settled by Viking-era Norse about a thousand years ago and then largely forgotten by the rest of the world. But they kept speaking their version of Old Norse and it became its own language. There are many dialects and the writing system was designed to cover all of them, so it is is etymologically informed by Old Norse and it is very conservative. It's not at all indicative of how it's really pronounced. The written form is somewhat even mutually intelligible with Icelandic / Old Norse, but the spoken language is not.
Underneath those æ and ð is a language that is oddly similar to English, like parallel convergent evolution. It's a North Germanic language not a West Germanic language so the historical diversion point is about 1500 years ago.
But it has undergone an extensive vowel shift (but in a different pattern). And also like English, it has also undergone extensive affrication (turned into ch/j) of the stop consonants and reduction of final stops and intervocalic stops. It has the same kind of stress - vowel reduction interaction that English has. That further heightens the uncanny effect.
I came away with the impression that it is English's closest sibling language, aside from Dutch. Some vocabulary:
broðir "broh-wer" (brother), heyggjur "hoy-cher" (hill/height), brúgv "brukf" (bridge), sjógvar/sjós "shekvar/shos" (sea), skyggj "skooch" (sky/cloud), djópur "cho-pur" (deep), veðirinn "ve-vir-uhn" (weather). Rough pronunciations given between quotes; all examples are cognate with English!
There's an extended story reading by a native speaker here [1] if you want an example of what it sounds like. No idea what they're saying. The intonation reminds me a bit of the northern British isles which also had a Norse influence.
[0] https://annas-archive.org/md5/4d2ce4cd5e828bbfc7b29b3d03349b...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSXu2fuJOTQ
Repost of an earlier comment of mine.
"If you’ve ever seen a pub called “Ye Olde” anything, that ye is actually þe, an attempt by early printers to write a thorn without having to make an expensive new letter".
Now I know.
Honestly not a bad critical thinking exercise in general, for someone with language fluency. Much of it can be “worked out” just through gradual inference and problem-solving, and I’d be curious to see its results as a test for High Schoolers.
Only from 1913-1946 though.
1200 is much harder but I can get maybe 60-75%:
Hit is muchel to seggen all þat pinunge hie on me uuroȝten, al þar sor and al þat sorȝe. Ne scal ic nefre hit forȝeten, naht uuhiles ic libbe!
There is much to say of all that paining he wrought upon me. All that soreness and sorryness. Not shall I ever forget it, not while I live!
Ac þer com me gret sped, and þat was a uuif, strong and stiþ! Heo com in among þe yuele men and me nerede fram heore honden.
Here is where I lose the thread.
A wiff ... wife? witch? waif? woman? ... who is strong and perhaps stiff or some similar word, comes to him with great speed. She comes in among the evil men/man and saves him with her hand. Although I could be way off
Heo sloȝ þe heþene men þat me pyneden, sloȝ hem and fælde hem to þe grunde. Þer was blod and bale inouȝ And hie feollen leien stille, for hie ne miȝten namore stonden. Ac þe Maister, þe uuraþþe Maister, he flaȝ awei in þe deorcnesse and was iseon namore.
Here I can gather a lot more but I'm guessing a lot:
She slayed the heathen man who pained me, slayed him and felled him to the ground. There was a lot of blood and bile and he fell and lay still. For he had no more might to stand. And the maister, the wrathful maister, he fled into the darkness and I saw him no more.
Ic seide hire, “Ic þanke þe, leoue uuif, for þu hauest me ineredd from dæðe and from alle mine ifoan!”
I said to to her "I thank you, lovely waif/wife/witch, for you have saved me from death and from all my (?)"
And then from 1100 I can gather that the waif/witch/woman replies to his thanks and introduces herself as Aelfgifu, which I incidentally know is an old English female name meaning Elf Gift
Any further help?
Steady or stout (which used to mean more "steady" than "thickset" as now), perhaps.
> Heo sloȝ þe heþene men ... sloȝ hem and fælde hem to þe grunde
> She slayed the heathen man ... slayed him and felled him to the ground.
Them, not him, I thought? The Master had several henchmen.
> ...from alle mine ifoan!”
> ...from all my (?)"
Foes, fiends? (Ger. "Feind" and Swe. "fiende" both mean "enemy", so I've always thought that's the original meaning of Eng. "fiend" too.)
> Aelfgifu, which I incidentally know is an old English female name meaning Elf Gift
Spouse -- almost wrote "wife" there, but that could have been confusing in this context -- of some old king of Wessex or something, innit?
___
The original:
And þæt heo sægde wæs eall soþ. Ic ƿifode on hire, and heo ƿæs ful scyne ƿif, ƿis ond ƿælfæst. Ne gemette ic næfre ær sƿylce ƿifman. Heo ƿæs on gefeohte sƿa beald swa ænig mann, and þeah hƿæþere hire andƿlite wæs ƿynsum and fæger.
Ac ƿe naƿiht freo ne sindon, for þy þe ƿe næfre ne mihton fram Ƿulfesfleote geƿitan, nefne ƿe þone Hlaford finden and hine ofslean. Se Hlaford hæfþ þisne stede mid searocræftum gebunden, þæt nan man ne mæg hine forlætan. Ƿe sindon her sƿa fuglas on nette, swa fixas on ƿere.
And ƿe hine secaþ git, begen ætsomne, ƿer ond ƿif, þurh þa deorcan stræta þisses grimman stedes. Hƿæþere God us gefultumige!
___
Applying the following changes mechanically (which I often do in my head when I see a un-familiar word in old english)
ģ = y, ċ = ch, sw = s, ƿ = w, p = th, x = sk,
we get:
And thæt heo sæyde wæs eall soth. Ich wifode on hire, and heo wæs ful shyne wif, wis ond wælfæst. Ne yemette ich næfer ær sylche wifman. Heo wæs on gefeoghte sa beald sa æniy mann, and theah wæthere hire andlite wæs wynsum and fæyer.
Ac we nawight freo ne sindon, for thy the we næfer ne mighton fram Wulfesfleote yewitan, nefen we thone Laford finden and hine ofslean. Se Laford hæfth thisne stede mid searocræftum gebunden, thæt nan man ne mæy hine forlætan. We sindon her sa fuglas on nette, sa fiskas on were.
And we hine sechath yit, beyen ætsomne, wer ond wif, thurgh tha deorcan stræta thisses grimman stedes. Wæthere God us yefultumige!
__
My translation attempt:
And that which she said was all true. I made her my wife, she was a very beautiful woman, wise and steadfast when dealing death[0]. I had never met such a woman before. She was as brave in a fight as any person, yet her appearance was winsome and fair.
But we were no longer free, because we could neaver leave Wulfleet, even though we found the lord and slew him. The lord had bound this town with sorcery, such that no one could leave it. We were trapped like birds on a net, like fishes are by a man.
And we searched yet, being together, man and wife, through the dark streets of this grim town. God help us!
___
[0] my best attempt at translating "ƿælfæst"; it's like slaughter + firm/fast/stable. I guess it means she is calm while killing people :))
https://www.youtube.com/live/2WcIK_8f7oQ?si=NpXTrRjcHN09Zn56...
Medieval French, Middle High German, Ancient Greek, Classical Arabic or Chinese from different eras, etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh
The Shahnameh is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author.
Books written in the 17th century or later are easy to read. Of course, the meaning of some words can change over time but that's a minor trouble. I believe Molière and Racine are still studied in school nowadays, but the first name that came to my mind was Cyrano de Bergerac (the writer, not the fictitious character).
Books from the 16th need practice, but I think anyone who tries hard will get used to the language. I enjoyed Rabelais's Pantagruel and Gargantua a lot, and I first read them by myself when I was in highschool (I knew a bit of Latin and Greek, which helped).
Before that, French was much more diverse; the famous split into "langue d'oc" and "langue d'oïl" (terms for "oui" — yes — at the time) is a simplification, because there were many dialects with blurry contours over space and time.
I've read several 11th-12th novels about the Round Table, but I was already experienced in Old French when I started, and I think most readers would struggle to make sense of it. It may depend on the dialect; I remember "Mort Artur" was easier than "Lancelot, le chevalier à la charette".
"La chanson de Roland" (11th century, Old French named anglo-normand) is one of my favorite books of all times. Reading it for the first time was a long process — I learned the declensions of Old French and a lot of vocabulary — but it was also fun, like deciphering some mystery. And the poesy is a marvel, epic, incredibly concise, surprising and deep.
Before that (9th-10th), Old French was even closer to Latin.
There's not much literature older than that, cause people preferred to write in Latin, the oldest bit in "volgare" is the Indovinello Veronese[0] which is from the 8th or 9th century and at that point it's almost latin spelling-wise, it's understandable if you're well educated but wouldn't be understandable by everyone.
Resiliency is one of the weird beneficial side-effects of having a writing system based on ideas instead of sounds. Today, you've got a variety of Chinese dialects that, when spoken, are completely unintelligible to one another. But people who speak different dialects can read the same book just fine. Very odd, from a native English speaking perspective.
In general, language changes around at the same rate all over history and geography, barring some things (migration, liturgical languages)
I managed fine all the way through 1400. I was missing a word here and there, and by 1500 I deduced the semantics of some words from the context, roots, similar words, and other European languages.
1300 was quite challenging; I understood more than half the words, but there was not enough context to fill in the gaps. I got the gist of the story, but not enough of the details.
1200 and onwards were inscrutable to me.
> Before the mid 1700s, there was no such thing as standardized spelling.
It felt like it was become more Germanic, and that appears true:
> The farther back you go, the more the familiar Latinate layer of English is stripped away, revealing the Germanic core underneath: a language that looks to modern eyes more like German or Icelandic than anything we’d call English.
For example "grymme" as "cruel" (possibly related to modern English "grim"?)
Also: after reading the notes below about how the unusual symbols should be pronounced it becomes easier, if you slowly read it aloud to yourself. The 1300s is now mostly clear except a few unusual words.
"Þe sayde Maiſter, what that hee apperid bifore me"
I believe should be
"Þe sayde Maiſter, what Þat hee apperid bifore me"
Or were there situations in the 1400s when the thorn would not be used for representing th?
on edit: or is it a representation of the changeability of spelling choices in individual texts, which admittedly this text seems a bit less changeable and random than many authors of that time period.
What's interesting is the one in use today - from the early 17th century - is not the most modern variant. There was another revision from the mid-19th century that fell out of favor because it sounded a bit off, less rhythmic, less sacred (ie. Kingdom -> Government).
I thought my Swedish and basic knowledge of Icelandic spelling would have been more helpful than it was. From 1300 on it feels like the influence of French is making the language more familiar.
Language changes. It's weird to see it happening in front of you...
That happens even if you live in the country where you are a native speaker though. I have seen this in my native Swedish too. Some are easy to adapt to, some I find really grating. But there is little point in being angry over it.
Thus I regard KJV-onlyism to be a passing fad; for if another 400 years passes, the writing in the 1611 will go from being strange to our eyes, to being unreadable in the future by anyone but trained scholars.
Language changes in the time axis but also in the location and social axes. The best we can probably hope for is one snapshot in time. However this is meant to be a blogger, journalist, writer etc., through time this may have been the expected style for writing of this sort.
Especially in medieval times, I understand it may have been impossible to understand people a few towns away as the dialect could change so dramatically.
Disclaimer, I'm no expert, but I find linguistics fascinating.
Still, I really enjoyed this and I commend the effort!
I.e. the 2000s one is a casual travel blog style intended normally intended for any random quick reader and the 1900s one is more a mix of academic sounding/formal conversation intended for longer content. If you assume a more casual voice in the 1900s one and a more formal voice in the 2000s one I bet they'd even almost seem to be placed backwards chronologically.
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/guest-review-the-wake-by-paul-k...
There will be changes of course. Yet we are also more connected than ever, whereas the next town over would be a whole day trip in the past. The separation allows for more divergence.
Well, maybe if we get to Mars, differences might crop up again.
window unseal nite no log. odd.
Is there something specific in there?
I wonder how much our understanding of past language is affected by survivorship bias? Most text would have been written by a highly-educated elite, and most of what survives is what we have valued and prized over the centuries.
For instance, this line in the 1800s passage:
> Hunger, that great leveller, makes philosophers of us all, and renders even the meanest dish agreeable.
This definitely sounds like the 1800s to me, but part of that is the romance of the idea expressed. I wonder what Twitter would have been like back then, for instance, especially if the illiterate had speech-to-text.
Good for thee, ackcherly.
Dutch is 1400s English.
why language would evolve ? Let’s say to make it easier and better ? And if such a case then wouldn’t that be applicable to all languages? If yes then I am a native kutchi speaker and it just a dialect. How would its history of change could even be found? But I do speak other languages like Gujarati and Hindi and I wonder if there was any evolution if those languages which have a
Maybe called the "teleological fallacy" or something.
I hope not
Better for it to grow layers that are new and exciting, accessible only to the cultures that create them (and whatever comes after) and those who make the effort to continue learning
Past that, I'm not familiar with Old English enough to understand and follow the text.
So someone who is a modern German or Dutch speaker will have an easier time reading Anglo-Saxon than an English speaker, perhaps. But that's a bit deceiving. Many of the sounds written there had a very different spoken sound than their modern German or Dutch counterparts, and are actually closer to their modern English variants. (ge in particular pronounced "ye" not hard-g, so words like yesterday were spelled with "gest" similar to modern German, but not spoken that way at all).
Simon Roper on YouTube does a better job of this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic
Super work!
We need to bring muchel back
*than.
Which I realize is an ironic correction in this context. I wonder if we'll lose a separate then/than and disambiguate by context.
For example, Bill W speaks about being trapped or surrounded by quicksand. Apparently, nobody today understands quicksand. So they remove the word quicksand.
I'm 44, and this makes me feel like an old man yelling at clouds.
It's weird when an "s" that's written in cursive is translated like that.
Is this about recognizing letters. Then show original scans.
Or is this about understanding the spoken word. Then write "first".
Don't do both and fail at everything.
To me this made it clear that the German Nation has been clearly defined over the last thousand years and just how similar the people who wrote and enjoyed that work are to the native Germans right now. Can only recommend people do something like that if they want to dispel the delusion that people of your Nation who lived a thousand years ago were in any way fundamentally different from you.
Fucking AI slop, even this