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0 pointsrhdunn1mo ago0 comments

I can comprehend most of the text back to 1300, if slower than Modern/Present Day English. It helps to know the old letter forms, and some of how Shakespearean (Early Modern), Middle, and Old English work. It also helps sounding it out.

Past that, I'm not familiar with Old English enough to understand and follow the text.

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antonvs1mo ago

Knowing a bit of German or Dutch helps as well.

I posted my amateur translation of 1200 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874

At first it stumped me, but I spent some time on it and it started to become intelligible. I didn't look up any words until after I was done, at which point I looked up "uuif" (woman/wife) since I wanted to know what manner of amazing creature had saved the protagonist :D

dhosek1mo ago

Knowing that W is a late addition to the alphabet and would have been written UU or VV suddenly makes uuif obvious.

antonvs1mo ago

I could intuit the pronunciation but I didn’t make the connection from “wif” to “woman” in general. In hindsight I should have, after all we have words like “midwife” which doesn’t refer to a person’s actual married partner.

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0 pointsrhdunn1mo ago0 comments

Past that, I'm not familiar with Old English enough to understand and follow the text.

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antonvs1mo ago

Knowing a bit of German or Dutch helps as well.

I posted my amateur translation of 1200 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874

dhosek1mo ago

Knowing that W is a late addition to the alphabet and would have been written UU or VV suddenly makes uuif obvious.

antonvs1mo ago

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