How far back in time can you understand English?
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How far back in time can you understand English?
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Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#2This is a good quick example, almost like an eye test where the characters are harder to interpret when you go down the page because they are smaller.
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.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#3an audible example:
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#4the experience of grendle in the original flashing between comprehensibility and jumbled letters is as far back as I have gone, but I read everything truely ancient that I can get my hands on from any culture in any language(translated) and try and make sense of it best as I can
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#5Simon Roper has a spoken equivalent for Northern English -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Zqn9_OQAw.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#6an audible example: https://loops.video/v/dxXFQREMjg
And here's the Simon Roper videos acknowledged in the article: "From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic (short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_pS3_c6QkI ). This runs forward rather than back in time. However, Roper's "How Far Back Can You Understand Northern English?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Zqn9_OQAw does run backwards in time.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#7How far into the future is my concern
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#8Should be "how far back in time can you read English?" The language itself is what is spoken and the writing, while obviously related, is its own issue. Spelling is conventional and spelling and alphabet changes don't necessarily correspond to anything meaningful in the spoken language; meanwhile there can be large changes in pronunciation and comprehensibility that are masked by an orthography that doesn't reflect them.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#9[dead]
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#10the experience of grendle in the original flashing between comprehensibility and jumbled letters is as far back as I have gone, but I read everything truely ancient that I can get my hands on from any culture in any language(translated) and try and make sense of it best as I can
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.