A recent book which looks at this in an interesting fashion is _The Wake_ which treats the Norman Conquest in apocalyptic terms using a language markedly different and appropriate
How far back in time can you understand English?
21–30 of 432 posts
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#22How far into the future is my concern
I'm heading to Stornoway next week, I don't hold out much hope
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#23A recent book which looks at this in an interesting fashion is _The Wake_ which treats the Norman Conquest in apocalyptic terms using a language markedly different and appropriate https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21023409-the-wake
There is an interesting review of The Wake on the PSmiths literary substack:
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/guest-review-the-wake-by-paul-k...
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#241500 is the threshold I think. I don’t understand 1400. I can go a bit further back in my mother tongue, but 1200 is definitely tough for me.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#25I can get through 1300 with some effort, but from 1200 I get nothing. Just a complete dropoff in that one time frame.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#26Around 1300 to 1400. Some words were harder. But English isn't my first language either. So I guess that's alright. I guess I'd be fine in the 1500 in England. At least language wise.
In 1500 a lot of pronunciation would've been different too, it was in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift [1]. And of course while the UK is still (in)famous for its many accents and dialects, some nigh mutually unintelligible, the situation would've been even worse back then.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#27The other difficulties with older texts is not just the different spellings or the now arcane words - but that the meaning of some of those recognisable words changed over time. C.S. Lewis wrote an excellent book that describing the changing meanings of a word (he termed ramifications) and dedicated a chapter to details this for several examples including ‘Nature’, ‘Free’ and ‘Sense’. Would highly recommend a read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_Words
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#281500 is the threshold I think. I don’t understand 1400. I can go a bit further back in my mother tongue, but 1200 is definitely tough for me.
Shakespeare is a definite barrier.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#29Would be curious to know from other HN readers: how far back can you understand written prose of your own language, assuming the writing system uses mostly the same letter or characters?
Medieval French, Middle High German, Ancient Greek, Classical Arabic or Chinese from different eras, etc.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#30I'd love to see actual, authentic material that was rewritten through the years. One possibility is a passage from the Bible, though that's not usual English. Another is laws or other official texts - even if not exactly the same, they may be comparable. Maybe personal letters written from or to the same place about the same topic - e.g., from or to the Church of England and its predecessor about burial, marriage, or baptism.
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.