Could they hunt down the werewolf wizard and defeat him or not?? I need to know how this ended.
How far back in time can you understand English?
151–160 of 432 posts
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#152> The blog ends there. No sign-off, no “thanks for reading.” Just a few sentences in a language that most of us lost the ability to follow somewhere around the thirteenth century. Fucking AI slop, even this
Not sure what you mean?
ironically, I think there's an epidemic of ai bots accusing everything of being ai-written here on hn
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a native English speaker and I think this is an easier jump if you know other Romance languages. In Spanish and Portuguese “woman” and “wife” are often the same word, “mujer” and “mulher” respectively.
Also French femme. It isn't limited to Italic languages either. There's also German Frau, Dutch vrouw, Irish bean.
Czech žena
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d say we’ve already partly lost separate then/than. It’s sort of like how you can sometimes tell second-language speakers of a language because their grammar is much more precise than a native speaker’s would be (I have a vague notion that native French speakers tend to use third person plural where the textbooks inform French learners to use first person plural, but I’m too lazy to open another tab and google for…
You can tell second-language speakers because they know when to use "its" and "it's".
and knowing how to count to 1 to not use "they" xD
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d say we’ve already partly lost separate then/than. It’s sort of like how you can sometimes tell second-language speakers of a language because their grammar is much more precise than a native speaker’s would be (I have a vague notion that native French speakers tend to use third person plural where the textbooks inform French learners to use first person plural, but I’m too lazy to open another tab and google for…
You can tell second-language speakers because they know when to use "its" and "it's".
Thanks to having kids, I ended up reliving lots of details from my own K-3 education and one of the things I clearly remember was coming up with my own mnemonic of remembering its vs it’s by comparing those to his vs he’s.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#156Simon Roper has a spoken equivalent for Northern English -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Zqn9_OQAw .
He has a spoken one that isn't Northern English specific too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic
"From Olde English to Modern American English in One Monologue"
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#157> The blog ends there. No sign-off, no “thanks for reading.” Just a few sentences in a language that most of us lost the ability to follow somewhere around the thirteenth century. Fucking AI slop, even this
Not sure what you mean?
That this kind of writing "The blog ends there. No sign-off, no “thanks for reading.”" has tell-tale AI mannerisms
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
oh my god, you're right, they just used an f, no wonder I found it so bad! That is really annoying. Enraging even.
I should have noticed, it has a full cross bar, I guess it's my fading eyesight and also the white text of green is perhaps not the best contrast.
It doesn't have such a bar in the article e.g. "swifter" https://imgur.com/a/XwsoVgB
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#159Without even checking the article, presumably around 1067. Pre-Norman English was a VERY different language.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
That has moved it out of a wish list and into my cart for my next purchase. Makes me wonder what J.R.R. Tolkien would have thought of this.
If you go far enough down the Psmiths' online rabbit hole, you'll find (via footnote 7) some speculation on that. Tolkien was apparently of the opinion that the Norman Conquest was a Very Bad Thing for English historical language and culture, hence his frequent references and allusions to Anglo-Saxon mythology. It sounds like he would have been a fan of The Wake as described here.