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How far back in time can you understand English?

deadlanguagesociety.com

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Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#191

Post by zamadatix »

coldtea wrote: post #157
zamadatix wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you mean "The extremely modern style of voice used to provide contrast between the anachronistic end of the story and the review of the same is how LLMs also sound" the I agree. That style voice is, after all, exactly what most of the training content major LLMs are trained on will use.

If you mean "the usage of that voice implies the article itself is written by LLMs" then I strongly disagree. I'd eat my shoe if an article written this well were made by today's LLMs. Doubly so for an article from a linguistics PhD who was written similar content prior to LLMs.

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#192

Post by SSLy »

logicchains wrote: post #79
n8cpdx wrote: post #57

no cap u need to b like so unc 2 read this I finna yeet my phone like who even reads I have siri English is lowkey chueggy anyway all my homies use emoji now bet English is cooked fam. Gen Alpha’s kids are going to get lost at the 2000 paragraph.

"unc" can't be used as an adjective like that.

memes about unc video games are galore

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#193

Post by WillAdams »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #160
WillAdams wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was my thought as well, and it's an interesting thought exercise, but unless there is some note on this which I'm not aware of, it's just reasoned speculation.

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#195

Post by ajb »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #176
riffraff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italian here, and it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300. 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

> it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300. The language in section 1300 isn't much different from section 1400. Almost all of it is still good English today if you give the words their modern spelling: Then after much time spoke the Master, and his words were cold as winter is. His voice was as the crying of ravens, sharp and shrill, and all that heard him were adread and durst not speak. "I…

From some random googling it seems like "swie" could be "silence", but it doesn't seem to be quite that meaning. There may be some religious overtones .

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#196

Post by KPGv2 »

1200 is where I can't anymore. This was interesting. I expected it to be about there. I'm a highly educated native speaker (i.e., well above median vocabulary) with some French and a lot of German, plus understanding of orthographic changes.

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.

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#197

Post by KPGv2 »

dddgghhbbfblk wrote: post #8

Should 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 t…

> Spelling is conventional and spelling and alphabet changes don't necessarily correspond to anything meaningful in the spoken language

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.

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#198

Post by KPGv2 »

krackers wrote: post #148
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what?

That will replace the long-s with the standard s. You can do the same for the thorn.

The person you're talking to was wondering if there's a more elegant long-s font choice, not how to replace long-s with short-s.

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#199

Post by KPGv2 »

rhdunn wrote: post #121
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #113

Earlier 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.

The text doesn't use an `f`. If you copy from e.g. the 1700 passage you get `ſ` not `f`.

This is correct. And if you don't like that font's long-s, you can fix it with

document.body.style.fontFamily = "Baskerville";

Baskerville has a nice long-s. TNR is also not bad. Garamond is passable.

Re: How far back in time can you understand English?

#200

Post by LAC-Tech »

englishrookie wrote: post #43

Well, for a native speaker of Dutch who doesn't speak English at all (not many left since my grandmother died in 2014), I'd say old English is actually easier to read than modern - starting around 1400. Around 1000, English and Dutch must have been mutually understandable.

Really? I read German (not at a very high level anymore admittedly), and I find that while Old English is closer to German than modern English is, I would still say a deep knowledge of Modern English helps me more, and that most things have be learned frlm scratch.

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).

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