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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?

#201

Post by thaumasiotes »

ajb wrote: post #195
thaumasiotes wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

Yes, I found https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti... , which glosses "swie" as "silence".

Here the text says "I swied", so it has to be a verb, but the meaning "be silent" makes sense in the passage.

Something to think about in this exercise is that the shortness of the passages adds difficulty.

Consider section 1200, where a verb with the root ner is used. It's given so much focus and contextual elaboration that you can easily tell what it means, even though the word is unfamiliar.

If you read longer passages of Middle English, this same phenomenon will occur with more words.

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

#202

Post by 7bit »

> firſt

It's weird when an "s" that's written in cursive is translated like that.

Is this about recognizing letters. Then show original scans.

Or is this about understanding the spoken word. Then write "first".

Don't do both and fail at everything.

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

#203

Post by LAC-Tech »

leoc wrote: post #15

If you want to improve your score, the blog author (Dr. Colin Gorrie) has just the thing: a book which will teach you Old English by means of a story about a talking bear . Here's how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZhlWdVvZfw . Your dream of learning Old English has never been closer: get Ōsweald Bera https://colingorrie.com/books/osweald-bera/ today.

co-sign this. Oswald the Bear is an amazing book and taught me how to read Old English remarkably quickly.

The first chapter is like a book for toddlers in Old English (with questions and loads of repeated vocab), and each chapter gets a bit harder. Half way in its like a Young Adults Novel level of difficulty. But each step up is relatively small.

The actual story is great too. Æthelstān Mūs is my spirit animal.

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

#204

Post by depressedpanda »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #190
mock-possum wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it’s really just the glyphs that are changing here, and occasionally the spelling, otherwise the words themselves are still fairly recognizable if you’re well-read.

there'd be a discontinuity around 1066 since Normans brought over Latin-derived vocabulary aplenty, and overlayed germanic vocabulary. it's super evident if you learn Swedish (for example...very related to pre-1066 English) and have learned Latin (or French), while speaking English.

Yeah. Try comparing texts written in Old English and Old Norse. It's basically the same language. (I'm not surprised at all that Beowulf takes place in Scandinavia.)

But I think they would both be easier to decipher for someone speaking Swedish than English.

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

#207

Post by SilasX »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #201
ajb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Yes, I found https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti... , which glosses "swie" as "silence". Here the text says "I swied", so it has to be a verb, but the meaning "be silent" makes sense in the passage. Something to think about in this exercise is that the shortness of the passages adds difficulty. Consider section 1200, where a verb with the root ner is used. It's given so much focus and context…

Wiktionary doesn't mention it for either word, but it looks to be cognate with German schweigen, "to be silent":

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schweigen

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

#208

Post by YZF »

ilamont wrote: post #29

Would 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.

I read Hebrew and I can more or less read the dead sea scrolls that I think are 250BCE. According to Google's AI from around 800BCE the alphabet was different enough that I won't be able to read those writings but given the translation between the letters you can still understand the words. While I haven't seen them or tried to read them supposedly the 600BCE Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls should be readable by a modern Hebrew reader.

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

#209

Post by thaumasiotes »

SilasX wrote: post #207
thaumasiotes wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I found https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti... , which glosses "swie" as "silence". Here the text says "I swied", so it has to be a verb, but the meaning "be silent" makes sense in the passage. Something to think about in this exercise is that the shortness of the passages adds difficulty. Consider section 1200, where a verb with the root ner is used. It's given so much focus and context…

Wiktionary doesn't mention it for either word, but it looks to be cognate with German schweigen, "to be silent": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schweigen

Well, wiktionary does call them cognates, if you follow the links around.

Old English swige (Following the links around on wiktionary may, in general, lead to self-contradictory results.)

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

#210

Post by nosrepa »

zamadatix wrote: post #74
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.

Things like slang and casual registers always seem to move much faster but for some reason we assume it's always going to be the next set newer than how we'd write that will result in things going off the rails or resulting in it being the only speech understood by that generation. Lowkey though, let’s keep it 100 and check it. Back in the day Millennials got totally ragged on for sounding all extra like this n' usin…

Straight up
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