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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?

#221

Post by bryanrasmussen »

zamadatix wrote: post #158
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

just noted that in reply to my post but repeat here: yeah I was wrong, I happened to look back at Maiſter and my bad eyesight and the resolution made it look like the long s had a crossbar from the t next to it in the default font.

on edit: this was probably where my problem generally was, in lest and Maister and anything where the long s is next to a t it looks very like an f to me, although if I zoom to 170% then it is clear, however at that size it introduces its own reading problems; unfortunately my reading glasses are broken so I just struggled at a lower resolution.

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

#222

Post by niwis »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #209
SilasX wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

In Limburgs, still today: Zwieg!: Shut up, zwiegen: Not saying anything.

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

#223

Post by mauvehaus »

One of the absolute treasures of our time is The History of English Podcast. 186 episodes in, and he's just gotten past Shakespeare. The first 30 or so episodes might run a little slow for you for lack of written sources, but it really does pick up and has been hours of joy. https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/

For the prurient, Chaucer's Vulgar Tongue is a great place to dip a toe into it:

https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2019/09/25/episode-129-c...

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

#224

Post by niwis »

Delk wrote: post #213
dataflow wrote: post #114

1400 seems fine except for the one big hurdle being "Þ", which I feel like I'd seen at some point but did not recall. ("ȝ" is useful but that's somewhat easier to guess and not too critical. "ſ" is also easy to guess and I'd seen it before.) 1300 is noticeably harder and needs some iterative refinement, but once you rewrite it, it's surprisingly not too bad: > Then after much time spoke the master, his words were col…

> biwepe(?) Probably beweep; lament, weep over. > pinunge(?) This is explained later on the page. "Where a modern writer would say he underwent torture, a 1200-era writer must say that he suffered pinunge instead." I also couldn't understand this one although the word "pining" did come to mind, apparently not totally off, as that has apparently come from the same ancestor. Didn't help me figure out the intended meani…

In current Limburgs, pinige: to torture. Mien herses pinige: Wrecking one's brains.

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

#225

Post by sometimes_all »

mhitza wrote: post #82
sometimes_all wrote: post #49

Really interesting! Somewhat reminds me of the ending of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls", where the main character, a scion of a very old family which has done some really bad things, goes mad and progressively starts speaking in older and older versions of English after every sentence.

Thanks, that's such a great detail. I was reading Lovecraft during highschool in locally translated print editions. Where such details didn't come through. Do you know if there any other such language related eastereggs in other of Lovecraft's writing? should I chose to revisit them, in English this time around.

The Call of Cthulhu seemed to have a bit of language construction and world-building, if you are into that. But my knowledge of Lovecraft lore is limited, so I wouldn't know all details; I just read his short stories from Standard eBooks a few months ago, which was my first exposure to his work.

I'm sure S. T. Joshi might have a bit to say about the topic. Personally speaking from very limited exposure and knowledge of language games, and me not being from an environment which has European language roots, I might have missed quite a bit of such easter eggs in the atmosphere and writing. Like, for example, your comment prompted me to find out what "rue d'auseil" (from The Music of Erich Zann) meant, I didn't bother to find out until today.

I do recommend rereading Lovecraft in English either way, since you never know what gets lost in translation!

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

#226

Post by noosphr »

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…

I use a screen reader and in managed quite well until 1200.

That said: phonetic spelling now. We have spent 500 years turning English into something closer to Egyptian hieroglyphs than a language with an alphabet.

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

#227

Post by bryanrasmussen »

saltcured wrote: post #141
aardvark179 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orthography is probably the biggest stumbling block going back to the 1500s or 1400s , but that’s really because the rest of the language has changed in vocabulary and style, but is still understandable. If you think the 1200 or 1100 entry are mostly orthographical changes then you are missing the interesting bits.

I would prefer to see a version that was skillfully translated to modern orthography so that we could appreciate shifts in vocabulary and grammar. To me, it is nearly like trying to look at a picture book of fashion but the imagery is degraded as you go back. I'd like to see the time-traveler's version with clean digital pictures of every era...

so replace the long s with just s and the thorn (þ) with th? others?

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

#228

Post by Podrod »

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.

Shame that it only seems to be available in physical form and only from the US. The price is already quite high and with postage to the UK it adds up to be quite expensive.

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

#229

Post by noosphr »

pjc50 wrote: post #72
dhosek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I remember being in Oxford in the 90s and an older man approached me and spoke to me in English and I couldn’t understand a word he said. My ex-wife, who’s an ESL speaker who speaks fluently and without an accent has trouble with English accents in general. Similarly, in Spanish, I find it’s generally easier for me to understand Spanish speakers than Mexican speakers even though I learned Mexican Spanish in s…

I have had to interpret between an Ulsterman and a South African, who were both speaking English. I think those accents have vowel shifted in opposite directions. I was also taught a bit of Chaucer (died 1400) in English at school. Although not any of the naughty bits.

My funniest moment working in Singapore was translating between an Indian and a Chinese co-worker. The translation was repeating what each said in English in English.

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

#230

Post by bryanrasmussen »

huh I was looking through it again and I noticed what I think is a typo

"Þe sayde Maiſter, what that hee apperid bifore me"

I believe should be

"Þe sayde Maiſter, what Þat hee apperid bifore me"

Or were there situations in the 1400s when the thorn would not be used for representing th?

on edit: or is it a representation of the changeability of spelling choices in individual texts, which admittedly this text seems a bit less changeable and random than many authors of that time period.

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