Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How far back in time can you understand English?

deadlanguagesociety.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 432 posts

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

#241

Post by Oreb »

retrac wrote: post #171

I recently skimmed a grammar of Faroese [0]. Not much has been written about the language in English; only a few books, and an English-Faroese dictionary was only first published in the 1980s. It's spoken by about 50,000 people in the Faroe Islands, which are between Iceland and Scotland. The isles were settled by Viking-era Norse about a thousand years ago and then largely forgotten by the rest of the world. But the…

As a native speaker of Swedish and Norwegian, I can mostly understand spoken Faroese (if they speak slowly). In spoken Icelandic, I understand some words, but rarely a complete sentence.

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

#242

Post by dontlaugh »

Oreb wrote: post #240
noosphr wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Phonetic spelling would perhaps make the language easier to learn for native speakers, but it would make it harder to learn for foreigners, at least those of us who come from Europe. Most words in written English resemble words in Germanic or Romance languages. If English was spelled phonetically, the resemblance would be significantly smaller. People often say that the English spelling is weird or illogical. As a no…

The other big problem would be the lack of intelligibility of English written by native speakers from different places.

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

#244

Post by xelxebar »

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…

> Hit is muchel to seggen all þat pinunge hie on me uuroȝten, al þar sor and al þat sorȝe. Ne scal ic nefre hit forȝeten, naht uuhiles ic libbe!

My reading was "There is (too) much to say all that pain he wrought on me, all there sour and all that sorryness. Not shall I never forget, not while I live!"

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

#245

Post by baristaGeek »

This very interesting blog post got me thinking how English would look like in 2100 or 2200 driven by the changes of the internet and AI. Spelling matters less so alphabet gets reduced? Simpler grammar as it gets more spoken worldwide? Emojis as punctuation?

window unseal nite no log. odd.

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

#246

Post by lbourdages »

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.

Native French speaker here. 1300s I could still kinda follow the story with difficulty but from the 1200s I just couldn't anymore.

I felt like it helped to use an "old english" accent in my inner voice when reading.

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

#247

Post by xeromal »

rpicard wrote: post #235
mauvehaus wrote: post #223

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://historyofenglishpo…

I’m just ahead of you on episode 200! Just getting into the rise of printing in English. I absolutely agree. This has become my comfort podcast when I just want to decompress.

I haven't listened to this podcast, but if you want another one, the history of rome podcast by Mike Duncan holds a similar place in my heart. He's kind of monotone but I was entranced and would you believe that I couldn't listen to the episode for the final emperor because I didn't want the roman empire to fall. lol. What a good series.

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

#248

Post by Refreeze5224 »

cbdevidal wrote: post #215

In Christian circles some people are KJV-only, only reading from the 1611 KJV. But articles like this demonstrate that languages change dramatically over time. Thus I regard KJV-onlyism to be a passing fad; for if another 400 years passes, the writing in the 1611 will go from being strange to our eyes, to being unreadable in the future by anyone but trained scholars.

Kinda does a number on the whole "literal word of god" thing doesn't it?

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

#250

Post by Uncorrelated »

rpicard wrote: post #238
mauvehaus wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200? The website only goes to 187. Do I need to get on Patreon or something?

I think there’s a numbering difference. He went back and re did a bunch of earlier ones. I’m listening on Apple Podcasts. Season 5 episode 5 “Printin and Perkin” if it helps.

You're thinking of the The History of England podcast, not The History of English. The History of English Podcast does cover English history, often going deeper than is strictly necessary for tracing the evolution of English, but its primary focus is language. It's also very cozy, something you could listen to while sipping tea by a warm fire, and its consistency, clarity, and depth has made it my favorite podcast.
Post reply on HN