my girlfriend isn't ready for the mansplanning coming up tomorrow during dinner about this
How far back in time can you understand English?
291–300 of 432 posts
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Spanish I understand most easily is the heavily accented Spanish of non-native Spanish speakers. Are you sure this is because of their accent? I have the same experience with French (the non-native speakers are easier to understand), but I always thought that was because they use fewer and simpler words.
As an ESL I'd say it depends on the native language of who's speaking. I'll have no trouble with a thick spanish, italian or romanian language (I'm french), but indians speaking english are completely incomprehensible to me.
It took months of being exposed to Indian English on a regular basis for me to start to understand it (and I still find it requires significant mental effort). Context: I'm a Swede who regularly thinks and dreams in English (and when I did an English language test for exchange student purposes I got top marks in all categories).
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I love this podcast, I've listened to it all the way through probably ten times. That acoustic guitar riff followed by "Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome" is how I'll know I'm dead and I've arrived at the gates of heaven
Acoustic picking 18 from garage band....
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
phonetic spelling based on whose dialect? should "merry" "marry" and "Mary" be spelled the same? besides, pronunciation continues to evolve, so any phonetic spelling would continue to gradually diverge from the spoken language
You suffer from the typical brain damage caused by using a language without an alphabet. There is no such thing as spelling in phonetic writing systems because they render what is said, not some random collection of glyphs that approximated how a word was pronounced 500 years ago, in the best case. If two people with different accents can speak to each other, they can also write to each other under a phonetic writing…
Then under your definition there must not be any widely used written language with an alphabet. Most of the world's alphabetic writing systems aren't phonetic transcriptions, they're standardized. They're usually based on the prestige dialect, at the cost of diminutizing other dialects.
For example, Spanish has a fairly consistent spelling system standardized by RAE, based in Madrid. But, for instance, even though much of Latin America doesn't have a distinction between s and soft c (seseo), they still keep the distinction in its spelling.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#295Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
Heck, I still struggle scanning it properly at high resolution so no worries!
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#297I can read back to 1500, but 1400 reads like a different language. To be fair this quite remarkable, given: > Before the mid 1700s, there was no such thing as standardized spelling. It felt like it was become more Germanic, and that appears true: > The farther back you go, the more the familiar Latinate layer of English is stripped away, revealing the Germanic core underneath: a language that looks to modern eyes mor…
I found it was a gradual decline from "figuring out the overall gist from about half the words" in 1300, to "I have no idea" in 1100. Perhaps being a native Swedish speaker helped a bit. Some words definitely looked related and also made sense in context (but who know, false friend words do exist). I am curious as to what someone who can read Icelandic would make of this.
For example "grymme" as "cruel" (possibly related to modern English "grim"?)
Also: after reading the notes below about how the unusual symbols should be pronounced it becomes easier, if you slowly read it aloud to yourself. The 1300s is now mostly clear except a few unusual words.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#298I've been living in a non-English speaking country for 35 years or so. Although I read a lot, my English is still somewhat "frozen". I would still ask you if you have "mown" the lawn - a tense that is now almost lost. Many irregular verbs are becoming regular, I expect due to the large number of ESL speakers. Language changes. It's weird to see it happening in front of you...
> Language changes. It's weird to see it happening in front of you...
That happens even if you live in the country where you are a native speaker though. I have seen this in my native Swedish too. Some are easy to adapt to, some I find really grating. But there is little point in being angry over it.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#299I must admit that I didn't read the article in full.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#300I can read until the 1300s, which is about what I expected. I encourage people to go search up historical newspaper archives from the 1700s though, because it becomes significantly harder to parse when you have little to no knowledge of the events, people or even culture of the time.
The 1300s become significantly easier if you read it aloud to yourself (and you know how to pronounce the unusual symbols). The 1200s become very hard even with that method (I can make out occasional words and phrases) and then I'm completely lost after that.