Never learnt much Dutch or German, however I understand virtually 100% of everything down to and including "1200". On 1100, my understanding collapses suddenly to 30%.
How far back in time can you understand English?
321–330 of 432 posts
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mu…
One I can say for sure is Serbian. Italian looks like it does. Finnish, Hungarian, Georgian, Armenian, Albanian, Turkish and Korean are all ones I've heard are to a lesser or greater degree, but I don't know enough to say either way.
People always overestimate how 'phonetic' their language is, because nobody actually uses phonemes in regular speech. In Korean in particular, there doesn't even seem to be any obvious correspondence between what is written, and what is actually said.
Foreign accents don't come from any inherent inability to learn language after X years of age. They come from people pronouncing languages as they are written, and virtually no language is like that in reality.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#323Should 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…
We have the written word from centuries ago available today.
Where are you going to find the spoken word from centuries ago?
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
One I can say for sure is Serbian. Italian looks like it does. Finnish, Hungarian, Georgian, Armenian, Albanian, Turkish and Korean are all ones I've heard are to a lesser or greater degree, but I don't know enough to say either way.
People always overestimate how 'phonetic' their language is, because nobody actually uses phonemes in regular speech. In Korean in particular, there doesn't even seem to be any obvious correspondence between what is written, and what is actually said. Foreign accents don't come from any inherent inability to learn language after X years of age. They come from people pronouncing languages as they are written, and virt…
Foreign accents come from both.
It's true that when studying a foreign language, learning to read too early can harm your pronunciation. However, it is very difficult to learn new sounds that have no equivalent in your native language, and some languages have very restrictive phonology (like Italian and Japanese requiring a vowel at the end of every word) that their native speakers struggle to break out of.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#325Earlier 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…
The best case is a syllabary with how the word was pronounced a few years previous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary
> Around 1809, ... Sequoyah began work to create a writing system for the Cherokee language. ... He worked on the syllabary for twelve years before completion and dropped or modified most of the characters he originally created.
> After the syllabary was completed in the early 1820s, it achieved almost instantaneous popularity and spread rapidly throughout Cherokee society.[4] By 1825, the majority of Cherokees could read and write in their newly developed orthography. ...
> Albert Gallatin ... believed [the syllabary] was superior to the English alphabet in that literacy could be easily achieved for Cherokee at a time when only one-third of English-speaking people achieved the same goal.[6] He recognized that even though the Cherokee student must learn 85 characters instead of 26 for English, the Cherokee could read immediately after learning all the symbols. The Cherokee student could accomplish in a few weeks what students of English writing might require two years to achieve.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#326AmaZing job. My 6 and 8 yo could understand back to 1400.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#3271300 was a breeze but then I got stuck. (What did the strong and stiff wife do in 1200? I’ll never know… Edit - on second reading, I’m getting the picture, seems like medieval Tarantino.)
I thought my Swedish and basic knowledge of Icelandic spelling would have been more helpful than it was. From 1300 on it feels like the influence of French is making the language more familiar.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#328In 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.
Very true. The trueness to the original text is lacking in KJV, which is the major argument against that translation. It is more written to be old English proper prose than meaningfully translated. Modern translations like ESV are much closer to source, although hard to read compared against others like NIV and NLT which are written for comprehension.
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
“they” as a non-gendered singular pronoun dates back hundreds of years.
People say that but I think it's gaslighting. I got marked down for using singular "they" in any writing I did in school in the 1980s. I didn't start to see it as a common "gender neutral" pronoun in professional writing (e.g. newspapers) until the last 20 years or so, and really not commonly until the past decade. It still trips me up when I see it used, I have to go back and make sure I didn't miss that more than o…
> I got marked down for using singular "they" in any writing I did in school in the 1980s.
And your teacher would presumably have marked down Shakespeare for the same thing. If it was good enough for Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Austin, you'd think it would be good enough for your teacher, but we went through a particularly prescriptive period in the early to mid 20th century (though your teacher was maybe slightly behind the times even in the 80s).
Re: How far back in time can you understand English?
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Oh that’s funny. Yes you’re right.
He has actually mentioned the History of English before, but I’ve never listened to it. Great to hear though!