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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?

#371

Post by LAC-Tech »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #364
LAC-Tech wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I read German (not at a very high level anymore admittedly), and I find that while Old English is closer to German than modern English is, I would still say a deep knowledge of Modern English helps me more, and that most things have be learned frlm scratch. Like does Dutch have anything like "cƿæð"? Or "Hlaford"? Or "soð"? "þeah þe"? I know Dutch should be a little closer to Old English than German, but if yo…

As a native English speaker who also knows some German and has studied some Anglo-Saxon... I'd say the High German sound shift can really mess up hearing Anglo-Saxon for German speakers but reading it is easier than it might be for a modern English speaker... The orthography of Anglo-Saxon can make it look easier to read for a modern German or Dutch speaker, but to actually hear it could be confusing. Specifically ar…

I dont think reading will be much easier. A modern English speaker - assuming he is well read, will know things like "sooth", "quoth", "art thou", "ere", "sayeth"... I feel knowing this stuff helps me a lot more than cognates of high german "schön" or "wohnen".

Actually knowing Tolkien well has been helpful because the way he writes is very anglo-saxon, not so even his word choices but just the rhythm or syntax.

But yeah I went into Old English thinking it would be more like German, but really it is much more like English than people think IMO.

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

#372

Post by Izkata »

cyberax wrote: post #280
Oreb wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. BS. Phonetic alphabets are _much_ easier to learn for everyone. In Russia and Ukraine pretty much every child can read by the time they enter the first grade. It's _that_ easy because both alphabets are phonetic (although it's only one…

> In Russia and Ukraine pretty much every child can read by the time they enter the first grade.

In the US too, reading is generally handled in Kindergarten, the year before first grade. If your parents didn't teach you before that, like mine did.

> Meanwhile, when I was learning English there basically was one spelling rule: memorize.

There are rules though, that we're ad-hoc taught as kids, or just absorb through exposure. Just because there's a lot of exceptions doesn't mean they don't exist. Here's an attempt at listing them out: https://www.zompist.com/spell.html

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

#373

Post by SoftTalker »

noosphr wrote: post #263
SoftTalker wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how I learned to read or spell in the 1970s. "Sounding it out" was the main strategy. You learned a few rules for how different combinations of letters sounded, and the exceptions to those, as you went along. But most words are spelled as they sound.

>But most words are spelled as they sound. English has 45 sounds and 26 letter. There are basically no words over three letter long that are written as they are spoken.

That's why kids start with "Run Spot Run" and other simple 3 and 4 letter words. They then learn the more complicated rules and exceptions as they go. It's really not a problem.

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

#374

Post by cmrdporcupine »

roysting wrote: post #357
marssaxman wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often had the same thought coming from the other direction, as an English speaker learning Dutch for the past couple of years: I hear many little echoes in Dutch of archaic or poetic English forms.

That’s because English and Dutch are basically German dialects that the ruling aristocrat classes worked hard to differentiate and abstract from their ruling aristocrat class competitors in other places. You may want lol into that, since you are realizing and noticing things, but you are seemingly still not connecting the dots correctly. Another hint, Dutch comes from Deutsche, how the “Germans” refer to themselves,…

The Anglo-Saxons were not Germans, and their language was not a "German" language.

It was Germanic, derived from a common ancestor with German but absolutely distinct separate lineage and your weird ethonationalist quasi-fascist soup of of thoughts here and below is both factually incorrect and incoherent.

Actual scholars of Germanic languages don't share your bizarre biases.

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

#375

Post by noosphr »

SoftTalker wrote: post #373
noosphr wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But most words are spelled as they sound. English has 45 sounds and 26 letter. There are basically no words over three letter long that are written as they are spoken.

That's why kids start with "Run Spot Run" and other simple 3 and 4 letter words. They then learn the more complicated rules and exceptions as they go. It's really not a problem.

Chinese kids manage with 6,000 character. Just because we normalize child abuse doesn't mean its right.

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

#376

Post by einpoklum »

English is my third language, although the one I used the most other than my first. I know a bit of Dutch, German and French.

I managed fine all the way through 1400. I was missing a word here and there, and by 1500 I deduced the semantics of some words from the context, roots, similar words, and other European languages.

1300 was quite challenging; I understood more than half the words, but there was not enough context to fill in the gaps. I got the gist of the story, but not enough of the details.

1200 and onwards were inscrutable to me.

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

#377

Post by [deleted] »

dhosek wrote: post #37
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#378

Post by nsvd2 »

bityard wrote: post #347
ranger_danger wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think it was possible to speak "without an accent."

It depends on who you ask. There is a "dialect" called General American English, which is essentially how national news anchors and some actors are trained, so that they don't sound like they are too obviously from anywhere in particular to the public. A large percentage of Midwesterners and Canadians speak _mostly_ General American, if you allow for the occasional drawl or shifted vowel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

This is certainly at least an American accent, and would sound out of place in e.g. the UK.

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

#379

Post by Agingcoder »

mattmanser wrote: post #129
phpnode wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they seamlessly switch from English to Dutch I feel like I’m having a stroke: all the same intonation, the same accent, but nothing makes sense any more

That doesn't jive with my experience at all. I'm half-dutch, raised in England. Dutch doesn't have the same intonation, has harsher pronunciations, and has a whole extra sound most English people struggle with (a rolled r). The older generations also can't pronounce -thew very well as it's not a thing in Dutch, so struggle to pronounce my name, calling me Matchoo instead of Matthew. It still boggles my mind that my M…

The intonation is different, there are harsher sounds, but there are diphtongs everywhere in Dutch, and to me thisbis what makes it sound like English. French, Spanish, German etc don’t have diphtongs ( or they’re quite rare )

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

#380

Post by einpoklum »

YZF wrote: post #208
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…

Yes... while Hebrew has changed, it has been more of a shift in focus and an expansion and various directions - but the older stuff is still mostly usable. There was the long "Aramaic phase" though, which is weird given that we're talking about Hebrew. Bible Hebrew is, oh, 96-97% easily legible to moder readers I would say.

Of course, typical modern readers may not be able to string a full sentence of modern Hebrew, with clauses and everything, together these days, so maybe I'm overstating my point.

(Also: Free Palestine.)

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