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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?

#41

Post by dhosek »

mmooss wrote: post #30

I'd love to see actual, authentic material that was rewritten through the years. One possibility is a passage from the Bible, though that's not usual English. Another is laws or other official texts - even if not exactly the same, they may be comparable. Maybe personal letters written from or to the same place about the same topic - e.g., from or to the Church of England and its predecessor about burial, marriage, or…

Some early English translations of the Bible were unintentionally comical, e.g., “and Enoch walked with God and he was a lucky fellowe.”

Of course that’s not limited to the 16th century. The Good News Bible renders what is most commonly given as “our name is Legion for we are many” instead as “our name is Mob because there are a lot of us.” In my mind I hear the former spoken in that sort of stereotypical demon voice: deep with chorus effect, the latter spoken like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

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

#42

Post by dhosek »

BoredomIsFun wrote: post #36
Dwedit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 1400, they add in the thorn "þ". If you don't know that's supposed to be "th", you'll get stuck there.

No, not that. The endings are different, the verbs are substantially different. AFAIK invention of printing had generally stabilizing effect on English. It is not that I am incapable to understand old English, it is that 1600 is dramatically closer to modern than 1400 one; I think someone from 1600 would be able to converse at 2026 UK farmers market with little problems too; someone from 1400 would be far more challe…

Not to mention that there are pockets of English speakers in Great Britain whose everyday speech isn’t very far from 17th century English. The hypothetical time traveler might be asked, “So you’re from Yorkshire then, are you?”

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

#43

Post by englishrookie »

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.

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

#44

Post by dhosek »

antonvs wrote: post #35
jmclnx wrote: post #19

It will be interesting on how texting will change things down the road. For example, many people use 'u' instead of 'you'. Could that make English spelling in regards to how words are spoken worse or better then now ?

> worse or better then now? *than. Which I realize is an ironic correction in this context. I wonder if we'll lose a separate then/than and disambiguate by context.

I’d say we’ve already partly lost separate then/than. It’s sort of like how you can sometimes tell second-language speakers of a language because their grammar is much more precise than a native speaker’s would be (I have a vague notion that native French speakers tend to use third person plural where the textbooks inform French learners to use first person plural, but I’m too lazy to open another tab and google for the sake of an HN comment).

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

#45

Post by dhosek »

antonvs wrote: post #40
rhdunn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can comprehend most of the text back to 1300, if slower than Modern/Present Day English. It helps to know the old letter forms, and some of how Shakespearean (Early Modern), Middle, and Old English work. It also helps sounding it out. Past that, I'm not familiar with Old English enough to understand and follow the text.

Knowing a bit of German or Dutch helps as well. I posted my amateur translation of 1200 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874 At first it stumped me, but I spent some time on it and it started to become intelligible. I didn't look up any words until after I was done, at which point I looked up "uuif" (woman/wife) since I wanted to know what manner of amazing creature had saved the protagonist :D

Knowing that W is a late addition to the alphabet and would have been written UU or VV suddenly makes uuif obvious.

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

#46

Post by JasonADrury »

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…

I live in London, I can drive a little over an hour from where I live and hardly understand the people working at the petrol station. A few more hours and they start to speak French.

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

#47

Post by fooker »

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.

This is, roughly, a measure of how old your civilization is.

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

#49

Post by sometimes_all »

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.
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