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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?

#411

Post by CRConrad »

vidarh wrote: post #362
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.

Eddie Izzard speaking old English to a Frisian farmer: https://youtu.be/OeC1yAaWG34?si=lkoQ--uZNN8Ntpqy As a Norwegian who speaks English and school-German, Dutch is fairly easy to read but sounds like you're speaking a mix of English, Norse and German with a mouthful of gravel (similar to the Danish, who Norwegians like to say speaks Norwegian with a potato in their mouth)

Almost correct, except it's Swedish the Danes are speaking with a hot potato in their mouth.

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

#412

Post by CRConrad »

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…

> It still boggles my mind that my Mum would pick a name the Dutch can't pronounce.

Maybe she meant for you to go by Mathias (or whatever the local equivalent is) when in the Netherlands?

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

#413

Post by [deleted] »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #342
riffraff wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the spelling is part of how the language feels :) Also, you say spelling but e.g. "speken" feels more a grammatical than orthographic difference. By comparison, Dante's incipit to the Divine Comedy is 100% the same spelling and grammar as modern Italian (nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/che la diritta via era smarrita)

> Also, you say spelling but e.g. "speken" feels more a grammatical than orthographic difference. Doesn't make a difference if you're reading it.¹ If you were trying to produce correct Middle English, you're correct that this would cause difficulties. (And to me it looks like it has caused difficulties for the author. The passage has several verbs introduced by auxiliary modals. Check out the list: 1. Here ſchaltou d…

[deleted]

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

#414

Post by CRConrad »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #176
riffraff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italian here, and it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300. Which is interesting cause 1200 italian[0] seems pretty readable by everyone who can read italian (and likely every other romance language), you have to go further back to have a shift. [0] E.g. Saint Francis' Canticle of the Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canticle_of_the_Sun

> it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300. The language in section 1300 isn't much different from section 1400. Almost all of it is still good English today if you give the words their modern spelling: Then after much time spoke the Master, and his words were cold as winter is. His voice was as the crying of ravens, sharp and shrill, and all that heard him were adread and durst not speak. "I…

> No idea what this word ["swie"] is.

"Be silent" (or "shut up"). Feels like it must be a cognate of Ger. "Schweige[n]".

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

#415

Post by CRConrad »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #341
Amezarak wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you haven't been victimized by manuscripts with modernized spellings? When I look up ealry manuscript scans of the Comedy, I get: *Nel mezo delcamin dinra uita / mi trouai puna(?) felua (long s letter) ofcura / che la diricta (some bizarre letter in there) uia era fmarrita (long s). https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/view/PR-INCU...

> puna(?) Note that the p is struck through below its loop; that is probably an abbreviation for "per". That would be an example of the spelling being the same as modern Italian, but the manuscript is written in a kind of shorthand because writing takes a lot of time and effort. dinrã is probably also an abbreviation, given the diacritic. > diricta (some bizarre letter in there) No, the letters are exactly what you'v…

> > puna(?)

> Note that the p is struck through below its loop; that is probably an abbreviation for "per".

Aha, so "peruna".

How the heck did Dante know what "potato" would come to be called, centuries later, in Finnish???

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

#416

Post by CRConrad »

ajb wrote: post #195
thaumasiotes wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300. The language in section 1300 isn't much different from section 1400. Almost all of it is still good English today if you give the words their modern spelling: Then after much time spoke the Master, and his words were cold as winter is. His voice was as the crying of ravens, sharp and shrill, and all that heard him were adread and durst not speak. "I…

From some random googling it seems like "swie" could be "silence", but it doesn't seem to be quite that meaning. There may be some religious overtones .

I'm almost certain it's the imperative form of a verb, in the grammar of the time apparently "to swien", "to be silent" or "to shut up".

"Swie!" from "swien" looks kind of exactly like "Schweige!" from "zu Schweigen" in modern German. Must go back to the same root (closer to "swie" than "schweigen", I'd guess) in Proto-Germanic.

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

#418

Post by CRConrad »

roysting wrote: post #356
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.

That’s because Dutch is close to the original old german that it is derived from, just like English and modern German. English or as it is also known as Anglish, the language of the German tribe of the Angles, also known as the Anglo-Saxon group of Germanic people, are essentially Germans just like the indigenous ethnic people of modern Germany, as well as the ethnically German people of the Netherlands, aka the Dutc…

I'm fairly certain the "ruling parasitic class" in this bit:

> ...all German people who have been divided and conquered by a ruling parasitic class that we all know moved around the continent, marrying into each other’s families and becoming the people’s aristocratic slave masters over centuries

...is a weasel-worded way of saying "Jews". That is, this is just a re-spewing of the same old racist talking points from the original Nazis (and earlier).

Just in case anyone didn't see this for what it (almost certainly) is.

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

#419

Post by CRConrad »

permo-w wrote: post #391
niwis wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In current Limburgs, pinige: to torture. Mien herses pinige: Wrecking one's brains.

surely "paining" is the easiest way to comprehend it

Yup, definitely easiest. (That's how I first got it too.) Dunno if it's ethymologically correct, though; that depends on what the roots of "pain" are.

Since it's explained further down the page that it comes from an earlier loan from Latin "peona", "punishment", I suppose there is kind of a cognate in English itself from the later loan of the same word that has lead to "penalizing".

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

#420

Post by CRConrad »

xelxebar wrote: post #244
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!"

> al þar sor and al þat sorȝe.

> all there sour and all that sorryness.

"all those sores and all that sorrow"?

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