How far back in time can you understand English? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by mock-possum » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

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…

Yeah it’s really just the glyphs that are changing here, and occasionally the spelling, otherwise the words themselves are still fairly recognizable if you’re well-read.

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

#52

Post by teo_zero » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #44

antonvs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You can tell second-language speakers because they know when to use "its" and "it's".

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

#53

Post by huflungdung » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

artyom wrote: post #48

Well, I 100%'d Dark Souls, so surprisingly (or not) I can understand a lot of it.

[dead]

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

#54

Post by petesergeant » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

rhdunn wrote: post #5

Simon Roper has a spoken equivalent for Northern English -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Zqn9_OQAw .

for a very specific dialect of Northern English. I struggled to understand much beyond 1950, and I had a good ear

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

#55

Post by adrian_b » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

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…

The invention of printing had a stabilizing effect on all languages, at least of their written form, because for some languages, especially for English, the pronunciation has diverged later from the written form, but the latter was not changed to follow the pronunciation.

I have read many printed books from the range 1450 to 1900, in several European languages. In all of them the languages are much easier to understand than those of the earlier manuscripts.

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

#56

Post by antonvs » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #45

antonvs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I could intuit the pronunciation but I didn’t make the connection from “wif” to “woman” in general. In hindsight I should have, after all we have words like “midwife” which doesn’t refer to a person’s actual married partner.

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

#57

Post by n8cpdx » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

no cap u need to b like so unc 2 read this I finna yeet my phone like who even reads I have siri English is lowkey chueggy anyway all my homies use emoji now bet

English is cooked fam. Gen Alpha’s kids are going to get lost at the 2000 paragraph.

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

#58

Post by myth_drannon » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

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.

For square Hebrew (Assyrian) you can go back for about 2000 years. So for example Dead Sea scrolls are fairly readable. But old classical Hebrew impossible.

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

#59

Post by teo_zero » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

Excellent essay.

To those who enjoyed it so much as to come here and read these comments, I'd suggest to fetch a copy of David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas", and appreciate the multiple style changes between the various sections.

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

#60

Post by stego-tech » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

A delightful exercise. Inference and phonetics alone got me back to ~1200 with probably a 90% hit rate. Then it just collapsed under me around 1100.

Honestly not a bad critical thinking exercise in general, for someone with language fluency. Much of it can be “worked out” just through gradual inference and problem-solving, and I’d be curious to see its results as a test for High Schoolers.