Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reading English from 1000 AD

lewiscampbell.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 59 posts

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#2

Post by kusokurae »

Highly dependent on passage and writer imo, for anything before 1500

Some people I've had say middle english is easy enough to read now, and that's sometimes true, but if you drop some passages of Gawain or Pearl in front of people they'll be convinced it's an extra 2-300 years older. Anything non-London dialect is harder

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#3

Post by rob74 »

As a native German speaker, I can at least say that knowing both German and English doesn't really help in understanding the text. Not even the most "dumbed down" version - ok, he's apparently saying something about his wife, but no idea what exactly. And when I read "shyne (Modern English "sheen" but German cognate is closer)", I was even more confused. "Sheen" is the property of an object that is shiny, which in German would be "Schein", but because it is applied to a woman, I assume that the "cognate" he refers to is "schön" (beautiful)?

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#7

Post by Sharlin »

rob74 wrote: post #3

As a native German speaker, I can at least say that knowing both German and English doesn't really help in understanding the text. Not even the most "dumbed down" version - ok, he's apparently saying something about his wife, but no idea what exactly. And when I read " shyne (Modern English "sheen" but German cognate is closer) ", I was even more confused. "Sheen" is the property of an object that is shiny, which in…

Another Modern English cognate even closer to shyne than "sheen" is "shine" (and obviously the German "schein"). The words for "beautiful", "fair", "bright", "shining", "well-reputed", "righteous" have a long history of being related:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schinen#Middle_English (to shine, to appear)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skyr#Middle_English (clear-coloured, pale, light, luminous, radiant)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sciene#Old_English (beautiful, fair, brilliant, shining)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skīnaną (to shine, to appear)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skīriz (pure, clear, sheer)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skauniz (beautiful, shining)

and ultimately the PIE

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... *(s)ḱeh₁y- (to shine)

There are cognates absolutely everywhere in modern Germanic languages:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sk%C3%ADr#Icelandic skír (bright, clear, pure)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skir#Swedish (sheer, delicate, shining)

And even in Slavic languages:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s... *sijati (to shine, to illuminate)

Skauniz was even borrowed to Proto-Finnic and highly conserved in modern Finnish, Estonian, Ingrian, etc. which all have kaunis meaning "beautiful"!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/k... *kaunis

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#8

Post by ChrisGreenHeur »

Sharlin wrote: post #7
rob74 wrote: post #3

As a native German speaker, I can at least say that knowing both German and English doesn't really help in understanding the text. Not even the most "dumbed down" version - ok, he's apparently saying something about his wife, but no idea what exactly. And when I read " shyne (Modern English "sheen" but German cognate is closer) ", I was even more confused. "Sheen" is the property of an object that is shiny, which in…

Another Modern English cognate even closer to shyne than "sheen" is "shine" (and obviously the German "schein"). The words for "beautiful", "fair", "bright", "shining", "well-reputed", "righteous" have a long history of being related: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schinen#Middle_English (to shine, to appear) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skyr#Middle_English (clear-coloured, pale, light, luminous, radiant) https://e…

One way to say it that is understandable in modern English and Swedish: She shines with beauty/ Hon skiner av skönhet

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#9

Post by flyinghamster »

That's a nice reconstruction. My old dead-tree Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has an essay in its foreword that covers the evolution of English in reverse order, ending with texts in Old Anglo-Saxon. The further back, the more alien it seemed. I'd need a lot of help with Middle English, and anything older would require the sort of major effort/rewriting discussed here. William the Conqueror set a huge linguistic change in motion with his little dust-up.

Really, even early Modern English (e.g. Shakespeare or the King James Bible) is pretty thick for today's English speakers.

Re: Reading English from 1000 AD

#10

Post by LAC-Tech »

rob74 wrote: post #3

As a native German speaker, I can at least say that knowing both German and English doesn't really help in understanding the text. Not even the most "dumbed down" version - ok, he's apparently saying something about his wife, but no idea what exactly. And when I read " shyne (Modern English "sheen" but German cognate is closer) ", I was even more confused. "Sheen" is the property of an object that is shiny, which in…

Words to do with light are so subtle between German and English. Like Kraftwerk tells me neon lights are "schimmerndes" in German, which I will take their word on, but they also say they are "shimmering" in English which is definitely not true.

scyn/schön/sheen are a different root from schein/shine, for what its worth.

Also I realise now "forlet" is very archaic in modern english whereas "verlassen" is very common in modern german, which would have helped.

Post reply on HN