A friend posted this and I was super anxious to get home and try it out. Most commented that they got to the 1300s (which is pointed out due to Latin exiting the scene), though one friend started...
A friend posted this and I was super anxious to get home and try it out. Most commented that they got to the 1300s (which is pointed out due to Latin exiting the scene), though one friend started struggling by the 1500s and gave up at the 1400s.
I was able to pick out bits and pieces of the 1100s, courtesy of a meager knowledge of German (was jetzt vollig mangelhaft ist!) and having been super interested in old English tales in my late teens/early 20s that helped with the weird letters that started sneaking in. But yeah, the 1300s is where I quit reading and had to start studying and thinking as I read.
There's a YouTuber, Simon Roper, who does quite a bit of Old English content, including videos where he recreates speech through time, to allow you to test your understanding against the timeline....
There's a YouTuber, Simon Roper, who does quite a bit of Old English content, including videos where he recreates speech through time, to allow you to test your understanding against the timeline. You might like his content.
"In this video, I present a monologue which gradually transitions from pre-literary Old English (c.450 AD) to an urban northeastern dialect of modern American English. I present it first without any subtitles or notes so that viewers can gauge when they first start to pick out words and sentences, and then with subtitles and footnotes. "
That was pretty neat as well, though he's highlighting changes that didn't provide enough time to understand at first. I will try to start at 7:27 and read along as it goes, not that there are...
That was pretty neat as well, though he's highlighting changes that didn't provide enough time to understand at first. I will try to start at 7:27 and read along as it goes, not that there are enough examples for me to pick up on I don't think heh.
Yeah, as someone who has read a decent amount of archaic English texts, I think it was much easier for me since I already knew about long s, v = u/v, thorn, yogh, and have some practice at quickly...
Yeah, as someone who has read a decent amount of archaic English texts, I think it was much easier for me since I already knew about long s, v = u/v, thorn, yogh, and have some practice at quickly interpreting the sounds those characters represent. The meaning of the text still got pretty difficult to parse starting in 1200 though, even knowing those characters, their pronunciations, and some archaic verbiage. But the 1100 and 1000 texts were practically unintelligible to me no matter how hard I tried to understand them.
That's where I had the benefit, from both learning a bit of German (which has the ß that really helped me adapt to the "it's not an f, it's a long s" in English) and the wynn, eth, and thorn, from...
That's where I had the benefit, from both learning a bit of German (which has the ß that really helped me adapt to the "it's not an f, it's a long s" in English) and the wynn, eth, and thorn, from previous readings, though I knew what the "ash" was but didn't know its name. I only picked up on the yogh by noticing the words that would make sense and then working out that it was a "gh".
Like many of the blog post’s commenters, my understanding essentially completely checked out somewhere in the 1200s text. I already knew most of the runic letters beforehand, too. But my first...
Like many of the blog post’s commenters, my understanding essentially completely checked out somewhere in the 1200s text. I already knew most of the runic letters beforehand, too.
But my first language is German. I don’t think it’s as much of an advantage as you’d initially think, interestingly.
I’m guessing this has to do with most German speakers not knowing what to do with vocabulary from Germanic speakers/writers of that time in “their” language, either – it’s just too far removed to understand without training, so it doesn’t provide useful knowledge in another related-but-old language either.
Edit: And it’s not like I don’t have experience with other Germanic languages. I can understand some written Dutch, I’ve lived in Denmark, and Danish (or Norwegian) can also be somewhat manageable when it’s “easy” sentences.
First language Dutch here, and I feel the same way. I would love to read a similar blog post in German and/or Dutch and see how far I can get. Here's a reconstruction of how 11th century Dutch...
First language Dutch here, and I feel the same way. I would love to read a similar blog post in German and/or Dutch and see how far I can get.
I thankfully knew some of the symbols, but even then had to actively remind myself of what the symbols meant repeatedly. On that note, did anyone else start reading it with a mental lisp whenever...
I thankfully knew some of the symbols, but even then had to actively remind myself of what the symbols meant repeatedly.
On that note, did anyone else start reading it with a mental lisp whenever it had ſ instead of s? I kept correcting the mental pronunciation at first before quickly giving up.
An interesting comparison is literary Chinese, since it’s fairly unique amongst modern written languages for not being phonetic. This makes ancient writings surprisingly readable, as though the...
An interesting comparison is literary Chinese, since it’s fairly unique amongst modern written languages for not being phonetic. This makes ancient writings surprisingly readable, as though the pronunciation is not even remotely close to the same as how people would have pronounced the language at the time, the meaning persists.
Take, for example, this poem from the Shijing, a collection of poems dated to 1100 B.C
關關雎鳩
在河之洲
窈窕淑女
君子好逑
The only characters that a modern Chinese reader would likely not know is 雎鳩, an archaic word referring to water fowls. And from the radicals you would be able to guess it’s talking about some kind of bird.
This is earlier than Homer, which is generally considered to be compiled in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.
In English, you’d be hard pressed to read something from the 1400s A.D.
To be fair Chinese characters are sort of phonetic. Just to a far lesser extent than even English spelling is. But the phonetic components were a better indicator of a character's pronunciation...
since it’s fairly unique amongst modern written languages for not being phonetic
To be fair Chinese characters are sort of phonetic. Just to a far lesser extent than even English spelling is. But the phonetic components were a better indicator of a character's pronunciation back in older varieties of Chinese.
I'm also curious how transparent the grammar of Literary Chinese is to a native speaker of a modern Chinese language who hasn't had any education on it. The meanings of certain characters and the structure of a sentence are quite different from modern Chinese languages (at least based on when I had to take a semester of it for uni!) and I assumed the fact that one needed to be separately educated in Literary Chinese to read and write it was a big motivating factor behind the switch to writing in Mandarin around the turn of the century.
That makes sense, as yeah, [from what I understand] the characters are each their own syllable instead of breaking things down more. I know no Asian languages, but I do know that the long/short...
That makes sense, as yeah, [from what I understand] the characters are each their own syllable instead of breaking things down more.
I know no Asian languages, but I do know that the long/short pronunciations can change a word's meaning/intent. It kind of attest to what @trim's link showed for the English vowel shift, but on a much larger scale.
Not gonna lie, I would love to learn an Asian language (any, really, or Russian), except having learned very rudimentary options in Greek showed me that my brain didn't do too well with non-Latin characters... and I realized that 20ish years ago.
You know, it took a bit of mind bending at first, but after four years of lazily learning Japanese part time (more off than on) it sinks in pretty good! The alphabets are simple, the sounds are...
You know, it took a bit of mind bending at first, but after four years of lazily learning Japanese part time (more off than on) it sinks in pretty good!
The alphabets are simple, the sounds are limited and the sentence structure is quite simple when compared to some Latin languages.
If you're looking to start one, Japanese is quite accessible.
I wonder what the reverse would be like; how far back could you go before an educated reader from that time would be completely unable to parse any modern English?
I wonder what the reverse would be like; how far back could you go before an educated reader from that time would be completely unable to parse any modern English?
This is a really interesting question. On the one hand, a modern English speaker has the advantage that they may already have had exposure to previous forms of English and the various cultural...
This is a really interesting question. On the one hand, a modern English speaker has the advantage that they may already have had exposure to previous forms of English and the various cultural landscapes in which it was spoken, so in that sense navigating backwards in time is easier than if you travel into the future, of which you could not know anything about beforehand. Similarly, the present day vocabulary of English builds on what it was in the past, so in theory for a backwards-traveller there is a higher chance of figuring out words and how they may have changed.
On the other hand, many of us travelling back in time seem to start hitting a communicative brick wall around the 1200s and 1100s, when both the vocabulary and the grammar of English become more predominantly Germanic. Meanwhile, a highly educated forward-moving traveller from that era would have the benefit of not only knowing the more Germanic version of English (well, it's just "English" for them), as well as speaking and reading French and Latin, from which later forms of English borrowed a lot of vocabulary. They might be in the sweet spot, as for a forward-moving traveller coming from an even earlier time, the Scandinavian vocabulary that English adopted during the Viking era might become an issue.
As English grammar, or at least morphology, has in many ways become simpler, someone from the 1100s and 1200s might also have an easier time figuring out present day English sentences than the other way around. For them, the English of 2026 might read a bit like our depictions of caveman English: "Tuk want meat, Tuk hungry", lacking the finesse and flexibility of a more inflectional language (but of course having gained in other ways).
They would probably also be more accustomed to interpreting variations in written language than we are, as English spelling really only started to become standardised in the late 15th century with the invention of the printing press. For an educated 13th or 12th century scholar, spelling would have been more phonetic and expressing personal preferences and dialectal differences. Also lucky for them, modern English is sort of spelled like the language was spoken in the 15th century, before much of the Great Vowel Shift rampaged through the English vowel system. If English spelling had been fixed after the Great Vowel Shift, our Norman era scholar would probably be totally lost.
But in the end, the forward-traveller would certainly struggle with the cultural context in which language exists. Our use of language is full of references to things around us, and even for a highly educated 12th century scholar our world would seem quite alien. Not just technology like computers and cars, but also our social and ideological systems and the fact that so much of our world operates on a global scale these days.
This was a long way of me saying "I don't really know", and while I have a background in linguistics, I cannot claim much expertise in the topic. Still, it was a fun thought experiment to try to think about!
This depends a lot on when the speaker is moving forward from. An Old English speaker could be highly educated and still not speak or read a lick of French (or, more contemporaneously, Old French...
Meanwhile, a highly educated forward-moving traveller from that era would have the benefit of not only knowing the more Germanic version of English (well, it's just "English" for them), as well as speaking and reading French and Latin, from which later forms of English borrowed a lot of vocabulary.
This depends a lot on when the speaker is moving forward from. An Old English speaker could be highly educated and still not speak or read a lick of French (or, more contemporaneously, Old French or Old Gallo-Romance, as the languages d'oïl were still developing themselves). In fact, the many loanwords from Frankish, a Germanic language, into Old French would probably be a major factor in an Old English speaker's ability to understand Old French (alongside their knowledge of Latin, of course).
Of course later educated speakers would know more French as it became immediately more relevant due to the Anglo Norman conquest, since that's the reason English has so many loanwords from Norman French to begin with.
Also, if we're talking languages that had major loans to English, let's not include Latin but forget Old Norse, whose loanwords were often much more fundamental to English. Old English originally had a completely different set of third person plural pronouns, for instance, until we borrowed "they" and its forms from Old Norse, which replaced the earlier Old English "heo" and its forms over the course of the 13th and 14th centuries. So depending on when and where our educated speaker is from, they may struggle to recognize even some surprisingly basic elements.
I do otherwise mostly agree with your assessment, though, although I think finding a literate person makes this much less difficult than if we actually evaluated this solely based on spoken language. I also think that the issue of cultural context definitely goes both ways, though, so I don't think it would harm their understanding much more than it would harm the understanding of a modern person who isn't already well-educated on their culture. Even though we may nominally read Chaucer and Beowulf in our English classes, I wager quite a lot of modern English speaker if not most of them have a hard time understanding those without footnotes even in translation, after all.
My gut reaction, as someone who also has a linguistics background but didn't study Old English or philology specifically, is that there's no chance for an Old English speaker and a modern English speaker. The languages are simply too different in vocabulary -- it would be like locking you in a room with a German who speaks no English. You'd probably eventually learn enough of each others' languages to communicate, but mutual intelligibility would be very low to start with. I think you could make a case for being able to struggle through communication with a Middle English speaker, depending how early or late in the period it was and whether they were literate. Middle English is definitely where literacy would help the most.
Like I mentioned in my comment, I too believe that the best potential for understanding exists sometime after the Norse influence, and a speaker of Old English would likely struggle more. That...
Like I mentioned in my comment, I too believe that the best potential for understanding exists sometime after the Norse influence, and a speaker of Old English would likely struggle more. That said, although I did very cursively study both Old English and Middle English at university, I don’t remember enough about the exact timelines to really be able to say where the sweet spot would be. Like you say, most likely after 1066. I tried to play it safe with 1100s and 1200s.
I agree that when we read Chaucer and his contemporaries, let alone Beowulf or Bede, we are typically so removed from the cultural context that we miss a lot and misunderstand plenty. But as Nemoder asked about an educated reader's ability to parse the language, I would guess (and this is purely a guess) that a modern educated reader can still get a better superficial understanding of Chaucer than Chaucer could get reading something from 2026. Much depends on the text itself, of course, but today’s news for instance would likely be quite baffling and difficult to parse for Chaucer even on a surface level, without an interpreter explaining how the world functions and interacts these days.
The question where the line between mutual spoken understanding might exist is also fascinating, but slightly different from Nemoder’s question about educated readers parsing written texts. I share your gut reaction that trying to reach mutual intelligibility with an Old English speaker would be very difficult. My gut also says that the point where a native speaker from the past could more or less immediately understand us is later than it is with written text. Much of course depends on dialects, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say a speaker from the 15th or 16th century might be the earliest plausible candidate.
While this probably is true, I suspect it has more to do both with the text itself as well as what your threshold of "modern educated reader" is -- the fact by some definitions, most modern...
I would guess (and this is purely a guess) that a modern educated reader can still get a better superficial understanding of Chaucer than Chaucer could get reading something from 2026. Much depends on the text itself, of course, but today’s news for instance would likely be quite baffling and difficult to parse for Chaucer even on a surface level, without an interpreter explaining how the world functions and interacts these days.
While this probably is true, I suspect it has more to do both with the text itself as well as what your threshold of "modern educated reader" is -- the fact by some definitions, most modern educated readers have been exposed to Chaucer's work already is a big factor, after all!
While I think the news would contain a lot of vocabulary and concepts that would stymie a reader from that time period, I think something that's in a more similar genre to what Chaucer wrote would be more attainable despite the technological and cultural differences, at least in terms of parsing it on a surface level. I think it would be a closer race if you gave Chaucer something relatively down-to-earth from AO3 than if you gave him a news article, for instance. This is probably true in the reverse as well, as Chaucer's subject matter makes it generally more approachable, but I'm not sure what the equivalent type of text would be in terms of referencing cultural features of Chaucer's day would be... perhaps something theological, but I'm not sure if those would have been in English either...
Spoken understanding definitely would lag behind written language for sure. Possibly one of the few advantages to how poorly our writing system represents modern English phonology. I could mostly read the 1200s example in the article, but there would be no chance I'd understand a speaker from the same period.
Absolutely. That's sort of what I was trying to say when I wrote that while a modern reader travelling back in time could have had prior contact with previous forms and cultures of English, a...
the fact by some definitions, most modern educated readers have been exposed to Chaucer's work already is a big factor, after all!
Absolutely. That's sort of what I was trying to say when I wrote that while a modern reader travelling back in time could have had prior contact with previous forms and cultures of English, a reader travelling forward in time could not have that. (Although, we do already allow time travel, so I don't know why I assume that we don't allow information travel.)
In any case, like you say, in the end it's very much a question of what type of an educated reader, what type of a text, and so on. There are so many variables.
When I (a non-native English speaker) first went to an English speaking country, I had studied English for over a decade and already began my university studies in English philology. I read English books exclusively and watched English (well, American) media. I was pretty much fluent in the language. Or so I thought, until I stepped off the boat in Dover, walked to the railway station and couldn't understand a single word that the ticket seller behind the counter said. Never mind, I thought, they had a really bad loud speaker, the voice was distorted. But then, on the train, the conductor came and, again, I had to ask him to repeat something three times before I understood what he was trying to tell me. Dialects, huh.
Your comment got me thinking about another variant of this topic's question. Who might be the earliest author of a text written in English who would easily recognise their own work if given its modern English translation? Shakespeare certainly would. Chaucer and Langland, probably? Layamon, Geoffrey of Monmouth and other chronicles writing in Early Middle English, I'm not so sure? The Old English authors of The Wanderer, The Seafarer and Beowulf, surely not?
Hm that is an interesting question! I think my intuition aligns with yours there, but I think it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where in Middle English the line is drawn. Would definitely...
Hm that is an interesting question! I think my intuition aligns with yours there, but I think it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where in Middle English the line is drawn. Would definitely depend on the vocab, ofc.
Wow, I never even considered how scholars back then would be much more likely to be familiar with multiple shifting languages. I suppose a part of why not many of us are now is our...
Wow, I never even considered how scholars back then would be much more likely to be familiar with multiple shifting languages. I suppose a part of why not many of us are now is our ultra-specialization and easy access to translation resources.
Maybe if we ever perfect cryogenics we'll be able to find out how far language symbols can last. ..or just wind up in Idiocracy with many regrets. :)
1300 I was still able to understand. By 1200, I get the gist of the passage, but there are still many words that I don't know, so I'm not sure of the details. And 1100 and 1000? Pfft. No way. I...
1300 I was still able to understand. By 1200, I get the gist of the passage, but there are still many words that I don't know, so I'm not sure of the details. And 1100 and 1000? Pfft. No way.
I was familiar with the letters thorn and eth, as well as the long s, so those weren't too bad. Yogh I eventually figured out. but wynn and ash, I didn't know the sounds of. And trying to figure it out in context was impossible.
I figured out that "ic" was Iike German "ich, or "I" in English. But that's it.
One of the lighbulb moments for me was "deorcnesse." I was like "de-orc-ness? Orcs? Were there orcs here?" And then I said it faster a few times and was like "Ohhh, darkness!"
Yeah I lost the thread pretty much where you did. I was slowing down by 1300 but not struggling very much, but in 1200 only had enough knowledge to be able to get probably 2/3 to 3/4 of it and...
Yeah I lost the thread pretty much where you did. I was slowing down by 1300 but not struggling very much, but in 1200 only had enough knowledge to be able to get probably 2/3 to 3/4 of it and mostly gleaned the meaning, but it was definitely an educated guess. 1100 pretty much lost me right away, I could puzzle out a few words but couldn't catch the meaning.
I was very similar. I find reading out loud helps me with older English, once you get a sense of the vowel shifts and the v->u shifts and the like it becomes easier to read through. 1200 is where...
I was very similar. I find reading out loud helps me with older English, once you get a sense of the vowel shifts and the v->u shifts and the like it becomes easier to read through. 1200 is where I lost full understanding of sentences but could still puzzle it out somewhat. 1100 is scattered words that maybe I could figure out with more effort
Yeah, my first German teacher actually highlighted this - his doctorate was in middle-age German, so he utilized that to help us bridge between the languages. He utilized how the thorn looks kind...
I figured out that "ic" was Iike German "ich, or "I" in English.
Yeah, my first German teacher actually highlighted this - his doctorate was in middle-age German, so he utilized that to help us bridge between the languages. He utilized how the thorn looks kind of like a capital D, then compared words like danke (thank), Donner (thunder), and Durst (thurst).
Vocabulary was definitely the issue in the 1200's. I'm familiar with some of the old symbols used previously, particularly the thorn and long S, but I couldn't do much when the words lost...
Vocabulary was definitely the issue in the 1200's. I'm familiar with some of the old symbols used previously, particularly the thorn and long S, but I couldn't do much when the words lost similarly to what I already know.
I've never been to the Caribbean area, though I grew up in California, lived in Texas, Germany (though I did learn a good college try before moving there), and now currently nearby where my...
I've never been to the Caribbean area, though I grew up in California, lived in Texas, Germany (though I did learn a good college try before moving there), and now currently nearby where my grandmother was raised in New England with a horrid Boston accent. I didn't pick up any southern references, but I will reread it a few more times, as I'm still curious to milk all the knowledge I can out of it without studying anymore haha!
Huh. I remember reading Beowulf in high school in it's original middle/old English form, and while it was tough it was doable. But to my old man brain I just can't be bothered to read things past...
Huh. I remember reading Beowulf in high school in it's original middle/old English form, and while it was tough it was doable. But to my old man brain I just can't be bothered to read things past around 1400 or so. I could do it if I concentrated to piece together the weird parts, but I just can't find the internal patience to do it.
That's the one that got me into the rabbit hole of old English I believe in the early 2000s (the Seamus Heany version), because when the movie came out, I remembered thinking... that's not how it...
That's the one that got me into the rabbit hole of old English I believe in the early 2000s (the Seamus Heany version), because when the movie came out, I remembered thinking... that's not how it happened! Now I need to go find it, though I think most of my old books are gone through the moves and my attempt to get my SO to declutter. Also, to be fair, I don't really read much these days...
Until 1400s everything was easy and nice without even having to really think about it. But the 1400s is such an insane jump that I gave up immediately. If my life depended on it though, I'm pretty...
Until 1400s everything was easy and nice without even having to really think about it.
But the 1400s is such an insane jump that I gave up immediately. If my life depended on it though, I'm pretty certain I could read it after spending a bit longer on it.
I speak English and Flemish. Interestingly, I found it was easier to read if I attacked the text with a strong west flemish accent once 1300 hit and that served me well until 1100. I could work my...
I speak English and Flemish. Interestingly, I found it was easier to read if I attacked the text with a strong west flemish accent once 1300 hit and that served me well until 1100. I could work my way through that year, but it was difficult. I'm still trying to get past 1000 but it's a significant jump.
Flemish might actually be an improvement over Frisian, as your average Flemish speaker probably has more exposure to French vocab than your average Frisian speaker? I think Frisian speakers would...
Flemish might actually be an improvement over Frisian, as your average Flemish speaker probably has more exposure to French vocab than your average Frisian speaker? I think Frisian speakers would only have a marginal improvement over Flemish in recognizing English core Germanic vocabulary due to similar sound changes having happened for those (the Frisian word "tsiis" is the classic example there) but overall Frisian and Flemish are more mutually intelligible with each other than either is with English, after all.
Interestingly, I could get 1300 better than 1400, but it may just be down to recognizing more words in the specific contexts. This was fun. English is ever-evolving.
Interestingly, I could get 1300 better than 1400, but it may just be down to recognizing more words in the specific contexts. This was fun. English is ever-evolving.
modern back to 1300 was all easy, i had to read 1200 twice to get it, and 1100 was....i got the gist of it? but i couldnt say word-for-word what's being said or described, and if i'd had to read...
modern back to 1300 was all easy, i had to read 1200 twice to get it, and 1100 was....i got the gist of it? but i couldnt say word-for-word what's being said or described, and if i'd had to read that passage cold with no previous context, i think i wouldnt have understood anything beyond "its a dialog". And 1000 is completely unintelligible to me
A friend posted this and I was super anxious to get home and try it out. Most commented that they got to the 1300s (which is pointed out due to Latin exiting the scene), though one friend started struggling by the 1500s and gave up at the 1400s.
I was able to pick out bits and pieces of the 1100s, courtesy of a meager knowledge of German (was jetzt vollig mangelhaft ist!) and having been super interested in old English tales in my late teens/early 20s that helped with the weird letters that started sneaking in. But yeah, the 1300s is where I quit reading and had to start studying and thinking as I read.
Hopefully you enjoy as much as I did!
There's a YouTuber, Simon Roper, who does quite a bit of Old English content, including videos where he recreates speech through time, to allow you to test your understanding against the timeline. You might like his content.
e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic
"In this video, I present a monologue which gradually transitions from pre-literary Old English (c.450 AD) to an urban northeastern dialect of modern American English. I present it first without any subtitles or notes so that viewers can gauge when they first start to pick out words and sentences, and then with subtitles and footnotes. "
That was pretty neat as well, though he's highlighting changes that didn't provide enough time to understand at first. I will try to start at 7:27 and read along as it goes, not that there are enough examples for me to pick up on I don't think heh.
I think half the battle is working out what the symbols sound like in the older text!
Yeah, as someone who has read a decent amount of archaic English texts, I think it was much easier for me since I already knew about long s, v = u/v, thorn, yogh, and have some practice at quickly interpreting the sounds those characters represent. The meaning of the text still got pretty difficult to parse starting in 1200 though, even knowing those characters, their pronunciations, and some archaic verbiage. But the 1100 and 1000 texts were practically unintelligible to me no matter how hard I tried to understand them.
That's where I had the benefit, from both learning a bit of German (which has the ß that really helped me adapt to the "it's not an f, it's a long s" in English) and the wynn, eth, and thorn, from previous readings, though I knew what the "ash" was but didn't know its name. I only picked up on the yogh by noticing the words that would make sense and then working out that it was a "gh".
Like many of the blog post’s commenters, my understanding essentially completely checked out somewhere in the 1200s text. I already knew most of the runic letters beforehand, too.
But my first language is German. I don’t think it’s as much of an advantage as you’d initially think, interestingly.
I’m guessing this has to do with most German speakers not knowing what to do with vocabulary from Germanic speakers/writers of that time in “their” language, either – it’s just too far removed to understand without training, so it doesn’t provide useful knowledge in another related-but-old language either.
Edit: And it’s not like I don’t have experience with other Germanic languages. I can understand some written Dutch, I’ve lived in Denmark, and Danish (or Norwegian) can also be somewhat manageable when it’s “easy” sentences.
First language Dutch here, and I feel the same way. I would love to read a similar blog post in German and/or Dutch and see how far I can get.
Here's a reconstruction of how 11th century Dutch could have sounded, you may find it interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hVdz9gyGX4
I thankfully knew some of the symbols, but even then had to actively remind myself of what the symbols meant repeatedly.
On that note, did anyone else start reading it with a mental lisp whenever it had ſ instead of s? I kept correcting the mental pronunciation at first before quickly giving up.
An interesting comparison is literary Chinese, since it’s fairly unique amongst modern written languages for not being phonetic. This makes ancient writings surprisingly readable, as though the pronunciation is not even remotely close to the same as how people would have pronounced the language at the time, the meaning persists.
Take, for example, this poem from the Shijing, a collection of poems dated to 1100 B.C
關關雎鳩
在河之洲
窈窕淑女
君子好逑
The only characters that a modern Chinese reader would likely not know is 雎鳩, an archaic word referring to water fowls. And from the radicals you would be able to guess it’s talking about some kind of bird.
This is earlier than Homer, which is generally considered to be compiled in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.
In English, you’d be hard pressed to read something from the 1400s A.D.
To be fair Chinese characters are sort of phonetic. Just to a far lesser extent than even English spelling is. But the phonetic components were a better indicator of a character's pronunciation back in older varieties of Chinese.
I'm also curious how transparent the grammar of Literary Chinese is to a native speaker of a modern Chinese language who hasn't had any education on it. The meanings of certain characters and the structure of a sentence are quite different from modern Chinese languages (at least based on when I had to take a semester of it for uni!) and I assumed the fact that one needed to be separately educated in Literary Chinese to read and write it was a big motivating factor behind the switch to writing in Mandarin around the turn of the century.
That makes sense, as yeah, [from what I understand] the characters are each their own syllable instead of breaking things down more.
I know no Asian languages, but I do know that the long/short pronunciations can change a word's meaning/intent. It kind of attest to what @trim's link showed for the English vowel shift, but on a much larger scale.
Not gonna lie, I would love to learn an Asian language (any, really, or Russian), except having learned very rudimentary options in Greek showed me that my brain didn't do too well with non-Latin characters... and I realized that 20ish years ago.
You know, it took a bit of mind bending at first, but after four years of lazily learning Japanese part time (more off than on) it sinks in pretty good!
The alphabets are simple, the sounds are limited and the sentence structure is quite simple when compared to some Latin languages.
If you're looking to start one, Japanese is quite accessible.
I wonder what the reverse would be like; how far back could you go before an educated reader from that time would be completely unable to parse any modern English?
This is a really interesting question. On the one hand, a modern English speaker has the advantage that they may already have had exposure to previous forms of English and the various cultural landscapes in which it was spoken, so in that sense navigating backwards in time is easier than if you travel into the future, of which you could not know anything about beforehand. Similarly, the present day vocabulary of English builds on what it was in the past, so in theory for a backwards-traveller there is a higher chance of figuring out words and how they may have changed.
On the other hand, many of us travelling back in time seem to start hitting a communicative brick wall around the 1200s and 1100s, when both the vocabulary and the grammar of English become more predominantly Germanic. Meanwhile, a highly educated forward-moving traveller from that era would have the benefit of not only knowing the more Germanic version of English (well, it's just "English" for them), as well as speaking and reading French and Latin, from which later forms of English borrowed a lot of vocabulary. They might be in the sweet spot, as for a forward-moving traveller coming from an even earlier time, the Scandinavian vocabulary that English adopted during the Viking era might become an issue.
As English grammar, or at least morphology, has in many ways become simpler, someone from the 1100s and 1200s might also have an easier time figuring out present day English sentences than the other way around. For them, the English of 2026 might read a bit like our depictions of caveman English: "Tuk want meat, Tuk hungry", lacking the finesse and flexibility of a more inflectional language (but of course having gained in other ways).
They would probably also be more accustomed to interpreting variations in written language than we are, as English spelling really only started to become standardised in the late 15th century with the invention of the printing press. For an educated 13th or 12th century scholar, spelling would have been more phonetic and expressing personal preferences and dialectal differences. Also lucky for them, modern English is sort of spelled like the language was spoken in the 15th century, before much of the Great Vowel Shift rampaged through the English vowel system. If English spelling had been fixed after the Great Vowel Shift, our Norman era scholar would probably be totally lost.
But in the end, the forward-traveller would certainly struggle with the cultural context in which language exists. Our use of language is full of references to things around us, and even for a highly educated 12th century scholar our world would seem quite alien. Not just technology like computers and cars, but also our social and ideological systems and the fact that so much of our world operates on a global scale these days.
This was a long way of me saying "I don't really know", and while I have a background in linguistics, I cannot claim much expertise in the topic. Still, it was a fun thought experiment to try to think about!
This depends a lot on when the speaker is moving forward from. An Old English speaker could be highly educated and still not speak or read a lick of French (or, more contemporaneously, Old French or Old Gallo-Romance, as the languages d'oïl were still developing themselves). In fact, the many loanwords from Frankish, a Germanic language, into Old French would probably be a major factor in an Old English speaker's ability to understand Old French (alongside their knowledge of Latin, of course).
Of course later educated speakers would know more French as it became immediately more relevant due to the Anglo Norman conquest, since that's the reason English has so many loanwords from Norman French to begin with.
Also, if we're talking languages that had major loans to English, let's not include Latin but forget Old Norse, whose loanwords were often much more fundamental to English. Old English originally had a completely different set of third person plural pronouns, for instance, until we borrowed "they" and its forms from Old Norse, which replaced the earlier Old English "heo" and its forms over the course of the 13th and 14th centuries. So depending on when and where our educated speaker is from, they may struggle to recognize even some surprisingly basic elements.
I do otherwise mostly agree with your assessment, though, although I think finding a literate person makes this much less difficult than if we actually evaluated this solely based on spoken language. I also think that the issue of cultural context definitely goes both ways, though, so I don't think it would harm their understanding much more than it would harm the understanding of a modern person who isn't already well-educated on their culture. Even though we may nominally read Chaucer and Beowulf in our English classes, I wager quite a lot of modern English speaker if not most of them have a hard time understanding those without footnotes even in translation, after all.
My gut reaction, as someone who also has a linguistics background but didn't study Old English or philology specifically, is that there's no chance for an Old English speaker and a modern English speaker. The languages are simply too different in vocabulary -- it would be like locking you in a room with a German who speaks no English. You'd probably eventually learn enough of each others' languages to communicate, but mutual intelligibility would be very low to start with. I think you could make a case for being able to struggle through communication with a Middle English speaker, depending how early or late in the period it was and whether they were literate. Middle English is definitely where literacy would help the most.
Like I mentioned in my comment, I too believe that the best potential for understanding exists sometime after the Norse influence, and a speaker of Old English would likely struggle more. That said, although I did very cursively study both Old English and Middle English at university, I don’t remember enough about the exact timelines to really be able to say where the sweet spot would be. Like you say, most likely after 1066. I tried to play it safe with 1100s and 1200s.
I agree that when we read Chaucer and his contemporaries, let alone Beowulf or Bede, we are typically so removed from the cultural context that we miss a lot and misunderstand plenty. But as Nemoder asked about an educated reader's ability to parse the language, I would guess (and this is purely a guess) that a modern educated reader can still get a better superficial understanding of Chaucer than Chaucer could get reading something from 2026. Much depends on the text itself, of course, but today’s news for instance would likely be quite baffling and difficult to parse for Chaucer even on a surface level, without an interpreter explaining how the world functions and interacts these days.
The question where the line between mutual spoken understanding might exist is also fascinating, but slightly different from Nemoder’s question about educated readers parsing written texts. I share your gut reaction that trying to reach mutual intelligibility with an Old English speaker would be very difficult. My gut also says that the point where a native speaker from the past could more or less immediately understand us is later than it is with written text. Much of course depends on dialects, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say a speaker from the 15th or 16th century might be the earliest plausible candidate.
While this probably is true, I suspect it has more to do both with the text itself as well as what your threshold of "modern educated reader" is -- the fact by some definitions, most modern educated readers have been exposed to Chaucer's work already is a big factor, after all!
While I think the news would contain a lot of vocabulary and concepts that would stymie a reader from that time period, I think something that's in a more similar genre to what Chaucer wrote would be more attainable despite the technological and cultural differences, at least in terms of parsing it on a surface level. I think it would be a closer race if you gave Chaucer something relatively down-to-earth from AO3 than if you gave him a news article, for instance. This is probably true in the reverse as well, as Chaucer's subject matter makes it generally more approachable, but I'm not sure what the equivalent type of text would be in terms of referencing cultural features of Chaucer's day would be... perhaps something theological, but I'm not sure if those would have been in English either...
Spoken understanding definitely would lag behind written language for sure. Possibly one of the few advantages to how poorly our writing system represents modern English phonology. I could mostly read the 1200s example in the article, but there would be no chance I'd understand a speaker from the same period.
Absolutely. That's sort of what I was trying to say when I wrote that while a modern reader travelling back in time could have had prior contact with previous forms and cultures of English, a reader travelling forward in time could not have that. (Although, we do already allow time travel, so I don't know why I assume that we don't allow information travel.)
In any case, like you say, in the end it's very much a question of what type of an educated reader, what type of a text, and so on. There are so many variables.
When I (a non-native English speaker) first went to an English speaking country, I had studied English for over a decade and already began my university studies in English philology. I read English books exclusively and watched English (well, American) media. I was pretty much fluent in the language. Or so I thought, until I stepped off the boat in Dover, walked to the railway station and couldn't understand a single word that the ticket seller behind the counter said. Never mind, I thought, they had a really bad loud speaker, the voice was distorted. But then, on the train, the conductor came and, again, I had to ask him to repeat something three times before I understood what he was trying to tell me. Dialects, huh.
Your comment got me thinking about another variant of this topic's question. Who might be the earliest author of a text written in English who would easily recognise their own work if given its modern English translation? Shakespeare certainly would. Chaucer and Langland, probably? Layamon, Geoffrey of Monmouth and other chronicles writing in Early Middle English, I'm not so sure? The Old English authors of The Wanderer, The Seafarer and Beowulf, surely not?
Hm that is an interesting question! I think my intuition aligns with yours there, but I think it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where in Middle English the line is drawn. Would definitely depend on the vocab, ofc.
Wow, I never even considered how scholars back then would be much more likely to be familiar with multiple shifting languages. I suppose a part of why not many of us are now is our ultra-specialization and easy access to translation resources.
Maybe if we ever perfect cryogenics we'll be able to find out how far language symbols can last. ..or just wind up in Idiocracy with many regrets. :)
1300 I was still able to understand. By 1200, I get the gist of the passage, but there are still many words that I don't know, so I'm not sure of the details. And 1100 and 1000? Pfft. No way.
I was familiar with the letters thorn and eth, as well as the long s, so those weren't too bad. Yogh I eventually figured out. but wynn and ash, I didn't know the sounds of. And trying to figure it out in context was impossible.
I figured out that "ic" was Iike German "ich, or "I" in English. But that's it.
One of the lighbulb moments for me was "deorcnesse." I was like "de-orc-ness? Orcs? Were there orcs here?" And then I said it faster a few times and was like "Ohhh, darkness!"
Yeah I lost the thread pretty much where you did. I was slowing down by 1300 but not struggling very much, but in 1200 only had enough knowledge to be able to get probably 2/3 to 3/4 of it and mostly gleaned the meaning, but it was definitely an educated guess. 1100 pretty much lost me right away, I could puzzle out a few words but couldn't catch the meaning.
I was very similar. I find reading out loud helps me with older English, once you get a sense of the vowel shifts and the v->u shifts and the like it becomes easier to read through. 1200 is where I lost full understanding of sentences but could still puzzle it out somewhat. 1100 is scattered words that maybe I could figure out with more effort
Yeah, my first German teacher actually highlighted this - his doctorate was in middle-age German, so he utilized that to help us bridge between the languages. He utilized how the thorn looks kind of like a capital D, then compared words like danke (thank), Donner (thunder), and Durst (thurst).
Vocabulary was definitely the issue in the 1200's. I'm familiar with some of the old symbols used previously, particularly the thorn and long S, but I couldn't do much when the words lost similarly to what I already know.
I've never been to the Caribbean area, though I grew up in California, lived in Texas, Germany (though I did learn a good college try before moving there), and now currently nearby where my grandmother was raised in New England with a horrid Boston accent. I didn't pick up any southern references, but I will reread it a few more times, as I'm still curious to milk all the knowledge I can out of it without studying anymore haha!
I'm not native English speaker and lost it at 1500. 1600 was still quite readable and understandable for me.
What is your native language? I suspect it isn't a Latin-, Germanic-, or Scandinavian-based language?
Czech
Huh. I remember reading Beowulf in high school in it's original middle/old English form, and while it was tough it was doable. But to my old man brain I just can't be bothered to read things past around 1400 or so. I could do it if I concentrated to piece together the weird parts, but I just can't find the internal patience to do it.
That's the one that got me into the rabbit hole of old English I believe in the early 2000s (the Seamus Heany version), because when the movie came out, I remembered thinking... that's not how it happened! Now I need to go find it, though I think most of my old books are gone through the moves and my attempt to get my SO to declutter. Also, to be fair, I don't really read much these days...
Until 1400s everything was easy and nice without even having to really think about it.
But the 1400s is such an insane jump that I gave up immediately. If my life depended on it though, I'm pretty certain I could read it after spending a bit longer on it.
I speak English and Flemish. Interestingly, I found it was easier to read if I attacked the text with a strong west flemish accent once 1300 hit and that served me well until 1100. I could work my way through that year, but it was difficult. I'm still trying to get past 1000 but it's a significant jump.
I love language stuff like this!
I had a similar experience, but had to imagine Wim Opbrouck narrating the text.
I'd really like to know how far a Frisian would get :)
Flemish might actually be an improvement over Frisian, as your average Flemish speaker probably has more exposure to French vocab than your average Frisian speaker? I think Frisian speakers would only have a marginal improvement over Flemish in recognizing English core Germanic vocabulary due to similar sound changes having happened for those (the Frisian word "tsiis" is the classic example there) but overall Frisian and Flemish are more mutually intelligible with each other than either is with English, after all.
Already 1500 is a problem. I can understand the words but can't fully understand the sentences. Cool website though!
Interestingly, I could get 1300 better than 1400, but it may just be down to recognizing more words in the specific contexts. This was fun. English is ever-evolving.
modern back to 1300 was all easy, i had to read 1200 twice to get it, and 1100 was....i got the gist of it? but i couldnt say word-for-word what's being said or described, and if i'd had to read that passage cold with no previous context, i think i wouldnt have understood anything beyond "its a dialog". And 1000 is completely unintelligible to me