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.
This was so fun; thanks for sharing! The 1100s are beyond my capabilities, but everything else was pretty clear cut. To my (very American) ear, as the writing went on it began to sound very...
This was so fun; thanks for sharing! The 1100s are beyond my capabilities, but everything else was pretty clear cut.
To my (very American) ear, as the writing went on it began to sound very similar to some of the regional ‘pocket’ dialects that one might encounter in the southern U.S., and then gradually became more akin to something heard around the islands in the Caribbean.
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.
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.
This was so fun; thanks for sharing! The 1100s are beyond my capabilities, but everything else was pretty clear cut.
To my (very American) ear, as the writing went on it began to sound very similar to some of the regional ‘pocket’ dialects that one might encounter in the southern U.S., and then gradually became more akin to something heard around the islands in the Caribbean.
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.