Mastodawn

Christoph Löhr Feb 22

How far back in time can you understand English?

It’s a thousand years of the English language, compressed into a single blog post.

"... as his post goes on, his language gets older. A hundred years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words, and his attitude gets older too, as the blogger’s voice is replaced by that of a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler."

https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-time-understand-english

#english #language

How far back in time can you understand English?

An experiment in language change

Dead Language Society

@Natasha_Jay Read that yesterday, it's wild how we've had and lost a letter for "th" on two separate occasions.

@Natasha_Jay That's fantastic.

I got as far as 1200.

@Natasha_Jay try https://galacticjourney.org/stories/6112fsfmsfnd.pdf

Bauke Kramer Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay
Great!
From 1200 onwards, my knowledge of Frisian and Dutch helped me a bit. But even so, I quickly got lost...

Ellen Bakker Feb 22

@bmk @Natasha_Jay I had the same. Frisian and Dutch came to germanic aid.

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK Feb 22

@EllenB @bmk @Natasha_Jay

got about as far as 1100 but struggled at 1000, but I do understand Dutch and German (and listen to some pirate radio from NL every so often, where I get to hear many of the regional dialiects)

C++ Wage Slave Feb 22

That's fascinating. Thanks for posting. 1200 was where I really started to struggle.

@CppGuy @Natasha_Jay I found it pretty easy to read until 1300. The 1200 section I can understand about as well as (modern) Dutch. After that, I'm completely lost.

@CppGuy
Same.
@Natasha_Jay

MattChippytea Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay this is a lot of fun. I can follow the thread of things back to 1200 but after that… nope

@Natasha_Jay 1600 !

@Natasha_Jay ah non 1500!

After, it's very difficult to understand for mi

@Natasha_Jay but much more easier written than spoken !

Here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic

Well I 'm lost until modern English

From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue

YouTube

I picked up right away that the guy was a lousy farmer with no cows, so pretty happy about that!

I guess it helps being a Scandinavian who understands German, has Scottish friends, and knows enough Dutch to know what a bauer is. There's a lot of words from all over the place.
@beatricejess @Natasha_Jay

@Natasha_Jay
Nope. Didn't even get to the first unfamiliar word before I got stopped by "sign up for our mailing list" garbage.

Close tab.

@leeloo @Natasha_Jay Substack = no boost.

@Natasha_Jay I stopped at 1200

@Natasha_Jay Hard test! I'm reminded of this idea to warn people in 10,000 years, when our language has been lost, where we dumped nuclear waste.

“They proposed we genetically engineer a species of cat that changes color in the presence of radiation. We release it into the wild to act as living Geiger counters. Then we create folklore and write songs and tell stories about these 'ray cats', the moral being that when you see these cats change colors, run far, far away.”

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/

@CiaraNi @Natasha_Jay Ray cats? Caves of Qud!

@log @Natasha_Jay 🙂

While I love the idea of biotech, honestly you only need to tell some Native Americans about it. They'll pass it along.

CC: @[email protected]

Ryek Darkener Feb 22

Mittelhochdeutsch for the win. ;)

Pomegranate_Stew Feb 22

@_RyekDarkener_ @Natasha_Jay
I sent this link to my kids who’ve studied German. It’ll be interesting to see if they can get farther back than I did. They probably will.

Kevin LaRose,aka Grumpasaurus Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay @WeirdWriter This I’ve got to read, but it needs to be done on the Braille display. I’m currently working my way through the daily diary of a Brit named Samuel Pepys from the year 1666. As far as I know it’s presented just as he wrote it, and it’s fascinating to see how certain words have evolved from then to now. Also grammatical changes. If I tried to read it in audio it would be a slog.

@Thumper1964 @Natasha_Jay @WeirdWriter

For those interested, Samuel Pepys is also in the Fediverse: @samuelpepys

He's a 17th century guy so he can really be a sexist asshole. He's an interesting person to follow, not many people from the 17th century around here ;-)

Kevin LaRose,aka Grumpasaurus Feb 22

@Mab_813 @Natasha_Jay @WeirdWriter @samuelpepys Sexist asshole is right! On many days in his diary he very strongly insinuates that he practices, shall we say, extracurricular activities with many women not his wife. Still fascinating, though. Definitely a different time and place.

@Natasha_Jay Neat! Until 1500 it was alright, but no idea what to make of the weirder letters earlier on.

@murks @Natasha_Jay Basically they are th and gh as well as the long-s, if you also replace some cases of v<->u and y<->g you should be able to decifer back to 1200 roughly

@ljrk @Natasha_Jay Thanks, especially replacing þ with th helped a bunch. Still there are increasingly more oldish words that I am simply not familiar with.

I assume that, as a German native speaker, I would be more successful with old German.

@murks @Natasha_Jay
Glad it helped! Native German here as well :3

But my father studied Anglistik and I was given Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to read when I was 16 or so ^^'

@Natasha_Jay that was really cool

2something Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay I can read 1600 pretty easily, and mostly read 1500 slowly. For 1400 I can make out some sentence fragments, leading me to a very rough outline of what's happening in the story. For 1300 I can make out a few individual words and short phrases, but there's not nearly enough for me to understand what is happening. For 1200 I don't understand any of it.

DB Schwein Feb 22

@2something @Natasha_Jay

Reading from present time backwards I was clear on the narrators voice through 1300, but not the statements from others.

If you'd just handed me a section from 1300 or 1400 I think I would have been lost, and struggled mightily with even the 1500s.

Though a search and replace of f for s would simplify quite a bit there 😝

I once painted a scroll using spelling from the mid 1100s and at the time I could read it clearly!

RealGene ☣️Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay
I can't cope when the S's were F's…

@RealGene @Natasha_Jay They're not quite f's but they're the shortest long-s's I've ever seen - am used to them having descenders.

I managed okay back to 1200 but had completely forgotten about wynn so in 1100 I was reading them as thorn which Was Not Helpful.

Dan Hugo (แดน)Feb 22

I'm not entirely certain what this comment means.

What is that, 5 seconds?

commonst Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay 1200. Seems I lost the meagre Old English I learned in university.

Pomegranate_Stew Feb 22

@commonst @Natasha_Jay
Same, though I found it easier as it went back past 1600 to read it aloud rather than in my head. Hearing it somehow made it easier for me up until 1200, at which point I didn’t know/remember enough of the words and pronunciation to even make that help.

Virginicus Feb 22

@pomegranate_stew @commonst @Natasha_Jay Same here. I made it all the way, thanks to Malory and Ælfric in school, but I had to start reading aloud in 1300.

@Natasha_Jay Really amusing. I can experience the same with Italian, since it forked off from ancient Latin, and it has remained incomprehensible in the tens of dialects spoken today, unless you're a native speaker of one of them, that is.

int%rmitt]nt sig^al. ...~!...)Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay
English is a pidgin confounded by and comprised of the languages of the many peoples that occupied that fertile green and pleasant land and many pedant scholars that tried to "improve" it.
Once you get that it all, sort of, makes sense.

@Natasha_Jay The symbols seem to be the slowdown, simply from figuring them out. 1300 becomes the limit, being the start of non-standard spelling.

Pino Carafa Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay As English is not my first language I'm proud that I made it as far as 1200.

ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)Feb 22

@rozeboosje @Natasha_Jay Wow, that's impressive! What is/are your native language(s)?

Pino Carafa Feb 22

@chiraag @Natasha_Jay Dutch... I can understand German, too, but I'm not very confident speaking it and even less writing it.

HarryMutt Feb 22

Interestingly, as a German, I can understand quite a lot of the very old texts. But my mother had a PHD in English and French and knew a lot about old Germanic sagas and medieval German literature. So, that is nothing foreign to me.

If you read anything from Walther von der Vogelweide, you will clearly see the similarities to the oldest texts. Words and grammar are recognizable, and if you can read one, you can read the other.

But even in Shakespeare's time, you will find a lot of those common roots of our languages, and if you get used to the different spelling, the sound of it rings familiar. And as late as in Jane Austen's times, even the number format was still the same as in German, for instance, four-and-twenty and not twenty-four.

After all, with all the lost grammar and words, modern English is just a watered-down version of old German.
;-)

Thalia Archibald Feb 22

@HarryMutt @Natasha_Jay I made it through 1200 without too much effort. 1100 felt like I was reading my Walther von der Vogelweide book, but after comparing now, the Mittelhochdeutsch there is much easier to understand. By 1000, the vocabulary had shifted enough I couldn't discern much by reversing the shifts I know.

ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay This was fun! I got through 1300 and just...gave up at 1200. I caught the inflections, the issue was vocab for me!

Franchesca Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay probably got a bit further than most, but only because I also speak Dutch 😅 Amazing how they converge.

@Natasha_Jay omg!! Great find. On my reading list for tomorrow 🤩

(I wish it wasn't on Substack, but anyway...)

Louis A. M. 🇨🇦Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay Wonderful!!

French is my mother tongue, and I learned a bit of German as a third language. That's helping me until:
<<Ic seide hire, “Ic þanke þe, leoue uuif, for þu hauest me ineredd from dæðe!”>>

@redshiftdrift @Natasha_Jay

I made it till 1200, I think German being my first language helped me in the end.

Aki Moranaga Feb 22

I am German, English is my third foreign language (after Latin).

In the 1800s, I had two words that seemed unusual to me or that I had to deduce from the context. In the 1600s, there were three. From 1500 onwards, it became a little more difficult, with one word unusual and three unknown: ‘prees’, 'avys' and ‘thyder’.
I had real difficulties with the 1400s.

Aki Moranaga Feb 22

Interestingly, the 1300s were easier to understand again, with the meaning becoming clear after reading the text a second time. From 1200 onwards, however, I was lost.

Thank you so much for this entertaining post!

Cyberspice Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay @TCMuffin I made it all the way back to 1000 but then I’m interested in our lost letters like æ and þ (I have the icelandic keyboard set up so I can type the letters they still use) and I have some German.

🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈Feb 22

@cyberspice @Natasha_Jay

That's so very impressive 👏👏👏

Full Metal Archaeopteryx Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay
1200 was pretty much a brick wall for me

stevenray Feb 22

@Natasha_Jay if it starts with lingo that teens and twenty somethings use now, I won’t make it very far.