Super Fun für Sprach-Nerds, Weird Fiction-Fans und alle, die gerne neue Sachen lernen: Diese Geschichte wird jeden Absatz 100 Jahre älter (& gruseliger), am Schluss sind wir um 1.000 sprachlich angelangt. Bis wann könnt Ihr verstehen, was da steht? Danach erklärt ein Sprachhistoriker die Veränderungen, die ihr da rückwärts mitgemacht habt.
#linguistics #historyoflanguage #language #literature #learning
https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-time-understand-english
@Tinido this is fun! Sadly the author does not seem to be on Fedi?
I wonder if @yvanspijk could read all this just as is… (Yoïn, spoilers ahead so if you want to play, read the OP article first.)
I first got slight troubles in the 1500s when there began to be occasional words I didn’t know. I guess I would just have to look them up in the dictionary as I need to do today for some English words. These that troubled me were distinct from those that would trouble a native speaker, for I’m German and know Latin, inflection gave me only a little pause, we had long s ourselves, and I knew thorn, eth, and even yogh and wynn.
1200 was when it mostly lost me. I don’t know Old High German, so even after I figured out the… well… double u, and identified wif as woman, I only could follow a larger part of the story, but not all of it any more.
1100, well. I got that they were to marry. That’s that. yfel was understood, and cƿæþ was clear from context.
1000, I could read more easily than 1100, as in, the writing gave me less tongue-tying, but I understood even less of the words. "næfre ne mihton fram Ƿulfesfleote" was clear but the verb of that sentence not. In retrospect (after having read the summary), ofslean is clear (seeing the dutch connection here), same for forlætan = verlassen. "deorcan stræta þisses grimman stedes" is dark street of this grim… well stede, I don’t know how to put that in English 😹 Stätte.
@mirabilos @Tinido Interesting to read how you experienced those phases!
No, I don't understand these Middle and Old English texts with ease. I understand more than the average layman thanks to my lknowledge of historical phonology, grammar and vocabulary, but I'm more of a generalist than a specialist when it comes to those phases. Only people who have enough experience reading full texts become familiar enough with these languages to understand them fluently.
@yvanspijk @Tinido interesting! So it’s more a, you know more so you can work through it with effort, but as it’s a dead language you aren’t getting anywhere near fluent in it unless you specialise?
(Like I tried to learn to speak Latin at school (like in actual conversations) but never found a sparring partner and it’s impossible alone.)
@yvanspijk @Tinido yeah, no such thing as a community for a lone preteen in the last millennium.
I’m probably not up for this any more, but I’m glad there are people who did it. All the best to them.
Keep in mind there was no such thing as standard written English well understood across the whole country until relatively recently; spoken English even less so.
Even today, someone in rural Northumberland would not necessarily clearly understand every word spoken by somebody from rural Devon.
Personally, as a reasonably well educated native speaker of English, most (>95%) of Shakespeare is clear to me.
Chaucer (late 14th/early 15th C) starts to be a struggle.
Stefan Böhringer
Christina Dongowski
goncourt
wortezimmer
Lam 'al Adie
esthi
mirabilos
Yoïn van Spijk
Harvestmouse
tompsettchris
dimi
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ubrummack
Nike Leonhard
Hahn Holio
Pterry
Zuhause auf Nordbalkonien
gemütsmorchel
Eckes 
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