Natasha  ðŸ‡ªðŸ‡ºFeb 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
Show threadmurksFeb 22
@Natasha_Jay Neat! Until 1500 it was alright, but no idea what to make of the weirder letters earlier on.
Show threadlj·rkFeb 22
@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
Show threadmurksFeb 23

@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.

Show threadlj·rk

@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 ^^'

Feb 23 at 6:48pmWeb