How far back can you read?

[Bramblethorn]

Interesting exercise: every few lines the language in this story goes back 100 years.

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

I can read to about 1500 with no difficulty; 1400 and 1300 mostly okay though I have to stop and sound a few words out, and I had to look up "swie" (in hindsight, could've figured it out from German, but I didn't). I can figure out maybe three quarters of 1200 with work, but for 1100 and 1000 I'd be hard pressed to manage more than an odd word here and there.

 

[StillStunned]

Back to 1300 with no problem, I can puzzle through 1200 and I can get the gist of 1100 and most of 1000.

 

[Actingup]

Interesting exercise: every few lines the language in this story goes back 100 years.

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

I can read to about 1500 with no difficulty; 1400 and 1300 mostly okay though I have to stop and sound a few words out, and I had to look up "swie" (in hindsight, could've figured it out from German, but I didn't). I can figure out maybe three quarters of 1200 with work, but for 1100 and 1000 I'd be hard pressed to manage more than an odd word here and there.

I wasn't as patient as you - I bailed earlier. But this is a fantastic blog post - thank you for your sharing!

 

[SimonDoom]

How interesting! I didn't know about that.

The big jump is 1400-1500. 1400 is definitely "Middle English," while Modern English evolved in the 16th Century.

I recall reading The Canterbury Tales, which was written around 1387, in the original in college, but was heavily annotated, so the really unfamiliar words were translated. It's been a long time, but my recollection was I did OK. I was probably a better reader then, in pure processing terms, if not in understanding.

I can make out much of what's being narrated in the 1200 passage, but I don't want to, it's such a slog.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think, by the way, that this is a very useful exercise to develop reading skills -- reading older works in English that are a challenge. Most people find reading Shakespeare a challenge at first, but with a little experience it becomes easy, and then you enjoy it more. It's like developing an ear for different kinds of music.

 

[HordHolm]

I could get to 1300 quite comfortably, but earlier than that it became difficult, and by 1100 I was having to concentrate on each word and was missing the meaning perhaps 50% of the time - so, basically not actually reading properly. I do have a little experience with Middle and Old English, but nowhere near enough to truly understand early texts, sadly (given more time, this is a particular area of interest to me).

I will now send this to my linguist wife, and see how she gets on with it.

 

[BeechLeaf]

I had the odd experience of finding it (in some ways) easier when it jumped from ME to OE, because I've formally studied Old English: it became a language I knew better, albeit now a different language.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I was fine back to 1300 - knowing both German and Chaucer helps. I read an excellent version of the Canterbury Tales through college, with footnotes and margin notes, but otherwise untranslated beyond the modern alphabet. (Swie is modern German sweigen, to be silent) I got the gist of 1200 and 1100 but not the detail, and 1000 only a few bits, because that really is Old English not Middle English.

I always end up reading long S as a lisp. The thorns, eths and yodhs slow me down but once translated, their words are often easy.

There's sites with similar exercises in audio, which are much harder IME.

 

[Purechicanery]

Doesn't seem to change significantly until 1700s, where there appears to be two separate symbols for 's'. 1600 swaps u and v and that's the only main change. (Like, yeah, the manner of speaking is a touch different, but not significantly so yet.) 1500 changes up the spelling a bit, but you can still easily sound it out. 1400 took a moment, but it's doable. 1300 a bit trickier and one or two words evade me, but you can puzzle it out from context.

1200 is where I tap out. I reckon if I applied myself I might eventually be able to figure it out, but it feels like the biggest jump so far. Or maybe the symbol changes are just ones that I'm the least familiar with.

 

[TheLobster]

Okay, this may be interesting, considering that this is technically all Greek foreign language to me.

• The 1900 section is really lovely written. Much better than the crude 2000, for one.
• No real problems with 1800, except for "publican" whose meaning I could more or less infer from context.
• Cute long s in 1700, but otherwise actually easier to comprehend than the previous section.
• Another cute quirk of orthography with u and v in 1600, but given it's meant to mimic Early Modern English it's still perfectly understandable (though describing hen as "lusty" gave me a chuckle).
• Okay, 1500 is getting spicy. I had to reread some dialogue twice but context was enough to decipher the odd spelling here and there.
• I had to start reading 1400 aloud to grok it, and it sometimes felt like reading German, but honestly not too bad at all. Understood probably 90% of it.
• Ugh, this is getting rough. I could decipher the narration well enough in 1300, but the dialogue took multiple tries and I still am not sure I got the general gist.

I tapped out at 1200; it looked less like English and more like Danish or mangled Dutch at this point

 

[Bramblethorn]

1200 is where I tap out. I reckon if I applied myself I might eventually be able to figure it out, but it feels like the biggest jump so far. Or maybe the symbol changes are just ones that I'm the least familiar with.

It's not just the typography. Although the Normans conquered England in 1066, it took a couple of hundred years for their vocabulary to be absorbed into English. A lot of our modern vocabulary comes from words that the Normans introduced to the language around 1250, so before that we're dealing with much less familiar Germanic words.

After tapping out, it's worth skipping down to the notes, which explain a lot of what's going on.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I can fumble my way through 1300 with basic comprehension. 1200 is beyond me.

 

[redgarters]

This is fun. Not a native English speaker but so interesting to see the norse/germanic influences as the text gets older. The æ,ð and þ are still used in my language today to represent similar sounds, so that helped. Many of the words take norse forms 1000-1300 as well, from the time that Danes ruled half of England in the 11th century.

 

[Voboy]

"My hens are fat and lusty, and you may have them cheap."

... we still talking about chickens, there, back in 1600?

I made it to 1500 no problem. The rest I really had to focus, and at times guess. That shift from 1400-1500 is pretty profound.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I could read 1300 fairly easily. 1200 I just didn't want to go to the effort.

 

[Purechicanery]

After tapping out, it's worth skipping down to the notes, which explain a lot of what's going on.

Yeah, after I posted my reply I scrolled down and had a look.

 

[MrPixel]

1400 was the earliest for me. The numerous letterform differences from 1300 on back... may as well have been a Cyrillic character set as far as I was concerned.

 

[OddLove]

I've heard people joke that English will eventually be emojis and acronyms like 'LOL' pronounced 'lull' with the definition being "laughing".

But I think its actually true.

'AFAIK' pronounces 'Ay-fack' with the definition of "to the best of my knowledge" aka "as far as I know".

Often an acronym has less syllables than it's phrase, such as AKA being spoken 'Ah-Ka'=2 syllables where 'Also Know As'=4 syllables.

With restrictions of fixed physical keyboards phasing out, nearly infinite Emojis are potentially easily accessible, and we could literally see an Eggplant emoji in the dictionary with the same definition of penis. And a peach emoji for butt.

Regardless of which ways modern English changes, the one thing I'm most certain about is that all our current stories will be unreadable without the assistance of some sort of translator.

 

[Trionyx]

Yes, but can anyone read what was said in the twentythird century? If we haven’t annihilated ourselves by then, I wonder what our language will be like, given the influences of computers, mass communication, social media and technology in general. In the ag-based past, there might have been minimal linguistic changes in a generation or two but now boomers struggle to understand what their gen-z or gen-a great grandchildren are saying and they don’t know why some of us still ‘dial’ a phone.

 

[THBGato]

Great blog, thanks for sharing.

I'm currently reading David Crystal's "Stories of English", which really helped decipher the later bits (e.g. it meant I knew "heo" meant "she" back in the day). But, yeah, those last two entries were very hard.

 

[Trionyx]

Shortly after I wrote the above, I saw the following:

“alisa liu being the first woke idgafer alt baddie to win an olympic gold medalist”