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> They were all old court cases, and the assignment was basically to look through them for a case that looked interesting, try to read it, and write a report on

by cr1895 9y ago

> They were all old court cases, and the assignment was basically to look through them for a case that looked interesting, try to read it, and write a report on the judicial organization and procedural rules in it. That sounds like a really interesting course! How difficult was it to parse the old Dutch?

roel_v 9y ago
Quite difficult TBH. Not only the different spelling, but also that there were lots of different words than we use now for the same thing, and cases where the old word looked like a weird form of something of today but then turned out to be very different; and then all the linguistic embellishment. Instead of saying "x and y happened on date z" (as you would read in today's court transcripts), it would say "and so then it happened that, upon so many days after Easter, when the moon was full, also indicated as the year of the lord so and so and this month, that the horrible event of which we are talking about today too place, where first x was said by person bla", ... - on and on and on. I wonder how they got anything done those days. If you're into this sort of thing (and know Dutch), a really fun read is "Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen", a Dutch cook book from around 1510. Annotated (translated) version available at http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.pdf http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.... . Illustrates the issues above very well.
- cr1895 9y ago
  Neat! I'm learning Dutch and can understand some of what's in that old cookbook, still not easy though. Kind of surprised at all of the spices it calls for...must have been food eaten by the wealthy. The old Dutch in that book looks a little like Frisian, as far as I can tell.
  - coldpie 9y ago
    If you like this kind of stuff, there's a Dutch researcher who maintains a blog about old books, many of which are in old Dutch: https://medievalbooks.nl/ https://medievalbooks.nl/ Sadly not updated in over a year, but there are a lot of gems in the archives.

by cr1895 9y ago

roel_v 9y ago

Quite difficult TBH. Not only the different spelling, but also that there were lots of different words than we use now for the same thing, and cases where the old word looked like a weird form of something of today but then turned out to be very different; and then all the linguistic embellishment. Instead of saying "x and y happened on date z" (as you would read in today's court transcripts), it would say "and so then it happened that, upon so many days after Easter, when the moon was full, also indicated as the year of the lord so and so and this month, that the horrible event of which we are talking about today too place, where first x was said by person bla", ... - on and on and on. I wonder how they got anything done those days. If you're into this sort of thing (and know Dutch), a really fun read is "Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen", a Dutch cook book from around 1510. Annotated (translated) version available at http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.pdf http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.... . Illustrates the issues above very well.

cr1895 9y ago
Neat! I'm learning Dutch and can understand some of what's in that old cookbook, still not easy though. Kind of surprised at all of the spices it calls for...must have been food eaten by the wealthy. The old Dutch in that book looks a little like Frisian, as far as I can tell.
- coldpie 9y ago
  If you like this kind of stuff, there's a Dutch researcher who maintains a blog about old books, many of which are in old Dutch: https://medievalbooks.nl/ https://medievalbooks.nl/ Sadly not updated in over a year, but there are a lot of gems in the archives.