4 ms·

Isn't it a bit silly to ask about whether 1000 year old people can understand modern language? If it's not, I would love to know more about this.

genewitch 5y ago
a large portion of English, in general, is changes in spelling from prior words, usually traceable to proto-indo-european, which is a catchall group of languages that etymologists are unable to find reliable sources for. It's generally extrapolated backward, and decent extrapolations are used to bootstrap understanding of words that don't quite "fit" with english, and may, in fact, come from other areas of the planet. There are also scads of words that had a contemporary meaning that changed "overnight", morphing into entirely new meanings, which then brokered entirely new words with different definitions. My current favorite word to use an example of this is "filibuster" - the act of obstructing legislation by talking. The word, as so many in english, came from bastardizing the dutch word for "freebooter" or pirate, through a circuitous route of the French adding an S, and the American English removing an S. If you dig a bit more, you find that the "booty" part of freebooter (which means 'loves plunder' from the original dutch) came from a french word first recorded in the 1300s, "butin", which probably came from some mid-german word meaning "haul from plundering". There's also an implication that for a while in the 1500s-1800s freebooter was also the name of a private entity that engaged in exchanging goods - a "free trader", with the negative connotations falling in and out of style. So, if you can parse Shakespeare or Chaucer at all, it's because of the mechanism of how English, and other languages derived from the same roots "evolve". Saxon and old High German, as well as Icelandic all play a huge role in the way we speak and write today, to name a few.
hutzlibu 5y ago
Not sure if you intentionally missunderstood, but the point was, that you probably would be able to make some sense of 1000 year old english, but that is about the border. It depends on the culture of course. There are old cultures with the same references like a bible, that might cover longer timeframes of understanding.
- srcreigh 5y ago
  Ah, my apologies. I could be clearer. It was curious for that comment to refer to _mutual intelligibility_ for people on either side of a 1000 year period. It's a lot easier to ask whether contemporary humans can understand 1000 year old language, than to ask whether humans 1000 years ago can understand contemporary language.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "It's a lot easier to ask whether contemporary humans can understand 1000 year old language, than to ask whether humans 1000 years ago can understand contemporary language." This is clear. And since we can only look backwards, we can only assume it works the other way around.
  - nkrisc 5y ago
    I think it’s fair to assume that if we can’t understand them, they probably couldn’t understand us. Yes, they’re long gone so it doesn’t really matter.

genewitch 5y ago

a large portion of English, in general, is changes in spelling from prior words, usually traceable to proto-indo-european, which is a catchall group of languages that etymologists are unable to find reliable sources for. It's generally extrapolated backward, and decent extrapolations are used to bootstrap understanding of words that don't quite "fit" with english, and may, in fact, come from other areas of the planet. There are also scads of words that had a contemporary meaning that changed "overnight", morphing into entirely new meanings, which then brokered entirely new words with different definitions. My current favorite word to use an example of this is "filibuster" - the act of obstructing legislation by talking. The word, as so many in english, came from bastardizing the dutch word for "freebooter" or pirate, through a circuitous route of the French adding an S, and the American English removing an S. If you dig a bit more, you find that the "booty" part of freebooter (which means 'loves plunder' from the original dutch) came from a french word first recorded in the 1300s, "butin", which probably came from some mid-german word meaning "haul from plundering". There's also an implication that for a while in the 1500s-1800s freebooter was also the name of a private entity that engaged in exchanging goods - a "free trader", with the negative connotations falling in and out of style. So, if you can parse Shakespeare or Chaucer at all, it's because of the mechanism of how English, and other languages derived from the same roots "evolve". Saxon and old High German, as well as Icelandic all play a huge role in the way we speak and write today, to name a few.

hutzlibu 5y ago

Not sure if you intentionally missunderstood, but the point was, that you probably would be able to make some sense of 1000 year old english, but that is about the border. It depends on the culture of course. There are old cultures with the same references like a bible, that might cover longer timeframes of understanding.

srcreigh 5y ago
Ah, my apologies. I could be clearer. It was curious for that comment to refer to _mutual intelligibility_ for people on either side of a 1000 year period. It's a lot easier to ask whether contemporary humans can understand 1000 year old language, than to ask whether humans 1000 years ago can understand contemporary language.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "It's a lot easier to ask whether contemporary humans can understand 1000 year old language, than to ask whether humans 1000 years ago can understand contemporary language." This is clear. And since we can only look backwards, we can only assume it works the other way around.
- nkrisc 5y ago
  I think it’s fair to assume that if we can’t understand them, they probably couldn’t understand us. Yes, they’re long gone so it doesn’t really matter.