I'm not a Yank, but I know Old English is too different, so haven't bothered to listen/ Middle English is a lot easier, but still awkward in some places. We h

I'm not a Yank, but I know Old English is too different, so haven't bothered to listen/ Middle English is a lot easier, but still awkward in some places. We had to read The Canterbury Tales at school, and I remember getting the gist without having to make to much use of the references for obsolete words. As to David Campbell's piece, I only missed a few words of the Doric section followed the tale of the pious / holly fellow who went out in the fishing boat, and only really missed the (possibly implied) stealing of the bucket (rather than the literal loss of the fellow overboard while baling). I'm not a Scot, and in many respects Doric is a difficult dialect of Scots to follow. Now if that had been a conversation in a pub, or on the street (rather than the presented story), I imagine I'd have had more trouble.