2 ms·
I can comprehend most of the text back to 1300, if slower than Modern/Present Day English. It helps to know the old letter forms, and some of how Shakespearean
by rhdunn 8mo ago
I can comprehend most of the text back to 1300, if slower than Modern/Present Day English. It helps to know the old letter forms, and some of how Shakespearean (Early Modern), Middle, and Old English work. It also helps sounding it out.
Past that, I'm not familiar with Old English enough to understand and follow the text.
- antonvs 8mo agoKnowing a bit of German or Dutch helps as well. I posted my amateur translation of 1200 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47102874 At first it stumped me, but I spent some time on it and it started to become intelligible. I didn't look up any words until after I was done, at which point I looked up "uuif" (woman/wife) since I wanted to know what manner of amazing creature had saved the protagonist :D
- dhosek 8mo agoKnowing that W is a late addition to the alphabet and would have been written UU or VV suddenly makes uuif obvious.
- antonvs 8mo agoI could intuit the pronunciation but I didn’t make the connection from “wif” to “woman” in general. In hindsight I should have, after all we have words like “midwife” which doesn’t refer to a person’s actual married partner.
- remyp 8mo agoI’m a native English speaker and I think this is an easier jump if you know other Romance languages. In Spanish and Portuguese “woman” and “wife” are often the same word, “mujer” and “mulher” respectively.
- DonaldFisk 8mo agoAlso French femme. It isn't limited to Italic languages either. There's also German Frau, Dutch vrouw, Irish bean.
- dhosek 8mo agoCzech žena
- Symbiote 8mo ago"Wif" meant woman at the same time that "wer" meant man and "man" meant person. Man changed to mean only a male person, and we lost wer except in the word "werewolf".