4 ms·
Yeah it’s really just the glyphs that are changing here, and occasionally the spelling, otherwise the words themselves are still fairly recognizable if you’re w
by mock-possum 8mo ago
Yeah it’s really just the glyphs that are changing here, and occasionally the spelling, otherwise the words themselves are still fairly recognizable if you’re well-read.
- jjtheblunt 8mo agothere'd be a discontinuity around 1066 since Normans brought over Latin-derived vocabulary aplenty, and overlayed germanic vocabulary. it's super evident if you learn Swedish (for example...very related to pre-1066 English) and have learned Latin (or French), while speaking English.
- depressedpanda 8mo agoYeah. Try comparing texts written in Old English and Old Norse. It's basically the same language. (I'm not surprised at all that Beowulf takes place in Scandinavia.) But I think they would both be easier to decipher for someone speaking Swedish than English.
- ksenzee 8mo agoThis is true through 1300 or so. If you transliterate the 1200, 1100, and 1000 sections to modern glyphs, it's still a foreign language with the occasional recognizable word (such as "the"). Learning Old English in college was a lot like learning Latin: lots of recognizable vocabulary, totally unfamiliar case endings, mostly unfamiliar pronouns, arbitrary word order.