4 ms·

Like, modern and understandable? I ask because English from more than a few hundred years ago is basically gibberish so I’m curious about languages where that d

• wongarsu 7mo ago
  Depending on the author 17th century English can also be very close to modern English. A couple phrases will be off and the spelling is different, but most of the difficulty is more the author using constructions that have fallen out of use or "showing off" with overly complicated sentences. For example here's an excerpt from 1688's "Oroonoko" I have often seen and convers'd with this great Man, and been a Witness to many of his mighty Actions; and do assure my Reader, the most Illustrious Courts cou'd not have produc'd a braver Man, both for Greatness of Courage and Mind, a Judgment more solid, a Wit more quick, and a Conversation more sweet and diverting. He knew almost as much as if he had read much: He had heard of, and admir'd the Romans; he had heard of the late Civil Wars in England, and the deplorable Death of our great Monarch; and wou'd discourse of it with all the Sense, and Abhorrence of the Injustice imaginable. He had an extream good and graceful Mien, and all the Civility of a well-bred great Man.
• dghf 7mo ago
  Is six hundred years ago more than a few? Chaucer is still more or less comprehensible. (Though Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from roughly the same time, not so much.)
  • biofox 7mo ago
    The Middle English spelling and phonetic shifts are what make it so painful to read. The words themselves though are mostly comprehensible with a bit of effort. Go back another four hundred years to Old English and Beowulf and it becomes complete gobbledygook (to me at least).
    • usrnm 7mo ago
      I wonder what modern English would look like if the battle of Hastings went differently
      • Bayart 7mo ago
        Take a look at Frisian for the beginning of an answer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
    • SoftTalker 7mo ago
      Since spelling was not standardized at the time, I suppose there would be no real loss of meaning if someone were to rewrite these works using modern/standard English spelling? Why are high schoolers forced to read these archaic texts as written? It was just so tiring to try to read them; I could never get through any of them and resorted to Cliffs Notes.
      • eszed 7mo ago
        English nerd (and former English teacher) here, and I think for high school students that's a good idea. It's not actually an impossible text, and an introduction to the real thing is useful and interesting, but forcing teenagers to go through everything in the original is too much of an obstacle for most students. Also: only reading the "boring" bits. When I was in high school I was excused English classes (took English 101 at the local college instead - told you I was a nerd), but overheard my classmates hating their way through "The Wife of Bath's Tale", or "The Knight's Tale" - one of those - and introduced them (nerd!) to "The Miller's Tale" - broad scatalogical comedy - which they loved. Later I did something similar for them with Gulliver's Travels, by showing them the bit where he has fairly graphic sex with the giantess. (I think that's an actual kink, but I certainly didn't know that at the time!)
    • eszed 7mo ago
      Yep. If you hear Chaucer read aloud by someone who knows the phonetics and the meaning it's instantly like 75% comprehensible. If they give you a bit (like, half a class-period) more help, you'll get to ~90% without any more effort than that. Chaucer is more or less as incomprehensible as Glaswegian - that is to say, it's a bit tricky, and you won't know all the slang, but you can get used to it pretty quickly. What's really fun is that if you keep the dialect in your head, and try reading it out loud with your best "Chaucer accent" it feels like slipping on a pair of glasses: you immediately "get" stuff that you'd have thought was impenetrable just looking at the page. Source: my medieval lit classes, with a teacher who was really good.
• asabil 7mo ago
  Yes Arabic from 1000 years ago is very much understandable today[1]. [1] https://fluentarabic.net/arabic-unchanged-1000-years/ https://fluentarabic.net/arabic-unchanged-1000-years/
  • Bayart 7mo ago
    The article doesn't expound on it, but it very much depends on what Arabic means to you. Depending on the answer, it's really a dozen different languages. I know people who only speak their own darija and classical literature is utterly obscure to them.
    • asabil 7mo ago
      Sorry to disagree, but no, they are not dozens of different languages. The challenge with Arabic is that it has a rather large vocabulary, and different regions use slightly different vocabularies. That being said, Darija, or rather North African Arabic is a messy mix of Arabic and Tamazight. Which can be difficult for Middle East Arabic speakers to understand. For reference, I speak Darija and understand both classical and modern Arabic. It would take me a few days to adapt my speech to other regional variations of arabic.
      • Bayart 7mo ago
        What's your prior exposure to Classical and Standard Arabic ? The people I'm thinking about only have darija exposure without any formal education in Arabic and little exposure to pan-Arabic media.
        • deleted 7mo ago
          [deleted]
    • catlover76 7mo ago
      [dead]
• marginalia_nu 7mo ago
  A lot of that is just that English along with much of western vernacular wasn't given standardized spelling until fairly recently, as most of the important writing was done in Latin. If you get past the weird spelling it's still fairly understandable. Exception being maybe stuff like Shakespeare, but a huge part of what makes that inaccessible is that his writing is full of references to current events, double entendres, and various 17th century memes. It's a bit like showing South Park's world of warcraft episode to someone from the 2400s.
  • simonklitj 7mo ago
    Nah, you’ve got to go to Chaucer to get the really hard to parse but still understandable stuff.
  • graemep 7mo ago
    Shakespeare is sufficiently close to contemporary English that audiences will watch and enjoy his plays. I have seen plenty of kids and audiences in different countries enjoy them.
    • Broken_Hippo 7mo ago
      It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone explains it to them? It is more akin to watching television from a different culture. I am American, live in Norway, with my Norwegian spouse. We wind up watching British television from time to time. We find the jokes funny, but we both realize that we are missing references to people and places - but understand the gist of the jokes. The difference between shakespear and modern times is even larger - you don't always know they are jokes because you don't realize they are referencing anything. Still enjoyable, but a different story without as much comedy.
      • shagie 7mo ago
        > It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone explains it to them? Yes... my own recounting of freshman high school English (it was the late 80s) https://everything2.com/node/1207826 https://everything2.com/node/1207826