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Yrcrazypa t1_j0sjl5k wrote

Reply to comment by ragnarok62 in Ancient Grammatical Puzzle That Has Baffled Scientists for 2,500 Years Solved by Cambridge University Student by Superb_Boss289

Try to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. That's nowhere near as far back as Old English and it's already really difficult for most speakers of English, if not outright impossible for another huge portion.

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Duggy1138 t1_j0sl9ab wrote

People have enough trouble with Shakespeare and that's early Modern English.

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willun t1_j0sn8di wrote

What? Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

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SurferJase t1_j0sus4k wrote

I do bite my thumb, sir.

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MasterDooman t1_j0th47e wrote

Try reading it with a Scottish accent. It becomes remarkably easy to understand then.

If you're reading it with a North American accent, that's where it's difficult.

Was a trick I learned in university when dealing with Canterbury tales/beowulf/ other Middle English texts.

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doyouevensunbro t1_j0ti258 wrote

Like anyone could decipher the modern Scottish accent

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curtyshoo t1_j0tppjo wrote

The first time I traveled to Europe I found myself sitting in a moving train with two Scots.

I couldn't understand a word they said.

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temalyen t1_j0vsdal wrote

Now I want to hear Groundskeeper Willie read it.

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kindred_asura t1_j0tqkmo wrote

Can you work backwards in works like go from Milton and Shakespeare (modern english let's say) to Chaucer (middle english) to Beowulf (old english) and learn the language like that?

I read Paradise Lost and even that was hard for me since English is my 2nd language.

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Adlach t1_j0ujus5 wrote

I think a determined reader could get as far as Middle English with that approach but Beowulf, being in Old English, is probably unreadable without academic study of the language. Let me quote the first few sentences to you:

> Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,

> þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

> hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

> Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

> monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,

> egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð

> feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,

> weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,

> oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra

> ofer hronrade hyran scolde,

> gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.

I did my undergrad in linguistics and personally the only sentence I can read is the last one, which literally translates to "That was [a] good king."

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Volgin t1_j0vj670 wrote

Are there other texts that are contemporary to Beowulf but easier to read? I tried something similar in french a few months back and could easily read early 13th century letters and such but if the text was lyrical or some sort of poetry it was often way harder to read since it was written in an classical/older style that borrowed heavily from Latin.

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Adlach t1_j0vr7ar wrote

Not to my knowledge. English went through some huge shifts in pronunciation and orthography since the Old English period. I actually feel that using English as context for this article is misleading because of that—most other languages haven't undergone such dramatic transformations.

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temalyen t1_j0wf4ii wrote

I had an English teacher in High School who, when we were reading Canterbury Tales, would basically call us lazy if we said we couldn't understand what the heck it was saying. She said a bunch of times, "This isn't any harder than anything else written in english, you're just being lazy. If you actually concentrated, you'd have no problems at all reading it."

It always pissed me off because that is obviously not true, but she'd shut down any sort of dissent and insist we're making up a problem that doesn't exist. Annoying. To this day, I still don't understand why she'd take an attitude like that when it's very obviously wrong.

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