How far back in time could you read English?

In My Humble Opinion
21

If you really want to try your hand at Old English, try reading this and see how much of it you get.

*Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,

þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, [5]

egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð

feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,

weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,

oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra [10]

ofer hronrade hyran scolde,

gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!

Ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned,

geong in geardum, þone god sende

folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat [15]

þe hie ær drugon aldorlease

lange hwile. Him þæs liffrea,

wuldres wealdend, woroldare forgeaf;

Beowulf wæs breme (blæd wide sprang),

Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in. [20]

Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,

fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme,

þæt hine on ylde eft gewunigen

wilgesiþas, þonne wig cume,

leode gelæsten; lofdædum sceal [25]*

Translation and reading here. Click on the line numbers to hear it spoken.

22

Old English derived from the Germanic branch of Indo-European. Latinate words were absorbed later, largely through French after 1066 and William the Conqueror, although some directly from The Church and, later, from science.

23

True, it seemed to be pretty clearly mentioning “arch-bishops”, but that alone was insufficient to make heads or tales of the full text.

24

“Modern Hebrew” is a resurrected language, based on the biblical tongue, so that’s not too surprising.

As for Arabic, well there’s spoken Arabic which varies like crazy over the Arab speaking world, and there’s written Arabic, which is based on the language of the Koran, so again not too surprising.

If you’re looking for a candidate for most unchanged over time, it’s probably Icelandic, which is still very close to Old Norse.

25

I have no trouble reading Shakespeare. It’s just a different dialect at that point, and not so different from reading modern English using Aussie or Brit slang that I’m not familiar with.

By Chaucer, I’m really not reading it as English any more. I can understand the gist of it, but it’s a lot like the way I can mostly read Italian thanks to my knowledge of Spanish. Still, I’ll know basically what a passage is talking about even if not the specific meaning.

Any further back than that, it’s just a foreign language that happens to share some features of English. While I might pick up individual terms or phrases, I’m no longer making sense of it to any great degree.

26

I can’t read that, but I recognize it. Skip to 20:29 to hear an Anglo Saxon scholar sing it the way that he thinks the English bards did, around the fire. It’s not quite a fair comparison, because what you’ve posted is poetry, where the passage about Cnut was journalism. Different registers of language.

27

If you’re going that far back in time in England, you should consider taking someone conversant in Latin instead.

28

I was thinking more French, if we were to rub shoulders with the bigwigs.

29

Forget the poetry, look at individual words, and how many do you recognize? BTW, I saw that TV special when it first aired. If you scroll back a bit, there is a guy speaking modern English but using only words derived from Anglo-Saxon. Then listen to the same sentences in Old English, and you won’t understand any of it.

I think the difference between written and pronounced language is more apparent for Chaucer. I don’t have much trouble reading it, but can’t understand much of it when I hear it spoken. Now, I suspect that if any of us was transported back in time to Chaucer’s era, it wouldn’t take too long to get used to the accent. But just hearing it now, it sounds about as close to a foreign language as one can get but not quite feeling that it’s totally foreign.

30

Reading them, not many. But hearing them, more than enough to recognize that the language bears some relation to English. Cyning - sounds close to king. Eorlas - earls. ða - the. Þæt wæs god cyning! - looks totally foreign, but pronounced That was god ku-ning".

Of course there are plenty of grammar and vocabulary elements that have disappeared - the “ge-” prefix on verbs, for example - but there is enough continuity with Modern English that it’s not completely and utterly incomprehensible, the way, say, Estonian would be.

31

Yeah, perhaps I was too absolute. Any Germanic language is going to have recognizable elements to it. Point being, it’s much more foreign then not.

32

There are things written today that are incomprehensible.

33

Part of my MA work was in medieval languages and literature; it’s some years ago now and, like all learned languages, gets a bit fuzzy after awhile if you don’t use it, but I did once translate a lot of Anglo-Saxon poetry and I can still read it.

34

Oddly enough, I easily understood the 1st one, and partially understood the oldest one, but couldn’t make heads or tails of the ones in between.

35

When half the words are some variation of “bishop” or “earl”, that helps. :wink:

36

Shakespeare’s easy. I’m sure I’m missing some of the nuances, but I can definitely understan the import and the main meanings of the words.

The next one’s OK, although I would never have guess that God was giving him peace.

The next one’s not too bad. Much harder than the last one, but I suspect that’s due to the subject.

The last one’s actually quite easy. I thought at first it was because I speak German but on reflection it’s just that it contains mostly words that haven’t changed much. Not a lot got written down back then; if it got written down even then, its spelling and then pronunciation are less ikely to have changed.

37

Looks like I won’t be quitting my day job. (1603)

38

We should keep in mind that as we go back in time, we encounter a situation where there is no spelling convention and there is not a standard dialect of written English. And so, our understanding of a given passage might vary, depending on who wrote it and where. Our standard English of today evolved out of one of the many dialects spoken hundreds of years ago, and if you see a written form from a “nonstandard” dialect, that is going to look more foreign to you.

Written English, today, has a standard form regardless of the dialect you might speak at home. But that was not always the case.

39

I’ll try to paraphrase without reading the spoilers.

What a bold villain you are to say that you do not know me! Two days ago, I tripped you (onto the ground) and beat you up in the presence of the king, right? Pull out your weapon - even though it is nighttime, the moon is out! I’ll make you look like a drunkard. Pull your weapon, your mom is a prostitute and you sell hair for a living!

Man, come and see all these dead people: when folk become evil
Most have been very far away: All these worms to take care of:-
but what you do for good (i.e. what good deeds you do) in this life, you have nothing there (i.e. you have no good deeds):
In this grave lies John Smith, hewn (carved) by God into a good soul.

The time is coming forthright (right now, immediately, or soon)
That your right would
be born in this Middle Earth (i.e. the mortal world of humans)
for all mankind’s needs
He chooses some kinsmen (family) for himself
like pigs
and where he would be born
He chooses all of these things at his will (i.e. he chooses them himself)

(This one is about Jesus, isn’t it?)

King Canute greeted his Archbishops, his Lead Bishops, Earl Thurcyl, all his Earls, and all his people, in the twelfth land and twentieth land, given to law, in England’s countryside. And I know now, that I will be a Lord myself and unresistant to God’s grace and to right leadership of the world.

40

Right. So it’s more correct to say that English and German both derive from a common source, which was spoken at the same time as Latin but wasn’t Latin. Most of the languages of Europe have been influenced by each other, many of them heavily.

Interestingly enough, even though English is considered to be closely related to German in terms of descent, the word order of English is pretty nearly identical to that of Swedish and rather different than modern German. The standard hypothesis is that English originally used a German-like word order that was changed when the Vikings entered England, conquered it, learned English imperfectly, and taught their subjects to speak the new broken Viking-English.