I second that, although what to me seems the preponderance of double negatives in a sentence always puzzles me. (Those 6th grade grammar lessons still resonating, I guess.)
That double negative “rule” is somewhat recent, grammarians in the late 1700s started it, some say by following Latin rules, and others say it was in analogy to mathematical thought — but it was probably Latin grammar that had a greater influence.
They are all over old English and Middle English, where they don’t negate each other, but affirm each other, serving as an intensifier.
It’s still common in some modern tongues, too (e.g. , Portuguese, which I do realize is descended from Latin, but still does it. Come to think of it, Polish too.).
There’s the “logical” double negative where the two negatives create a positive, a sort of fussy understatement deployed for effect: “I am not unmindful of the fact that . . .” Then there’s the double negative that’s considered non-standard in English (“I never said nothing”) but perfectly correct in other languages: je n’ai jamais rien dit, ég sagði aldrei neitt (I said never nothing) 😅
Double negatives are a common part of speech and understood to be emphasis rather than contradiction. Mind, my parents would tell me off for my constant, 'common ' Cestrian accented use!
Or as Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) would say on answering her telephone "The Bouquet Residence, the lady of the house speaking" Now would that be Old Yankee enough for you.
Hyacinth Bouquet was a fictional character on a long running 🏴🇬🇧 TV comedy sitcom expertly played by the late Dame Patricia Routledge.
Hyacinths character was portrayed as 'a cut above her Station in Life' while the rest of her family were working class wasters 😎
The show is titled 'Keeping Up Appearances. It has You Tube and PBS and any number of Internet and Social Media postings.
Enjoy it Kerry if it sounds like your Old Yankee taste of life. Cheers DougT 🏴🇬🇧
The Hyacinths and Jocelyns of England still survive, proudly keeping the tide of change at bay. For what are we without a tongue to preserve our station in life?
Some of the common people hereabouts have a saying they imagine describes us: “All fur coat and no knickers.”
Ok Mat but as far as I'm concerned it's the Flag of England also known as the Cross of St. George 🏴 whilst the 🇬🇧 The Union Jack or Union Flag is the national flag of the United Kingdom. I can't help it if your Genovese flag is very similar to ours, leased or not 😎 Cheers DougT 🏴🇬🇧
Same. I got the gist of year 1100, but there were dragons lurking. One wee quibble about 1800, though. I doubt the weak form "chided" had eliminated "chid" quite yet.
In high school, we had to write a paragraph or two imitating earlier English styles, going back to 1700 or so, when we're firmly still in modern English. For the 1700s, I imitated something from Gibbon or the Declaration of Independence, balanced, stately sentences. For 20th century style, I tried Hemingway, whom my father adored. Short sentences. For wise guys. See?
A friend used to claim she got her English degree having invented a Hemingway quote that she used whenever she needed to make a point in an essay. "That is the way it is in the mountains." She hated Hemingway and all his works. That is the way it is in the mountains.
“I deme þe to þe deeþ, straunger. Here ſchaltou dyen, fer fram þi kynne and fer fram þine owen londe, and non ſchal knowen þi name, ne non schal þe biwepe.”
Same here. A good friend often says "it's nuts isn't it" I wonder if in the future the difference between people who are illiterate, and those who are not, (which I see emerging around me) will be as far as the difference between people who can code, them people who can't?
I thought the 1900 section was a tad contrived. It didn't ring true for me, more like someone now, trying to spoof Jane Austen - and I've read a lot of 1900 and thereabouts English. I had the biggest falling off a cliff at 1300 though. I could never deal with Chaucer at school. It just irritated me intensely. This was massively interesting, but I'm afraid Early-Mid still massivelt irritates me!
I don't know if it's because I enjoy Jane Austen and I'm currently reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskill, but really 1900-1700 just came off as more eloquent!
This is fascinating. 1300 offered no real difficulty, 1200 I couldn't read. It's very interesting that there is such a clear distinction at that date, given that there are clear changes in every century's version of our language
I‘d hoped the same. The Plattdeutsch spoken in my part of Germany, which is very Dutch-influenced, made the mid-1000s easy to understand, but did nothing for 1200 or earlier. I wonder if the Platt nearer Denmark would be closer…
I worked for years in Bolivia and Paraguay and was always struck by the way Mennonite Plattdeutsch sounded like something I *ought* to understand as an English speaker, and yet could not. The murmur of Mennonite conversation was deeply familiar, the actual content completely opaque.
I am a German native and also only got to 1300 and gave up at 1200. I don't think German helped here much and neither did Plattdeutsch, which I also understand.
I'm pure American Southern and therefore barely speak English, much less anything else but also got through 1300 just fine and hit the wall at 1200. It's interesting the to see overlap like that with seemingly unrelated languages
Reading it out aloud helps with that a bit, in my experience but then again it might not since it is tough to concentrate on reading something so unfamiliar and listen to the sounds you make at the same time. Chin up! I did a fair bit of Old English at uni and am a German native - I got completely stuck around 1100.
I was doing okay till 1200, and around 1100 I've lost the thread of the story, although some glimpses of what was happening remained. Some knowledge of German, Russian and reading some of the Tolkien's papers the ones his son published helped a lot, even in 1000, although not enough pieces for a picture of any sort of clarity.
Just stumbled on this gem. I am not a native English speaker, though my understanding is at near-native level. It was fascinating to see that - even though I have never studied old languages - I was able to read on and understand until the end. And I probably have my specific language combo to thank for that: my native tongue is Dutch, I learned English, French and German in school and, since I am now living in Iceland, I have studied Icelandic as well. All of that came together in this text.
I remember reading some very old Dutch texts and I have read old Norse texts and it sort of feels like these languages were much more similar to each other at one point.
Icelandic is super interesting in this respect, because even though it is an island nation, as the UK is, its language has remained mostly unchanged, since the time of the first written sources in the old Norse language. So you wouldn't really be able to write something similar in changing Icelandic. And it is true that many Icelanders can still read the sagas in the old language. I was suprised to see how relatively easy it was for me, with my still limited, but growing understanding of Icelandic.
So learning multiple languages not only helps you understand in the present, it clearly also helps understand languages of the past. Fascinating!
This is great. My one (very minor) critique is the lack of semicolons, especially in the 1800s and 1700s sections. I'm currently reading "Vanity Fair" (1847-8) and have encountered far more semicolons than I'm used to in more modern English.
Old English was a requirement for all English majors when I went through, as well as courses in Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare. You need more than one undergrad course in OE to be able to read it fluently I found, even if I saw some familiar words in the 1000 section. I so enjoyed recognizing stylistic keys in each section that correspond to many texts of my long ago university experience.
I got in trouble in third grade many decades ago, I had grabbed my older brothers copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that he had for high school English. I read it and wrote a book report in that style,,. I guess my teacher had never seen it before. Sent to a tutor who found the reason bogus but she did identify my form of dyslexia. She strongly encouraged me to read anything and everything to increase my vocabulary but to keep my school reading to near grade level also if a sentence didn't make sense to go back and pick my way through it. I did notice in 1200 and 1100 that there seemed to be still some left over Norwegian words and sentence structure.
When I did English in the early 2000s I was one of the last to do Old English, there were 5 of us. It was wonderful; I was sad to see it go. This brought back some lovely memories.
Interesting, thanks! The man in 2000 seems to be American (rather than English or from elsewhere in the UK)? 'Some place', 'the whole day was shot', 'Not going to lie', 'A guy', 'It kind of freaked me out', 'this one weird guy', 'real specific'. There are a few more borderline phrases that sound American but a British person could possibly have written them without sounding too out of place.
Good eye! Yes, I wrote the 2000s section so that I could perform it if necessary — before I realized that adding audio would somewhat defeat the purpose of the article — and the only accent I'd want to subject you to is my own (Canadian), so I wrote it using a broadly North American voice.
Yeah, ish... Colin (as I understand it) is Canadian, so that might explain some of this. We definitely do talk about "guys" these days in British English (I've even adopted the North American habit of using it gender-neutrally), and I have to say Gemma that younger British people use "Not gonna lie" very frequently in my experience. (Though I don't think they did in 2000...) But your other examples are spot on.
Yup I say 'guys' regularly (gender-neutral), but I don't think many Brits would type it out to describe a man, and not in 2000. And 'not gonna lie' is obvs very common now in the UK, but again, wouldn't be typed out like that, and def not in 2000. But maybe the blog author is meant to be Canadian...
While it reads slightly more British to me, 1900 could plausibly read as literary writing from either country. There are definitely some 19th-century American authors that fall into the gap between the 1800 or 1900 entries, like their British counterparts.
I've found that Internet lingo tends to dissolve a lot of regional and national dialect differences because everyone is copying each other. Not only do you get more British people using Americanisms or Canadianisms, but it goes the other way too (e.g. "uni" is uncommon in the USA as a shorthand for "university," but common online including among Americans). Or people from the northern USA using Southern terms they'd feel strange using irl, but are common online (I'm thinking of "y'all" here). It's the combination of being exposed to many more words, with being in a position (due to the Internet's anonymity, and far more so in 2000 than today) where the stakes for "using it wrong" are low.
I've been calling it uni since I matriculated in Scotland in 1985 (registered as a first year student for the uninitiated 😎)
Both my parents went to uni in the 60s - my mother to Edinburgh in 1961, my dad to Sussex in 1963, and he subsequently lectured at Glasgow from 1967 - 1977.
I've heard them use the word as shorthand for university my entire life - as did their uni friends.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that the word "uni" is both new, and not used by older people...
Sure, but it's largely younger people driving the discourse online, so that fits in with that. And it was common with young people by the 2000s. I was a young person online at that time noticing it from British people there (I'm American), and I watched British TV shows that used it.
People who were young in the 2000s (‘the noughties’ in GB English) are still young.
Many British TV shows (‘programmes’ in GB English) are made with an international audience in mind and therefore use international English. I’d never assume that all Americans talk like Lucille Ball!
I think that was the style of writing he was imitating (Live Journal) blog/diary platform. It was full of those phrases. Maybe because it was started by an American in 1999? At that time it was mostly North American English. Latter it was sold to a more global blogging company, who eventually sold it to Russian interests. I’m not sure if it’s still active in Russia.
However, for continuity of the story you are right. Well maybe the character was a foreign visitor, in that case.
What an absolutely fascinating read, Colin! I've studied foreign languages but never really English; it was so interesting seeing the Dutch, Germanic and Nordic influences slowly emerge from beneath the cloak of French and Latin. And yes, like most other people I lost it completely at 1200, so thank you for providing us with closure!
What a fascinating sortie into past. I got down to 1500 without any real problem. 1400 to 1200 was certainly doable with two or three read throughs and translation lookups. From 1100 downwards took considerable effort with multiple read throughs and look ups. I’ve been studying OE for 12 months and this exercise was a real eye opener. I’m currently half way through a second reading of Osweald Bera and half way through Ælfrics Colloquy. Without OE I would say that 1500 would be OK if you watched your Ps and Qs but from thereon I would get ready to duck, because understanding the spoken word might be a very different challenge. On a final note, I would say that a grounding in OE develops understanding across the whole spectrum; including modern English. Perhaps it’s time to start making it more accessible through the education system?
I couldn't agree with you more! Old English in every school!
A spoken version would ironically be easier in some centuries (although harder in others). The writing change by fits and starts, and not at all in lockstep with the changes in sound, which is why English spelling is such a mess.
I would also imagine that the regional ME /OE dialects would be as challenging as they are to day. In the UK there are an estimated 40 -50 dialects some of which can be interesting when we slip out of RP mode
Absolutely. I was struck in that amazing Simon Roper video that Colin linked to that Simon kept saying that he was specifically aiming for a south-eastern Mercian dialect of OE, and that there would have been different choices for other OE dialects. I wonder how mutually intelligible they were? Even now, many Br English speakers struggle with Geordie, Glasgow and Ulster accents - and I can attest to that, having been a Belfast boy growing up in SE England.
As I understand it the Anglo Saxon dialects were mutually intelligible but divergences might have lead to occasional differences in interpretation. My guess is that they would have gone the extra mile with each other when clarity was important. It’s a fascinating subject because for all we know the population outside of academia might have had regional lexicons of slang words and colloquialisms much as we have today. Personally I like dialects because they can widen the scope of expression and they enrich language rather than diminish it. Twenty years ago who ever would have thought that a program called Peaky Blinders would have lead to a language course in Brummie for actors.
I've been watching This Old House and Ask This Old House for decades, not least because of the New England accents my aunt and uncle had and my mom still had traces of.
One of my favorite moments was when Roger Cook, the landscaping guy, went to Ohio to help a homeowner. He told her to dig a hole and put the dirt "on the tahp" while he did something else. He came back and she had just piled the dirt on the grass next to the hole. She said "I put in on top like you said" and he replied "no, on the tahp, the taahhhhp" pointing to ... a tarp he had laid out. :-D
This Middle English was written by John Travisa in 1387 where be appears to have acknowledged issues with understanding English dialects. “Mercii refers to the Kingdom of Mercia; basically the divide between North and South
For men of the est with men of the west, as it were undir the same partie of hevene, acordeth more in sownynge of speche than men of the north with men of the south, therfore it is that Mercii, that beeth men of myddel Engelond, as it were parteners of the endes, understondeth better the side langages, northerne and southerne, than northerne and southerne understondeth either other...
"This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity [in orthography] does not proceed from an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much influence on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous: I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote." (Samuel Johnson, "Preface to the Dictionary", 1755)
Wow, very interesting. And I love Simon’s videos. Reading aloud, in Chaucer style, 1300 was really no trouble. But, as you predicted, 1200 was incomprehensible. So c. 1250 was the very steep cliff for me.
An excellent question. The short answer is no, only by about 1500 do I understand fully when listening. I'd already discovered this difference when listening to Chaucer in original pronunciation: I'm better at reading than at listening. My listening brain hasn't fully internalized the Great Vowel Shift, so I miss too much and get lost quickly. (BTW, I've purchased Osweald Bera and hope to start on it soon.)
1900, 1800: classic writing style, something I personally like reading, so no troubles at all.
1700, 1600: the sudden introduction of the "lisp" (the variant S) trips my mental voice up, but mouthing the words is enough to have no difficulty understanding anything.
1500, 1400: still understandable, with some difficulty. It's getting harder very quickly though.
1300: A real struggle, and I've certainly missed the meanings of a few words here.
- My native language is Dutch, but the sudden spelling changes at 1200 made it very hard to figure out what the word was supposed to be pronounced like, which would probably have given me some extra clues as to their meaning.
- I've followed you for long enough that I know eth, thorn, yogh, the "lisp" S and æ. That made reading a lot easier for a big part of this.
Hi Colin, I have dabbled a bit in Old Engish (u3a Wymondham group are using Osweald Bera to learn). Did Chaucer way back at school. So I got right back to the final text where I managed about 75%. Great exercise. ALISON B x
Amazing! You've got so much great literature open to you if you can read all the way back. And it's lovely to hear there's a group using Ōsweald as well! God spēde ēow!
That applies for old Norse and modern Icelandic, but not old English. In fact scribes often used them both for the same word just a few sentences apart.
They’re interchangeable in OE.
One has to pay attention to what letters/syllables they are next to, or where the are in the word to know when to voice it or not.
It’s not really hard to do though: basically initial position or final position or when doubled or next to voiceless consonants — it is voiceless.
When between vowels or a vowel and a voiced consonant — it is voiced.
Was that soon after English stopped contrasting the "th" sounds? I'm trying to figure out why both letters even existed, if there wasn't an important existence. But that "same word a few sentences apart" ... The only ideas I can still come up with are "It used to indicate voicing, and old people still _heard_ the distinction, even when it was sort of random", and "not every question even has a clear answer".
We still contrast them, E.G., unvoiced (/θ/) as in 'thumb' or 'thin' or 'bath' vs. voiced (/ð/ ) as in 'that' or 'then' or 'bathe'. However, we never distinguished them in writing; we always only did it by sound.
Why they (Anglo-Saxons) used both instead of one is because they already thorn from runes, while the eth is a modified Latin d, where scribes took the Latin minuscule letter 'd' and added a cross-bar (diacritic) to show it was being "softened" into a fricative.
These were interchangeable because they are allophones.
Note that Old Norse started that way as well, but Icelandic scribes started spelling phonetically, and decided to differentiate the two. (They took the eth home with them - sometime in the 11th century - from the English, along with other things <grin> that had interest to them).
In English originally, for a while that is, ð was the "winner" in early manuscripts (like those from the era of King Alfred). However, later scribes in the Danelaw and the north preferred the Runic þ.
Eventually, þ became the dominant letter in Middle English, while ð vanished almost entirely by the 1300s.
Then thorn suffered the same fate since the printing press didn’t contain it.
I could make out 1200 with a bit of guessing (though I thought the woman was a wife!). No sense of 1100 or 1000 though. It helps having the context from the more recent sections.
At the year 1000 I was reaching for the OE dictionary.
Great fun.
I was shocked to find that I often write in the language of 1900, even 1800.
No wonder people think I am nuts.
If that's nuts, I don't want to be sane! 1800–1900 is a really good period for English prose style.
I second that, although what to me seems the preponderance of double negatives in a sentence always puzzles me. (Those 6th grade grammar lessons still resonating, I guess.)
Dont you worry about that! It dont make no nevermind nohow!
Haha
But that's a treble negative, so it's a positive... I think!
I know this one having wondered about it before.
That double negative “rule” is somewhat recent, grammarians in the late 1700s started it, some say by following Latin rules, and others say it was in analogy to mathematical thought — but it was probably Latin grammar that had a greater influence.
They are all over old English and Middle English, where they don’t negate each other, but affirm each other, serving as an intensifier.
It’s still common in some modern tongues, too (e.g. , Portuguese, which I do realize is descended from Latin, but still does it. Come to think of it, Polish too.).
Wow. Thank you!
This fills a gap in my understanding that I did not know was gaping 😎
There’s the “logical” double negative where the two negatives create a positive, a sort of fussy understatement deployed for effect: “I am not unmindful of the fact that . . .” Then there’s the double negative that’s considered non-standard in English (“I never said nothing”) but perfectly correct in other languages: je n’ai jamais rien dit, ég sagði aldrei neitt (I said never nothing) 😅
Yep! And it is not authorised in the French language. No double negative.
Double negatives are a common part of speech and understood to be emphasis rather than contradiction. Mind, my parents would tell me off for my constant, 'common ' Cestrian accented use!
agreed!
Nay, ye be not of unsound mind, but ye speke as un wit a poetes sol.
Me too! I get teased a lot for things like: "To whom am I speaking? Shall I not ask him? Methinks not."
But, hey....from an old Yankee family, me.
Or as Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) would say on answering her telephone "The Bouquet Residence, the lady of the house speaking" Now would that be Old Yankee enough for you.
Hyacinth Bouquet was a fictional character on a long running 🏴🇬🇧 TV comedy sitcom expertly played by the late Dame Patricia Routledge.
Hyacinths character was portrayed as 'a cut above her Station in Life' while the rest of her family were working class wasters 😎
The show is titled 'Keeping Up Appearances. It has You Tube and PBS and any number of Internet and Social Media postings.
Enjoy it Kerry if it sounds like your Old Yankee taste of life. Cheers DougT 🏴🇬🇧
The Hyacinths and Jocelyns of England still survive, proudly keeping the tide of change at bay. For what are we without a tongue to preserve our station in life?
Some of the common people hereabouts have a saying they imagine describes us: “All fur coat and no knickers.”
One wonders how they could possibly know.
I say Fenwick how about a 🫖 of Earl Grey and a slice of Victoria Sponge, keep the rif raf at bay. Cheers DougT
Don't You use our Genovese flag of San Giorgio without due payment! You know it was only leased to protect your ship from Mauritanian pirates!
Ok Mat but as far as I'm concerned it's the Flag of England also known as the Cross of St. George 🏴 whilst the 🇬🇧 The Union Jack or Union Flag is the national flag of the United Kingdom. I can't help it if your Genovese flag is very similar to ours, leased or not 😎 Cheers DougT 🏴🇬🇧
Huzzah!
Same. I got the gist of year 1100, but there were dragons lurking. One wee quibble about 1800, though. I doubt the weak form "chided" had eliminated "chid" quite yet.
I, too, tend to write very formally, even in emails.
In high school, we had to write a paragraph or two imitating earlier English styles, going back to 1700 or so, when we're firmly still in modern English. For the 1700s, I imitated something from Gibbon or the Declaration of Independence, balanced, stately sentences. For 20th century style, I tried Hemingway, whom my father adored. Short sentences. For wise guys. See?
A friend used to claim she got her English degree having invented a Hemingway quote that she used whenever she needed to make a point in an essay. "That is the way it is in the mountains." She hated Hemingway and all his works. That is the way it is in the mountains.
I also write in the style of 1800s & early 1900s; occasionally, I hearken back unto 1700 realms.
1000?!
1309 had me stvmped
“I deme þe to þe deeþ, straunger. Here ſchaltou dyen, fer fram þi kynne and fer fram þine owen londe, and non ſchal knowen þi name, ne non schal þe biwepe.”
Same here. A good friend often says "it's nuts isn't it" I wonder if in the future the difference between people who are illiterate, and those who are not, (which I see emerging around me) will be as far as the difference between people who can code, them people who can't?
I thought the 1900 section was a tad contrived. It didn't ring true for me, more like someone now, trying to spoof Jane Austen - and I've read a lot of 1900 and thereabouts English. I had the biggest falling off a cliff at 1300 though. I could never deal with Chaucer at school. It just irritated me intensely. This was massively interesting, but I'm afraid Early-Mid still massivelt irritates me!
I don't know if it's because I enjoy Jane Austen and I'm currently reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskill, but really 1900-1700 just came off as more eloquent!
I also hit the wall at 1000, but I know HochDeutsch, so that is why I got that far.
This is fascinating. 1300 offered no real difficulty, 1200 I couldn't read. It's very interesting that there is such a clear distinction at that date, given that there are clear changes in every century's version of our language
Part of the reason might be the big dropoff in French words between 1300 and 1200, since 1250 is when the French flood began.
Though I speak German and had hoped that that might help me with the earlier forms of English...
I‘d hoped the same. The Plattdeutsch spoken in my part of Germany, which is very Dutch-influenced, made the mid-1000s easy to understand, but did nothing for 1200 or earlier. I wonder if the Platt nearer Denmark would be closer…
I worked for years in Bolivia and Paraguay and was always struck by the way Mennonite Plattdeutsch sounded like something I *ought* to understand as an English speaker, and yet could not. The murmur of Mennonite conversation was deeply familiar, the actual content completely opaque.
I speak standard German and South German dialect. Until 1300 was a breeze, 1200 was very difficult, 1100 and 1000 basically no chance.
I speak French, had the same thought. I saw the influences of both French and German, toward the end.
I am a German native and also only got to 1300 and gave up at 1200. I don't think German helped here much and neither did Plattdeutsch, which I also understand.
I'm pure American Southern and therefore barely speak English, much less anything else but also got through 1300 just fine and hit the wall at 1200. It's interesting the to see overlap like that with seemingly unrelated languages
I'm a German native speaker and by 1200 that was of no use what so blinking ever! 😂
Reading it out aloud helps with that a bit, in my experience but then again it might not since it is tough to concentrate on reading something so unfamiliar and listen to the sounds you make at the same time. Chin up! I did a fair bit of Old English at uni and am a German native - I got completely stuck around 1100.
It started looking like German to me at 1200. Fascinating and thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you!
Knowing German helped me. I’m also learning Swedish so that helped too.
Same. And it did nothing.
I had some difficulty with 1300, but it fell off a cliff at 1200.
That was the point I lost it too - it really is a marked cliff! *mutters* something something Norman monasteries
Same here. Huge change in a short time!
I was doing okay till 1200, and around 1100 I've lost the thread of the story, although some glimpses of what was happening remained. Some knowledge of German, Russian and reading some of the Tolkien's papers the ones his son published helped a lot, even in 1000, although not enough pieces for a picture of any sort of clarity.
I had to read 1200 twice to get it but hit the wall at 1100.
Exactly my experience. I was missing a few words at 1300, but feeling basically confident, then it was instantly all over in 1200.
Just stumbled on this gem. I am not a native English speaker, though my understanding is at near-native level. It was fascinating to see that - even though I have never studied old languages - I was able to read on and understand until the end. And I probably have my specific language combo to thank for that: my native tongue is Dutch, I learned English, French and German in school and, since I am now living in Iceland, I have studied Icelandic as well. All of that came together in this text.
I remember reading some very old Dutch texts and I have read old Norse texts and it sort of feels like these languages were much more similar to each other at one point.
Icelandic is super interesting in this respect, because even though it is an island nation, as the UK is, its language has remained mostly unchanged, since the time of the first written sources in the old Norse language. So you wouldn't really be able to write something similar in changing Icelandic. And it is true that many Icelanders can still read the sagas in the old language. I was suprised to see how relatively easy it was for me, with my still limited, but growing understanding of Icelandic.
So learning multiple languages not only helps you understand in the present, it clearly also helps understand languages of the past. Fascinating!
Like most, 1300 was pretty clear, 1200 was isolated bits, not coherent. 1100 nothing.
Same experience, Juliet Wilson. I got the gist of the 1200s but very little detail. What fun!
This is great. My one (very minor) critique is the lack of semicolons, especially in the 1800s and 1700s sections. I'm currently reading "Vanity Fair" (1847-8) and have encountered far more semicolons than I'm used to in more modern English.
We'll probably need to put in a fresh order at the semicolon factory
Yes, well, clearly, the depths of semicolonic surgery were just beginning to be plumbed at the time.
Old English was a requirement for all English majors when I went through, as well as courses in Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare. You need more than one undergrad course in OE to be able to read it fluently I found, even if I saw some familiar words in the 1000 section. I so enjoyed recognizing stylistic keys in each section that correspond to many texts of my long ago university experience.
Thank you.
I'm glad to hear it brought back some memories for you!
I got in trouble in third grade many decades ago, I had grabbed my older brothers copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that he had for high school English. I read it and wrote a book report in that style,,. I guess my teacher had never seen it before. Sent to a tutor who found the reason bogus but she did identify my form of dyslexia. She strongly encouraged me to read anything and everything to increase my vocabulary but to keep my school reading to near grade level also if a sentence didn't make sense to go back and pick my way through it. I did notice in 1200 and 1100 that there seemed to be still some left over Norwegian words and sentence structure.
When I did English in the early 2000s I was one of the last to do Old English, there were 5 of us. It was wonderful; I was sad to see it go. This brought back some lovely memories.
I failed mine, had to resit it. I don't remember a thing. I might have found it more fascinating if I had been older.
yes! i took all three of those classes last semester and im pleased that i finally got to use those skills lol probably will be the only time
Me too.
Interesting, thanks! The man in 2000 seems to be American (rather than English or from elsewhere in the UK)? 'Some place', 'the whole day was shot', 'Not going to lie', 'A guy', 'It kind of freaked me out', 'this one weird guy', 'real specific'. There are a few more borderline phrases that sound American but a British person could possibly have written them without sounding too out of place.
Good eye! Yes, I wrote the 2000s section so that I could perform it if necessary — before I realized that adding audio would somewhat defeat the purpose of the article — and the only accent I'd want to subject you to is my own (Canadian), so I wrote it using a broadly North American voice.
Makes sense, thanks Colin. Although if you can perform Middle English etc, I'm sure you'd be great at current English accents 😉
Honestly I would love an audio form of this to fully grasp the difference in speaking as well !
Yeah, ish... Colin (as I understand it) is Canadian, so that might explain some of this. We definitely do talk about "guys" these days in British English (I've even adopted the North American habit of using it gender-neutrally), and I have to say Gemma that younger British people use "Not gonna lie" very frequently in my experience. (Though I don't think they did in 2000...) But your other examples are spot on.
Yup I say 'guys' regularly (gender-neutral), but I don't think many Brits would type it out to describe a man, and not in 2000. And 'not gonna lie' is obvs very common now in the UK, but again, wouldn't be typed out like that, and def not in 2000. But maybe the blog author is meant to be Canadian...
I use peeps. Or should that be peypes? 😁
Pepys?
Nor do British people refer to themselves as ‘Brits’!
Internet no doubt is to blame (or thank?) for the faster spread of regionalisms or slang.
This British person definitely does not use ‘guys’ except in the Guy Fawkes sense!
What is British English when it’s at home?
While it reads slightly more British to me, 1900 could plausibly read as literary writing from either country. There are definitely some 19th-century American authors that fall into the gap between the 1800 or 1900 entries, like their British counterparts.
I've found that Internet lingo tends to dissolve a lot of regional and national dialect differences because everyone is copying each other. Not only do you get more British people using Americanisms or Canadianisms, but it goes the other way too (e.g. "uni" is uncommon in the USA as a shorthand for "university," but common online including among Americans). Or people from the northern USA using Southern terms they'd feel strange using irl, but are common online (I'm thinking of "y'all" here). It's the combination of being exposed to many more words, with being in a position (due to the Internet's anonymity, and far more so in 2000 than today) where the stakes for "using it wrong" are low.
‘Uni’ is very new and is common among youngsters in the UK but not among older folk.
I've been calling it uni since I matriculated in Scotland in 1985 (registered as a first year student for the uninitiated 😎)
Both my parents went to uni in the 60s - my mother to Edinburgh in 1961, my dad to Sussex in 1963, and he subsequently lectured at Glasgow from 1967 - 1977.
I've heard them use the word as shorthand for university my entire life - as did their uni friends.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that the word "uni" is both new, and not used by older people...
Sure, but it's largely younger people driving the discourse online, so that fits in with that. And it was common with young people by the 2000s. I was a young person online at that time noticing it from British people there (I'm American), and I watched British TV shows that used it.
Are we talking about online only?
People who were young in the 2000s (‘the noughties’ in GB English) are still young.
Many British TV shows (‘programmes’ in GB English) are made with an international audience in mind and therefore use international English. I’d never assume that all Americans talk like Lucille Ball!
Try listening to David Attenborough!
I think that was the style of writing he was imitating (Live Journal) blog/diary platform. It was full of those phrases. Maybe because it was started by an American in 1999? At that time it was mostly North American English. Latter it was sold to a more global blogging company, who eventually sold it to Russian interests. I’m not sure if it’s still active in Russia.
However, for continuity of the story you are right. Well maybe the character was a foreign visitor, in that case.
Well, I would expect the author would not be from the UK - folks in the UK would have learned by now to stay away from that town! 🤣
What an absolutely fascinating read, Colin! I've studied foreign languages but never really English; it was so interesting seeing the Dutch, Germanic and Nordic influences slowly emerge from beneath the cloak of French and Latin. And yes, like most other people I lost it completely at 1200, so thank you for providing us with closure!
Thank you! I hope our blogger is happy fighting the good fight out there.
What a fascinating sortie into past. I got down to 1500 without any real problem. 1400 to 1200 was certainly doable with two or three read throughs and translation lookups. From 1100 downwards took considerable effort with multiple read throughs and look ups. I’ve been studying OE for 12 months and this exercise was a real eye opener. I’m currently half way through a second reading of Osweald Bera and half way through Ælfrics Colloquy. Without OE I would say that 1500 would be OK if you watched your Ps and Qs but from thereon I would get ready to duck, because understanding the spoken word might be a very different challenge. On a final note, I would say that a grounding in OE develops understanding across the whole spectrum; including modern English. Perhaps it’s time to start making it more accessible through the education system?
I couldn't agree with you more! Old English in every school!
A spoken version would ironically be easier in some centuries (although harder in others). The writing change by fits and starts, and not at all in lockstep with the changes in sound, which is why English spelling is such a mess.
I would also imagine that the regional ME /OE dialects would be as challenging as they are to day. In the UK there are an estimated 40 -50 dialects some of which can be interesting when we slip out of RP mode
Absolutely. I was struck in that amazing Simon Roper video that Colin linked to that Simon kept saying that he was specifically aiming for a south-eastern Mercian dialect of OE, and that there would have been different choices for other OE dialects. I wonder how mutually intelligible they were? Even now, many Br English speakers struggle with Geordie, Glasgow and Ulster accents - and I can attest to that, having been a Belfast boy growing up in SE England.
As I understand it the Anglo Saxon dialects were mutually intelligible but divergences might have lead to occasional differences in interpretation. My guess is that they would have gone the extra mile with each other when clarity was important. It’s a fascinating subject because for all we know the population outside of academia might have had regional lexicons of slang words and colloquialisms much as we have today. Personally I like dialects because they can widen the scope of expression and they enrich language rather than diminish it. Twenty years ago who ever would have thought that a program called Peaky Blinders would have lead to a language course in Brummie for actors.
I've been watching This Old House and Ask This Old House for decades, not least because of the New England accents my aunt and uncle had and my mom still had traces of.
One of my favorite moments was when Roger Cook, the landscaping guy, went to Ohio to help a homeowner. He told her to dig a hole and put the dirt "on the tahp" while he did something else. He came back and she had just piled the dirt on the grass next to the hole. She said "I put in on top like you said" and he replied "no, on the tahp, the taahhhhp" pointing to ... a tarp he had laid out. :-D
You’re conflating accent and dialect, which are not the same thing.
How much do we know about how Middle and Old English were pronounced?
This Middle English was written by John Travisa in 1387 where be appears to have acknowledged issues with understanding English dialects. “Mercii refers to the Kingdom of Mercia; basically the divide between North and South
For men of the est with men of the west, as it were undir the same partie of hevene, acordeth more in sownynge of speche than men of the north with men of the south, therfore it is that Mercii, that beeth men of myddel Engelond, as it were parteners of the endes, understondeth better the side langages, northerne and southerne, than northerne and southerne understondeth either other...
>Spelling was standardized in the mid-1700s
"This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity [in orthography] does not proceed from an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much influence on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous: I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote." (Samuel Johnson, "Preface to the Dictionary", 1755)
This was great. Like many others I got as far as 1300 and could understand some of what was going on in 1200 but missed some details.
Witodlīċe þæt wæs wundorliċ; hit wæs swiþe gōd spell.
Iċ þancie þē
Wes þū hāl
Iċ þē þanciġe ēac, Phil! Wes þū hāl!
Wow, very interesting. And I love Simon’s videos. Reading aloud, in Chaucer style, 1300 was really no trouble. But, as you predicted, 1200 was incomprehensible. So c. 1250 was the very steep cliff for me.
So then the interesting question is: did you notice the same cliff at 1250 in Simon's spoken version of this experiment?
An excellent question. The short answer is no, only by about 1500 do I understand fully when listening. I'd already discovered this difference when listening to Chaucer in original pronunciation: I'm better at reading than at listening. My listening brain hasn't fully internalized the Great Vowel Shift, so I miss too much and get lost quickly. (BTW, I've purchased Osweald Bera and hope to start on it soon.)
2000: normal English
1900, 1800: classic writing style, something I personally like reading, so no troubles at all.
1700, 1600: the sudden introduction of the "lisp" (the variant S) trips my mental voice up, but mouthing the words is enough to have no difficulty understanding anything.
1500, 1400: still understandable, with some difficulty. It's getting harder very quickly though.
1300: A real struggle, and I've certainly missed the meanings of a few words here.
1200: Huh???
I'm sensing a trend that the 1300-to-1200 jump is the hardest one!
Got through a good bit of the 1200s, skimmed the 1100s, and where's my Anglo Saxon Primer for the rest of it?
For some extra context:
- My native language is Dutch, but the sudden spelling changes at 1200 made it very hard to figure out what the word was supposed to be pronounced like, which would probably have given me some extra clues as to their meaning.
- I've followed you for long enough that I know eth, thorn, yogh, the "lisp" S and æ. That made reading a lot easier for a big part of this.
My first language is Afrikaans, and I've studied German and Swedish. That helped me in the 1200 and 1100 section, but after that I was lost!
Hi Colin, I have dabbled a bit in Old Engish (u3a Wymondham group are using Osweald Bera to learn). Did Chaucer way back at school. So I got right back to the final text where I managed about 75%. Great exercise. ALISON B x
Amazing! You've got so much great literature open to you if you can read all the way back. And it's lovely to hear there's a group using Ōsweald as well! God spēde ēow!
This is great fun.
I loved this! I lost it around 1200/1300, like you predicted.
Was thorn used for both voiced and unvoiced th?
Yes, thorn was used for both in Old and Middle English. In Old English, ð is used indifferently for both as well.
I'm not sure about in English, but the International Phonetic Alphabet uses ð as voiced th and θ as unvoiced. It's funny how the same symbols pop up.
That applies for old Norse and modern Icelandic, but not old English. In fact scribes often used them both for the same word just a few sentences apart.
They’re interchangeable in OE.
One has to pay attention to what letters/syllables they are next to, or where the are in the word to know when to voice it or not.
It’s not really hard to do though: basically initial position or final position or when doubled or next to voiceless consonants — it is voiceless.
When between vowels or a vowel and a voiced consonant — it is voiced.
Was that soon after English stopped contrasting the "th" sounds? I'm trying to figure out why both letters even existed, if there wasn't an important existence. But that "same word a few sentences apart" ... The only ideas I can still come up with are "It used to indicate voicing, and old people still _heard_ the distinction, even when it was sort of random", and "not every question even has a clear answer".
We still contrast them, E.G., unvoiced (/θ/) as in 'thumb' or 'thin' or 'bath' vs. voiced (/ð/ ) as in 'that' or 'then' or 'bathe'. However, we never distinguished them in writing; we always only did it by sound.
Why they (Anglo-Saxons) used both instead of one is because they already thorn from runes, while the eth is a modified Latin d, where scribes took the Latin minuscule letter 'd' and added a cross-bar (diacritic) to show it was being "softened" into a fricative.
These were interchangeable because they are allophones.
Note that Old Norse started that way as well, but Icelandic scribes started spelling phonetically, and decided to differentiate the two. (They took the eth home with them - sometime in the 11th century - from the English, along with other things <grin> that had interest to them).
In English originally, for a while that is, ð was the "winner" in early manuscripts (like those from the era of King Alfred). However, later scribes in the Danelaw and the north preferred the Runic þ.
Eventually, þ became the dominant letter in Middle English, while ð vanished almost entirely by the 1300s.
Then thorn suffered the same fate since the printing press didn’t contain it.
> I'm trying to figure out why both letters even existed, if there wasn't an important existence.
The scribes just liked visual variation, I guess. A handful of letters had interchangeable shapes, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G#Typographic_variants and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_rotunda and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezh and it's not uncommon for a scribe to alternate between them, according to his artistic taste.
I could make out 1200 with a bit of guessing (though I thought the woman was a wife!). No sense of 1100 or 1000 though. It helps having the context from the more recent sections.
Ah, that's the trick! "wif" means adult female, just as "were" means adult male.
So if you see mems about wifwolves, that's the root.