Posted by spzb 3 days ago
Accents have diverged a lot over time and as I recall, American English (particularly the mid-Atlantic seaboard variety) is closer to what Shakespeare and his cohort spoke than the standard BBC accent employed in most contemporary Shakespeare productions).
like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc ?
I was also taught a bit of Chaucer (died 1400) in English at school. Although not any of the naughty bits.
Around 1000, English and Dutch must have been mutually understandable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Anglo-Saxon_England
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/english-to-dutch-translations
Dutch doesn't have the same intonation, has harsher pronunciations, and has a whole extra sound most English people struggle with (a rolled r).
The older generations also can't pronounce -thew very well as it's not a thing in Dutch, so struggle to pronounce my name, calling me Matchoo instead of Matthew. It still boggles my mind that my Mum would pick a name the Dutch can't pronounce.
The Dutch accent is also extremely noticeable to a native English speaker.
Ultimately, they're not the same at all as English is Germanic/Latin hybrid where half the words are French/Italian words, and half the words are Germanic/Dutch words.
Dutch is not.
You can usually tell by looking at the word and the end of the word.
Words like fantastic, manual, vision, aquatic, consume are all from -ique, -alle, -umme and will have similar words in French/Italian. The tend to be longer words with more syllables.
Words like mother, strong, good, are Germanic in root. The -er, -ong, -od words will all be similar to the German/Dutch words. Shorter, quicker to pronounce.
“Swie!” is interesting, I understood it somehow naturally. In Gheg Albanian we say “Shuj!”, which means “Be silent!”.
Which is interesting cause 1200 italian[0] seems pretty readable by everyone who can read italian (and likely every other romance language), you have to go further back to have a shift.
[0] E.g. Saint Francis' Canticle of the Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canticle_of_the_Sun
The language in section 1300 isn't much different from section 1400. Almost all of it is still good English today if you give the words their modern spelling:
Then after much time spoke the Master, and his words were cold as winter is. His voice was as the crying of ravens, sharp and shrill, and all that heard him were adread and durst not speak.
"I deem¹ thee to the death, stranger. Here shalt thou die, far from thy kin and far from thine own land, and none shall know thy name, nor none shall thee beweep."
And I said to him, with what boldness I might gather, "Why farest thou with me thus? What trespass have I wrought against thee, that thou deemst¹ me so hard a doom?"
"[Swie!]"² quoth he, and smote me with his hand, so that I fell to the earth. And the blood ran down from my mouth.
And I [swied],² for the great dread that was come upon me was more than I might bear. My heart became as stone, and my limbs were heavy as lead, and I []³ might no more stand nor speak.
The evil man laughed, when that he saw my pain, and it was a cruel laughter, without mercy or pity as of a man that hath no [rewthe]⁴ in his heart.
Alas! I should never have come to this town of Wolvesfleet! Cursed be the day and cursed be the hour that I first set foot therein!
¹ We still have this word in modern English, but the meaning is different.
² No idea what this word is.
³ I assume the ne in the text here is required by some kind of grammatical negative agreement with the rest of the clause. In more modern (but still fairly archaic) English, nothing goes here. In actual modern-day English, the grammar of this clause isn't really available for use, but it's intelligible.
⁴ This turns out to be the element ruth in ruthless, and a man with no ruth in his heart is one who is literally ruthless, without "ruth". It literally means "regret", but the use in the text clearly matches the metaphorical sense of the modern word ruthless.
[0] Or at the time promised the post, I don't remember the details.
Assuming that translation was done a while ago (100+ yrs?)... It is hard to read. I can understand it if I try. But the phrasing is not current. 100 pages will take double the time at the least.
Almost think AI needs to rephrase it into current English.
Probably has these double negatives, long sentences, etc.
> Before the mid 1700s, there was no such thing as standardized spelling.
It felt like it was become more Germanic, and that appears true:
> The farther back you go, the more the familiar Latinate layer of English is stripped away, revealing the Germanic core underneath: a language that looks to modern eyes more like German or Icelandic than anything we’d call English.
Do you know if there any other such language related eastereggs in other of Lovecraft's writing? should I chose to revisit them, in English this time around.
"From Olde English to Modern American English in One Monologue"
I remember my father and I having to enable the subtitles for Rab C Nesbitt when I was a kid. There are areas of Scotland (especially the isles) which are probably still unintelligible to most of the British population I would wager.
Anyway as I know from my reading history at 1400 it gets difficult, but I can make it through 1400 and 1300 with difficulty, but would need to break out the middle English dictionaries for 1200 and 1100. 1000 forget it, too busy to make that effort.
(function() {
const SKIP_PARENTS = new Set(["SCRIPT", "STYLE", "NOSCRIPT", "TEXTAREA"]);
const walker = document.createTreeWalker(
document.body,
NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT,
{
acceptNode(node) {
const p = node.parentNode;
if (!p || SKIP_PARENTS.has(p.nodeName)) return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT;
if (p.nodeName === "INPUT") return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT;
return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT;
}
}
);
let node;
while ((node = walker.nextNode())) {
node.nodeValue = node.nodeValue.replace(/ſ/g, "s");
}
})()1300 is noticeably harder and needs some iterative refinement, but once you rewrite it, it's surprisingly not too bad:
> Then after much time spoke the master, his words were cold as winter is. His voice was the crying of rauenes(?), sharp and chill, and all that heard him were adrade(?) and dared not speak.
> "I deem thee(?) to the(?) death, stranger. Here shall you die, far from thy kin and far from thine own land, and none shall known thy name, nor non shall thy biwepe(?)."
> And I said to him [...]
1200 is where I can't understand much... it feels like where the vocabulary becomes a significant hurdle, not just the script:
> Hit(?) is much to saying all that pinunge(?) hie(?) on me(?) uroyten(?), all that sore(?) and all that sorry. No scar(?) is never hit(?) forgotten, not uuhiles(?) is libbe(?).
It gets exhausting to keep going after these :-) but this was very fun.
Ravens
"adread", meaning afraid
Still a recognizable archaic word, constructed from a still-in-use root. Just the spelling is different.
I really got into reading Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" (about 1497) about a year ago, and I suspect that really helped me with this exercise, since he uses some language that was archaic even back then.
I really wish there was an audio recording of this story. I found the spellings in the earlier years more and more confusing.