I'd love to see actual, authentic material that was rewritten through the years. One possibility is a passage from the Bible, though that's not usual English. Another is laws or other official texts - even if not exactly the same, they may be comparable. Maybe personal letters written from or to the same place about the same topic - e.g., from or to the Church of England and its predecessor about burial, marriage, or baptism.

The author Colin Gorrie, "PhD linguist and ancient language teacher", obviously knows their stuff. From my experience, much more limited and less informed, the older material looks like a modern writer mixing in some archaic letters and expression - it doesn't look like the old stuff and isn't nearly as challenging, to me.

I am an ESL, but I can easily comprehend 1600. 1500 with serious effort.

It's probably roughly Elizabethan English (1600s).

Without even checking the article, presumably around 1067. Pre-Norman English was a VERY different language.

In AA, they are coming out with a new addition of the Big book, using modern language, because apparently people are having a difficult time understanding language used in the 1940s.

For example, Bill W speaks about being trapped or surrounded by quicksand. Apparently, nobody today understands quicksand. So they remove the word quicksand.

I'm 44, and this makes me feel like an old man yelling at clouds.

I dunno. I just learned what 'mogged' means 2 days ago. So probably not far.

1700s English is like 1200s Turkish. It looks like English has evolved very much. 1500s English is kind of underdtandable for me but 1400s English is not underdtandable.

> firſt

It's weird when an "s" that's written in cursive is translated like that.

Is this about recognizing letters. Then show original scans.

Or is this about understanding the spoken word. Then write "first".

Don't do both and fail at everything.

1200 is where I can't anymore. This was interesting. I expected it to be about there. I'm a highly educated native speaker (i.e., well above median vocabulary) with some French and a lot of German, plus understanding of orthographic changes.

I'm expecting that's true of a lot of people who meet my description, and my guess is university graduates not in STEM can read 1300 without issue (same as me), and certainly every native speaker with a college degree can read 1400. (Edit: FWIW I'm thinking here of how I can read Chaucer, and how I couldn't in 9th grade when I was introduced to him)

1200 I had to focus insanely hard and make guesses and circle back once I'd gotten more context to the words I couldn't read.

> of whom I hadde herd so muchel and knewe so litel.

We need to bring muchel back