What's the oldest version of your language that you can understand or read, Sup Forums? English starts to get really weird before the late-1500's. Even by then, a lot of words and grammatical forms are no longer used. So, English has about 430 to 450 years of writing that can be understood today.
Here's an example of a famous poem from the early 1200's, followed by a literal translation, and then a modern translation, to show how much things have changed:
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Original version:
>Svmer is icumen in
>Lhude sing cuccu
>Groweþ sed
>and bloweþ med
>and springþ þe wde nu
>Sing cuccu
>Awe bleteþ after lomb
>lhouþ after calue cu
>Bulluc sterteþ
>bucke uerteþ
>murie sing cuccu
>Cuccu cuccu
>Wel singes þu cuccu
>ne swik þu nauer nu
>Sing cuccu nu • Sing cuccu.
>Sing cuccu • Sing cuccu nu
Literal translation:
>Summer is a-comin' in
>Loud sing [sing loud], cuckoo!
>Groweth, seed
>and bloweth (bloom) meadow
>and springeth the wood now [ie, leaves appear]
>Sing cuckoo
>Ewe bleateth after lamb
>Loweth after calf, cow (ie, the cow lows for its calf)
>Bullock strutteth
>Buck farteth (ie, the goat makes goofy noises)
>Merry sing cuckoo
>Cuckoo, cuckoo
>Well sings you, cuckoo
>No swick (ie, trick) us ever, now (ie, don't stop being summer)
>Sing cuckoo; sing cuckoo
>Sing cuckoo; sing cuckoo now!
Modern translation with modern grammar:
>Summer has arrived,
>Sing loudly, cuckoo!
>The seed is growing
>And the meadow is blooming,
>And the trees are growing leaves now,
>Sing, cuckoo!
>The ewe (female sheep) is bleating for her lamb,
>The cow is lowing (mooing) after her calf;
>The young bull is prancing,
>The billy-goat is being silly,
>Sing merrily, cuckoo!
>Cuckoo, cuckoo,
>You sing well, cuckoo,
>Never stop now.
>Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo;
>Sing, cuckoo; sing, cuckoo, now!
I can sort of make out most of the Cantar de Mio Cid so around the 12th century. Some latin is actually pretty much easy to read tho I wouldn't claim to fully understand it.
Not so difficult if you are a native speaker and has some experience tbqh.
I am rather fluent in proto-Neanderthal; it sounds like a series of grunts and growls to most, but there's a real elegance to the language once you catch on.
>cuccu
The original version of Karel ende Elegast from 1270 is still quite readable for someone who has never seen middle Dutch. There are some difficult words in it, but it's easy to understand the story. Ancient Dutch isn't understandable at all in my opinion and some sentences, like those from the 6th century don't even look like Dutch.
I like that, pretty cool
I can read and understand Tale of Igor's campaign if it is written in modern alphabet.
The Séquence of Saint Eulalie from 880 is the oldest that i can understand
Looks a little bit like modern Catalan or Occitan.
Biblical Hebrew from 500 BC, but that's because we actually learn that shit in school.
I vant understand portuguese from 500 years ago. It was called galego-portuguese in a distant past. Galego is still spoken at Galícia/Spain.
oldest recorded writing because im not rapebaby subhuman
No it doesn't
latin
: ^ )
wew, I really can't understand this for shit
My native language is Russian and I can easily understand Old Russian (1000+ years old).
Tho it's a little bit hard to read, because of the changes in alphabet/orthography. Old Russian had 44 letters, modern Russian only has 33
Pic-related is a 830 years old text, in Old Russian on the left, in modern Russian on the right
I can understand 17th century Russian perfectly. 12th century is like 80% clear.
it does
t. understood all
Pre-1500s starts getting difficult.
it gets easier once old norse becomes old norwegian
Fucking jews cutted my languge, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Old russian language was a song.
Anything older than Shakespeare gets incredibly difficult without a reference
Кaкoй coнг, o чём ты вooбщe?
Very cute poem.
Пecня жe, в cтapинy paзгoвapивaли пecнeй.
The oldest recorded sentence in Polish is indecipherable because it uses archaism for "grinding" not present in modern Polish.
Oldest preserved song in Polish is understandable.
The hard part is deciphering the sounds really. Back then there was no standardized characters, most authors of old text used latin so every single one of them "made up" their own characters that represented a sound
probably 1200s Spanish. That's when the "Cantar de Mio Cid" was done. It shares many traits with Galician at that time.
The hard thing is understanding the caligraphy of the time.
id eat ur ass in ireland
I can understand this galician poem from around 1300 and I asume other spaniards could as well considering this sentence: "e miraremos las ondas" it' almost indentical in spanish (y miraremos las olas)
>Mia irmana fremosa, treides comigo
a la igreja de Vigo u é o mar salido
e miraremos las ondas.
>Mia irmana fremosa, treides de grado
a la igreja de Vigo u é o mar levado
e miraremos las ondas.
>A la igreja de Vigo u é o mar salido
e verrá i mia madre e o meu amigo
e miraremos las ondas.
>A la igreja de Vigo u é o mar levado
e verrá i mia madre e o meu amado
e miraremos las ondas.
I guess vulgar latin could be somehow understandable.
Aussies all sound like they talk through their arse.
No.
I can understand almost all of it ever since its standardization in the 13th century.
It's funny to notice how it shared much more stuff in common with other latin derived languages at the time.
wew it's easier to read than i expected
yeah, that's not so different from archaic portuguese either
my portuñol sounds very similar
J sounds like X in this era AFAIK
its pretty much archaic portuguese, galaico-portuguese, whatever you want to call it
en.wikipedia.org
only about two words can't be understood and one of them is a Slavic loan
>not being able to understand any dialect of your L1 throughout history
>Türk Oğuz begleri budun esid: uze tengri basmasar asra yir telinmeser Türk
budun ilingin törüngün kim artati udaçı erti? Türk budun ertin, ökün
I can read like 30% or 40% of it.
Stop lying
Your languages contain far too much "a" to be close to Old French
interesting, you can tell how it hadn't detached that much from Latin yet, thus making it perhaps a bit more readable for other neolatin speakers than modern French
I have trouble understanding books that are 90-100 years old so I don't think I'd be able to read much older stuff
Yes, I'm French and I haven't got a shit of it.
Btw in this time this 'protofrench' was already the romance language that detached the most from Latin.
Arabic is almost the same for the past two thousand years, some vocabulary might be challenging but anyone who went to school can understand most of it.
I can understand even the first written text in Albanian 15th century.
I understand some of this. Why is chose spelled both kose and cose?
I was under the impression that Arabic dialects can be pretty far removed from each other.
>Yes, I'm French
Your flag is showing, paella nigger
Yes, but there is Standard/Classical Arabic which almost everybody knows.
This is the language of writing, television, poetry, etc.
But in the day to day lingua franca, people speak their own dialects.
this and levantine arabic isn't that different from classic arabic
Ancient Greek is very morphologically different from Modern Greek which makes it hard to distinguish words and articles
Or maybe I just didnt pay enough attention in school
>tfw never had any written scipt till early 19th century
Well there's occasional written accounts from early euro explorers. But that's about it
tried to read old slavic, only like 20%
I мимo иды и҃c видѣ ч҃лкa cлѣпa oтъ poждъcтвa и въпpocишѧ и ѹчeници eгo глѭ҃штe ѹчитeлю кътo cъгpѣши cь ли или poдитeлѣ eгo дa cлѣпъ poди cѧ
The handwriting was too fancy back in the day. Can just barely recognize a few words.
pic from 13th century.
"gelobistu in got alamehtigan fadaer?
ec gelobo in got alamehtigan fadaer
gelobistu in crist godes suno?
ec gelobo in crist godes suno
gelobistu in halogan gast?
ec gelobo in halogan gast "
This is from an 8th century baptismal vow, either in Old Franconian or Old Saxon. Not that hard to understand.
I find it fascinating how intertwined many languages are. Middle English and Dutch are clearly very much related for example.
"English" as a written language was uncommon (and not standardized) until the late-1500's. Before then, most "serious" writers still wrote in Latin. Legal texts were in Latin. When people tried to write "English," the spellings were all over the place, and individual words were often regional or unknown outside of a specific part of England.
That's why older English has to be specified by dialect. People from "Wessex" spoke very differently than those from York, and so on.
"La Morte d'Arthur" was published in 1485 in the Yorkshire dialect, and it's almost readable if you look up some of the archaic words:
quod.lib.umich.edu
But "The Canterbury Tales" from a century earlier are much more difficult to read because they have far more words that don't exist in modern English. Over the centuries, a lot of Germanic/Anglo-Saxon words were replaced by Latin/French words.
With Middle English it is possible to read back to the 1200s or even farther back depending on the local variety. Old English is mostly gibberish.
With French you can understand many individual Latin words, although Latin grammar is more complex. Going back to Gallo-Romance and Old French it often isn't that hard to pick out a lot of the words and get the general idea of what is written.
Here's a very old English poem from the year 700, when "English" was still a Germanic dialect with some Latin elements:
>Nū scylun hergan, hefaenrīcaes Uard,
>metudæs maecti, end his mōdgidanc,
>uerc Uuldurfadur, suē hē uundra gihwaes,
>ēci dryctin ōr āstelidæ
>hē ǣrist scōp aelda barnum
>heben til hrōfe, hāleg scepen.
>Thā middungeard moncynnæs Uard,
>eci Dryctin, æfter tīadæ
>firum foldu, Frēa allmectig.
Translation:
>Now we must honour the guardian of heaven,
>the might of the architect, and his purpose,
>the work of the father of glory
>as he, the eternal lord, established the beginning of wonders;
>he first created for the children of men
>heaven as a roof, the holy creator
>Then the guardian of mankind,
>the eternal lord, afterwards appointed the middle earth,
>the lands for men, the Lord almighty
How much Church Slavonic can Russians understand?
you should read my dick like it's braille
Here's some of the bin Old English
You will understand it if spelled in modern.
Try find one from around 1000 please.
Literal amateur tier thread
Come back later
>tfw icelandic-speakers can understand old english with far more ease than english-speakers
...
I can understand old norse
"Beowulf" is a famous example of English from that time.
I like how Paul is a meme now desu. What languages does he even speak? Seems like only Hebrew and English
Ahhhh, it's like you're showing me more proof of this article related: sciencedaily.com
Feels good desu.
most written text after Latin and up until usually after the medieval era did not have standardized spelling, so I've found that even in 16th century written english texts; that the same words are spelled differently throughout.
our language changes only words, but doesn't change any other aspects(in over 1000 years we have lost only dual form, but not completely), so we understand everything, because you can get the meaning from context (our language wasn't writtten until 153X, because everyone who weren't peasant was native in latin and it was an oficial language of the state)
I believe I could understand finnish from as long finnish language has existed since its pronouncing and words havent changed a lot and I could even understand the basic idea of other finnic languages texts
Ottoman turkish mostly used arabic and persian loanwords which is quite interesting
I think that's more of an exception, try this one instead
Visc flot aftar themo uuatare.
uerbrustun. sina uetherun.
tho gihelida. ina. use druhtin.
the seluo druhtin. thie thena uisc gihelda.
thie gihele. that hers theru. spurihelti. AMEN
Middle Dutch is clear as water compared to that
I guess, the fall of jers (which happened in the second half of the 12 century) would be a good place to draw the line. It's not like earlier texts would be completely unrecognizable but realizing that šĭvĭcĭ means švec and Plĭskovŭ is just Pskov would require certain brain activity and/or linguistic knowledge. Also the old past tense forms and the dual number might be quite confusing as well.