How far back can you read?

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Samer
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How far back can you read?

Postby Samer » Sat Jul 23, 2016 1:19 am

Greetings!

This is my first post here although I have been following and enjoying this forum and HTLAL for some time. Glad to see this community of language learners from all over the world :)

I have been wondering for some time about the differences in the rate of change between languages, how this makes the speakers of one language able to read very old texts with little effort, while speakers of another need to translate texts to the modern language in order to understand.

For Arabic speakers, it is possible to read texts from as far back as the pre-Islamic era going back some 1500 years. Reading poetry from that era may be helped with commentary to get the background of the poem, whereas prose is very readable even without any sort of commentary in my experience, perhaps with some lookups if one's vocabulary is not very big. This applies to non-native speakers too if they get to a high level.

So, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts about this.

How far back can you read in your language(s) without specialized study?
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sillygoose1
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby sillygoose1 » Sat Jul 23, 2016 2:10 am

In English I'm good all the way back to Shakespeare. My cutoff is probably Chaucer era.

In French I can read as far back as the Descartes era without problems, but Rabelais' works in Middle French start to slow me down a bit as far as vocab goes.

In Spanish I can read through Don Quijote.

In Italian, I remember being able to go through some of Galileo's journals and a few chapters of Boccaccio's Decameron but at times it felt like I knew the words but couldn't picture the sentences in my head.
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby aokoye » Sat Jul 23, 2016 2:59 pm

Early Modern English is really easy for me to read (though let's not pretend I can pronounce it without analyzing it first - I know people who can but they've studied it and/or taught courses on the history of English). Middle English is fairly difficult for me. I can make out about 50-75% of the words.

Edit: I would also assume that the issue at play in the intelligibility of earlier versions of languages isn't generally the speed (in your words, "rate") of the changes but the types of changes that were made as well as how many of X type of changes were made.
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Soffía
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby Soffía » Sat Jul 23, 2016 4:17 pm

In English I can read Middle English, just about.

I can read Icelandic sagas, albeit usually in modernised spelling as the Icelanders do nowadays.
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby chokofingrz » Sat Jul 23, 2016 5:27 pm

N.E.thing b4 da 21st C iz 2 hard 4 me!
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby MamaPata » Sat Jul 23, 2016 5:44 pm

I think this depends a lot on what you're reading. I watch a lot of theatre and when I started, I found it incredibly difficult to follow the jokes in Shakespeare the first time I watched a play. I used to have to watch it twice before I really got what happened. However, now that I've seen far more of them, I get the lines without any trouble.

I've never tried in a foreign language but I do tend to be more interested in modern literature, art, etc. So for me, it's not something I come across.
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby Tomás » Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:51 pm

In Middle English I can read some of Chaucer, but not the Pearl poet.

In Spanish, I am reading Bernal de Castillo (1500s) with no problem.
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby IronMike » Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:46 am

I once found a hardcopy of the Bible in Old Church Slavonic, just sitting on a table with a sign that said "Free". I, of course, couldn't pass it up.

I could read some of the more known passages based solely on my Russian (and, dare I say, other Slavic languages I've studied at a lesser degree). That's pretty far back, at least on the Slavic timeline.

I can read Esperanto all the way back to its beginning! ;)

I was able to understand some old (~13th c.) Cornish back when I was studying it seriously, but that's because of the period of the language that the revival was based upon.

In English, I'm good back to about late Middle English time, starting at around 1340 or so. Here's an excerpt from the Peterborough Chronicle, mid 12th c. You can just about make it out, especially if you've studied other Germanic languages (e.g. rihht, firrste).

Annd wha-se wilenn shall þiss
boc. Efft oþerr siþe writenn.
Himm bidde icc þat he’t write
rihht. Swa-summ þiss bov himm
tæcheþþ. All þwerrt-ut affterr
þatt itt iss. Uppo þiss firrste
bisne. Wiþþall swillc rime exemplar.
alls her iss sett. Wiþþall þe
fele wordess. Annd tatt he loke
wel þatt he. An bocstaff write
twiȝȝess. Eȝȝwhær þær itt uppo
þiss boc. Iss writenn o þatt
wise. Loke he wel þatt he’t
wrote swa. Forr he ne maȝȝ
nohht elless. Onn Ennglissh
writenn rihht te word. Þatt
wite he wel to soþe.

But much clearer two hundred years later:

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,
Ther was a duc that highte theseus;
Of atthenes he was lord and governour,
And in his tyme swich a conquerour,
That gretter was ther noon under the sonne.
Ful many a riche contree hadde he wonne;
What with his wysdom and his chivalrie,
He conquered al the regne of femenye,
That whilom was ycleped scithia,
And weddede the queene ypolita,
And broghte hire hoom with hym in his contree
With muchel glorie and greet solempnytee,
And eek hir yonge suster emelye.
And thus with victorie and with melodye
Lete I this noble duc to atthenes ryde,
And al his hoost in armes hym bisyde.
And certes, if it nere to long to heere,
I wolde have toold yow fully the manere
How wonnen was the regne of femenye
By theseus and by his chivalrye;
And of the grete bataille for the nones
Bitwixen atthenes and amazones;
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Jon
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby Jon » Sun Jul 24, 2016 9:06 am

As far as I'm concerned even a middle '800 text could be tricky sometimes but I have to go back to Dante to really struggle. (Italian)
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n_j_f
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Re: How far back can you read?

Postby n_j_f » Mon Jul 25, 2016 12:27 pm

Samer wrote:Greetings!

This is my first post here although I have been following and enjoying this forum and HTLAL for some time. Glad to see this community of language learners from all over the world :)

I have been wondering for some time about the differences in the rate of change between languages, how this makes the speakers of one language able to read very old texts with little effort, while speakers of another need to translate texts to the modern language in order to understand.

For Arabic speakers, it is possible to read texts from as far back as the pre-Islamic era going back some 1500 years. Reading poetry from that era may be helped with commentary to get the background of the poem, whereas prose is very readable even without any sort of commentary in my experience, perhaps with some lookups if one's vocabulary is not very big. This applies to non-native speakers too if they get to a high level.

So, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts about this.

How far back can you read in your language(s) without specialized study?


I have heard that Icelandic and Persian are both very conservative in their written form (not their spoken form, at least not with Persian) that a modern speaker can easily read works written a thousand years ago. That was my motivation to learn Persian.

In English, my cut off is probably the late 14th and early 15th centuries. I can read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Morte d'Arthur
but I would struggle with Chaucer — at least at first.
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