#Microblog Monday 571: English
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A person recorded a monologue in English, moving from about 450 AD to the modern day. A timeline appears on the screen, and you note the date when you start to understand the monologue. Is this video accurate? Who knows! But let’s try it anyway.
I started being able to follow along in 900 AD, missing about half the words, but could mostly catch everything by 1300 AD. How did you do?
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4 comments
That was fascinating…. I was able to make out “chicken” around 800 AD and “long winter” around 950 and gradually more and more. Like you, I could make out most of it by around 1300, although it was still a bit difficult.
This reminded me of the course I took on Chaucer in university, which was probably the English class I liked least during my four year program (but more or less had to take for my degree). I wound up buying a Penguin modern English translation of The Canterbury Tales to read alongside my text, which was my salvation… not sure I’d have made it through otherwise..! (It was written in the late 1300s, I think.)
I see Loribeth said what I was thinking. “That was fascinating!” Thanks for the link!
I guessed the word for “no” and “habben” for have, before I heard “chicken.” A lot of the words I could then make out – they sounded German, perhaps, and at 1300 could also get sentences. There seemed to be a big jump around 1500, into an English pronunciation almost everyone could understand.
Ooops – accidentally added my No Kidding post from last week! lol And can’t remove it cos then added my Separate Life travelogue from this week.
I thought I understood a couple words here and there starting at 700, could get the general idea around 1300, and stopped hearing German about 1600.