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Comment by riffraff

2 days ago

Italian here, and it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300.

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

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riffraff

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thaumasiotes  2 days ago

> it was the same for me, the language feels very different by 1300.

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.

  • riffraff  1 day ago

    Yeah but the spelling is part of how the language feels :)

    Also, you say spelling but e.g. "speken" feels more a grammatical than orthographic difference.

    By comparison, Dante's incipit to the Divine Comedy is 100% the same spelling and grammar as modern Italian (nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/che la diritta via era smarrita)

    • thaumasiotes  1 day ago

      > Also, you say spelling but e.g. "speken" feels more a grammatical than orthographic difference.

      Doesn't make a difference if you're reading it.¹ If you were trying to produce correct Middle English, you're correct that this would cause difficulties.

      (And to me it looks like it has caused difficulties for the author. The passage has several verbs introduced by auxiliary modals. Check out the list:

      1. Here ſchaltou dyen Here shalt thou die

      2. non ſchal knowen þi name none shall know thy name

      3. non schal þe biwepe none shall thee beweep

      4. wiþ what boldenesse I miȝte gaderen with what boldness I might gather

      5. more þan I miȝte beren more than I might bear

      6. I ne miȝte namore stonden ne spoken I [] might no more stand nor speak

      Three examples use shall and three examples use might. Five of them have an -n suffix (must be infinitive or subjunctive; not to be confused with the 3rd person plural -n suffix that we also see) on the verb, but that suffix is missing from non schal þe biwepe, which is otherwise an exact grammatical match to non ſchal knowen þi name)

      ¹ The reason it doesn't make a difference is that the sentence structure is still that of modern English and there's only one permissible form of the verb in the modernized sentence. So it's sufficient to know (a) what verb is being used; plus (b) what the sentence it's being used in is.

  • ajb  2 days ago

    From some random googling it seems like "swie" could be "silence", but it doesn't seem to be quite that meaning. There may be some religious overtones .

    • thaumasiotes  2 days ago

      Yes, I found https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti... , which glosses "swie" as "silence".

      Here the text says "I swied", so it has to be a verb, but the meaning "be silent" makes sense in the passage.

      Something to think about in this exercise is that the shortness of the passages adds difficulty.

      Consider section 1200, where a verb with the root ner is used. It's given so much focus and contextual elaboration that you can easily tell what it means, even though the word is unfamiliar.

      If you read longer passages of Middle English, this same phenomenon will occur with more words.

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