Comment by riffraff
2 days 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)
Are you sure you haven't been victimized by manuscripts with modernized spellings?
When I look up ealry manuscript scans of the Comedy, I get:
*Nel mezo delcamin dinra uita / mi trouai puna(?) felua (long s letter) ofcura / che la diricta (some bizarre letter in there) uia era fmarrita (long s).
https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/view/PR-INCU...
> puna(?)
Note that the p is struck through below its loop; that is probably an abbreviation for "per". That would be an example of the spelling being the same as modern Italian, but the manuscript is written in a kind of shorthand because writing takes a lot of time and effort.
dinrã is probably also an abbreviation, given the diacritic.
> diricta (some bizarre letter in there)
No, the letters are exactly what you've just typed. There is a ligature between the c and the t. You could call this a difference in font, but not in spelling. (Though diricta for modern diritta is a real difference.)
> Nel mezo delcamin
This is a real spelling difference. There's a really glaring one in stanza 3, where poco is spelled pocho in contravention of the rules of Italian spelling. I don't know what an Italian today would think if confronted with -cho-.
> 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.