IE and Substrates and Time

[Glen Gordon]

>[ Moderator's comment:
>  Chaucer, of course.  Shakespeare is easy.
>  --rma ]

Certainly, Shakespeare is more understandable than Chaucer and it may be
easy for one who dabbles into languages and linguistics, however there
are jokes and such in Shakespeare that are lost amongst the contemporary
laymen. The degree of comprehension depends too on what modern dialect
you compare it to.

For all intents and purposes, Early Modern English is different enough
from Modern English to make comprehension difficult after only 400 years
or so. By comparing even Shakespeare's English to Chaucer shows how much
things can change in an even shorter period.

--------------------------------------------
Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com

[ Moderator's response:
  There are jokes and such understandable to members of my generation (1951)
  that are lost on those born 10 years later, but the language is such that
  the jokes can be explained--as with Shakespeare.  Before the jokes in the
  _Canterbury Tales_ can be explained, the language itself must be explicated.

  I do agree that the changes between 1400 and 1600 appear more radical than
  those between 1600 and 1999--though the Great English Vowel Shift is obscured
  by the orthography, so how do we measure the difference?
  --rma ]