LL-L "Comprehension" 2008.07.07 (03) [E]

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.07.06 (03) [E]

From: Theo Homan <theohoman at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2008.07.06 (02) [E/LS/French]

This question: do you English-speaking people read older texts? And how much
do you understand? And how much do you understand of Pepys?

---***************************************
It probably depends on individual education, and language confidence, but
I'd sum up as follows:

Back to the 17th Century: - no problems reading. If we could hear them speak
there might be some oddities or confusion, but no more so than exists across
the country anyway.

16th Century (Shakespeare, Elizabeth I etc): - Few difficulties, though some
words might be "falsch Freunde" -  not quite meaning what they do today.

Late Mediaeval: - Caxton, Henry VII: - Still readable without specialist
knowledge, though a lot of words that don't seem familiar at first.  More
strong regional variation (which Caxton commented on as a problem when he
started printing in England).

"High" Middle-ages (Chaucer):- Need a dictionary or guide to work through,
though still broadly recognisable as a version of what we speak today.  The
more conservative Northern language of "Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight" is
the same age but probably harder. I start relying on other Germanic
languages, for example when Sir Gawain is called  "a sikker man", meaning
true and constant, it helps if you know some German or Dutch.  I suspect
that if we could hear anyone from this time, we would understand very little
at first.

Early post-conquest, e.g. 12-13th C: Now getting to look a bit "foreign"..
There is relatively little in English anyway, because literate people mostly
used French.

Old English (roughly pre-1100):- Most modern English speakers need to learn
this as a foreign language, albeit obviously related to the modern one.  All
books I've seen teach it that way.  Again, knowledge of a modern mainland
Lowlands language will help, and the concepts of modern German grammar
(gender, cases etc) certainly help a lot.

Hope that answers your question.

Paul Finlow-Bates

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From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.07.06 (03) [E]

>From heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk

Theo asked: This question: do you English-speaking people read older texts?
And how much do you understand? And how much do you understand of Pepys?

I think Pepys is probably within the range of most people who have the will
to pursue the text. (c 1660-1680)

I think it is safe to say that the majority of English speakers can read
Shakespeare c 1580-1620 BUT do not necessarily understand 100% of what they
are reading.

As for Chaucer c 1400 the majority of people would struggle with his texts
if they were left unguided by those who know them.

Medieval texts say 1200-1300 would be incomprehensible - except for a word
or phrase here and there

pre Conquest texts i.e. before 1066 utterly incomprehensible unless you have
a good working knowledge of German.

These opinions are based on our palaeography class which works once a month
over winter on old texts. We have dealt with documents in the original from
1688, which once you are able to read the handwriting, are fairly clear
except for archaicisms. The 16th century documents are harder to read
because of the v different handwriting and the English once read is less
easy to understand - often convoluted and vague. We have also read 15th &
14th century documents and once again it is 'reading' the handwriting that
causes the problems. The texts are usually self explanatory because we tend
to be reading rent rolls or court rolls rather than prose.

But there is the added problem that before 1400-1450 many of the documents
are in Latin or French with tons of abbreviations which make life v v
difficult. Luckily we have an expert teacher who picks up these manscripts
and reads them as if they were today's newspapers.

It is also clear that those of us that have learnt Latin and / or other
languages have the advantage of those who only know modern English. Maybe it
is just a case of a more flexible mind looking eagerly for solutions... I
don't know but but certainly the best 'readers' are those who are not
monoglots.

Heather [Randall]

•

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