How well do you understand things written in your own language from 100+ year ago?
I'm afraid not much, here. I can directly understand half of what's written, but I have to rely on context to find out what certain old words mean. And even then, some things may just fly over my head.
How well do you understand things written in your own language from 100+ year ago?
Lucas Jenkins
Other urls found in this thread:
vicentellop.com
twitter.com
Ryder Cooper
How can a language change so fast? Spanish from 100 years ago is pretty much modern Spanish with a couple of old fashioned words here and there.
Jaxson Peterson
Barely anything because of all the Turkish influence
Justin Turner
100+ years ago? No problems.
500+ years ago? There it get's difficult.
I can read it thanks to practice and education within the field but most people can not.
Old Swedish looks like a mix between Swedish, German and Finnish.
Levi Hughes
If we go back 100 years it's like there's no difference, apart from modern danish is very much americanized.
We have to go a couple hundred years back for it to be hard to understand
Luckily I can also read old norwegian and swedish texts with around the same amount of understanding, which means more history
Brayden Foster
That looks like an adapted version. vicentellop.com
Original Don Quixote is perfectly understandable tho.
Caleb Allen
Oh shit sorry
Why do people fail to mention that, seems kind of important
David Peterson
On a second thought, I understand a bit more than half. But still, I don't understand some things.
We went through a linguistic modernisation after we got liberated, importing parts of the Russian language and others, but we also did some changes on our own. Things were messy ~120 years ago; some words stuck, some didn't. There was plenty of turkish influence manifesting itself in loanwords and slang, which are not used today.
I can pretty much say that I can understand 90% of everything written after 1920, though. There is the odd word that confuses me but it's not as bad as earlier stuff.
Hunter Torres
I understand Camões.
Brody Brooks
Do you understand this? I have a bit of trouble but it's mostly fine
Jaxon Taylor
Makes sense I guess.
Dunno, but old Castillian is top comfy
Este libro fizo don Johan, fijo del muy noble infante don Manuel, deseando que los omnes fiziessen en este mundo tales obras que les fuessen aprovechosas de las onras et de las faziendas et de sus estados, et fuessen más allegados a la carrera porque pudiessen salvar las almas. Et puso en él los enxiemplos más aprovechosos que él sopo de las cosas que acaesçieron, porque los omnes puedan fazer esto que dicho es. Et sería maravilla si de cualquier cosa que acaezca a cualquier omne, non fallare en este libro su semejança que acaesçió a otro.
Isaac Green
Count Lucanor is from quite a later date, right?
Carter Mitchell
Wait, that's the wrong pic.
Jordan Robinson
Arabic is mostly the same even from +1400 years, not much changed
Cameron King
Tyler Ortiz
I know it is, but you'll be surely able to understand this one, right?
Samuel Cook
Sure, but everything before the 15th century is technically old/medieval castillian.
Andrew Rivera
200 years back and it's pretty much the same at least in written form, just with some words that are no longer used and slightly different spelling. But go further back than that and it gets a little bit more muddled. It's still mostly decipherable but it can take some effort.
Jack Clark
In this picture is first text in Lithuanian language written in 1547. It's late considering how old this language is, but whatever.
This text is understandable and there are a lot of words which are used to these days, but they have changed quite a bit.
I`m going to write few lines.
From picture:
>Bralei seseris imkiet mani ir skaitikiet
>Ir tatai skaitidami permanikiet
>Maksla schito tewai iusu traskdawa tureti.
>Ale to negaleia ne wenu budu gauti.
Currently it would be like this:
>Broliai, seserys, imkit mane ir skaitykit
>Ir tatai skaitydami permanykit.
>Mokslo šito tėvai jūsų trokšdavo turėti,
>Ale to negalėjo ne vienu būdu gauti.
471 years. Still comprehensible.
Brandon Campbell
I can understand it fine because I learned to read Chinese characters, but for most people it would be impossible to read
Brandon Hughes
The average joe stuff very well, bureaucracy and philosophical shit is a bit weird, but still I get most of it.
Grayson Gray
The oldest English that is easily understood is stuff like Paradise Lost, Leviathan, Shakespeare plays, it's all pretty legible which is ~ 400 years ago. Middle English like Canterbury Tales is pretty legible, but does require a bit of puzzling out with contextual clues to understand some archaic words and spelling. Old English, stuff like Beowulf, is unintelligible and needs to be translated. so with English you can go back to when it got sufficiently FRENCHED, around 800 years ago. the oldest thing I've read is Chaucer, which is ~600 years old.
Brayden Miller
Very easily. French was more or less standardised by the church around the Renaissance, so I can understand texts written in French that date back to the 15th at least. Any period before that and you enter Middle French territory, which is still understandable, just a lot less.
Elijah Morgan
I haven't read much from BC times, but AD is 80-90% understandable without formal education - depending on the area it's from and the speaker is from.
I'm sorry to spoil the thread here by setting the bar high like this.
Gavin Richardson
I don't even understand half of swedes today
The south and northern dialects are completely unintelligible