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This is really cool. Going back 100 years at a time, you can see how language (not just words, but letters and phrases) shifts, with parts still being recognizable even when the whole isn't. I also love that we get explanations at the end, including annotations of the styles the author was using.

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @Angie 1h

Hermoso artículo, el idioma y su lenguaje si que ha cambiado, ahora usar Emojis es lo usual me imagino leyendo está historia en unos años donde un lo bueno o alegré lo marca un dibujo, no estoy en contra de los emoticonos yo también los uso pero si por no usar el lenguaje lo perdemos,eso sí que me preocupa,

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24 sats \ 0 replies \ @Ohtis 27 Feb

The explanations and annotations make all the difference. Without them, I’d just be squinting at old words wondering what’s going on.

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From 1300 it helps to read in Dutch / Afrikaans.

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So nice to read! The value-add was really the annotations that shed insight into how language evolved over the years

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Interesting.

1400 is still ok if you know some basic German or Dutch and read phonetically, 1300 has a Frisian or Danish (?) feel to it and is much much harder already... 1200 is babylon for me.

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“Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.”

“Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Frisian.”

Thanks Duolingo!

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It's like reading Canterbury Tales

Whan that Aprille...

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Canterbury Tales was the first thing that came to mind for me when I read those earlier sections, too.

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Wow. That is wild. I am really struggling once I get to 1400. I can't decipher all the words in 1500 but I get the gist of it. 1000 definitely looks like a totally different language.

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Yeah, I went from, "okay, I just need to be a bit more deliberate and I can work it out" to "this is English? at around that point.

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love it!

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Naah you don't even need to go so far. Here is an example:

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these comparisons are absolute amazing... It's so obvious, too, when you read similar-ish (e.g., famous novelists) from various time periods -- in my case, economists from the late-19thC, or Jane Austen or Dickens from the early 19th C (beautiful and elaborate), compared to Shakespear from 16th C (HOPELESS!)

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Yeah, though it's also kind of amazing when you see Shakespeare performed to see how much easier it is to understand verbally (probably because there's more context and it's harder to get caught up on one word).

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About as far back as Pauly Shore.

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I got as far as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and then it was like, fook eet, this reads like Swedish now.

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you mean albionese?

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