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Old and Middle English | ||
Tags: Dead Languages | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 1 of 12 27 September 2010 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Do we differentiate Old English and Middle English ?
I noticed that I am able to update my profile to include Old English but not Middle English: Is Middle English considered too close to Modern English to have its own entry ? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 12 27 September 2010 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, I think that's the reason. A speaker of modern English can still make sense of Chaucher but Beowulf is almost completely incomprehensible. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5353 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 12 28 September 2010 at 1:55am | IP Logged | |||||
I think this is generally the case, and would suspect that this is the reason Middle English does not have its own entry. Since I happen to be reading through some Middle English at the moment though, maybe I can add some more thoughts about it. -The later(?) Middle English works, such as Chaucer, are very accessible for people that can read modern English, and the level of comprehension becomes even easier if one also speaks another Germanic tongue, such as Dutch or German, since so many of the archaic words have cognates in these languages. I must say, however, that the older works will still be terribly difficult for someone to understand, if he or she does not understand Old English. An example would be Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original. -Generally it is thought that Middle English would be very difficult for a speaker of Modern English to comprehend, just by listening to it. I have, unfortunately, not really heard it "spoken" too much, so I am not sure whether it would be easy to adjust one's ear to it or not. -At one point I wanted to actually learn the grammar of Middle English, but from what I have read, it seems as if Middle English lacks conformity. I am not sure if this is the absolute truth, but I could see there being some truth to this matter, since the cases and grammatical complexities were rapidly changing/dropping off by the time Middle English rolled around. With this said, I am not really sure how someone would ever "learn" to do more than read/speak Middle English, since there is not really a grammatical standard. If some texts adhear to one standard, and texts a few generations later adhear to another, which grammar would be learnt, and thus used for creating Harry Potter, for example, in Middle English. It's just a bit problematic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 4 of 12 28 September 2010 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Middle English is intelligible for educated English speakers. It takes a while of reading and learning the most
common words that are no longer used in modern English, or the strange spellings, but it is definitely a clear and direct ancestor of modern English. I've read Hoccleve (not too recommended), Malory (can be tedious but Morte d'Arthur does have its moments), the Pearl Poet works, and some loose poems in the original. I highly recommend Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, as well as St. Erkenwald and the Pearl. I plan on reading Gower, Lydgate, and Chaucer as well to complete my study of this phase of English literature. I also tried reading Layamon's Brus, but apparently its Anglo-Norman was too distant and I couldn't manage it in the original. Old English is clearly another language. I have not been able to read anything from the 4 major codices in the original, not even one sentence. Edited by Merv on 28 September 2010 at 5:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 5 of 12 28 September 2010 at 9:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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A huge thank-you, I remember Morte d'Arthur: Chaucer and I fell out many years ago but my interest in Old English was stimulated by Beowulf and living in sight of Stonehenge.
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| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 6 of 12 28 September 2010 at 11:59am | IP Logged | |||||
I am currently taking two university courses on Old English and on Chaucer and knowing Dutch and a bit of German is a huge help in both. With Middle English it mostly helps with the pronunciation. My professor reads pieces of the Canterbury Tales aloud and also has my class read some sentences and tells us to pronounce it like we would if it were Dutch, just as a general rule. The pronunciation is really different from modern English and much closer to Dutch. Every letter is pronounced, the vowels are longer and purer like in Dutch, the r is trilled and the g is a guttural one sometimes. Spoken aloud, I don't think I would understand much of it if I didn't have the text. When I read it myself I feel like I'm speaking in a strange mix of Dutch and English, kind of like I'm reading English with a heavy Dutch accent which is hard to do because it's something I've always tried to avoid. You do get used to it though, after a while. As for Old English, cognates with Dutch, German or modern English are often well disguised so I don't even notice I'm looking at a cognate until my professor explains how the word has evolved. And even when I do recognise a word I still look it up because the meaning might have changed over time. Dutch is also very useful in the pronunciation here and a little with the grammar as well, though German and even Latin are more useful because they have cases. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 7 of 12 28 September 2010 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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An animated version of Canterbury Tales using puppets as well as cartoons came out about 12 years ago. It had actors narrating lines in Middle English pronunciation. It was sometimes harder to follow than the written version, which is pretty transparent to a modern English speaker.
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| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 8 of 12 28 September 2010 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
ReneeMona: now you've set me off thinking of Dutch..... :-p 1 person has voted this message useful |
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