…so plot-wise, this is an elaborate Buffy the Vampire Slayer in-joke, right?
(The “Master” stuff at first made me think it was Dr Who)
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I could pretty much keep on top of it through 1200, but at 1100 I’ve only got bits and pieces—the woman saying her name is Aelfgifu, then explaining something about the Master and the narrator is like “is that so?” and then Aelfgifu maybe saying it’s worse than he thinks/knows? 1000 I pretty much can’t read at all (past the first sentence confirming that everything was as Aelfgifu said, I guess). It’s been a very long time since I studied Beowulf and I guess there’s a lot that I didn’t retain!
Yes, that’s what I’ve heard, too—especially in terms of being able to use the same sets of moveable type internationally, with the first letters to go being the ones that were English-specific and things like the long S sticking around a bit longer because they were relatively common across Europe.
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Do go on?
The big bag of the first season of Buffy was a bestial-looking vampire called the Master who had a bunch of thugs at his beck and call; the name, physical similarity, and then the fact that the dude gets rescued by a lady who’s really strong and fast seems pretty aligned. Admittedly the name and “let’s get married stuff” isn’t in Buffy, so could be there are other legends being remixed here, but it seems pretty in-jokey to me!
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I could understand most of 1300.
added the last word from 1200
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This is neat. Like a lot of people, I could understand everything until 1200. Around 1300 was difficult for me, but by focusing on the implied pronunciation instead of the spelling I could get an idea of what was happening. 1200 and beyond became completely incomprehensible besides a few phrases here and there.
I did the requisite Shakespeare reading in middle school, where we were all assigned Julius Caesar, but I never studied Beowulf or anything.
The plot was surprisingly not what I expected. I was imagining some kind of uncanny horror thing, where the protagonist is being pulled further and further into the past without realizing it, being transformed into someone with a language and sensibilities incomprehensible to the world he came from, forcing him to stay in the town forever. I thought for sure that there would be some section at the end where he tries to return home and discovers he can no longer understand what anyone is saying, and the people he used to know don’t recognize him. Something like this is perhaps hinted at, but not really covered in any detail.
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Unfortunately, though, I didn’t catch that it was the same plot until like the third time they were talking about Master.
Just looked at this translation—you got much more out of 1100 than I did, so I don’t know if I should be proposing corrections/additions, but I’m pretty sure “ne ƿiste” is “didn’t know” (cf German “wissen”), and “Hit is eall soð, and ƿyrse þonne þu ƿenst.” (one of the few lines that more or less made sense to me!) is “It is all(?) true, and worse than you think” (or “thought”?).
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Yeah, unfortunately our surviving corpus of Old English literature doesn’t have a lot of examples of subtle horror—a lot more slaying of foes and such.
Which does make sense. The style of horror I’m thinking about mostly arose in 20th century English writing or so. As you look back and the sensibilities shift, the writer by necessity moves from “travel blogger” to “chronicler of heroic deeds”… though it does induce some whiplash.
The translation is helpful, though, and impressive in how it brings to light what is essentially a foreign language.
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In english, I can read those aulde pre-Tudor Navalese, but is a specialisation; I can read and understand Shakespeare’s works, but I doubt that I can read other specialistic Elisabethian texts (aside Navalese, of course; I read and understand the Drake-era Fighting Instructions, but I doubt that I can read, for example, Thomas More)
In Italian, depends on how one put Italian in romance language context, because can be asserted that is direct descendant of the Latin, so I can read back to ~ 3rd-4th century BC, and I can even slowly read early Latin (back to XII Tabulae) and I managed once to really slowly read the Lapis Niger Fragmentae… but I live in an environment where inscriptions in Latin is common sight…
on Italian proper, is a bit embarassing admitting that I read much better Dante’s Commedia than the later Works of Machiavelli (yea, I have difficulties in reading the “Dark Arts of Politics”…) albeit both are Tuscans…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Late, but I got to 1500, and 1400 lost me lol. After I read about the letters, I managed to get through 1400 and some of 1300 but then 1200 I couldn’t get.
It’s like 2:30 in the morning where I am, so I’m not going to try tonight, but considering Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar are about the oldest untranslated English texts I have any familiarity with and the King James Bible is about the oldest English translation I have any familiarity with, and I’ve only ever read Beowulf, bits of the Canterbury Tales, or bits of Arthurian Legend in translation to more modern English, I’m expecting to not do great by the standards set in this thread… Also, I’ve never taken a French class, the one semester of German I took in uni didn’t go well, my knowledge of Latin mostly comes down to math, science, and academic terminology, and While I understand British English and even have a somewhat Britishized dialect, I understand The British have had more linguistic drift than us Yanks in the time since American and British English started diverging, so probably not much there to help going even further back.
As for evolution of English, in addition to Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440 likely doing a lot to stabilize written language across Europe and not just for English, probably worth noting that 1066 is when the Normans invade England and start injecting a lot of French into the English language, leading to English sometimes being described as a bastardized mix of Germanic and Romance linguistic heritage… The Normans might have also been responsible for introducing the Roman alphabet to English(I understand Old English was originally written in a runic alphabet similar to that used for Old Norse, but I’m less clear on when the shift to Latin letters took place than I am on why the second largest source for words in the English language is French(the plurality of English words are Germanic, but there are a lot of French words… I want to say something like about half of English words have Germanic origin and a third have French origins, but I might be misremembering or rounding grossly).
ifoan as in foes, I guess
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I think the author started including deliberate variations in the spellings of words in the sections that are ‘pre-standardization’.
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@Draconis as promised yesteray … this took me way too long, do not tell my manager!
1000 translation
“And þæt heo sægde wæs eall soþ.”
And what she foretold was all true
(It’s maybe “what she said”, but I think sægde is like “sage”)
“Ic ƿifode on hire, and heo ƿæs ful scyne ƿif, ƿis ond ƿælfæst.”
I took her to wife, and she was a beautiful wife, wise and resolute
(technically “I wifed her”. I think scyne is related to “shine”)
(the last word is totally throwing me. ƿælfæst seems to mean something like “woe ready” or “slaughter ready” or maybe “ready for battle”. It doesn’t quite seem to go with “beautiful” and “wise”, although I guess she’s all about fighting in the next sentence. Maybe I should have used “warlike”?)
“Ne gemette ic næfre ær sƿylce ƿifman.”
I never met such a woman
(“Nor met I never” would be better maybe? Using sƿylce just to mean “such” is odd. A search tells me it is usually translated “also” or “likewise”. Not sure if I’m just missing a meaning or if the author used it wrong)
“Heo ƿæs on gefeohte sƿa beald swa ænig mann,”
She was in fighting as bold as any man
(gefeohte as in “fight” or “battle”?)
(There should be no difference between sƿa and swa. Google tells me it’s two spellings for the same word, so I guess this is an authorial idiosyncrasy that appears again below.)
“and þeah hƿæþere hire andƿlite wæs ƿynsum and fæger.”
and though whether her countenance was winsome and fair
(I’m pretty sure I’m translating þeah hƿæþere wrong here. A search tells me it is a colloquial meaning “nevertheless”. So I guess it’s “She fought like a man in battle but was still beautiful”)
“Ac ƿe naƿiht freo ne sindon,”
But never free we are,
“for þy þe ƿe næfre ne mihton fram Ƿulfesfleote geƿitan,”
for that we never might from Wolsfleet escape
“nefne ƿe þone Hlaford finden and hine ofslean.”
unless we the Lord find and kill. — unless we find the Lord and kill him
(ofslean like “slay”)
“Se Hlaford hæfþ þisne stede mid searocræftum gebunden,”
The Lord has this village with cunning arts bound
(I wanted to translate searocræftum as “secret craft” or “magic”, but “cunning arts” as in “cunning man” seems the more common translation. Maybe “sorcery” would also be good?)
“þæt nan man ne mæg hine forlætan.”
that no man is able to leave
(hine forlætan is, I think, “to forsake it”)
“Ƿe sindon her sƿa fuglas on nette, swa fixas on ƿere.”
(my favouite line)
we are here like birds in a net, like fish on a weir
(I am entirely out on a limb with ƿere meaning weir! I can’t really think what else a fish might be trapped on like a bird on a net, but I have no dictionary evidence for it)
“And ƿe hine secaþ git, begen ætsomne, ƿer ond ƿif,”
And we seek him still, being together, man and wife
(ætsomne like “at same”, so I guess “at the same time” would work too)
“þurh þa deorcan stræta þisses grimman stedes.”
through the darkened streets of this grim town
(stedes like “steading”)
“Hƿæþere God us gefultumige!”
Whether God us helps!
(I’m guessing this is idiomatically “Whether god helps us or not”? Maybe it just means “God help us!”)
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1300 was the last one I felt comfortable understanding, and I’m completely lost by 1100. Though I suspect I’d have more trouble with actual texts from each era - this seems generous with how it splits the text into paragraphs.
Interesting idea for an IF though maybe…
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1200 is where I really hit a wall, which seems to be a common experience.
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To my ears:
2000 sounds like how I imagine social media influencers to talk.
1900, 1800, and 1700 sound like classic British literature
1600 and 1500 sound mostly intelligible with a few odd spellings leading to my screenreader giving things odd pronunciations. Was initially tripped up by the use of v for u in some words since Orca has no idea how to handle a vowel v(e.g. vntroubled is read vee in troubled by Orca). Can follow, but there are definitely some turns of phrase I don’t understand.
1400 and 1300 are almost like picking the English lyrics out of a J-pop song, except the background language parses as German and the gratuitous English level is like 30-40% whereas a J-pop song with gratuitous Engrish might have more like 5%. No comprehension beyond individual phrases.
1200, 1100, and 1000 Really does feel like I’m listening to german with the occasional shared word standing out or the occasional English word a German speaker might not recognize sprinkled in.
Granted, I imagine the older stuff sounds like German in the same way Italian sounds like Spanish to someone who knows neither language and might be just as incomprehensible to a monoglot of modern German, especially as I understand Anglo-Saxon(aka Old English) is on the Low German branch of the Germanic Language family while modern German is on the High German branch… Again, my one semester of German in uni did not go well. Also, I just had my screen reader read it to me and it is set to use the default British English voice for espeak. Even if I wasn’t cursed as an English Monoglot, I can’t say for sure it wouldn’t corrupt pronunciations of other Roman Alphabet using languages to the point they would be incomprehensible to a native speaker of those languages without switching to a voice for those languages.
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