h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Chaucer's English may well have a radically different structure, but that just doesn't matter because you don't need to understand it to read Chaucer. Shifting definitions and the like, however, do matter. That's why when Chaucer's Wife of Bath says

"Ye shul have queynte right ynogh at eve."

it's much easier for the modern reader to interpret than when Austen's Emma relates

"...she found her subject cut up - her hand seized - her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her..."

I find the second easier to understand. Regardless, you also have to look to the complexity of what's being said. These two passages have radically different complexities.

Also, what does the modern reader do with the y- prefix? Or -en pluralisation? One must think about the words Chaucer uses; one can concentrate on the ideas Austen conveys. If the reader has to pause to look something up on every page, the fluency of the narrative is lost, and reading beccomes merely a game of what-does-this-word-mean.

The basic narrative, certainly, can be guessed, just as a first-year French student can guess the basic narrative of "Le Petit Prince." You don't need to understand Middle English to READ Chaucer; you need it to UNDERSTAND Chaucer.

As a modern reader one either deduces that words with y- prefixes and -en suffixes have something in common with less obsolete terms such as yclept and oxen, or else one looks them up. I'm not interested in reading or understanding Chaucer, I'm interested in enjoying it. If you felt it necessary to learn exactly which Middle English nouns are uninflected in the genitive singular before reading a single line of 'Troilus and Criseyde' then good for you, but I don't see why anyone else should have to.

I haven't read the Knight's Tale, but I'm a bit concerned that Theseus brought Emily home as well as Hippolyta. Sounds a bit kinky to me.

Er, '... less obsolete terms such as yclept....' Are you sure?

Well, alright, 95% was perhaps a little optimistic, but then "completely different" is *completely* indefensible. Are you suggesting that people would have the same trouble understanding Russian or Chinese as they would understanding Middle English? It seems unlikely, especially judging by the people who've already given pretty good translations here, of whom I'm assuming few are actual language scholars.

And to take another contrary position, it's much easier to *understand* Chaucer than it is to be able to transliterate *every word*. We are very good at extracting sense from seemingly impenetrable verbiage, but only as long as there are sufficient similarities of structure and vocabulary, such as there are in 'The Nun's Priest's Tale' and the rest of Chaucer.

How about my other points, such as modern English's evolution directly from Middle English? Surely that means something?

Personally I'd like to know how close my half-assed attempt was: it was only a guess.

I suspect that Middle English is more distinct from Modern English than Victorian English simply because of the relatively short time that has gone by since the Victorian age. I wonder what 20th Century English will look like when compared with whatever they are speaking in 700 years time.

Mind you, I wonder if the availability of a greater number of written models and/or higher literacy levels is keeping the language more static, too. Wasn't Chaucer somewhat unusual, writing in the vernacular rather than Latin? Not to mention longer lifespans (less turnover of people who are starting the language from scratch). The rise of the nation state may even have something to do with it (How dare you pollute our National Language?). It is possible the language was more fluid back then (I'm sure someone will tell me). but it doesn't mean it isn't changing. You can tell my sympathies are with beeline when he says there are no difinitively 'right' versions of English, can't you?

I would argue, though that some conventions/style are more 'right' than others depending on the situation. A style/version that is suitable for a chatty letter to our friends would be totally inappropriate for a letter of application and (and this is important) vice versa. The trick is to decide which of these 'right' versions of English are suitable for the internet in general and h2g2 in particular.

beeline:

I didn't say that Modern English wasn't useful in determining what Middle English passages mean. Yes, Modern English did evolve from Middle English.

There were also many influences from French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek in the meantime.

They are still completely different languages.

As a second-year Latin student, I can get a basic feel of passages of Rumanian, French, Spanish, and Italian. Does this mean that Latin and Rumanian (or French, Spanish, or Italian) are the same language? Certainly not!

I don't have that much trouble getting a basic sense of German passages. I studied German for only 2 weeks! What I know, I know from English. Yet no-one says German and English are the same language.


Solnushka:

The fact that it's been that long is indicative of the differences. I suspect the English spoken in 700 years will be utterly different than Modern English. They'll be different languages.

I agree that language evolution is probably slowing.

What I take exception with is not the novelty of certain constructions, spellings, &c. I take exception with the fact that many people simply don't care about what their particular spellings, constructions, idioms, or conventions express.

Take "difinitively" as an example. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this spelling. However, it loses its spelling connexion to the word "define" and therefore its meaning connexion, too. Use of that spelling changes the latter word to "difine". This causes a loss of etymological history. Therefore I reject "difinitively" as a correct spelling.

The above is but one example. There are many more common spellings that do the same or worse damage to the language.

--Cooper

You should also reject the spelling of common and argue for commun so as to maintain the word's link with its antecedents.

The German/English similarity is understandable, given that they are from the same root. They are both Germanic languages, rather than Romantic ones (like Spanish/French/Italian, chiefly derived from Latin).

I'm fully aware of the relationship, St. Emily. There are also parallels to the Modern/Middle English situation.

That was a reason I used the example.

re: common
Perhaps "commun" is a more appropriate spelling--but it might cause confusion with words related to "commune". "Communality" and "communally" are awfully close to each other. There are other words in Modern English with the "common" root. Also, the -un has no meaning per se, whereas the de- in "define" has a meaning.

--Cooper

"Completely different languages"? I don't think you can define a point either in time or in space at which languages become distinct. There may be missing links between Chaucer's written language and today's, but historically there must be some kind of continuum.

And what do you compare Chaucer with? Times editorials of the 20th century? Transcriptions of dialect poetry from Norfolk, Kent, Lancashire...? Throw Shakespeare in and compare his writing with Pepys and other written records of about that time, but also what is known about spoken language in Warwickshire and London.

Language is a net with a geographical dimension and a time dimension. There may be points, or clusterings within that space, corresponding to people (Shakespeare, Confucius), organisations (Academie Francaise, missionary churches) or political entities (see below), which attract more of our attention or pull people together and "stabilise" language in some way.

Norwegian and Swedish, Spanish and Portuguese are called languages, yet each pair is mutually comprehensible to a large extent. They are languages because they are associated with political nations. Mandarin and Cantonese are considered by many to be dialects of Chinese, but they have far less in common than the Scandinavian "languages".

Drawing the line between "completely different languages" may be pragmatic, political or many other things, but it is always arbitrary.

this is all so interesting to read, but i don't think i have anything intellectual to add... sorry..
i'll be back
^. .^
= ' =

Of course there is a continuum between the two languages, just as there are continua between all other related languages. There needn't be a specific event, point, tract, book, or what-have-you to separate them. It's more on the order of critical mass: once the number of differences accumulates to a certain point, the languages are distinct.

I take exception at Portugese and Spanish being mutually comprehensible. Perhaps the spoken languages are, but the written languages are significantly different.

I think the basis for separating languages can be the ability to write or speak. In other words, Spanish and Portugese are distinct because if one told a Portugese man with no experience of Spanish to write a simple sentence--"The fox chased the hound."--he probably wouldn't be able to.

Similarly, though I can get the basic feel of Middle English and German passages, I can't compose in them. Perhaps composition should be a criterion.

--Cooper

Of Mandarin and Cantonese - there are hundreds of different Chinese dialects, but there are some similarities between words - it's often a matter of pronunciation. Incidentally, Mandarin is the only actual language, in that it is actually writen down; Cantonese is only sopken and therefore a dialect.

Similarities - what most people know as "chow mein" literally means "fried noodles" in Cantonese. However, in Hokkien, we call the same thing "char mee". Similarly "tofu" and "dau-fu". However, what they call "ho-fun" (rice tagliatelle?) we call "koay-teow", so there can be big differences.

You see I am food obsessed.

Feel pity for us with these nuances of pronunciation - I believe the same is true of Japanese, where different emphases of pronunciation on the same construction mean completely different things, eg. "sei" can mean either 'wash' or 'brush'...

Obviously a Portuguese couldn't write in Spanish without any knowledge of Spanish. The important thing is whether the Spaniard would understand what he wrote. The phrase you chose is 'A raposa perseguiu o cão' and 'El zorro persiguió el perro' in Portuguese and Spanish respectively, so the chances of a misunderstanding are slight unless the Spaniard doesn't know the Spanish words 'raposa' and 'canino'. On the other hand, the Portuguese could have just written 'O zorro persiguió o perro' the first time.

Incidentally, most of the people who spoke Middle English didn't know how to write it. Does this mean they didn't know it at all?

I can't remember where it was, but I think it was one of Terry Deary's chidren's books in the "Horrible Histories" series that I read about this. I think the early attempts at wriiten middle English were largely phonetic transcriptions of local dialect. Later attempts led to a degree of standardisation. I think one of the examples Deary gave was the word "egg", which had many (very different) variations around the country, but through the written word became standardised as the "egg" we know now.

Your ovoid etymology's pretty much right - for reasons too tedious to relate it's a subject I was looking at a few weeks ago, so I might as well share the fruits of my tedium...

One of the odd things about egg is that the verb form (i.e. 'to egg on' in the sense of urging) predates and is completely unrelated to the noun form.
The verb stems originally from the Proto-Indo-European ak-, meaning sharp/pointed. The Greeks kept it that way, giving us acute acidic acne along the way, while the Germans changed it to ag-, presumably using it for a bunch of German words I don't know, from whence it ended up in Old Norse as eggja meaning edge, which in turn ended up as egg in Old English.
When it comes to the kind of eggs you can eat, those Proto-Indo-Europeans decided the chicken came first: they started with awi- for bird (which gives us aviation, ostrich, etc), from which came owo- for egg. The Germans turned this into ajja, from which Old English derived oeg and Old Norse got egg. The Old English version certainly came to England first and was subsequently supplanted by eye (eyren in the plural), but thanks to periodic invasions the Old Norse version eventually established itself in parts of the country too. The efforts at standardization you mention probably refer to William Caxton. He had this to say on the subject of eggs in his preface to Eneydos (a re-telling of the Aeneid translated from French in 1490):

And that comyn Englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a shippe in Tamyse, for to haue sayled ouer the see into Zelande, and for Iacke of wynde thei taryed atte Forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them; And one of theym named Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in-to an hows and axed for mete; and specyally he axyd after eggys; And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude not speke no Frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde haue hadde egges, and she vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren; then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren.

Eventually Caxton answered his own question, and that's why eggs is eggs.

That's the one!

Pray tell, why this interest in the humble ovum?

Surely a language can be a language without being written down. If not, many of the world's languages would be dialects, but of what?