Quote:
Originally Posted by jackm8
I don't understand your point about Beowulf being easier to read than Cantenbury Tales, though. Isn't Beowulf in Old English balderdash to anyone not familiar with it?
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It's not the point, that was the point if you read carefully. A scholar of Classical Greek or 2000+ yo Roman might have difficulty with Medieval Latin or modern Greek. Even non-scholars can sort of manage Canterbury Tales (like Robbie Burns, easier out loud), but Beowulf would be incomprehensible.
Many people can't manage Shakespeare and the so called King James Version of the bible is more readable because in fact it's been revised silently several times. It's not actually the original KJV, and even the original and Shakespeare were not the English even educated people spoke and wrote, but special versions.
I was doing research and finding any large amount of ordinary Elizabethan English as spoken hard to find. I and most people find the Canterbury Tales extremely difficult compared to Shakespeare (who was more Jacobean than Elizabethan in surviving MSS/Quartos)
Beowulf*: Disputed (c. 700–1000 AD), oldest MSS is about c. 975–1025 AD
Canterbury Tales: Written by Chaucer 1387 – 1400
Shakespeare started acting between 1585 & 1592, died 1616, age 52.
Queen Elizabeth reign: 1558 – 1603
King James IV Scotland: 1567 – 1625. Ruled England as James I 1603 – 1625
King James Version Bible: 1604 – 1611, but current version is
mostly 1769. Also called the Authorised Version. The NKJV was finalised in 1982, a sort of KJV for people that can't read the KJV.
Irish before 1940s is hardly readable by current speakers. The actual Irish MSS of various stuff in Old Irish (800 to 1300) only by specialist scholars. Makes no sense at all to current Irish speakers. Those scholars might not be able to read 17th to early 20th C. "Modern" Irish. That needs different scholars.
Then there is Early Celtic which split to P (Wales, Cornwall, Brittany) & Q (Ireland, Scotland).
There is Proto Celtic (500 BC) which stretched as far as Turkish coast of the North Sea. Some oaths survive to Modern Irish. Greeks called them the Keltoi.
[* cf most Norse legend we have is from one 13th C. Icelandic source sent to Denmark, written by a guy assassinated for being a traitor, or something, it's complicated!]