archive.org as a reference source for public TV

[j.p.s]

I was recently watching a Lucy Worsley presentation on the norman conquest of England when the camera cut to a closeup of a tablet showing an english translation of a medieval latin book. (The setting for that scene was a table in some library or archive with said thousandish year old book open on the table.) Then I noticed it was a web page with an archive.org URL. Later the camera cut to the tablet showing the same or different book on archive.org, and this time I noticed a field with something about time remaining on borrow. I also wonder whether the episode was produced before the court ruling on whether archive.org could legally lend books under copyright without express permission or if some publishers of books do give permission to archive.org to lend books.

The same episode showed paper book translations of other books. Dr. Worsley mentioned something about not being comfortable enough with medieval latin to establish some of the subtle points she wanted to make. I've experienced trouble with books written in english as recently as 100 years before, but I've never considered that a book written around a thousand years ago might be too recent to fully comprehend compared to a book written 2000 years ago in the same or direct parent language. Kind of like Beowulf being easier for someone to read than The Canterbury Tales on an even longer time scale. (I can't read either of those myself, but had less trouble with The Canterbury Tales in high school.) So I also wonder if the difficulty with the medieval latin came as a surprise and it was necessary to scramble online for a translation.

(Note to those eager to take every single opportunity to denounce archive.org as copyright violators: Please refrain for a week or so to allow for a possible discussion of the actual topics of this thread and any natural drift.)

[jackm8]

Lucy Worsley Investigates: William the Conqueror? I'll try and find it somewhere.

I'm not a linguist, but I often wonder about pronunciations. As soon as you go back in time, as back as Shakespare, and you read Quartos and Folios as they were written, you start seeing words written differently. Not just the long s's, whole words are different. There was Original Pronunciation Shakespare movement, but its validity was never entirely established. We do know that pronunciation was different, we know some basics, but I guess that we'll never know how it really sounded.

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?

[Quoth]

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?

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!]

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I was recently watching a Lucy Worsley presentation on the norman conquest of England when the camera cut to a closeup of a tablet showing an english translation of a medieval latin book. (The setting for that scene was a table in some library or archive with said thousandish year old book open on the table.) Then I noticed it was a web page with an archive.org URL. Later the camera cut to the tablet showing the same or different book on archive.org, and this time I noticed a field with something about time remaining on borrow. I also wonder whether the episode was produced before the court ruling on whether archive.org could legally lend books under copyright without express permission or if some publishers of books do give permission to archive.org to lend books.

The same episode showed paper book translations of other books. Dr. Worsley mentioned something about not being comfortable enough with medieval latin to establish some of the subtle points she wanted to make. I've experienced trouble with books written in english as recently as 100 years before, but I've never considered that a book written around a thousand years ago might be too recent to fully comprehend compared to a book written 2000 years ago in the same or direct parent language. Kind of like Beowulf being easier for someone to read than The Canterbury Tales on an even longer time scale. (I can't read either of those myself, but had less trouble with The Canterbury Tales in high school.) So I also wonder if the difficulty with the medieval latin came as a surprise and it was necessary to scramble online for a translation.

(Note to those eager to take every single opportunity to denounce archive.org as copyright violators: Please refrain for a week or so to allow for a possible discussion of the actual topics of this thread and any natural drift.)

Archive.org still lends books. I think maybe they've stopped lending the big publishers titles that sued however. Personally this has been useful for my own work because I needed to read an old article that wasn't available at my universitiy's library but was available in short term loan from archive.org. And no, it wasn't even available online for the highway robbery of $49.95 or whatever the big journal publishers like to charge for PDFs.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by jackm8

Lucy Worsley Investigates: William the Conqueror? I'll try and find it somewhere.

That's it. I also found the other episodes informative and entertaining. I record by time slots instead of by program and her work sometimes pops up when other progams are between seasons

I'm not a linguist, but I often wonder about pronunciations. As soon as you go back in time, as back as Shakespare, and you read Quartos and Folios as they were written, you start seeing words written differently. Not just the long s's, whole words are different. There was Original Pronunciation Shakespare movement, but its validity was never entirely established. We do know that pronunciation was different, we know some basics, but I guess that we'll never know how it really sounded.

I've always wondered how they work out old pronunciations. I only recently learned that some English dialects say "my" as "me" because the "y" sound didn't evolve the same in other dialects. But I can see how that is known much easier than how much older pronunciations can be determined.

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?

Of course the Canterbury Tales are less unintelligible than Beowulf, but there was much less time separating them than between classic and medieval Latin. I was being a bit silly, since the problem in the program was confidence in distinguishing fine and subtle details.

My only exposure to Cantenbury Tales and Beowulf was in high school English class.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Quoth

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.

Yes, that is what I was getting at, and that it was a new concept to me, even though it is obvious after a little thought.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Archive.org still lends books. I think maybe they've stopped lending the big publishers titles that sued however. Personally this has been useful for my own work because I needed to read an old article that wasn't available at my universitiy's library but was available in short term loan from archive.org. And no, it wasn't even available online for the highway robbery of $49.95 or whatever the big journal publishers like to charge for PDFs.

Thanks for the clarification/report. Good to know.

[jackm8]

Link to the book mentioned:

https://archive.org/details/ecclesiasticalhi0002orde

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I've always wondered how they work out old pronunciations.

Rhymes and puns help.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by jackm8

Link to the book mentioned:

https://archive.org/details/ecclesiasticalhi0002orde

Thanks, I hope the archive.org scan quality haters don't follow that link. (Oh, I now see that first page is an image of a page in the Oderic book.)

As to the screenshot, I hadn't noticed that the original text and translation are on facing pages. Keeping those in sync must be a challenge in print, and would be really tricky for reflowable ebook formats. Maybe that is something appropriate for AI generated software, once that that is capable enough.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Rhymes and puns help.

So, despite being allegedly the lowest form of humor, puns are a valuable tool for linguists?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

So, despite being allegedly the lowest form of humor, puns are a valuable tool for linguists?

Was it Oscar Wilde?

A search suggests not and also a theory that it was someone jealous of people that could invent puns!
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/01/04/pun-first/

It is the sort of comment he might have made.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Was it Oscar Wilde?

A search suggests not and also a theory that it was someone jealous of people that could invent puns!
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/01/04/pun-first/

It is the sort of comment he might have made.

Mary Livingstone. was married to Jack Benny. She was also his partner.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Was it Oscar Wilde?

A search suggests not and also a theory that it was someone jealous of people that could invent puns!
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/01/04/pun-first/

It is the sort of comment he might have made.

I've got no idea, but it rings a bell. And maybe he also said wit instead of humor, like everyone else.

I thought the custom of some people groaning at puns goes way way back.

I'm not adept at generating puns and many of those I come across go right past me, but sometimes I get a laugh and I have nothing against them. I don't remember hearing of the jealousy explanation, but it seems plausible.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I've got no idea, but it rings a bell. And maybe he also said wit instead of humor, like everyone else.

I thought the custom of some people groaning at puns goes way way back.

I think that Walden has one against irony. All of them against humour are really annoying, since they get lodged in the brains for no reason.