Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by brabel on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @06:50AM
(#39522944)
> Does this look recognisably like modern English? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-eng...
Oh my... I can't even begin to understand that. It looks about as foreign as Old Norse (or modern German for that matter). How things change over just 1,000 years (that's just like what, 40 generations?!).
I am no expert, though I think the language changed a lot after the Norman conquest, right? So perhaps just a few hundred years later it would have morphed into something we could more or less recognize as English? Or was it really a more gradual evolution?
Re:What Do We Get Wrong About the Byzantine Empire?
by graemep on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @07:39AM
(#39523322)
Yes, Chaucer from the 14th century is fairly understandable.
"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote".
Easier if you say it to yourself as the spelling has changed so much
* same religion: most people say they are non-religious (thought some have Christian beliefs), some who say they are Christian really do not know the right term for their actual beliefs (moralistic therapeutic deists), those who are Christian are of different denominations.
* both have a king: the western empire of Hadrian's time and the Byzantine both had an emperor. modern England is a constitutional monarchy, an executive drawn from parliament, and parliament is very different from its predecessors that existed at the time. The king is also king of a lot of other countries.
* controls almost the same territory: true of England alone, but England is not an independent entity, but part of a larger union, and that union has a lot of overseas territories.
* speaks a language that's closer to modern English: we are talking about the same era as Beowulf. That was a very different language, so no more comprehensible than related modern languages which at least have some common vocabulary (including loan words). Does this look recognisably like modern English? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-eng...
I agree with you about Egypt but it has been invaded multiple times, had a complete change of culture, etc. There is no political or cultural continuity (except the copts?) so it is fair to say it is another thing that happens to occupy roughly the same territory.