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
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?