
Learn to read Middle English - weinzierl
https://blog.plover.com/lang/middle-english.html
======
lqet
> What's “schuleth” then? Maybe something do to with schools? It turns out
> not. This is a form of “shall, should” but in this context it has its old
> meaning, now lost, of “owe

It's still "schulden" (to owe) in German, and "trybut" is still "tribut", and
"alle" is still "alle", and "hoppen" (or "hopfen") is still used in some
German dialects as "jump"/"dance", and "alwey" (or "alleweil" / "ällweil") is
still used in southern Germany for "always" \- my grandfather still uses it.
"Ȝelde" is very close to the modern German "vergelten" (repay) or "abgelten"
(compensate), and even to "Geld" (money).

The only word that seems strangely out of context is "dettes", and as it turns
out, this word is French.

As a German, when I read Middle English, I always have the strange feeling
that someone tried to "correct" or clarify a Modern English text, but only
partly succeeded.

~~~
combatentropy
> What's "schuleth" then? . . . This is a form of "shall, should" but in this
> context it has its old meaning, now lost, of "owe"

I would not say it is lost. What else does "you should" mean but "you owe"?
You can exchange "You should..." for "You ought to..." ( _ought_ is a past
tense of _owe_ ).

~~~
stevula
While the sense evolution from owing to obligation is clear, it would
definitely sound weird now to say “you should a tribute”.

~~~
sgrove
Funnily, if you read your sentence aloud, it sounds perfectly reasonable:

"You should attribute..."

------
TheHeretic12
If anyone is interested in something from this time period worth reading in
its original language, that is not on the reading lists, I can recommend the
works of Sir Thomas Malory. He collected, compiled, and translated from French
to English everything we call "Arthurian Legend." He did this while in prison
near the end of his life. I picked up a used copy on a whim, knowing nothing
about Middle English, and its been difficult but priceless. It took me an hour
to get through the first page, but it puts Game of Thrones to shame. Found it
on Amazon, they list it as ASIN B011T6UUCQ. Theres other editions, but I can
vouch for the integrity and readability of this one.

~~~
Balgair
Sir Thomas Malory's life is just nutters, likely because it's a bit hard to
pin down. Nonetheless, born a lesser noble, he gets knighted and then does
what any young man in those late medieval days does: goes civil warring.
Riding about he gets married, and has a kid (maybe more?). Somehow he gets
elected to parliament, while being wanted for some sort of crime. Parliament
doesn't really seem to mind, maybe they thought him a bit roguish for it.

Unfortunately, he then decides to back the wrong (loosing) side durng some
such part of the War of the Roses. They get at him and try to jail him for
this. Also a bunch of murdering and raping and pillaging for good measure. He
gets captured and, well, just walks out and swims the moat. Nothing really
comes of that escape, legally speaking. Everyone was like, good for you.

As he is still backing the wrong side, they try and get him again. This time
they do their jobs and capture him. The jury convicts him and he, well, maybe
they convict him. No one really knows. So they let him go. This pattern
repeats itself a few times, yes really. Malory finds that cattle rustling on
the Scottish border is more his cup of tea anyway.

Eventually he gets on the right/winning side of the war. Unfortunately, they
still don't really like him, all that pillaging you know, so the general
pardons that come along when a new king comes into power, well, those skip
him. Finally, he gets into a prison that really has some bars behind it. There
he gets really bored reads a bunch of French and English stuff borrowed from a
bleeding heart Noble next to the Tower of London. It's all about King Arthur
so he writes 'Le Mort d'Arthur'. He dies in prison.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malory)

~~~
mjd
Another vote here for the Malory. An earlier draft of this article had a
Malory example, but I decided it wasn't needed. But the Malory is not hard to
read, and it's a lot a of fun.

------
chizhik-pyzhik
There's a wikipedia incubator site for middle english. It's pretty
entertaining to read:

 _A frogge biþ a smol beaste wiþ foure leggys, whyche liueþ booþ in watyre and
on londe. It cuoþ bee broune or grene or yelowe, or be it tropyckal, he may
haue dyuers coloures. It haþ longys and guilles booþe. Eet haccheþ from an ey
and it þan ys a tadpolle. It groweþ to ben a frogge, if it þan ne be noght
aetoen._

[https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/enm/Frogge](https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/enm/Frogge)

~~~
gerdesj
According to Caxton there was a controversy between egges and "eyren".

~~~
stevesimmons
Very interesting! The Dutch for eggs is "eiren" (plural of "ei" pronounced
"ey")

~~~
schrijver
Nitpicking, the plural is eieren, with three distinct syllables :) IIRC, there
used to both words with -er and -en as plural, but over time the norm became
-en so it was tacked onto the -er. Like kind/kinderen. In German Kinder and
Eier are still the plural.

------
DonaldFisk
If you want to know what (late) Middle English sounded like, listen to this
recitation of Skelton's Speke Parott:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCckcTHWqKw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCckcTHWqKw)

The text, with modern orthography, is here:
[http://www.skeltonproject.org/spekeparott/](http://www.skeltonproject.org/spekeparott/)

~~~
gorkish
When I was learning to read Middle English I found that learning to pronounce
it out loud helped a tremendous amount; it made the whole process a lot easier
for me, and it helped others understand it as well since I could impart some
contextual meaning that made some of those 'close' words very clear.

Being able to recite monologues from Canterbury Tales was also a good party
trick that apparently piqued the interest of this girl who later decided to
marry me. So there you go.

~~~
KineticLensman
> recite monologues from Canterbury Tales was also a good party trick

I'm guessing not the Knights Tale

> apparently piqued the interest of this girl who later decided to marry me

I waited until after the first date before trying this one (Millers Tale).
Reader - she married me!

~~~
gorkish
I recall at that particular time I just reeled off the prologue, but I was
always partial to the Monk's tale.

The reason is silly. One of the first times I heard any of it read out loud,
it was an English prof with an extreme Southern drawl reading Monk's Tale. I
got a real kick of it, and always gave the Monk a little hint of the Blue
Ridge Mountains in his honor.

------
tetris11
There must be a thousand false friends though. As a guy struggling through
German, there are too many words that sound the same but mean different
things, like 'fast', 'bald', and others (I cannot immediately think of)

~~~
duskwuff
"Fast" is an interesting word in English -- it has a diverse (or is it
"dyuers"?) set of meanings surrounding both "rapid", "secure" (i.e. "stand
fast" or "fast asleep"), and "abstain" ("fasting").

Its relative, "quick", has some weird historical attachments as well -- it can
mean both "rapid" and "alive" (as in "quicksand" or the "quick" of a nail).

~~~
thaumasiotes
> "secure" (i.e. "stand fast" or "fast asleep")

The most common example of this sense today would be "fasten".

------
pfkurtz
In a college language seminar we read The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe very
closely in Middle English. The Canterbury Tales are a really great way to
learn it, because they are so rich and varied and there are great _dual
language_ editions with copious notes. The big fat Penguin edition is
fantastic.

In general, poetry is a great component to any language learning (enhanced by
the fact they're often published in dual language version), but it's essential
for dead languages.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> poetry is a great component to any language learning (enhanced by the fact
> they're often published in dual language version)

Poetry is actually much worse for learning a language than prose is, because
the language used in poetry is usually not typical and not uncommonly fairly
strained. Any advantage of poetry comes from how much the student enjoys it.

> but it's essential for dead languages.

Why would dead languages be any different in this regard from living ones?

~~~
pfkurtz
For dead languages the answer is easy: a lot of the most interesting texts are
in verse. Including Middle English. I have never had a conversation in any
dead language. Prose _literature_ is actually a more recent development, so if
you want to read ancient stories in the original, which are awesome, you will
be reading poetry.

As to poetry in general: Poetic language is challenging, diverse in
vocabulary, and because of meter it is memorizable, which I find puts more of
the language "in my head". Poetry is also an essential part of most national
literatures, and so a big component of _really_ learning a language beyond
being conversational.

Nothing in my answer disparaged prose, or that poetry is more important than
prose; any language learning consists of repeated, effortful exposure to many
language sources, as well as speaking and writing the language. I'm just
emphasizing that studying poems in other languages can really help learning
those languages, so a savvy student should include it. The tone of your
response is puzzling to me.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> a lot of the most interesting texts are in verse

This is a matter of taste.

> I have never had a conversation in any dead language.

This is also a matter of taste.

> Prose literature is actually a more recent development, so if you want to
> read ancient stories in the original, which are awesome, you will be reading
> poetry.

This is more of a matter of which language you're studying.

> because of meter [poetic language] is memorizable

This is bizarre. Your claim is quite correct as to speakers of the original
language, but we've stipulated that the language is dead. In general, students
cannot identify or even notice poetic meter in the dead languages they study.
I really enjoyed scanning Latin verse, but that is because I enjoy _math_. To
more "normal" students, scansion is infamous for being painful and difficult.

I responded to the perceived suggestion that studying poetry is an effective
method of learning a language. I don't agree with that: poetry is more
difficult to read than prose, and the lessons you may draw from it are often
specific to the genre, not the language. For example, if you want to read
Latin poetry, you will want a working knowledge of Greek grammar, which is
sometimes used in preference to Latin grammar. The Roman poets could count on
their audience to know Greek. But learning Greek grammar is not actually a
particularly valuable step in studying Latin grammar.

You don't read poetry in order to learn a language. You learn the language in
order to read the poetry.

~~~
pfkurtz
So... you just like to be disagreeable.

------
asplake
“trybut” should be a programming language keyword

~~~
tetris11
demand { <code> } trybut { <code> } now <finalcode> }

~~~
jdnier
Since it's "tribute", it seems like a synonym for return. A function's output
is its tribute, or maybe just the thing it returns.

    
    
        def speke_parott():
            # many machinations...
            trybut = "squwak"
            return trybute

------
Lukas_Skywalker
The difficult word, "schuleth", is actually pretty close to its German
counterpart, the verb "schulden", which still has the original meaning of "to
owe".

In German itself, the word apparently transformed from "skulan" at around the
year 0 over "skuld" at around 700 to "schult" around the year 1000.

~~~
gerdesj
I have no problem with this:

"to him that ye schuleth tribute, tribute" becoming "to him that you should
tribute, tribute."

It is a bit odd to modern ears but the second tribute is clearly a shortened
exhortation for emphasis. Should in English often implies an obligation and
owe falls out from that. "You should apologise for that" -> "You own an
apology for that".

~~~
tankenmate
the first "tribute" is a gerund (i.e. a verb taking the place of a noun)
although i'm not sure of the gerund declension in middle english. the second
"tribute" is an imperative verb (with an implied subject and object).

------
bovermyer
I kind of wish we still used thorn, edh, and yogh. But I'm weird like that.

~~~
DonaldFisk
Nothing stopping you. I do, when I'm writing. As any written communication
from me is typed, only a few people know this.

Incidentally, thorn and yogh are still occasionally used today: thorn (written
as y) at the beginning of some pub names, e.g. "Ye Olde Mitre Inn", and yogh
(written as z) in some Scottish surnames: Menzies (traditionally pronounced
"mingus"), Dalziel (pronounced "dee-el"), Mackenzie (derived from Gaelic
MacCoinnich, but now with a spelling pronunciation in English).

~~~
Accacin
Heh, when I was younger I went through a phrase of writing almost everything
in Anglo-Saxon runes.

~~~
Baeocystin
It happened to me, too. I blame Ultima IV!

------
yters
If I blur my eyes and read fast, it is not so hard to understand, i.e.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typoglycemia).

------
Mediterraneo10
It is worth mentioning that Middle English consisted of dialects that
significantly differed from one another. Chaucer’s English is similar enough
to modern English that bookish people today can quickly get used to it with
the help of an annotated edition of the Canterbury Tales. But _Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight_ or the less popularly known writers of the Middle English
period like the Pearl-poet or William Langland are more challenging and
generally only ventured by specialists, and everyone else relies on
translations.

~~~
pfkurtz
The Canterbury Tales is a great preparation for the harder stuff!

------
c3534l
When people say things like:

> The only strange word is schuleþ itself

it makes me think Middle English is not easy at all. Out of the entire
sentence I unambiguously recognize "to," "that/þat" and "men", and I can guess
but can't be sure that "alle" means "all" by recognizing that "alles" is
German for all and supposing that English lost the trailing e recently. None
of these words have high semantic meaning and I am unable to make a guess at
any of the remaining words in the sentence based on context, since I have no
context.

I'm not a dumb man, nor do I have a small vocabulary. I probably know more
about linguistics and especially historical linguistics than the vast majority
of the population due to my interest in conlanging. But the fact that some
people think that the meaning of the rest of the words in the sentence is so
obvious as to serve as an example for how obvious Middle English is, is
probably the reason why I've failed or nearly failed every English class where
we've had to read Shakespeare, and never garnered any sympathy from teachers
who are so certain that "trybut" is obviously "tribute" as anyone can plainly
see.

------
robaato
Takes me back to my university days and the holiday project I got involved in
as part of the Middle English Dialect Project lead by Dr Michael Benskin.

[http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/intros/atlas_preface.html](http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/intros/atlas_preface.html)

I helped with programming for processing/typesetting of the various texts and
the production of "dot maps" and other maps for the data of the corpus of some
320 words which were (manually) collected from thousands of manuscripts.

E.g. text 1423, (maybe with a known scribe, usually with a location), spelled
such and such a word in the following N ways (scribes often had a preferred
spelling, but weren't always consistent).

With such maps, among other thints, you could start to place unknown texts by
doing some simple Venn diagrams for spellings it contained.

The original (referenced above) was printed, subsequently, it was put online.

[http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html](http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html)

Maybe when I retire I can help them tidy it up :)

------
sbierwagen
>Some words that were common in Middle English are just gone. You'll probably
need to consult a dictionary at some point. The Oxford English Dictionary is
great if you have a subscription. The University of Michigan has a dictionary
of Middle English that you can use for free.

>Here are a couple of common words that come to mind:

>eke — “also”

>wyf — “woman”

Wyf shouldn't be that hard to guess: it eventually became "wife".

~~~
mjd
“Wife” and “woman” don't have the same meaning. I think people learning Middle
English are often puzzled when they try to read “wyf” as “wife”, which is why
I mentioned it.

------
microtherion
The discussion of yogh, which can be g or y reminded me that in some dialects
of German, "g" is pronounced as "j", as in the proverbial phrase "Eene jut
jebratene Jans ist eene Jabe Jottes" (A well grilled goose is a gift from
god).

~~~
akavi
To be clear, pronounced as a German "j" or an English "y", ie /j/, not an
English "j", ie /dʒ/.

~~~
microtherion
Yes, important point.

------
shitgoose
"Yelde ye to alle men youre dettes: to hym that ye schuleth trybut, trybut."

Sounds Yiddish:)

------
cmrdporcupine
"English started out as German."

Can we not do better than this? This is factually incorrect. I'm sure the
author knows better, and just thought readers weren't "smart" enough to be
able to understand "English is part of the Germanic language family" or
"German and English are related", but instead this is just ... no... I don't
think I'm being pedantic by complaining about this... But this is like saying
that "Spanish started out as French" or "Romanian started out as Italian"

German refers to the language descended from Old High Franconian. English is
descendended from the Anglo-Saxon dialects, the languages of peoples who
invaded Britain from the western coast of what is now Denmark and the
northeast coast of what is now the Netherlands. And then modified with a whole
bunch of old Norse influence from Danish and Norwegian invaders. And then with
a whole bunch of Old Norman French influence... etc.

If you look for a _modern_ Germanic language that English is most closely
related to it would be the low Germanic languages, low Saxon, Frisian, even
Dutch more so than German proper. Low and high refers to altitude -- not class
or prestige or anything -- the "high" German languages are those that
underwent a softening/changing sound shift which came out of the highlands in
southern Germany. English, like Dutch, never underwent that sound shift. Hence
we say "School" with a "k" for the sch instead of a soft "sch" like in German.

~~~
monadic2
What’s the misunderstanding you’re trying to avoid with this distinction?

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Do you descend from your cousin? No. You're related, and thus share a common
ancestor.

~~~
monadic2
Sure, but who believes english comes from modern german? The OP is laying out
a strawman of confusion. The article certainly does not make this claim. It’s
being pulled from the OP’s ass with no context for a dopamine hit.

Edit: removed accidental condemnation of sodomy.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
I regularly teach a historical linguistics course. Despite my repeatedly
telling my students that Germanic is not the same as German (it's easier in
German, where the distinction is clearer: Germanisch vs Deutsch), and that
English doesn't come from German, a surprisingly high percentage still end up
thinking that English comes from German.

So, the Strawman is realer than one would like, albeit still lacking a brain.

~~~
shitgoose
You are probably right, but the original article is more of a "freestyle". It
is entertaining and engaging. Conflating (deliberate or not) of cousins and
ancestors is a small price to pay to keep the reader on the subject. [pardon
my English, I am sure you will find enough to critisize]

~~~
_emacsomancer_
It would be pretty easy to say something like "Go far enough back, and English
and German (and Dutch &c.) were the same language...."

~~~
monadic2
Is that not true? Certainly you can find a period of time when populations in
both England and Saxony spoke mutually intelligible tongues. This confusion
seems to arise out of a deliberate misinterpretation of your quote out of bad
faith, not any semantic misunderstanding of the past.

If you believe this isn’t true you’re wandering into a territory of
objectively demarcated language and dialect classification to little benefit.
Pedagogically useful I’m sure, but to what semantic end? Hell I thought this
was the type of problem linguistics intended to _solve_.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
No, it is true: that was exactly why I suggested it. My point was that rather
than saying something along the lines of "English used to be German" (which
makes as much sense and is just as true [false] as saying "German used to be
English"), it would have been easy enough to quickly say that they used to be
the same language.

(Though, as to your point about England and Saxony: (1) mutual intelligibility
is not the same as being the same language (2) Old Saxon isn't the same as Old
High German.)

[But, you're right about demarcating language: it gets tricky pretty quickly.
E.g., from a certain perspective, English (and German, and French, and Hindi)
don't exist in the first place. A bunch of people have some sort of
instantiations of formal grammars + lexicons in their brains and the output of
these is such that some sort of more or less effective communication takes
place and so we say these people 'speak the same language'.]

~~~
cmrdporcupine
It's also not even clear that Saxon is actually the origin for English; yes
the Anglo-Saxons often called themselves Saxons, but it is likely the ethno-
linguistic pool they came from was something closer to Frisian than Saxon. Or
some sort of Common West Germanic, from what is now Schleswig-Holstein and
Frisia, not Saxony proper.

So yeah there would have been mutual intellegibility, because at that point
there was likely high mutual intelligibility between all Western Germanic
languages. But like you said that doesn't make them the same language. And
like you aluded to, it's kind of a lumpers vs splitters thing.

