Look at these two sentences in English, and how they were written differently in the past. The text is from Luke 2:1-3 in the Bible (I chose the Bible simply because that book has been rewritten so many times through history).
Of course, reading this won't improve your English, but I think it's interesting. How do you think yourlanguage has changed in the last 1000 years?
OLD ENGLISH <em>(written around AD1000)</em>
Soþlice on þam dagum wæs geworden gebod fram þam casereAugusto, þæt eall ymbehwyrft wære tomearcod. Þeos tomearcodneswæs æryst geworden fram þam deman Syrige Cirino. And ealle hig eodon,and syndrige ferdon on hyra ceastre.
Important texts in Old English: Beowulf (the earliest masterpiece of English literature)
MIDDLE ENGLISH <em>(AD1380, John Wycliffe translation)</em>
And it was don in tho daies, a maundement wente out fro the emperour August, thatal the world schulde be discryued. This firste discryuyng was maad of Cyryn, iustice of Sirie. And alle men wenten to make professioun, ech in to his owne citee
Important texts in Middle English: The Canterbury Tales (possibly the most significant book ever written in English), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (the most famous story about King Arthur)
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH <em>(1604, King James Bible)</em>
And it came to passe in those dayes, that there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was gouernor of Syria) And all went to bee taxed, euery one into his owne citie
Important texts in EME: anything by Shakespeare, the first ever (real) dictionary of English (by Samuel Johnson, this dictionary finally standardised English spelling.)
MODERN ENGLISH <em>(1978, New International Version)</em>
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.
Important authors in the development of late ME: <em>Jane Austen (her style has some EME elements that sound strange today), Charles Dickens (his books contain a lot of 19th-Century British slang!), Mark Twain (a great example of 19th-century American English, his books also contained a lot of African American slang)</em>
Thanks for the very interesting post, Alan. I would just add that it was the Anglo-Saxons (a mix of West Germanic tribes, including Angles, Saxons and Jutes), rather than the North Germanic Vikings, who brought the Old English language to Britain (England didn't exist at that time, it was later created when the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united, and takes its name from the Angles). The Vikings arrived several centuries later, from Norway and Denmark. They also settled in large areas of England, bringing with them their own language, Norse, which was a Germanic language closely related to, and possibly to some extent mutually intelligible with, Old English. Old English adopted many words from Norse, the most notable example from your text being Modern English "their" (compare that with "hyra" in the Old English text).
While on the subject, it's also interesting to note that the Vikings also settled in northern France, where they were known as Normans (< "Northman"). There they adopted the French language and later invaded and conquered England (in the year 1066). They had a very far-reaching effect on the English language. Some Norman French words in your text are: issue, decree, entire, governor, register.
It's interesting to follow the development of the word for "town" in these four texts. The Old English version uses "ceastre", which is an old Latin borrowing (< "castrum"); after the Norman conquest the French word "citee/citie" is used; then in the Modern English version a word of Anglo-Saxon origin - "town" - is used. Of these, "ceastre" is now only found in place names (as "chester", "-cester"), while the other two, "city" and "town" are in common use, with slightly different meanings.
A note on the Old English: this language was brought to England around AD450-650 by Viking tribes from modern-day Denmark, France and the Netherlands
It's not quite as strange as it looks! In just those two sentences, there are many words that are the same or very similar to modern English:
on: on
wæs: was
fram: from
þæt : that (the letter "þ" was pronounced "th")
and: and
to: to
The grammar was far more complex, though, and similar in many ways to modern German today.
Interesting note :)
Persian also has had many changes through many years, reading old works of literature in Persian and trying to understand the meaning of them is entertaining for me.
Here's a (not very funny) joke in Proto-Indo-European! I'd love to know how linguists are able to reconstruct pronunciations that went extinct so long ago...
http://io9.gizmodo.com/listen-to-what-our-ancestors-language-sounded-like-6-0-1403832049
And here's a mega-compilation of ancient languages, including Old and Middle Chinese and Japanese, as well as a bunch of ancient Middle Eastern languages. I'm not sure how reliable all of them are though, the Latin recording seems to have a rather Polish-sounding twang...
Here you can listen to an Old Irish joke: www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/sengoidelc/donncha/tm/en/aithris.html
If you don't happen to understand Old Irish, or you'd like to see how the language has changed over the past 1000 years, you can find the same text translated into Modern Irish here: www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/sengoidelc/donncha/tm/ga/ (scroll about half way down the page)
For anyone who doesn't understand Modern Irish either, here's the link to the English translation: www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/sengoidelc/donncha/tm/en/
