Tim May wrote: > > All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are > > the same age. > > This statement is so silly it leaves me speechless... > > Getting my breath back, > > > Of course some might change more slowly than others (Greek seems to > > have > > a;ltered less than Latin in 2500 years), or might remain in one place > > longer than others (it is silly to say that Welsh is an older language > > than English, but it is older in Britain)
> Nonsense. Icelandic is little changed from the Old Norse of 1000 A.D. > Icelanders can easily read the sagas without help; modern Danes and > Norwegians cannot. English, by contrast, is substantially different > from just the Middle English of Chaucer, let alone the Old English of > Beowulf. Er, that's exactly what I said - they are the same age, but some change more slowly than others... and I did warn that I was being unreasonably pedantic. I just about can read /The Canterbury Tales/ straight off, though it does help knowing some of the background. There is a sort of knack to it, a twist of the mind, that once you catch it shows that is more like modern English than it appears at first sight. Sort of like imagining it was English written down phonetically by a drunk Belgian :-) But /Beowulf/, as you say, might as well be a foreign language. I last read it with the Old English and a translation open at the same time, & even then it was hard going. /Gawaine and the Green Knight/ and /Pearl/ are much harder than the /Tales/, though almost contemporary. Chaucer's London dialect was much more modern than the northern Gawaine Poet,
