understanding older language??

[Alveranter]

Why is it that some languages seem to be preserved more than others?

Chinese was practically unchanged for thousands of years.. and most native english speakers are fully capable of reading the works of Shakespeare.. written hundreds of years ago. (heck even I can do that).

Texts from let's say the 17th or 18th century in my mother tongue Swedish, are practically unintelligible.. It really isn't the same language..

These are the only examples I can come up with.. do you have any more??

[Claw]

I wouldn't say Chinese was practically unchanged for thousands of years. The main benefit of Chinese characters are that since they aren't completely based on pronunciation, many of the characters used centuries ago are still the same now. The orthography of the chracters has also remained unchanged for the past two thousand years.

However, the grammar has evolved a lot. Chinese used to be written in 文言文, which used classical Chinese grammar. But over the many centuries, spoken Chinese and written Chinese grew so far apart that 文言文 was eventually abandoned in the early 20th century for the current writing system we have today, 白話文 (Vernacular Chinese), which is based on the Mandarin dialect. The May Fourth Movement in 1919 eventually sealed the fate of 文言文.

Unless trained, most people today are unable to read works written in 文言文... they may be able to get a vague idea of a passage by recognizing many of the characters, but the entire meaning may not be as decipherable. Certain features of 文言文 still appear in more formal documents. Newspapers also make use of some 文言文, which manifests itself as 書面語, which is why it is sometimes harder to read a newspaper than it is to read an informal letter (it's also the reason why you wouldn't necessarily say something the way it would be written). Pure 文言文 is hardly ever used though.

and most native english speakers are fully capable of reading the works of Shakespeare.. written hundreds of years ago. (heck even I can do that).

Try reading Chaucer in the original Middle English (circa 14th century). It's practically unintelligible as well.

[Guest Yau]

Unless trained, most people today are unable to read works written in 文言文...

我中學時也有閱讀文言文的訓練, 但諸子百家那些文章, 還是太難太難唸.

楚詞、詩經更是吃不消, 據說現在不少註釋還有商榷餘地.

[pazu]

楚辭有少少唔同啦, 就算當時嘅人都唔一定明白哂全部啦, 就好似北京人睇廣東人打中文咁, 明到七八九成左右咋。

[Claw]

楚辭有乜嘢唔同㗎？我未睇過楚辭。

[Bamboo Grove]

Texts from let's say the 17th or 18th century in my mother tongue Swedish, are practically unintelligible.

hey, even the present day Swedish seems the same to me and I did study it for 7 years.

However, you do have a very strong and interesting accent in Sweden as well, Skåne. How much does anybody outside the area understand the accent?

[Alveranter]

hey, even the present day Swedish seems the same to me and I did study it for 7 years.

However, you do have a very strong and interesting accent in Sweden as well, Skåne. How much does anybody outside the area understand the accent?

ok.. maybe that was an exaggeration.. but it is sometimes with great difficulties you just have to scrape through a text, just catching up a few words here and there..

Yes.. the accent in Skåne.. (actually called skånska) is a very distinct one.. and probably also the most ridiculed dialect too I suppose that a very domestic form of the dialect (perhaps spoken by people in the countryside, far away from "civilization") could be considererd very difficult to understand, but otherwise, people should have no more trouble understanding it than the accent of my region.. which is close to Gothenburg.

[Guest Yau]

楚辭有乜嘢唔同㗎？我未睇過楚辭。

上古文學之中, 北有詩經, 南有楚詞. 柏楊話中原人形容楚國人講野, 好似鳥兒叫, 完全講乜鬼, 好彩佢地引入左漢字, 先無成為另一種語言. 可想而知, 佢地文法相差幾大, 睇唔明楚辭都唔出奇架.

不過佢地有乜春分別, 我就唔知喇. 還掂楚辭詩經都係一樣超難明啦.

p.s. 丫, 你估班老外睇見我地打廣州話果陣, 會唔會騎呢地去查字典呢. 一於查死佢地.

[Claw]

p.s. 丫, 你估班老外睇見我地打廣州話果陣, 會唔會騎呢地去查字典呢. 一於查死佢地.

肯定呀！

[Machjo]

Arabic has remained relatively unchanged since the time of the Qur'an, which certainly isn't a coincidence; people still read it regularly, so it would naturally continue to influence the modern language. As for English, some people still have an appreciation for the King James Bible, Shakespear, Chaucer, etc.

Thus these texts end up stabilizing the evolution of the language from there on in. What would happen, however, if people suddenly gave up on these older texts and turned to a new set of more current literature? I suspect that that could then allow the language to start drifting again. That's my theroy, anyway.

I'd be curious to know if there is any particular older text in Swedish which people have really held on to for generations up until now?

[Alveranter]

hm.. I'll have to think about that.. but since I can't come up with any now, there probably isn't..

[pazu]

Arabic has remained relatively unchanged since the time of the Qur'an, which certainly isn't a coincidence; people still read it regularly, so it would naturally continue to influence the modern language.

I thought the classical form of Arabic is quite different from modern Arabic indeed... I don't know Arabic, can anyone give us more information about Arabic?

[beirne]

Also Arabic differs a lot from country to country, so much that they can be mutually incomprehensible. This is another sign the the language has changed.

[shibo77]

Standard Classical Arabic has remained mostly unchanged. But the vernacular, what is spoken everyday, has changed a lot, and differently in different regions.

Modern Literary Chinese(文言) hasn't changed much since the southern Song dynasty (the 12th century). But the vernacular has changed differently in different regions. Presently, almost all literature are written in the (白话)vernacular.

-Shibo

[yonglan]

Just curious, when you say 17th & 18th century Swedish is "practically unintelligable" do you mean you can't even follow the plot or that the cultural details are lost?

[Alveranter]

well.. I was exaggerating, I admit that.. but I was alluding to the huge spelling reforms during the past centuries.. (Even though much of the texts are very difficult to understand unless you're a pundit) I don't know if this is of any interest but I am a man with much leisure and will therefore copy a text from a book I have and try to translate it..

Ur stockholms stads tänkebok 1544-48 (I know it's not from the 17th century but it didn't change that much during that period and it's just a few decades earlier than Shakespeare)

Item samme dagh (28 juni 1544) war for retta Jörenn Benedict, föd vdi Könsbergh, och wart han anklagat aff Nils Helsing i Stocholm, att för:ne Jörren hade stulit jfrå Niels Helsingh eth hanckestop aff sölff och eth sölffbond, men sölff stopet stod på disken i radstuffuin tilstädis och sölffbondet hafuer tiuffuen panthsatt Mechil Larson, borgare i Vlffzby (what kind of spelling is that.. =) for 4 march peningar. Och ther med bekende for:ne Jörgen Benedict sine gherningh, och bleff han dömd tiill galgen. Men epter her fattadis en häncker j staden, bleff han benådet tiill liifuet, att han en häncker wara skulle, och reckte han mester Larss hånderna, och miste han samme dagh både sin öronn.

thinking about it though.. I won't translate it =) .. even though I get the context, I would need some older dictionary to translate it into proper words.. otherwise it would just be rediculous..

spelling reforms:

radstuffuin - rådstugan

sölff - silver

gherningh - gärning

liifuet - livet

håndena - händerna

and numerable incomprehendable words..

so it's not unintelligible, it just seems to me, that swedish has changed more trastically than let's say english over the past centuries..

[yonglan]

I may be wrong, but I'm guessing you may be the only person on this board (or one of a few) who can read Swedish, and hence judge the veracity of your claim.

I will say that naitve English speakers don't understand Shaky as well most think they do. Also, not too long before Shaky, English went through a big change and has calmed down since then. Languages do not evolve slowly. They tend to change in fits and starts.

[Altair]

It has literally been decades since I knew much Swedish, but I can confirm that some of the spellings are indeed quite bizarre.

Swedish is maybe only slightly friendlier towards consonant clusters than English and I can’t imagine what words like “vdi” and “Vlffzby” are supposed to represent. I can guess that the “v’s” are supposed to be “u’s,” but I still cannot figure out what these words are supposed to be. The double “ii’s” are bizarre, except maybe in Finnish. “H’s” seem haphazardly tacked onto the ends of words to no purpose I can imagine. Some of the “p’s” seem to represent f’s (e.g., “epter” = “efter” ?), which I have never seen in any language. Of the actual words Alveranter cites, only “gherningh” seems at least rational.

Just for fun, I would like to make a guess at the sense of the passage, without using a dictionary. Below is what I can partially dredge up. I think I can recognize about half the words as definitely Swedish, but probably recall the meanings of only about 60% of these.

“One Jörenn Benedict who was accused by Nils Helsing of stealing some sort of silver object that had been bought (tiuffuen = cöpt?) for four pennies from Mechil Larson, a citizen (burgher?) of Vlffzy. Jörenn Benedict was first condemned to be hanged; but then, after something was done about a hangman(?) in the town, he was pardoned so that he could be a hangman(?). He then did something to Master Lars’ hands and lost both of his ears that same day.”

My rendering would definitely be more complete and make more sense if I still had a decent knowledge of Swedish, but I can again confirm that some of these words and spellings are quite strange.

By the way, I thought there were still dialects (mal?) in Sweden that were not comprehensible to speakers of standard Swedish. I once had a friend from Orsa, and he said that in Dalecarlia (Dalarna?) there were a number of these. I recall him talking about a particular “mal” in Orsa that used something like “uh” (pronounced with the English “oo” of “book” and with an audible “h” at the end) for “hello.”

As for the question of languages changing at different rates, I think a good example is Icelandic. From what I have read, modern Icelanders can read Viking (Old Norse) sagas with about the same difficulty as Modern English speakers read Shakespeare. The language of the sagas is about 1000 years old, however. It is interesting to contrast this with modern Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. These three languages are also more or less descended from Old Norse. Speakers of any of the three languages can to some degree communicate with speakers of the other two languages. None of them, however, can make anything out of Icelandic or Old Norse, just as Modern English speakers cannot understand Old English to any meaningful degree.

Spanish has been much more stable than English or French, from what I recall; and yet, American Spanish and European Spanish show more separation than American English and European English. Perhaps an extra hundred years of colonization make a difference.

I think the pace of language change is affected by a number of factors. One of these comes from when people change their opinion of what dialect of their language has the most prestige. Such a change struck English between Old and Middle English. The Old English we read today generally conformed to a stable literary standard of a particular dialect (Wessex?). This homogenized language obscured changes that were probably going on all the time, expecially in other dialects of Old English. When Middle English established a credible literature, it evolved out of a dialect of Old English that had been little represented in the literature up till that time (Mercer?). As a result, the changes look quite striking.

As for Shakespeare, I would agree that his works are less comprehensible to Modern English speakers than one might think. Enough linguistic distance has appeared that we can even speak of modern “translations” of Shakespeare.

When I listen to Shakespeare’s plays, I can understand about 95 to 98 percent of the language, but only if I concentrate. I would guess that speakers with less education understand substantially less, maybe 60-70 percent. The issue is not so much that individual words have changed, but rather that they are used in such strange combinations. If the plays were also spoken with more authentic pronunciation, my own level of comprehension would probably drop to 90 to 94 percent.

Some aspects of Shakespeare’s grammar are lost on modern speakers, such as the difference in usage between “thee” and “you.” Similarly, I would wager that a large percentage of the English speakers on this board grew up misunderstanding the famous quote: “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo.” Many people mistakenly believe Juliet was saying: “Romeo, Romeo, where are you, Romeo,” instead of “Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo?” How many people immediately recognize the real meaning of “To be or not to be, that is the question”? The individual words are easy, but the combination is strange to modern speakers, and not immediately transparent as a debate about the appropriateness of suicide.

[shibo77]

Is Latin stable?

-Shibo

[Claw]

Latin is pretty stable because no one speaks it anymore, just like Classical/Literary Chinese is pretty stable because it's only used in writing. In order to use these languages, people just learn a bunch of rules so there's no real way for these languages to evolve anymore.