Should be "how far back in time can you read English?" The language itself is what is spoken and the writing, while obviously related, is its own issue. Spelling is conventional and spelling and alphabet changes don't necessarily correspond to anything meaningful in the spoken language; meanwhile there can be large changes in pronunciation and comprehensibility that are masked by an orthography that doesn't reflect them.
Seems to be heavily focused on orthography. In 1700s we get the long S that resembles an F. In 1600 we screw with the V's and U's. In 1400, the thorn and that thing that looks like a 3 appears. Then more strange symbols show up later on as well.
If you want to improve your score, the blog author (Dr. Colin Gorrie) has just the thing: a book which will teach you Old English by means of a story about a talking bear. Here's how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZhlWdVvZfw . Your dream of learning Old English has never been closer: get Ōsweald Berahttps://colingorrie.com/books/osweald-bera/ today.
> No cap, that lowkey main character energy is giving skibidi rizz, but the fanum tax is cooked so we’re just catching strays in the group chat, fr fr, it’s a total skill issue, periodt.
The other difficulties with older texts is not just the different spellings or the now arcane words - but that the meaning of some of those recognisable words changed over time. C.S. Lewis wrote an excellent book that describing the changing meanings of a word (he termed ramifications) and dedicated a chapter to details this for several examples including ‘Nature’, ‘Free’ and ‘Sense’. Would highly recommend a read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_Words
I'd love to see actual, authentic material that was rewritten through the years. One possibility is a passage from the Bible, though that's not usual English. Another is laws or other official texts - even if not exactly the same, they may be comparable. Maybe personal letters written from or to the same place about the same topic - e.g., from or to the Church of England and its predecessor about burial, marriage, or baptism.
The author Colin Gorrie, "PhD linguist and ancient language teacher", obviously knows their stuff. From my experience, much more limited and less informed, the older material looks like a modern writer mixing in some archaic letters and expression - it doesn't look like the old stuff and isn't nearly as challenging, to me.
Well, for a native speaker of Dutch who doesn't speak English at all (not many left since my grandmother died in 2014), I'd say old English is actually easier to read than modern - starting around 1400.
Around 1000, English and Dutch must have been mutually understandable.
Really interesting! Somewhat reminds me of the ending of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls", where the main character, a scion of a very old family which has done some really bad things, goes mad and progressively starts speaking in older and older versions of English after every sentence.
no cap u need to b like so unc 2 read this I finna yeet my phone like who even reads I have siri English is lowkey chueggy anyway all my homies use emoji now bet
English is cooked fam. Gen Alpha’s kids are going to get lost at the 2000 paragraph.
This was a fun exercise. I made it through 1300 by reading it in a Scottish accent and being familiar with some basic old Norse characters from a prior trip to Iceland. I watch Scottish shows like "Still Game", and for some reason that combo with the accent and their lingo made it simpler to read. By 1200 I was completely lost; it looks more Germanic to me, which I don't have the knowledge to read.
Their long S is really annoying, although truthfully I generally am unfamiliar with the long s in modern fonts so I don't KNOW if it really looks worse than it needs to, but I feel it looks worse that it needs to and that makes it harder, for example I thought lest at first was left and had to go back a couple words after.
Anyway as I know from my reading history at 1400 it gets difficult, but I can make it through 1400 and 1300 with difficulty, but would need to break out the middle English dictionaries for 1200 and 1100. 1000 forget it, too busy to make that effort.
1400 seems fine except for the one big hurdle being "Þ", which I feel like I'd seen at some point but did not recall. ("ȝ" is useful but that's somewhat easier to guess and not too critical. "ſ" is also easy to guess and I'd seen it before.)
1300 is noticeably harder and needs some iterative refinement, but once you rewrite it, it's surprisingly not too bad:
> Then after much time spoke the master, his words were cold as winter is. His voice was the crying of rauenes(?), sharp and chill, and all that heard him were adrade(?) and dared not speak.
> "I deem thee(?) to the(?) death, stranger. Here shall you die, far from thy kin and far from thine own land, and none shall known thy name, nor non shall thy biwepe(?)."
> And I said to him [...]
1200 is where I can't understand much... it feels like where the vocabulary becomes a significant hurdle, not just the script:
> Hit(?) is much to saying all that pinunge(?) hie(?) on me(?) uroyten(?), all that sore(?) and all that sorry. No scar(?) is never hit(?) forgotten, not uuhiles(?) is libbe(?).
It gets exhausting to keep going after these :-) but this was very fun.
This is something I struggle with on a semi-regular basis since I'm fairly interested in our constitutional history, so documents like the Bill of Rights 1688/9[1], the Petition of Right 1627[2], etc, are not old or illegible enough to have been given modern translations (like the Magna Carta 1297[3]). As such, they can be difficult reads, particularly with their endless run-on sentences. Punctuation seems to have not been invented yet either.
Very neat! My native language is Russian. I could understand it pretty well up to 1300, then only about 40% of the 1200 section (not at all the beginning, but the last paragraph was easier), then quite little after that - though I understood enough to glean that there was some woman who had showed up that caused the Master to flee.
I really got into reading Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" (about 1497) about a year ago, and I suspect that really helped me with this exercise, since he uses some language that was archaic even back then.
I really wish there was an audio recording of this story. I found the spellings in the earlier years more and more confusing.
1200 is where I can't anymore. This was interesting. I expected it to be about there. I'm a highly educated native speaker (i.e., well above median vocabulary) with some French and a lot of German, plus understanding of orthographic changes.
I'm expecting that's true of a lot of people who meet my description, and my guess is university graduates not in STEM can read 1300 without issue (same as me), and certainly every native speaker with a college degree can read 1400. (Edit: FWIW I'm thinking here of how I can read Chaucer, and how I couldn't in 9th grade when I was introduced to him)
1200 I had to focus insanely hard and make guesses and circle back once I'd gotten more context to the words I couldn't read.
One of the absolute treasures of our time is The History of English Podcast. 186 episodes in, and he's just gotten past Shakespeare. The first 30 or so episodes might run a little slow for you for lack of written sources, but it really does pick up and has been hours of joy.
https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
For the prurient, Chaucer's Vulgar Tongue is a great place to dip a toe into it:
Haha! That was remarkable! What an enjoyable experience! I read through and thought I must surely have done better than the average man, having only started stumbling in the 1200s on account of using my clever method of speaking out the words, only to find from the author that this is about the average place a native English speaker would find his way barred by Germans!
Great fun, and helped a little perhaps by the fact that I've visited Iceland and that language uses the thorn for the sound we make in 'thin' and eth for the sound we make in 'then' so I mimicked that.
Interesting. Down through 1300 was pretty straight forward. 1200 slowed me down a lot. 1100 I could only get a couple of sentences from, at first straight read-through, but it looks like I should be able to read it by going carefully through it.
Background: Fully understands Scandinavian languages (native), can read a bit of German and Dutch, proficient in English, and can read a fair bit of Icelandic. All of this seems to help.
Score Breakdown
+0.15
PreamblePreamble
Low P:free_access
Editorial
ND
Structural
+0.15
SETL
ND
Combined
ND
Context Modifier
ND
Preamble emphasizes human dignity and equal rights. Structural platform supports open access and information sharing. Context modifiers reflect mission and accessibility. No direct editorial framing of preamble-relevant content.
+0.12
Article 1Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood
Low P:open_access
Editorial
ND
Structural
+0.12
SETL
ND
Combined
ND
Context Modifier
ND
Article addresses universal equality and rights. Structural accessibility enables broad participation. No editorial content directly addresses Article 1.
ND
Article 2Non-Discrimination
null
No observable editorial or structural content directly addressing non-discrimination. ND assigned.
ND
Article 3Life, Liberty, Security
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No observable content addressing right to life, liberty, security. ND assigned.
ND
Article 4No Slavery
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ND
Article 5No Torture
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No observable content addressing torture or cruel treatment. ND assigned.
ND
Article 6Legal Personhood
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No observable content addressing legal personhood. ND assigned.
ND
Article 7Equality Before Law
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No observable content addressing equality before law. ND assigned.
ND
Article 8Right to Remedy
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No observable content addressing access to justice. ND assigned.
ND
Article 9No Arbitrary Detention
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ND
Article 10Fair Hearing
null
No observable content addressing fair trial. ND assigned.
ND
Article 11Presumption of Innocence
null
No observable content addressing presumption of innocence. ND assigned.
ND
Article 12Privacy
null
No observable content addressing privacy. ND assigned.
ND
Article 13Freedom of Movement
null
No observable content addressing freedom of movement. ND assigned.
ND
Article 14Asylum
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ND
Article 15Nationality
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No observable content addressing nationality. ND assigned.
ND
Article 16Marriage & Family
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No observable content addressing marriage and family. ND assigned.
ND
Article 17Property
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No observable content addressing property. ND assigned.
ND
Article 18Freedom of Thought
null
No observable content addressing freedom of conscience and religion. ND assigned.
+0.49
Article 19Freedom of Expression
Medium A:information_access F:linguistic_education P:open_publishing
Editorial
+0.35
Structural
+0.22
SETL
+0.21
Combined
ND
Context Modifier
ND
Content directly exercises freedom of expression and information sharing through educational linguistics article. Platform structure enables open access and public discourse. Creator identified as language educator. Combined with context modifiers for accessibility and mission.
+0.10
Article 20Assembly & Association
Low P:open_assembly
Editorial
ND
Structural
+0.10
SETL
ND
Combined
ND
Context Modifier
ND
Platform enables comment and subscriber community (268 comments observed in metadata). Mild structural support for peaceful assembly and association. No editorial content directly addresses Article 20.
ND
Article 21Political Participation
null
No observable content addressing democratic participation or voting. ND assigned.
ND
Article 22Social Security
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No observable content addressing social security. ND assigned.
ND
Article 23Work & Equal Pay
null
No observable content addressing labor rights. ND assigned.
ND
Article 24Rest & Leisure
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No observable content addressing rest and leisure. ND assigned.
ND
Article 25Standard of Living
null
No observable content addressing adequate standard of living or health. ND assigned.
ND
Article 26Education
null
No observable content addressing education access. ND assigned.
+0.45
Article 27Cultural Participation
Medium A:cultural_participation F:linguistic_heritage C:language_history
Editorial
+0.40
Structural
+0.18
SETL
+0.30
Combined
ND
Context Modifier
ND
Article directly addresses language history and cultural understanding—core to Article 27 (participation in cultural life, scientific advancement, protection of intellectual interests). Editorial content demonstrates linguistic scholarship accessible to public. Supports cultural participation in intellectual commons.
+0.08
Article 28Social & International Order
Low P:social_order
Editorial
ND
Structural
+0.08
SETL
ND
Combined
ND
Context Modifier
ND
Platform structure enables community participation within social order. No editorial content directly addresses Article 28 duties. Minimal signal.
ND
Article 29Duties to Community
null
No observable content addressing limitations on rights for community protection. ND assigned.
ND
Article 30No Destruction of Rights
null
No observable content addressing prohibition of abuse of rights. ND assigned.