Post #1404859
2026-02-22 13:18 UTC
@mirabilos @Tinido Interesting to read how you experienced those phases!
No, I don't understand these Middle and Old English texts with ease. I understand more than the average layman thanks to my lknowledge of historical phonology, grammar and vocabulary, but I'm more of a generalist than a specialist when it comes to those phases. Only people who have enough experience reading full texts become familiar enough with these languages to understand them fluently.
Replies (2)
-
@mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org 2026-02-22 14:00
@yvanspijk @Tinido interesting! So it’s more a, you know more so you can work through it with effort, but as it’s a dead language you aren’t getting anywhere near fluent in it unless you specialise? (Like I tried to learn to speak Latin at school (like in actual conversations) but never found a sparring partner and it’s impossible alone.)
-
@mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org 2026-02-22 14:05
@Tinido @yvanspijk I probably got the historic phonology all wrong but often I could just pronounce a word as if it was english, german or dutchish, and the result would make sense in either english, germanic or romance. That was fun!