A common grammatical error made by 'smart' people

[CRGreathouse]

1066.

From the wikipedia article on Middle English:

1000:

Syððan wæs geworden þæt he ferde þurh þa ceastre and þæt castel: godes rice prediciende and bodiende. and hi twelfe mid. And sume wif þe wæron gehælede of awyrgdum gastum: and untrumnessum: seo magdalenisce maria ofþære seofan deoflu uteodon: and iohanna chuzan wif herodes gerefan: and susanna and manega oðre þe him of hyra spedum þenedon.​

1400:

And it is don, aftirward Jesus made iourne bi cites & castelis prechende & euangelisende þe rewme of god, & twelue wiþ hym & summe wymmen þat weren helid of wicke spiritis & sicnesses, marie þat is clepid maudeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten out & Jone þe wif off chusi procuratour of eroude, & susanne & manye oþere þat mynystreden to hym of her facultes.​

Modern:

And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance.​

Certainly it's harder to go from modern to 1066 than from modern to 1400, but I think that the changes from 1066 to 1460 were smaller, year-by-year, than those from 1460 to 1510. (I reserve the right to fiddle with the precise years!)

 

[SW VandeCarr]

And it is don, aftirward Jesus made iourne bi cites & castelis prechende & euangelisende þe rewme of god, & twelue wiþ hym & summe wymmen þat weren helid of wicke spiritis & sicnesses, marie þat is clepid maudeleyn, of whom seuene deuelis wenten out & Jone þe wif off chusi procuratour of eroude, & susanne & manye oþere þat mynystreden to hym of her facultes.[/indent]

Did they really use '&' in 1400? Where can I get those other cool Olde and Middle English characters?

 

[tiny-tim]

ðÞþÿß …

Did they really use '&' in 1400? Where can I get those other cool Old and Middle English characters?

(If you can read 'em, then you got 'em! )

On the Mac character palette, they're in the ISO-8859-1 list between A01 and F0F

 

[D H]

Certainly it's harder to go from modern to 1066 than from modern to 1400, but I think that the changes from 1066 to 1460 were smaller, year-by-year, than those from 1460 to 1510. (I reserve the right to fiddle with the precise years!)

The change from Middle to Modern English resulted from invasions of little rats. The plagues forced rich and poor to move and commingle. The language changed as people changed their speech to find a common ground. The invading rats of course did not speak. The change from Old to Middle English resulted from invasions by much bigger pests, the Normans. The language changed in 1066 because these earlier invaders spoke. They introduced a new language. Middle English is a meld of two languages. Modern English is a meld of multiple dialects of one language.

 

[CRGreathouse]

The change from Middle to Modern English resulted from invasions of little rats. The plagues forced rich and poor to move and commingle. The language changed as people changed their speech to find a common ground. The invading rats of course did not speak. The change from Old to Middle English resulted from invasions by much bigger pests, the Normans. The language changed in 1066 because these earlier invaders spoke. They introduced a new language. Middle English is a meld of two languages. Modern English is a meld of multiple dialects of one language.

I'm quite familiar with this, yes. I've studied linguistics, particularly Indo-European languages.

Modern linguists would not call it a meld: the substratum is decidedly Germanic. The language did import around 2/3 to 3/4 of its vocabulary from Italic languages (French and Latin). As for dialects, it was certainly influenced by many, though the West Saxon dialect was probably more influential than all the others together. (Just historic happenstance, as usual.)

Did they really use '&' in 1400? Where can I get those other cool Olde and Middle English characters?

& was much more common in 1400 than it is today. It was a typographic alteration of the script form of "et", Latin for "and"; you can still see the letters in some of the fancier (=older, naturally) ampersands. ("ampersand", incidentally, comes from "and per se".) It was also used in abbreviations: &c. for et cetera "and other things", today written "etc.".

Unicode has the thorn, ash, eth, wynn, yogh, the long s, and so on.