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jimthesquirrelking t1_j0s46sq wrote

Reply to comment by ragnarok62 in Ancient Grammatical Puzzle That Has Baffled Scientists for 2,500 Years Solved by Cambridge University Student by Superb_Boss289

Modern and old English are far apart enough to be quite difficult to translate fully, I imagine a language with deeper roots even more so

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ragnarok62 t1_j0s5m4s wrote

The article should have made this more clear. To state that people speak Sanskrit today makes everything else odd.

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Tony2Punch t1_j0sgovt wrote

There are people that speak the Vedic Sanskrit, it is extremely useful in figuring out the Proto-Indo-European Language. That is the old Sanskrit.

Fun fact, a Sanskrit Scholar would have been able to talk to a Lithuanian peasant back in ye olde’ time because their languages were similar enough.

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_rgk t1_j0snxzd wrote

When?

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mylittlekarmamonster t1_j0srq8p wrote

> I’ll let you be the judge of that. Here are two sentences, one in sanskrit, one in lithuanian: Sanskrit: Kas tvam asi? Asmi svapnas tava tamase nakte. Agniṃ dadau te śradi tada viśpatir devas tvam asi. Lithuanian: Kas tu esi? Esmi sapnas tavo tamsioje naktyje. Ugnį daviau tau širdy, tada viešpatis dievas tu esi. English: Who are you? A dream in your dark night. I gave you the fire in your heart, so you are god our lord. Sanskrit: Kas tava sūnus? Lithuanian: Kas tavo sūnus? English: Who is your son?

Just some words. Lithuanian on the left, Sanskrit center, English on the right: DIEVAS-DEVAS-GOD; BŪTIS-BHUTIS-EXISTENCE; VIEŠPATS-VISPATI-Another expression for God (more or less equivalent to the christian expression: “our lord”); RASA-RASA-DEW; MEDUS-MADHUS-HONEY; JAVAS-YAVAS-CEREAL; UGNIS - AGNIS-FIRE; VĖJAS-VAJUS-WIND; AKMUO-AKMAN-STONE/ROCK; BANGA- BHANGA-WAVE; VYRAS-VIRAS-MAN; SŪNUS-SUNUS-SON; SENAS-SANAS-OLD; ESU-ASMI-I’M... Of course, they are still different languages, but it’s no wonder many scholars that want to study Sanskrit do study Lithuanian first.

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notmyrealnameatleast t1_j0sv6gf wrote

Wow that's so interesting, I had no idea they were so similar and yet so far apart geographically.

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Russki_Wumao t1_j0tvyze wrote

I speak Latvian and I understood all but three words you listed. This is neat as fuck. The Sanskrit sentence reads more like Latgalian dialect. Probably because the region borders with Lithuania.

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dilsiam t1_j0u0f8a wrote

This is beautiful and very interesting, thank you for sharing

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Modern_rocko t1_j0sri2q wrote

Ye Olde’ Time, he just said

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MarsRocks97 t1_j0t5mzi wrote

On a tangent, but I read somewhere that “Ye” is not pronounced like in yet or yeet. The archaic letter Y was just commonly used to denote a “th” sound.

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nolo_me t1_j0t7t3r wrote

The letter þ was called "thorn", it fell out of use with the rise of the printing press. In blackletter type "Y" was often substituted.

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cdncbn t1_j0thxzd wrote

Even more tangential, but I do enjoy saying 'th' to myself whenever I see Ye in the news.

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GoAheadMakeMySplay t1_j0t7vlg wrote

Yeah, right here. As a native anglophone, I struggled with Middle English (Chaucer, Canterbury Tales) and Old English was undecipherable (Beowulf) to me

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________________0 t1_j0tasga wrote

And Chaucer is late middle-English which is much easier to understand than even just early middle-English. I can read Chaucer pretty reliably now but fuck if I can read Layamon's Brut yet.

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GoAheadMakeMySplay t1_j0tdmhn wrote

*Whan that Aprile, with his showeres soote, and the raines hath perced to the roote... ________________0 hath this thy comme, in pilrammage for soote"

(yes, I'm drunk right now, so please accept this as an approximation)

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sycamotree t1_j0tw149 wrote

Is "soote" soot? Otherwise it didn't seem that tough. But I also obviously could just be wrong in understanding so there's that lol.

Granted I also don't understand what soot would even mean in this context unless it's a poem about volcanoes or something lol

Edit: I looked it up.. it means sweet? Guess I had no idea what I was talking about anyway

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Drachefly t1_j0unp12 wrote

properly,

> Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
> The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

Means, "when the (sweet) rain of April has thoroughly wetted the ground after the drought of March…"

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sycamotree t1_j0x1nvp wrote

I read this as, "When April with its showers sweet, the drought of March has pierced to the roots."

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Drachefly t1_j0x8tlz wrote

I rearranged to make the grammar clearer. Like, what's doing the piercing in that sentence? It's April, not the drought of March.

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sycamotree t1_j0x8ywu wrote

Man I thought it was a poem I didn't think about it making sense lol I'm just saying how I read it in a literal sense. I didn't interpret it as "first, then"

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doegred t1_j0u1w0u wrote

TBF Beowulf is probably not the best example since it's poetry. Old English is still obviously its own language but if you've got a few basic notions of phonology and/or some knowledge of another Germanic language you'll probably be able to decipher a bit of OE prose. Poetry on the other hand will still be hard as fuck.

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