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GoAheadMakeMySplay t1_j0t7vlg wrote

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

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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