Reading English from 1000 Ad

rob741 hour ago

As a native German speaker, I can at least say that knowing both German and English doesn't really help in understanding the text. Not even the most "dumbed down" version - ok, he's apparently saying something about his wife, but no idea what exactly. And when I read "shyne (Modern English "sheen" but German cognate is closer)", I was even more confused. "Sheen" is the property of an object that is shiny, which in German would be "Schein", but because it is applied to a woman, I assume that the "cognate" he refers to is "schön" (beautiful)?

Sharlin17 minutes ago
Another Modern English cognate even closer to shyne than "sheen" is "shine" (and obviously the German "schein"). The words for "beautiful", "fair", "bright", "shining", "well-reputed", "righteous" have a long history of being related:<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schinen#Middle_English" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schinen#Middle_English</a> (to shine, to appear)<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skyr#Middle_English" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skyr#Middle_English</a> (clear-coloured, pale, light, luminous, radiant)<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sciene#Old_English" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sciene#Old_English</a> (beautiful, fair, brilliant, shining)<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/sk%C4%ABnan%C4%85" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic...</a> skīnaną (to shine, to appear)<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/sk%C4%ABriz" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic...</a> skīriz (pure, clear, sheer)<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/skauniz" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic...</a> skauniz (beautiful, shining)and ultimately the PIE<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/(s)%E1%B8%B1eh%E2%82%81y-" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...</a> (s)ḱeh₁y- (to shine)There are cognates absolutely everywhere in modern Germanic languages:<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sk%C3%ADr#Icelandic" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sk%C3%ADr#Icelandic</a> skír (bright, clear, pure)<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skir#Swedish" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skir#Swedish</a> (sheer, delicate, shining)And even in Slavic languages:<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/sijati" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s...</a> sijati (to shine, to illuminate)Skauniz was even borrowed to Proto-Finnic and highly conserved in modern Finnish, Estonian, Ingric, etc. which all have kaunis meaning "beautiful"!<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/kaunis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/k...</a>

kusokurae1 hour ago

Highly dependent on passage and writer imo, for anything before 1500Some people I've had say middle english is easy enough to read now, and that's sometimes true, but if you drop some passages of Gawain or Pearl in front of people they'll be convinced it's an extra 2-300 years older. Anything non-London dialect is harder

HelloUsername45 minutes ago

Related? "How far back in time can you understand English?" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061614">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061614</a> 18-feb-2026 399 comments

sgt59 minutes ago

Fascinating