I think it was earlier this week, or maybe last week, that someone on one of the frontpage posts recommended "The History of English Podcast".
I haven't finished the first episode yet, but it's already seeming promising and I know I'm going to continue with it.
In that first episode (which is basically an introduction), the host explains that the history of the English language can be divided into three periods: Old English, Middle English, and New English.
After establishing that there are three periods, he asks where we think Shakespeare falls, and I immediately thought it had to be Middle English.
Then the host proceeded to say he wouldn’t be surprised if most listeners guessed Old or Middle English—and that he wouldn’t be surprised at all if nobody guessed correctly. Because Shakespeare’s plays are actually classified as New English!
I smiled in surprise.
But he explained that if you can more or less understand the English being written or spoken, then it still falls under New English. The King James Version of the Bible is considered New English too.
Keep in mind, Shakespeare wrote his plays between 1589 and 1613.
The King James Bible was published in 1611.
So when I opened that link in this thread’s header and realized I couldn’t understand a damn thing, it all suddenly made sense!
The History of English Podcast gets much better once he gets into the groove of things and I'd definitely recommend sticking with it. I love all the random fun facts that come in most episodes, like where idioms came from, meaning behind the names of the days of the week, and how the word for hospital relates to Christians pilgrimaging to the Holy Land.
I've seen this recommended a few times here, and I've listened since the beginning. I'd recommend it. But it would be hard to catch up after nearly 14 years and 187 episodes (probably averaging an hour?) - I wonder if there's a shorter history of English somewhere.
Is it still in production? I mean are new episodes still being released? Because I haven't finished the first episode yet, but if all episodes are as interesting as the first, I'll finish all those 187 episodes in no time. Hahaha.
Still in production. The most recent episode was released 2025-12-31, and it looks like he's lately been putting them out every two months. (I subscribe to the Patreon; there are bonus episodes interspersed between the regular episodes.)
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)?
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:
For a modern semantic parallel, we might point to the phrase "she's quite a looker".
It's also interesting to see the words related to hearing and reputation; I'm thinking of Greek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos and Slavic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#Ethnonym where there's a whole thing about having people talk about you loudly (or, alternatively, being able to produce intelligible speech at all).
Words to do with light are so subtle between German and English. Like Kraftwerk tells me neon lights are "schimmerndes" in German, which I will take their word on, but they also say they are "shimmering" in English which is definitely not true.
scyn/schön/sheen are a different root from schein/shine, for what its worth.
Also I realise now "forlet" is very archaic in modern english whereas "verlassen" is very common in modern german, which would have helped.
For a while, I mistakenly thought that “Germanic” meant related to German specifically. Old English makes more sense if you’re aware of Frisian, Dutch, and other non-Scandinavian Germanic languages, since that’s the area it originated from. German and Spanish make this distinction explicit (Deutsch/Germanisch and Alemán/Germánica).
That's a nice reconstruction. My old dead-tree Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has an essay in its foreword that covers the evolution of English in reverse order, ending with texts in Old Anglo-Saxon. The further back, the more alien it seemed. I'd need a lot of help with Middle English, and anything older would require the sort of major effort/rewriting discussed here. William the Conqueror set a huge linguistic change in motion with his little dust-up.
Really, even early Modern English (e.g. Shakespeare or the King James Bible) is pretty thick for today's English speakers.
Highly dependent on passage and writer imo, for anything before 1500
Some 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
No, Old English is pre-Norman invasion. I think you have (understandably) misunderstood what a "negative concord" means--it's when a double negative is still a negative, ie multiple negative elements agree with each other rather than cancel out. Like "I didn't hear no bell". A lot of languages are like this (eg Spanish).
In the OP article the sentence has both this "ne" and also a "never"
I used Claude to come up with this translation for the submission a couple days ago:
And what she said was all true (And that she said was all true). I married her (I wifed on her), and she was a very beautiful woman (and she was full beautiful wife), wise and steadfast in battle. I had never before met such a woman (Not met I never before such a woman). She was in battle as bold as any man, and yet her face was lovely and fair (and though however her countenance was winsome and fair).
But we are not at all free (But we nothing free not are), because we could never depart from Wulfsfleet (because we never not might from Wulfsfleet depart), unless we find the Lord and slay him (unless we the Lord find and him slay). The Lord has bound this place with cunning arts (The Lord has this place with cunning-crafts bound), so that no man may leave it (that no man not may it leave). We are here like birds in a net, like fish in a weir.
And we seek him still (And we him seek yet), both together, husband and wife, through the dark streets of this grim place. May God help us nonetheless (However God us help)!
I haven't finished the first episode yet, but it's already seeming promising and I know I'm going to continue with it.
In that first episode (which is basically an introduction), the host explains that the history of the English language can be divided into three periods: Old English, Middle English, and New English.
After establishing that there are three periods, he asks where we think Shakespeare falls, and I immediately thought it had to be Middle English.
Then the host proceeded to say he wouldn’t be surprised if most listeners guessed Old or Middle English—and that he wouldn’t be surprised at all if nobody guessed correctly. Because Shakespeare’s plays are actually classified as New English!
I smiled in surprise.
But he explained that if you can more or less understand the English being written or spoken, then it still falls under New English. The King James Version of the Bible is considered New English too.
Keep in mind, Shakespeare wrote his plays between 1589 and 1613.
The King James Bible was published in 1611.
So when I opened that link in this thread’s header and realized I couldn’t understand a damn thing, it all suddenly made sense!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schinen#Middle_English (to shine, to appear)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skyr#Middle_English (clear-coloured, pale, light, luminous, radiant)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sciene#Old_English (beautiful, fair, brilliant, shining)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skīnaną (to shine, to appear)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skīriz (pure, clear, sheer)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skauniz (beautiful, shining)
and ultimately the PIE
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... *(s)ḱeh₁y- (to shine)
There are cognates absolutely everywhere in modern Germanic languages:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sk%C3%ADr#Icelandic skír (bright, clear, pure)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skir#Swedish (sheer, delicate, shining)
And even in Slavic languages:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s... *sijati (to shine, to illuminate)
Skauniz was even borrowed to Proto-Finnic and highly conserved in modern Finnish, Estonian, Ingrian, etc. which all have kaunis meaning "beautiful"!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/k... *kaunis
For a modern semantic parallel, we might point to the phrase "she's quite a looker".
It's also interesting to see the words related to hearing and reputation; I'm thinking of Greek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos and Slavic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#Ethnonym where there's a whole thing about having people talk about you loudly (or, alternatively, being able to produce intelligible speech at all).
scyn/schön/sheen are a different root from schein/shine, for what its worth.
Also I realise now "forlet" is very archaic in modern english whereas "verlassen" is very common in modern german, which would have helped.
Really, even early Modern English (e.g. Shakespeare or the King James Bible) is pretty thick for today's English speakers.
[0]: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-time-u...
Some 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
In the OP article the sentence has both this "ne" and also a "never"
And what she said was all true (And that she said was all true). I married her (I wifed on her), and she was a very beautiful woman (and she was full beautiful wife), wise and steadfast in battle. I had never before met such a woman (Not met I never before such a woman). She was in battle as bold as any man, and yet her face was lovely and fair (and though however her countenance was winsome and fair).
But we are not at all free (But we nothing free not are), because we could never depart from Wulfsfleet (because we never not might from Wulfsfleet depart), unless we find the Lord and slay him (unless we the Lord find and him slay). The Lord has bound this place with cunning arts (The Lord has this place with cunning-crafts bound), so that no man may leave it (that no man not may it leave). We are here like birds in a net, like fish in a weir. And we seek him still (And we him seek yet), both together, husband and wife, through the dark streets of this grim place. May God help us nonetheless (However God us help)!