I thought this was a really secluded and niche Scots dialect before realising it was just old english.
This is like Frisian and English mixed together. As a Dutch man I could stil read this. Except had to figure out that ſ is an s
Fun Fact: Old English and Old Frisian are closely related.
May we all be nat eton.
I read this all in a broad Scots accent. Which is possibly a pretty accurate choice.
Old EnglishEarly middle English and lowland Scots are very, very similar as languages.It is early Middle English not Old English.
Ah, how right you are! Sorry, I’ll edit.
A frog is a wee beast with four legs which lives both in water and on land. He is brown, green, or yellow, or if he is tropical, he may be diverse colors. He has lungs and gills both. He haches from an egg and he then is a tadpole. He grows to be a frog if he is not eaten.
arguably if you’re translating then “wee beast” should be “small animal.”
That is arguable. I wouldn’t want to rob it of its flavor. ‘Wee beast’ is unusual, but it’s fine English already.
“Hatches from an egg” caught me up a bit but I could read this otherwise
You don’t care but I was excited
I just know it from Schnappy das kleine Krokodil we learned in German class haha
It makes more sense if you understand that the “thorn” (Þ) is pronounced “th”.
Interestingly, the thorn was in pretty common use until the printing press took off because most of the presses in England were imported from France and Germany, neither of which used the thorn so their typefaces didn’t include one. For a while people used ‘y’ in place of the thorn (hence “ye olde”), but eventually it fell out of use all together
Printing press is one factor, another is French influence. Greek terms with that sound were written with <th> like in French and so <th> already competed with <þ> independent of the printing press.
I heard that y and th competed and th won in the end.
@RegalPotoo
(My understanding)
The thorn evolved as a pseudo glyph first, have you ever written a “th” really fast? Once the printing press was invented and widespread, it became less common for “th” to look like a thorn and it slowly fell out of use altogether
That’s wrong. Thorn was a runic letter before the Latin alphabet arrived in great Britain. Since the latter didn’t have a letter for this sound, they used it from the older script. “þ” writing fast looks like “y” which is why that letter was used in print. Words For Granted as a podcast episode about lost letters of the English alphabet, including þorn.
Interesting! I wonder what other linguistic history I have slightly wrong lol
If anyone is having trouble reading this, it might help to know that “þ” is the same as “th”. That’s more widely known than it used to be, but it’s still pretty niche.
adding onto this, that weird f looking letter in “beeſt” is actually a long S. So it’s read as “beest”
Oh no did this mean frogge is just a wee lil beast 🥺
a wee beest with foure legges bop on water and on lond 🥺
Late middle English?
Thought I was reading Dutch there at first. But it was just idiot
No, can confirm.
Actually early Middle English and Dutch were not that far apart. More French, of course, but a lot of Germanic verbs and vocabulary that matched up with Dutch.
They’re the same picture
You were not alone…
Surely, i’m having a stroke
I thought this was Froggy Went A Courtin for a moment before reading more.
I can hear the YouTube video done about this.
Where can I find more descriptions like this?
It’s from the proposed Middle English Wikipedia. Here’s the frogge article, here are all articles that have been written. But the no-fun-allowed Wikimedia killed it off.
They allow conlangs but not historical languages?? What the actual fuck
its weird and lame middle english was killed off, particularly as theres old english available
There’s a lot of articles written in middle English that make sense on that list, like languages, locations, historical events, historical figures, etc.
Then there’s also brainfuck, genshin, and this beauty.
Who makes up such funny words?
This is just how English used to be.
A classic
