Matins and Chaucer's English

For over two years now I have been getting up in the morning, brewing my coffee while reading four pages of some enormous book, and then going to my study to write as fast as I can for 30 minutes on anything that pops into my head. I call this my Matins. Usually the writing is no more than stream of conscious drivel, but sometimes the thoughts are worth keeping. I usually keep track of my reactions to what I am reading this way. Since I always inteneded to put book reactions on Sententiae, here is one on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which I listened to on CD.

This version was simply a straight reading of the original text, with modernized spellings so the readers could pronounce all the words as if in modern English. Otherwise it was the original text. With modern pronunciations the listener can pick up what they are saying with little difficulty. Some of the words need a bit of explanation, but surprisingly few. The funniest one is 'eke', which means also. It's used all the time. And 'swink' is used for work; 'wood' for mad, as in crazy. You can see the Latin and German struggling to produce what is clearly English. With the original 15th century pronunciation it would sound something like the incomprehensible Scotsman on Monty Python. It must have been one gnarly language once upon a time. Probably sounded like Dutch or Afrikaans now.

Eke, it's just interesting, but now I have to get back to swink before I become wood.