Re: [tied] Ne me nis nothing leef nor loth

From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 4086
Date: 2000-09-29

Yes, several things look very much like (medieval) Dutch too, eg, we'd say now: "Er was eens een hertog die Theseus heette", but in Chaucer's time it would have been (in modern spelling) something like: "Daar was een hertog die heette Theseus" or "Daar was een hertog heette Theseus".
 
Marc
How about reading some 14th century English? Try the following part of a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. I find his texts surprisingly easy to understand and the way things are spelled always brings a smile to my face.
 
Often, I can use my own language, Swedish, to decipher him; Chaucer's English is in some ways more like Swedish (or other Germanic languages) than modern English. For example: "there was a duc that highte Theseus..." - this verb, "highte", which means "was called", is lost in modern English, but it corresponds to Swedish "hette" or German "hiess".