How far back in time could you go and still understand English?
All languages change over time. But the rate of change is dependent on a lot of factors. Purely spoken languages change the most over time. Languages that have a long written tradition and most children are in school (as opposed to working on a farm or in the family business) tend to change slower as […]
A look at Old Norse
Old Norse is the name given to the language of the Vikings. There were to main types of Old Norse, Old West Norse which lead to Icelandic, Norwegian and Faroese, and Old East Norse which lead to Swedish and Danish. Most of the literature we have today is in Old Icelandic. Modern Icelandic has changed […]
The Litany Against Fear translated into Atlaans
The Litany Against Fear originated in the Dune series of books by Frank Herbert. It is spoken by those facing great danger. There is a lot of discussion in the Dune books over humanity’s place in the universe and what it means to be human. In the beginning of the first book, one of the […]
Native Speakers
It’s not that native speakers ignore grammar, it’s that they do it on instinct. Being a native speaker of a language is a very different thing to having learned a language from a book. Only through a large amount of exposure can you build up that instinct. Native speakers spend most of their time in […]
