How far back can you read?

[TheArsonist]

Very cool!

I'm actually surprised at how much is recognizable English even back to 1000. In a phrase like hire andƿlite wæs ƿynsum and fæger ("her face was winsome and fair"), most of the words are still the same, subject to sound and spelling changes.

 

[HectorBidon]

I was pretty sure someone had swept in in the 1200 segment to save the day, but I didn't realize the older meaning of "uuif," or the precise meaning of "heo." Very entertaining way to spend a Sunday morning. Thanks.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I kept feeling like if each section had just been longer I would've had an easier time figuring them out.

That said, I think I made it through the 1300s before tapping out and skimming to the bottom

 

[BeechLeaf]

There's gradually changing form, which is easier to follow, and there are abrupt changes of whole words, which you just have to know: it would be hard to work out that she replaced heo or that an andwlite was a face, or more subtly that a wif was a woman (wif-man) rather than a wife. Once too many of those replacements have come in, it breaks up too much to be possible to follow.

I first went blank at swie, but someone above had provided a clue, and after staring at it I recalled German schweigen.

 

[Erozetta]

1400 was the earliest for me. The numerous letterform differences from 1300 on back... may as well have been a Cyrillic character set as far as I was concerned.

Same.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

• The 1900 section is really lovely written. Much better than the crude 2000, for one.
• No real problems with 1800, except for "publican" whose meaning I could more or less infer from context.

Being British may help - 'publican' is still a word in common use (or use, anyway), given we still have pubs. Landlord would be the common layman's word, or licensee for the specific person 'licensed to sell alcohol for consumption on or off the premises', but publican is still a general term for the person in charge of a pub.

• Cute long s in 1700, but otherwise actually easier to comprehend than the previous section

I was surprised how little changed, but it's the time of the Great Vowel Shift where pronunciations changed but the spellings, mainly solidified by 1700, didn't catch up. Before 1650ish words were simply written as pronounced (eg Shakespeare changing the spelling of his name as fashion and different local accents influenced him).