riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (01/20/84)
I'm just nitpicking, but: >> I happen to like the Canterbury Tales, in Old English... >> -- David Norris >> -- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david Chaucer's "Caunterbury Tales" were written in Middle English. The main example of Old English with which you may be familiar is "Beowulf". There is a l a r g e difference between the two -- Middle English is sufficiently distant from Modern English that it can be called a different language, but sufficiently close that a modern reader can bull his way through it with the help of footnotes and a lot of guesswork. Old English is much more distant, resembling Latin and other archaic European languages in its grammar more closely than it resembles the English of today, and unfamiliar enough that reading it requires serious study. And to relate this to the discussion at hand: Shakespeare, King James' Bible, and almost every other sample of archaic English most of you are likely to have experience with are all classified as varieties of Modern English. ---- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle