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Comment by signal11 | Hacker News Reader

This is a great example of moving the goalposts re the original (false) point that a previous comment made about French having a longer literary history than English.

If you’ve got a specific agenda, say x > y, you can be very selective about success criteria to suit yourself.

In this particular case of English and French, the reality is that few modern French speakers can read the Song of Roland. “Resembles x much more” is pretty irrelevant because it cherry-picks similarities while glossing over differences. One can equally say Old English’s “and forgyf us ure gyltas” is pretty readable, but really you’re scraping the bottom of the argument barrel.

Also glossing over an older literary tradition because the language mutated in response to a new political reality (conquest) is ... curious.

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These are the first 5 lines of Beowulf:

Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum

þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon

hú ðá æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Oft Scyld Scéfing sceaþena þréatum

monegum maégþum meodosetla oftéah

It's a long stretch to say it's the same language as modern English, so shouldn't be counted as "literature in the English language".

It could however count as literature written by the English people.

For a comparison, these are the first 5 lines of Chanson de Roland

CARLES li reis, nostre emperere magnes,

Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne:

Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne.

N’i ad castel ki devant lui remaigne;

Mur ne citet n’i est remés a fraindre,

Relative to modern French and English, the French of Chanson de Roland is comparable to the English of Chaucer.

I don't think it's moving the goalposts to say that something understandable by modern French speakers has an older literary tradition than something understandable by modern English speakers. You can call what we speak today "English" but it barely resembles the language used in Beowulf.

You’re entitled to your opinion. All I’ll say is that in the context of the bald fact (French has an older literary tradition than English) presented by a previous commenter, “understandable by modern speakers” is moving the goalposts. In my opinion of course.

Also

> something understandable by modern French speakers

The Song of Roland, used as an example in a previous comment, doesn’t qualify, and actually is yet another reason why this line of argument is pretty sad.

Fair enough!

The term "Old English" is completely misleading in this context given how distant modern English is from that language. Both were spoken in England, that's about it. Applying the same logic to "France", should we then consider Gallo-Roman works like Ausonius's Mosella (c. 370 CE) to be "French" literature?

The Beowulf manuscript dates from around 975 CE and is written in what might be better termed Anglo-Saxon. How much can you understand from this random sentence: "þa me þæt gelærdon leode mine, þa selestan, snotere ceorlas"? ("So my vassals advised me well…) I personally can't understand a single word or even relate it in any way to the English I know.

On the other hand, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia was composed in "Old French" in 880 BCE and seems rather intelligible to me. I also just took a random sentence from the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100 BC) and can understand all of it: "Seignurs, vos en ireiz. Branches d’olive en voz mains portereiz, Si me direz a Carlemagne le rei Pur le soen Deu qu’il ait mercit de mei." I'd even go so far as to say that's closer to modern French than Shakespearean English despite being written in Anglo-Norman … Which also means it should probably count as being English literature if Beowulf qualifies…

I guess the lesson here is simply to remember that reality is always a lot more granular than we first expect and that any sweeping judgements on languages, countries, etc. over the span of millennia make very little sense. By that criteria, the linked article was pure clickbait to begin with.

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