Adding even super-rough dates would make this great casual content for anyone curious about language evolution. Super approachable IMO Very cool video

Agreed! That would have been useful

It would be excellent if it were edited to remove all that presumably unscripted waffle apologising about how the video is too scripted.

IPA is great for linguists, and for correctness, but your average listener won't follow it very well.

I concur. We went along by varying periods of time and I don’t think they’d be able to tell how modern we were getting until the very end. It would have been cool to have the corresponding spelling below.

Just like B and V, ey? ;)

I felt the same way when I was trying to learn Hindi and there are four different ways to say ‘d’ with their own distinct letters and they all sound exactly alike to me. As babies we have the capacity to hear the full variety of human vocalisations but as we learn our specific mother tongue our brain optimises our hearing for the distinct sounds of our language, whittling away at the other possible sounds. So it’s not that we can’t hear these sounds, it’s that our brain slides them into the closest sounds we are familiar with.

Same here, for many of them, and I'm American!

I remember trying to teach a Spanish friend the difference between "cat" and "cut". He was convinced I was winding him up and insisted that they were identical. Saludos.

That's what happens when a person with the pin-pen merger hears pin or pen, they sound identical to them, and when they say pen and it sounds like pin. Russian has two kinds of sh and Polish has three, so when I hear ш and щ they sound like two variations of sh.

Nice. It's "De kat in huis at brood" in Dutch.

Essentially the same in Norwegian. "Katten/katta i huset åt brød", although many would use the word "spise" instead of "eta". In my dialect I would say "Kattn i husi åt brø". Here, "husi" is the dative of "hus", like in older English. In most dialects, the "d" in "brød" is silent, and was actually an "ð" before it stopped being pronounced, never "d".

@@tob there's a very weird moment that happens to an English speaker studying Norwegian where he realizes he can understand Swedish more easily than the language he was studying

@@rueisblue would you be suprised that some Norwegians, like myself, actually understand the Swedish dialect just across the border from where I live better than some Norwegian dialects?

@@espenschjelderup426 That makes complete sense. Regional variants, as well as (sub-)ethnic groups, often don't care about national borders. In the Netherlands, eastern and northern regional variants of Dutch Low Saxon and West Frisian form a continuum with, and are much closer to other North Sea Germanic variants in northwestern Germany and southwestern Denmark when compared to their respective nation's standardized language (in the Netherlands it's Dutch, which is a combination of Low Franconian variants, which are Wezer-Rhine Germanic; High German in Germany, which is an Elbe Germanic language) that originate from the southern parts of those countries.

Yea, I'm a native Platt speaker. It came of to me like someone speaking Platt trying to do pretend to have a Norse accent.

Yeah, I was also thinking dates would be nice.

@@preussischblau lol lol lol

@@preussischblau he must be jesting about the jest in linguistic vocal is not cord but flap polmao polymathy is even a pilot Dern it icarus

I got it from the very first.. I'm surprised it's that close to modern.

Yes showing approx dates would be great. Thanks Simon, brilliant work as always.

i'm from northeast pennsylvania and some older folks around here say "et" instead of "ate"

As somebody else noted in another comment, I think the “et” pronunciation is becoming less common and is being replaced with “ate (eight)”. When I was a kid in the 80s I think you heard people with working class London accents say “et” a lot, but a lot less now (I think).

it basically seems to only exist in older people and a few regional dialects. But it used to be quite common. It does still exist though. I have friends from northwest England who pronounce it that way

The monophthong used to be standard, but the spelling pronunciation has eclipsed it for most of us. I spontaneously say it homophonously with “8”, but I don't think my parents did.

bread/great/beat and ate, I think, are due to some dialect interplay. Sociolinguistics shows it's generally upper class accents that trickle downwards; the reverse happens, but it's rarer. But it could probably be attributed to one of the few times power shifted away from London, or if a hypercorrection or something caught on among the nobility. Or even just a memetic expression like is maith sin -> smashing, but, there's a bit of systemization to it.

Hint: on pc (not sure about mobile) click on the upload date of the comment to "pin" the comment above all else. That way when clicking a timestamp you will not need to search for it each time and hence you can easily compare all pronunciations with little time in between

Scripted with a few asides sound very good. Technical but still friendly and open.

Agreed.

I also agree. The scripted reading was not disturbing at all. It seemed to fit the nature of the content very well. I enjoyed this explanation and it was not difficult to follow. If I may make a suggestion, when you added text on the screen to further explain what you just said, could let the text stay there about twice as long? Then it would not be necessary to pause the video to read all of the text. Thank you.

De kat in het huis eet brood

I could understand/guess it instantly as well. In Swedish, it's "Katten i huset åt bröd".

And as a dutch speaker I suspected the meaning from the beginning already (although of course also confused about a cat eating bread ;-) ), and then certain from about 5'. Even closer to Dutch (and I've heard old english more often)

Okay, honestly, for a while, because bread seemed so unlikely, I also considered the cat had breeded (had had infants in the house) :-D

I'm a Turkish speaker but I got it right at the beginning

I'm a German native and I immediately heard sth about "cat in", though I wasn't sure at first whether the last words were "house eat bread" or "house are brothers" lol

Sorry for double post, but I also wanted to add that I was once the proud hooman of a cat who did in fact love bread. Freshly toasted crust, especially, idk, she liked to gnaw on that.

It's change, but I wouldn't call it progress. It usually just becomes lazier and as a result often less clearly articulated as well. Compare Icelandic to Old Norse, or Modern Mongolian to Old Mongolian, or Modern Danish to Old Norse, etc.

@@ingwiafraujaz3126 I guess I meant 'progress' in the sense of "moving forward" rather than "getting better".

Usually you'll get an angry death stare from your cat if you try and feed them bread.

Also similiar in German of course, but not quite as close as dutch, because of the second vowel shift in German: "Die Katze in dem Haus aß Brot"

@@kanister21 Is Haus neuter in German like huis is in Dutch? You'd think these things would line up, but I'm often surprised by the inconsistent genders. Like "Das Auto" in German (neuter) but "De auto" (masculine/feminine) in Dutch.

@@OntarioTrafficMan De auto is ook nieuw. Voor (gokje) de tweede wereldoorlog was het in het Nederlands ook "het auto". Omdat auto een afkorting is van "het automobiel". Er schiet me zo even niets te binnen, maar geslachten van woorden veranderen soms in de loop der tijd. Voornamelijk (denk ik) omdat het lekkerder bekt/mooier klinkt. Een echt al heel oud verschil tussen Duits en Nederlands is "Das Boot" en "de boot".

@@OntarioTrafficMan I've studied dutch at A2 niveau, some years ago. If I remember correctly, most of the genders are same in both languages. There only a minor differences like you mentioned "das Auto", "de auto".

@@rattikommtundallesindsowoah da man im englischen "in the house" und im niederländischen "in het huis" sagt, habe ich es nur zur Verdeutlichung der Ähnlichkeit "in dem Haus" geschrieben. In der Alltagssprache wird natürlich eher "im Haus" statt "in dem Haus" verwendet.

Yeah like trying to recreate dead languages via "devolution" of their successor languages. Porto Germanic is nothing more than an educated guess.

@@bingobongo1615 peer review gang

@@Adhjie I don't know how peer review would verify the educated guess.

But it does explain why some Brits say et and not ate. I'm more familiar with northern accents and et is quite common

I mean, it is also literally spelled in a way that suggests such a pronunciation

I've always pronounced it as "eight", although in theory we were taught BE in Finnish schools. That is, in the past - nowadays they try to avoid "britocentricity".. (is that a real word or not?)

@@omenoid It's not an attested word in a dictionary, but it is understandable. Long live linguistic productivity, dictionaries are overrated.

@@Mercure250 I once had a German colleague who used to come up with non-existent Finnish words that were immediately understandable. ;)

It goes for 2 walks, in the same direction

Me too, but not in every context. "To whom were you speaking?," yes, but "Who were you speaking to?" The first sounds formal, if not pompous.

@@davidfried7279 Agreed, it depends who I'm speaking to (to whom I am speaking). I'd always use whom in a formal written communication though.

I like whom a lot, just like whose. My native language is German so the distinctions appear very natural to me, but since I speak English mostly with other non-natives, many of whom did not have the chance to learn English too well, and with whom I thus have to speak carefully so they can follow me easily, I am often shy with those forms and more complicated expressions and phrasing in general. I'm always glad to let it all out on occasions like this. xD

We're an old-fashioned kind of guys.

Omg you're so cultured and different your so cooool

The thing is that they only used Latin for cinematic purposes. It was a german show made for Germans

@@rueisblue And for Latins like Luke Ranieri.

Maybe some day someone will organize a proto-Germanic dubbing... Id gladly participate in that xD.

@@domsjuk I also think people underestimate the difficulty in making something like that. Latin is one of the most documented and attested languages of the past. And even with all the examples we have, there are still humongous challenges that production teams have to deal with. Proto Germanic, not to mention authentic proto Germanic for the tribes they use, would be even harder

@@rueisblue I sure agree with that, besides most of the vocab and grammar we "have" being logically reconstructed, it would take very creative and productive linguists to add that degree of authenticity and casualness of normal speech (which I found particularly interesting e.g. in some of Simon's spoken Old English) while trying to remain as accurate as possible.

I also thought it was broad, or brood. It's amazing how a back diphthong has changed to a front short vowel, via A diphthongs, where in continental West Germanic it's become long O vowels.

You're right, it is "in thaem huse", but that's precisely the way he has it in the video. @Matthew McVeagh interesting observation. I wasn't really consciously aware of that pattern, until Simon mentioned other examples later in the video, e.g. for English - Standard German: bread - Brot, red - rot, or I just happen to think of some simple past/praeteritum irregular verbs, like flee/fled - fliehen/floh, fly/flew - fliegen/flog.

@@domsjuk Yep there are lots of such examples. Interestingly there are some where it seems to have gone the other way. E.g. dough /Teig.

I first thought it might meant brother, then broad. I finally cracked it at 4:55.

I'm a native English speaker, and the first iteration was completely incomprehensible. Then I thought the last word was "brother". Then I remembered Old English "hus" was "house", and that "cat" goes back a long way and is in both Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages. That gave "cat in house ? brother". Then it became clear the last word was "bread", so the second-last word must be "ate" like it sounds. That gave the whole sentence. That was just before or after articles were introduced.

Starting at West Germanic, the point of divergence between the three languages: kɑtːu in huːseː ɑːt braud 5th century central continent (aka "Frankish"), short final -u and -i are lost: kɑtː in huːseː ɑːt brɑud Diphthong ɑu is raised to ou, then becomes a monophthong in northern dialects: kɑtː in huːseː ɑːt broud > kɑtː in huːseː ɑːt broːd Long final vowels shortened, "cat" changed into a different inflectional category: kɑtːɑ in huːse ɑːt broːd 9th century Dutch, final devoicing: kɑtːɑ in huːse ɑːt broːt 10th century but possibly earlier, voicing of s: kɑtːɑ in huːze ɑːt broːt 11th century, appearance of definite article: ðie kɑtːɑ in ðemo huːze ɑːt broːt 12th century, fronting of u, diphthongisation of long e and o: ðie kɑtːɑ in ðemo hʉːze ɑːt broɔt 13th century, i > ɪ, ð > d, weakening of unstressed vowels, beginning of Middle Dutch: die kɑtːə ɪn den hyːzə aːt broɔt Sometime in Middle Dutch, replacement of "ate" by analogy: die kɑtːə ɪn den hyːzə ɑt broɔt 15th century, diphthongisation of yː, monophthongisation of ie: di kɑtːə ɪn den høyzə ɑt broɔt Early modern Hollandic, loss of final schwa and long consonants: di kɑt ɪn den høys ɑt broɔt Merging of oɔ back into oː, weakening of unstressed words: də kɑt in dən høys ɑt broːt Loss of accusative and dative cases in speech: də kɑt ɪn ət hœys ɑt broːt Diphthongisation of long o in northern dialects: də kɑt ɪn ət hœys ɑt broʊt

it took me 3 a d a half minutes

I thought it was brown for half the video 👀

I had 'house' and suspected 'cat' but I was unwilling to commit further.

@@vickiekostecki It is very unlikely for a cat to eat bread, so it wasn't very obvious.

Well done! I got ‘cat’ and ‘house’ but I though he last word might be ‘brother’!

Leftovers?

hes done several his grandfather speaks cumbrian

Simon is from Surrey.

The Celtic language?

@@shesmoonlight514 Yes, place names and it's influence on the accent of the area

I'm on that bandwagon, not only does it not bother me, but I like the accuracy. Saves having to edit the video with "whoops I made a mistake, this other thing is X"

Scripted has reasons for existing. Well-ordered. Moves along without a lot of air time. Etc.

Sure but it's also better, when talking about phonological and grammatical history, to not have words just get replaced by other words in the middle of the process, at least for educational purposes; it would make it harder to follow

@@Mercure250 I'm sure people are mentally capable enough to follow a single word change. You missed my point, which was that " 'brauðã " was not the word for bread those who spoke Proto-Germanic would have used. Therefore, the initial sentence was not entirely Proto-Germanic.

@@nobs8862 People are also capable of withstanding the pain induced by a slap in the face; doesn't mean I'm gonna do that to them. Joking aside, there are cases where it's better to leave things aside as to not complicate things, even if it looks simple. If you have a specific goal in mind, don't add unnecessary stuff. Here, the goal was just to show sound changes and some grammatical changes, not lexical changes. I don't know how the semantic shift means it's not a correct sentence; the sentence still works. He didn't have to use a different word, because he didn't say "This is what "The cat in the house ate bread" was in Proto-germanic". What he could have done, though, is specify that there was a semantic shift, so that people don't assume it meant the same thing.

@@Mercure250 Again, you miss the point I was making. The sentence is presented as if it's entirely Proto-Germanic. However, it's not entirely a Proto-Germanic sentence. Speakers of Proto-Germanic would have used a word closer to Gothic " hláifs " ( hlɛːɸs " loaf "). I'm not arguing Simon's purpose nor how he explains the evolution of the spellings and pronunciations. He did quite well with that. I merely pointed out that Gothic " hláifs " ( hlɛːɸs " loaf ") would have been closer to the correct word used in Proto-Germanic. I understood, all along, that he may have substituted " 'brauðã " to illustrate the evolution of the letters of that word and how the pronunciation of them evolved. You're not being constructive here with your rebuttals of my posts.

@@nobs8862 He could actually have meant brauđã. Both words are Germanic, so both would have been in Proto-Germanic. Gothic isn't the sole authority for Proto-Germanic. It's as much a branch off of the proto language as West and North Germanic are. Plus, we have limited attested vocabulary in Gothic; nothing says that brauđã wasn't also reflected in Gothic, just that it didn't make it into the Gothic Bible.

I've heard your language is one of the most conservative language. They froze the language

Any Germanic speaker would. Icelandic has evolved just as much as any other language.

@@BurnBird1 Wouldnt say that, Icelanders can read texts from 1000 years ago in the original writing and understand it, while Norwegians cant. Both of those languages come from Old Norse but one evolved more to the point its not close to its original language

@@danielthorsteinsson9698 Yeah, because Icelandic consciously keeps it's spelling as archaic as possible and don't update it according to how the modern language is spoken. English speakers can very easily read Shakespeare since the spelling hasn't been updated since then, but that doesn't mean that it would be as easy to understand if English had reformed its spelling. It could be argued that Icelandic retains a more conservative grammar and vocabulary. The spelling has been kept artificially archaic and the pronunciation of Icelandic is much more innovative and far removed from Old Norse than either Norwegian or Swedish, with Danish being the only real competitor there.

BurnBird A good example of this is the digraph, which is pronounced like /tl/ - which is bonkers to anyone who doesn't already know it

Well English and Platt are both part of the north sea germanic family, so there’d be a lot of similarities

The language is officially called Low Saxon or Neddersassisk (in the New Saxon Spelling or Nysassiske Skryvwyse).

If someone said that sentence to me, I would assume they were a foreigner speaking English to me. It is easy to understand. The most difficult word is "hu:s", but it's not hard to figure out.

same!

i knew the last word was bread, i was just confused most of the time as to how a cat could be "at bread" until i realized it was ate LMFAO

@@penntopaper9305 fascinating that you caught the bread part. If you don’t mind answering the question, what variety of English do you speak? I’m from USA and specifically the North East.

@@BulletTheEnforcer im also from the north east of america! funilly enough, i actually caught bread before cat or house. i just knew it sounded kinda like bread, and bread being such a broad and old concept, means that the word probably hasn’t changed much. i probably could’ve figured out cat faster, but i think i was distracted by bread LMFAO

Not quite. The z at the end of the word disappeared in German too - it was lost before English and German diverged. The t later became an affricate in German - ts - spelled tz or just z - compare English ‘to’, Dutch ‘toe’, German ‘zu’.

@@longuevalnz oh okay, I see. Thanks for explaining!

@@Mindartcreativity It does remain in Icelanidc (köttur) and Faroese (køttur) where the /z/ turned into an /r/ We don't use the ending in Swedish any more, but it wouldn't be out of place in some old rhyme as "katter"

@@HwyadylawInteresting! -z also survived in West Germanic monosyllables, eg in German as the -r in words like wir.

That's the High German Consonant Shift. Stops turned into fricatives or affricatives across the board, so the t turned into ts (spelled z or in this case tz). It's the same reason as English/German ship/Schiff, apple/Apfel, tongue/Zunge, make/machen, two/zwei, open/offen, shut/schliessen, etc.

Same in Sheffield " 'en ya yetten yer dinner?" "Yis, O yet at eight o'tlock"

I've found a translation once: Ēow, þe ne wull hæfde, seah ēos, ānne hefigne wegn pulliendne, ānne micelne berendne, ānne guman snelle berendne. Ēow ēom cwæþ: min heorte me þrǣsteþ, guman ēos drīfendne to sēonne. Ēos cwǣdon: "Hlysn, ēow. Ūr heortan ūs þrǣstaþ þis to sēonne: guma, hlāford þæs ēowes wull seolfes wearmum wǣdum to āwendanne. And ēow nāne wulle hæfþ." Ēow, þǣm gehȳred, þǣm æcre flēah. it's not mine, but I can't find the credit now...

@@kartonkartonski i also love iirc old English of the poem odes\carmina of Horace especially the phrase mae dimidīum animae full poem from

Eg the interpretatio of Æolus

Swedish, immediately.

My first language is English, and I got it immediately, as I like reading etymologies. But as I'm American, the last few stages swerved. I pronounce "ate" /et/ (with an off-glide, which is not phonemic) and "bread" /bɹεd/, and don't pronounce final as a glo'al stop.

Swedish, immediately as well. Although I thought it was "eats", not "ate", so I was waiting for the s to appear....

Regarding the use of "whom" in _written_ English: It depends a lot on context and register: "whom" is seen as formal language. In a casual text chat, you normally wouldn't expect someone to write it, but it wouldn't sound out of place in an article in a respectable newspaper.

@@KudistosMegistos In written English, I'd say "whom" is still much more commonly used than "who" whenever preceded by a preposition. ( eg: "The boys, one of whom was only six years old, found themselves in deep water.")

OK. I would have thought that cats are more likely to eat brothers than bread.

I think he mentioned a few months ago that he would like to do a northern English version (I guess, Cumbrian dialect, based on Simon's background.) Being a northerner myself, I would love to see that... and more accent progression videos, of course. I guess the USA would be really difficult to do due to the high level of immigration to the States? But general American is more conservative and could be probably treated as a continuum of an early 17th century English dialect - you could start from that point.

@@leod-sigefast is it really more conservative though? Many or most Americans, such as myself, have lost the dark l - clear l allophony, have significantly reduced the contrast in low back vowels, have merged t and d intervocalically before unstressed syllables, and have still gone through many of the same changes RP went through (such as the final stages of the great vowel shift and the quality of /r/ changing from a tap to an approximate), to name a few. Obviously American English is more rhotic, but that's just one aspect.