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Thyne Oldest Known Tech Manual
johnshirley writes "How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chaucer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe--the predecessor to the sextant. Read Chaucer's 'A Treatise on the Astrolabe here."
Yet another technical manual I can't make much sense of....
8-)
Somehow I suspect the 1-800 tech support line at the end of the manual isn't ringing any more. Lifetime support my ass...
There will a short exam to test your knowledge at 3.
Looks exactly like my experiences of using OCR software.
No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks...
The Karma sutra was written by Vatsyayana sometime between the 1st and 6th century AD. If that's not a technical manual, I don't know what is. Oh wait.. this is Slashdot.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
The Book of Armaments?
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
Unless I'm mistaken, the spelling and grammar is correct. The chronology here places this writing in Late Middle English, which had very different spelling and grammar rules than modern English.
Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around. - Stephen King
I gather that it's a thing with a ring and you do something with your finger...
:P
hrm, must be a woman!
(Tis a joke you lame mods...)
Bye reeding thus lycense agerment, thee promeses...
No that's documentation!
Shame he's dead. He'd make a good Slashdot editor.
(yes, yes, I know, Olde Englishe ande alle thate...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
the intricate workings of the Astrolube--the predecessor to the sextant
He wrote a sex manual for his 10 year old kid?
This guy is a pervert!
That was -- ahem -- an interesting read. I liked the part where I had absolutely no idea what he was saying.
Nevertheless, I'm always impressed by how flowery the language was in the old days, considering how time-consuming it was to actually pen something.
In our day and age, we have the ability to dash things off at fifty to a hundred words a minute (depending on typing ability), and we make nearly everything we compose direct to the point of sterility.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
can she read it?
More or less a manual on how to technically run an army. C. 500BC
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I thought Chaucer wrote this. Who's this Chauncer guy?
Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chauncer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar,
Actually, the spelling in the manual is correct for the period, unlike slashdot articles, where one cannot even expect proper nouns like Chaucer to be spelt correctly. :P
Although the spelling and grammar are rather old fashioned, no doubt spammers will take inspiration from the text for the latest attempts to get around filters.
I can see it coming to an inbox near you soon:
"Is thyne mans penys lyttel? Than thou hast by myne oyntments"
John.
aw, c'mon; what percentage of slashdotters ever studied old english? heck, the percentage of lit majors that studied old english is probably pretty darned small. heck, i was an english major myself and studied it only in one class.
ed
The Karma sutra was written by Vatsyayana sometime between the 1st and 6th century AD. If that's not a technical manual, I don't know what is. Oh wait.. this is Slashdot.
That's Kama Sutra, you dork. You've misunderstood the meaning of the word 'karma'. Oh wait... this is Slashdot.
[
I would have preferred a simple overview of how to operate the astrolabe. Unfortunately Chaucer had to take the tack of having each piece tell a tale about how it fits into the whole. That wouldn't be so bad, but sometimes the tales are analogies that are somewhat hard to relate to the instrument at hand.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Support could be summed up by a four-letter acronym:
RYFP - Reade Ye Focking Parchment!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Anyone used to the current obfuscation techniques spammers use to get their spam past the filters will be able to read that manual easily! ;)
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
Proof that even back then they knew "info" sucked ass.
all your constants are belong to us
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Ye page by Method of Design, is hencewith left Without Content...?
The spelling and grammar seem familiar... Remarkably similar to that of the slashdot community it seems.
;-).... )
That, and every document I read that's written by the engineers at work (other than myself, of course
Actually, it's Middle English. Old English is the language spoken prior to the Norman conquest, and thus prior to incorporation of many French words to the language. Middle English occupies an interesting position in the evolution of the language, before the Germanic and French rooted words were merged into a consistent pronunciation scheme (refered to as The Great Vowel Shift).
Isn't it supposed to be Chaucer?
Editor?
Sorry for the nitpick, but after seeing the suggestion that the spelling and grammar were "rough," I just couldn't resist.
I attempted to find examples, but all I found was google spam. Remember when Google was useful?
That's All Folks ;)
Chaucer wrote in Middle English and I'm sure his spelling and grammar are just fine, thank you. And his name is Chaucer, not Chauncer!
So I'm part language student, and I can't figure out why there are misspellings of the same word. "Treatise" is spelled differently something like five times. I understand that individual words would be spelled differently, but why weren't they all standarized in his text?
I've seen original latin and greek and I've never come across different spellings of the same word (unless it's an obvious mistake or a part-of-speech suffix or something) within one text.
This guy looks like he should teach techpubs at Caltech. About their speed....
Rough spelling and grammar?
Well it was only written a couple centuries before anyone thought of standardizing spelling for english. Believe it or not that spelling is not rough at all, its absolutly correct (as there is no standard for correctness at all, pretty much anything that is intelligable by the people who spoke the language of the day, which was not exactly modern english, was correct. We can only assume that this is the case (unless you know of someone still around who learned english in that same area as the writter, around the same time)
Remember grammar is the study of language, the rules arn't fixed, language lives and changes as people use it. At BEST the rules of grammar that we are taught in school, while they are not wrong, only work for a major subset of the language that we actually use, there are many perfectly acceptable and understood constructs that the rules of grammar know nothing about... and some where they are absolutly wrong.
Take double negatives. They are perfectly understood, and used by nearly everyone. Any grammar rule saying that one can't use a double negative is just flat out wrong. (thats not tosay that they can be used as prolifically in english as they are in some languages, but they do work in english)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
That's just part of an old frame tale!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
That's not Old English. This:
HWAET, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
eodcyninga rym gefrunon,
hu da aeelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaena reatum,
monegum maegum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syddanaerest weard
feasceaft funden; he aes frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weordmyndum ah,
od aet him aeghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; aet waes god cyning!
Daem eafera waes aefter cenned
geong in geardum, one God sende
folce to frofre; fyrendearfe ongeat,
e hie aer drugon aldorlease
lange hwile; him aes Liffrea,
wuldres Wealdend woroldare forgeaf,
Beowulf waes breme --- blaed wide sprang---
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftumon faeder bearme,
(From Beowulf...) is Old English. You might consider going back to school....
And I thought 12 hours of programming was the only thing that could turn your eyes to goo.
Might as well make the font orange and the background neon yellow and really mess people up.
Don't get the instructions for the Astrolabe mixed up with those for the Astrolube. That could really hurt.
Spelling wasn't standardized until long after this was written (I've forgotten - late 1700s maybe?), so don't hold that against the author. Look at the 1700s writings of even highly-educated people and you'll see some very, shall we say, 'innovative' spellings.
Chauncer? CHAUNCER?! Does the author of this story mean Geoffrey Chaucer? I don't know a Geoffrey Chauncer, but in the same period, Chaucer did write a treatise on the Astrolabe for his son.
And beyond the poor editing, how is this news? The treatise is included in all of the most widely used compilations of his complete works. See The Riverside Chaucer if you don't want to take my word for it.
Finally, not to be redundant, but while this is arguably the oldest tech manual in english, it is certainly not the oldest technical manual period. For something older, just for example, see Vitruvius' book on architecture. There's an older tech manual for you.
Gosh. You people really need a humanities / social sciences editor here.
Looks like even then they were outsourcing technical writing to non-native English speakers.
XeoMage
middle english. it wouldn't even make sense if it was old english. wes thu hal, folde. fira modor, beo thu blowende.. etc, etc, etc
"The absurd is clear reasoning recognizing its limits"
-Albert Camus
He must be a true geek: He would rather write an intricate manual rather than just show his son face-to-face how to use the damned thing. I can relate :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Somewhere at the bottom it says something about "firste posthethe" and an arcane mention of something called "yegoate.intercour.se" Predating slashdot standards yet again, Chauncer gave this to his son then 4 hours later gave it to him again.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
The text is in Old English and is presented without any transalation.
Nope, Chaucer isn't Old English (a language more closely related to Fresian), its actually Middle English. Once you get used to it, it isn't too difficult to understand. If you want to see some Old English, have a look at an untranslated version of Beowulf (the Epic, not the cluster).
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems
I swore I was the only person who'd ever seen Deep Blue Sea. Unless this quote was repeated elsewhere...?
Preacher: Einstein's theory of relativity. Grab hold of a hot pan, second can seem like an hour. Put your hands on a hot woman, an hour can seem like a second. It's all relative.
Tom Scoggins: I spent four years at CalTech, and that's the best physics explanation I've ever heard.
El riesgo vive siempre!
It's not translated at all, it is written in Old (or is it Middle?) English. I seriously doubt that the grammar or spelling is wrong as Chaucer is a raher famous writer and is regarded by many English professors as the "father of English Literature". For a sort of dictionary see http://www.towson.edu/~duncan/glossary.html
..people really spoke and wrote like that? i thought Shakespere was just kidding.
i can't tell what is real or what is 90210-ized these days. it's refreshing to see a bit of history. or an elusive scam.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
Even allowing only for machines: I find it hard to believe there are no surviving tech manuals in at least one of: Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Korean, Latin, that are earlier.
l337 t/-\||3r 2!!!!1111....
This's going to make a lot of those odd google-in-one hits :-)
Banu
I think in those times the relationship
with time was much different. Much less hectic.
The rhythms of work and life were much more
subjected to things like daylight, seasons and
stuff like that.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
As only one other poster I saw pointed out, and that buried deep in the hierarchy, Chaucer wrote in Middle English. Old English is circa Beowulf, and would appear to us more akin to German or something Scandinavian than it does to English.
OK. We just ignore the Arabs and Levants....
De Honnecourt did technical drawings and gave instructions on the use and repair of various machines in the 13th Century (1225 to 1255 or so). See Jean Gimpel's "The Medieval Machine."
I guess you could equivocate in that Honnecourt's notebooks were not *published*, just passed around from interested party to interested party.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Wouldn't the instructions for building the Ark be considered a technical manual? It certainly predates Chaucer. The Ark of the Covenant would be another example of a how-to.
I still crack up listening to Bill Cosby's "Noah".
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Frome hence-forth I wyle be wryting all of mye tenychnal documentatyon in olde english!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There's a drawing on a cave wall in Kenya that shows two sticks being rubbed together.
--- Ban humanity.
I don't know if this Chaucer guy should be writing for kids. Imagine if the tech manual was like the "Miller's Tale?"
"But son, a woman has no beard!"
Yes indeed - glad somebody knows the difference. While you can make out Middle English (especially when spoken) Old English is barely intelligible
Old English, Middle English and Modern English are terms used by modern scholars to segment a continuum of language change which begins sometime after the 5th-century Germanic settlements in Britain. 'Old English' (or 'Anglo-Saxon', as it is sometimes called) is generally taken to cover the period c600-1100 AD. The earliest surviving text is the Northumbrian version of Caedmon's Hymn, in Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.16 (c737). Inscriptions also offer evidence for Early Old English: for example, minting of coins began in the early 7th century (Mitchell and Reeds 1996), and early post-invasion runic inscriptions are found on objects such as cremation urns, sword pommels, and brooches (Page 1987).
also quite possibly the worst movie ever put to film.
(Score: -1, Offtopic)
Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chauncer for his ten year old son
And thus setting the standard for dumbing-down technical information in consumer tech products
Design for Use, not Construction!
because Chaucer said the first part of the manual would give him "the gretter knowing of thyn owne instrument."
So now we know what Wizard is used to create Windows help files.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Heh, after taking a Chaucer course in college (ALL of it in Middle English), it turns out that it was useful for something geeky after all! (Well, that, and I ended up brewing my first batch of homebrew for the course, which not only turned out really well but was about 10% alcohol). If you
Additionally though, at least in terms of geekness, Monty Python's Terry Jones wrote a very well received book on Chaucer's Knight as a not-so-ideal character, and I used his book for one paper.
It's not so much that it contains 'rough spelling and grammar' as it was 'written in Middle English'. Middle English is that period in the English language from after Romanticisation (following the Norman invasion in 1066) to roughly a century before Shakespeare.
It's also worth mentioning at this point that the concepts of correct spelling and correct grammar are essentially 20th century concepts within the English language. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the first in the language, was not published until 1755. Webster's Dictionary, the first such book in America, did not appear until 1828. Prior to the advent of Dictionaries, spellings were not considered absolute. In Shakespeare's time, it was not uncommon to spell your name differently on different occasions. Not only are spelling and grammar newcomers to our language, the concept of 'correct grammar' is a bit of a dated one. Linguists have come to realize that usage patterns vary from dialect to dialect and context to context. How we speak whe we are discussing Psychology tends to be very different from say, discussing Philosophy. Instead of saying 'incorrect grammar', it is better to speak of 'poor style'.
That guy would make so much money selling stuff on ebay.. Fore Selli, Tou year aged Delli Computra complete with Windeoes XP'r.... No resveria!! will Traida fora sheepa..
This Sig for rent.
it wasn't all refined and perfect and unambiguous like it is now. ;-)
--- Ban humanity.
If you are triangulating with such devices (Astrolabia?) does it demonstrate the areola boriallus inthe northern hemisphere, or the cornholio effect in the southern hemisphere?
Apparently not for his own son. At the very bottom (everybody did read the whole thing, right?) it says
Too bad Mr. Chauncer has been dead for 600 years. Otherwise I would have a great candidate for Slashdot editor.
Geoffery Chaucer is credited with inventing the English novel with his (alas, unfinished) collection of short stories "The Cantebury Tales". If you think this technical manual is tricky to understand, the book is written in prose! Fortunately, some excellent modern translations exist.
Outside of writing, he spent most of his life as a civil servant. He is buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
More information here.
If you've ever seen the movie, A Knights Tale there's an amusing (if not particularly historically correct!) portrayl of him by Paul Bettany. The movie also contains characters from The Cantebury Tales.
last time I checked, there was a story about Udo, the Mandelbrot Monk von www.freezone.co.uk/rgirvan/udo.html. It might have been covered by Slashdot as well. However, it was a brilliant kind of hoax, the one I really love.
While the text appears to be the kind of English it was spoken back in 1390 (haven't been there, yet) and the Latin particles also seem to be authentic, some last suspicion remains, IMHO. It would be nice to hear any kind of statements from you if I'm just paranoid or if this thing is too obvious that nobody has mentioned it.
Thanks.
I hear he put this together in Frame-makre
This guy had way too much time on his hands, especially for back then. Pasting this document into Word yields 25 pages (12pt Times New Roman). According to the word count feature, there are 14,917 words.
Can you imagine how long this took to write?
"Never tell me the odds"
Ammianus Marcellinus gave a pretty nice discourse on the Onager 400 AD.
...the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar...
And how this is different from any of the recent manuals I've read, again?
At least with Chaucer's manual, eventually, you WOULD understand what the fsck you were doing, which is more than can be said for some tech writings.
-Styopa
It still sounds terrible when read by a text-to-speech converter.
For more information, click here.
Father! (Score:IV, Runelike)
by Lowysbot (0000087)
on Wednesday January 28, 1392
Overthwart this forseide longe lyne ther crossith him another lyne of the same lengthe from eest to west? WTF?
Siggurus infantium!
re: Father! (Score:II, Plagued)
by ACerteyneMortale (0000004)
on Wednesday January 28, 1392
RTAM!
(Rede thy accursd manuale!
Mie tayle is too loge for God's sig.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Get REAL! There are some excellent pre-Christian writings that qualify as "technical manuals". Take Julius Caesar's treatise on building bridges: he describes it well enough that you could read his text and build one. Going back even further: Egyptian wine-making recipes from 4000 years ago qualify.
Wish I had a mod point!
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Please note: All files marked with a copyright notice are subject to normal copyright restrictions.
Next we'll be getting public service announcements on how deal ole Geoffrey won't be able to afford his astrolube or whatever because we're all reading his work on the internet.
Stop the madness!
"This parchment intentionally left blank."
Have they found Chaucer's matching EULA yet?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"I have wist, sin i couthe meen,
That children hath by candle light
Her shadewe on the wal iseen,
And ronne therafter all the night."
This is Old English.
Take a look through Liviticus....
And what's the oldest known use of RTFM?
Probably shortly afterwards...
It's just a BloJJ
Astrolabes were invented by Muslim navigators, and there are so many books on Astrolabes in Arabic and Persian.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Say what you will about it's validity, but the Bible has been a tech manual for Jews and Christians since the ancient times. Just think of it as a Manual for Human Life. See Appendix A for salvation.
Just browse to www.puzzlering.net/astrolabe.html
It reads like...
- Hurn-de-burn-de-hurn! (Swedish Chef)
- Vogon poetry
- It was run through the Babelfish too many times
- It was written by a beowulf cluster of monkeys
And so on.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
The instructions that Gilgamesh recieves from the heavens on how to build a boat, to survive the flood. 4500 B.C., written on cuneiform tablets.
6500 years ago.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Surely, the instructions for the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch predate this.
If you read other works in English from Chaucer's period, you notice that the spelling and grammar are very similar to his. The language changed over time, and that's how we arrived at the common conventions of style we have today.
Of course, all too often people assume that "old" and "bad" are the same anyways.
For anyone too lazy to read, here's how it begins:
"Congratulations on choosing Astrolabe(TM), the most advanced device of its kind in the worlde..... blah blah blah.
Astrolabe Inc. 1391"
I'm not certain, but I have a nagging suspicion that the oldest known tech manual actually belongs to another instrument entirely, in the origins of the modern computer. Counting boards, or abacuses (abaci?) have been used for a loooong time.
A quicky google on the history of the abacus yielded the following spiffy (or not) abacus history information, including a mention of the "ancient Chinese abacus imagined from a description given in a book titled Mathematical Treatises by Ancients written by Hsu Yo towards the end of the Later Han Dynasty, about 1700 years ago"
On the plus side (couldn't resist) I'm pretty sure that Chaucer would have written the first English (Englyshe?) tech manual, since he was, after all, a bit of a pioneer in English literature of all kinds...
Any generalization is a stupid one.
Check out the first five books of the Old testament (especially Exodus) for detailed descriptions of how to construct a shrine (the Mikdash) from materials that fit together beautifully and are easily assembled and disasembled.
The first? After all he was writing it for his 10yr old.
Wasn't K&R The first manual on earth?
....
I mean, Unix was invented, then man was created, then all the manual pages, or am i wrong?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
When I was about 10 (that would be about 30 years ago), my dad wrote me and my sis a short little book called "The Idiot's Manual to FORTRAN" (VW reference for those of you into classic cars) to help us get started writing code on his (we, not *his*) PDP-11 (state-of-the art, in the day... Lots of little flashing lights and switches).
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Are you sure that isn't just Welsh? ;)
Is that what I get when I rub astroglide on a girl's netherlands?
It could be that those "flowery" writers thought they were writing as clearly as possible, and our language has been simplified by our hurry in the intervening years.
Makes you wonder how compacted the language will be in fifty years when Hemingway will look flowery. Maybe a language like in A Clockwork Orange.
It's middle English, not "rough spelling". Chaucer was one of the forefathers of the English language, and considered by many scholars to be one of the first major poets to write not in French or Latin (as was popular in the day), but in the language of the common people -- English.
If it weren't for Chaucer, many argue that the English language we know today never would have received the same amount of attention as it (eventually) did among the noble English class.
The concept of "bad speller" wasn't yet relevant. Standardized spelling didn't come until later.
Make that "grammar" and "experiments."
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
From the Land of Cute we got cute manuals with cute pictures of cute anthropomorphic home electronis reacting in cute cartoon manner to the possible bad, bad things the new owner might do to the poor little Microwave/VCR/kettle.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'
Didn't I just get an email about that?
/. :P
Something like "apply this gel and she goes wild"?
Oh right, this is
Nobody will get that joke
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
The original manuscript was found in perfect condition, due to the fact that his son never broke the shrinkwrap on the manual.
... you'd think someone would have written a "Dummies" book for the Astrolabe.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
This was back in the old days when the earth did not rotate as fast and was farther from the sun, so a year then was longer than now. Plus, without all the chemicals in food and water and beer, kids grew up faster. This also explains why the life expectancy was so much "shorter", with adults dying off at age 40. This is like Martian years vs Earth years: old Earth long years vs modern short years.
Infuriate left and right
My name is not "Moran" :-)
...
Here is the text of the article above:
"How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chaucer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe--the predecessor to the sextant."
Didn't see anything about English there
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I have seen a varient of that quote attributed to Einstein regarding relativity.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
grammer?
I have here on my desk at work (don't ask why) texts of mostly Roman-period artillery manuals (some in Greek, some in Latin), mostly cribbed from earlier, now-lost materials dating back to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. Much older than the one referenced, and just as 'technical', to the point where they've been used to reconstruct some of the artillery engines described (stone and bolt throwers powered by twisted ropes and/or metal springs).
No linux mentioned anywhere, I'm afraid.
Chaucer's astrolabe manual, translated into modern english, can be found here.
Sigmund
Is that understandable to a native speaker of English?
From the text: >
Even back in the 14th century, there was more than one way to do it !
Thomas Miconi
Well, according to our good friends at dictionary.com:
Old English
n.
The English language from the middle of the 5th to the beginning of the 12th century. Also called Anglo-Saxon.
From OED: According to the nomenclature now generally adopted in this country, the Old English period ends about 1100-1150...
So the Anglo-Saxon language *is* Old English. And since Chaucer is late 14th century, I think he qualifies as Middle English. Thanks for playing though...
Aw, c'mon, there just _has_ to be some Chinese text about astrology or gunpowder or something that predates this by centuries, don't you think?
Or are we looking only for a 'manual' that describes how to use a device, not a scientific document on how to make or measure something? How about some Mayan or Egyptian glyphs showing how to check the date of the equinox through the use of some pyramid or something like that ? They're harder to date but known to exist and be older than a paltry 613 years...
Let's call this the oldest known example of an old white English guy's tech manual, and leave it at that, huh ? I mean, I'm as euro-centric as the next guy, but 600 years is nothing in human history, there _must_ be something that qualifies as a tech manual that's older...
From the text: "And God woot that in alle these langages and in many moo han these conclusions ben suffisantly lerned and taught, and yit by diverse reules; right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome."
Even in the 14th century, There Was More Than One Way To Do It !
Thomas Miconi
My landlord.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
This would be true, except for the fact that media outlets have a duty to report news fairly, unbiased, and to expose all truths. Their bribing of the government is a conflict of interest, and their choice of what commercials to air is bias.
Ok, where's my babelfish when I need it? What a cryptic pyle of Olde English!
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
There existed no English dictionary at the time, and most formal documents (and nearly all scholarly texts) were written in Latin or Greek. In the second paragraph Chaucer states that the reason he was writing in English was that his young son for whom he's allegedly writing this didn't know Latin yet. Paragraphs two and three are basically a long justification (excuse?) for writing this whole thing in English, because literate people of the time were all expected to know Latin and Greek. One of the reasons many of Chaucer's works survived and are read to this day (e.g. Canterbury Tales) is that he was willing to write in English- unusual for the time.
Can someone find a translation of this?
his son still just took the Astrolabe out of the box, tossed the manual aside, and then precedes to ask questions on #astrolabe that are answered on page 2.
-no broken link
It helps to read it out loud. Once your auditory center gets in on processing it, it's pretty easy.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
But the main problem today is that people aren't following any of those standards! Whether we're talking of minor typos, common misspellings ('rediculous' &c), or the complete lack of any order or at all (some postings here...), far too few web pages and posts use English that anyone would recognise.
I find it interesting that those for whom English is a second language generally use it fairly well. Many continental Europeans, for example, put us to shame, rivalling the best native speakers in spelling, grammar, idiom, and other aspects. It's those whose first (and often only) language is English who mistreat it most grievously!
What depresses me most isn't ignorance so much as wilful ignorance. No-one knows the spelling of every word in the language, or makes no grammatical mistakes or typos. But everyone can improve, can spot where they go wrong and learn from their mistakes. However, too few seem to be doing so...
Good English matters. You can't always say "But you knew what I meant." -- Firstly, you're making it much harder for people to know what you meant; often, they won't make the effort. Computers, search engines and the like often don't know what you meant. People may know what you meant but infer unfortunate things about your education and intellect anyway. People still learning English (youngsters or foreigners) may learn the wrong lessons from your bad example. And, maybe most importantly, people often don't know what you meant, or think they do while completely misunderstanding you.
Luckily, quite a few people seem to agree with me -- as evidenced by the unexpected runaway success here in the UK of a book named after an old joke, in which a single misplaced comma completely changes the meaning: Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves .
(Posted on behalf of CaRP, the Campaign for Real Pedantry.)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Our grandchildren will no doubt think our own prose long-winded and overly eloquent. They themselves will communicate solely by Powerpoint presentations and SMS-messages.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Unbelieveable.
There's a reason it's not translated: it doesn't need to be.
To paraphrase Ezra Pound, anyone unwilling to spend five minutes figuring out Chaucer's language should be shut out of reading good books forever.
Seriously, this takes a thirty word glossary and the patience to puzzle out some spelling. College graduates (even engineers) should have read -- and likely learned to pronounce -- Chaucer's midlands dialect in their English survey courses for the same reasons they should have a working knowledge of Calculus and History.
That's part and parcel of a liberal arts education.
You never know who will get one.
Geoffrey Chaucer, father of English Literature.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Now, I would ask meekly of everyone that reads or hears this little treatise, to excuse me my crude editing, and my wordiness. For two reasons. First, that proper editing and hard sentences are hard for such a child to learn. Second, that it seems better to me to write a good sentence twice to a child, than that he forget it once.
Have you actually fixed an astrolabe?
I can even point you in the right direction... Icewind Dale, fourth level of Labelas Tower in the Severed Hand... See?
Take that, Mr. humanities/social sciences editor guy!
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
johnshirley writes "How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chaucer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe--the predecessor to the sextant."
Hypatia of Alexandria wrote a manual for the use of, and for the construction of, an astrolabe. That was 1,000 years before Chaucer's book.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Chaucer: Here is thine first technical manual
God: W00t!!
I tried just it through babelish, but that just made things worse.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
It appears that he wrote it for a friend's kid, who may have died before it was completed. Look beyond what Chaucer wrote, and imagine what might have happened. Possibly, the kid kept asking "Uncle Geoffrey" whenever he visited how his cool astrolabe thing worked, and Chaucer started writing this for him... and then he gets the news that little Lewis is dead.
That's pretty sad, not because he spent time writing this, but because he liked the kid enough to make the attempt, then had to deal with his death. This is more than a scientific document, it's a hint as to what life was like back then.
Get off my launchpad!
note that the bible is full of gnurdly specifications if not actual tech docs, the earliest one perhaps, concerning the building of a boat. (scroll down to 6:14.)
I found exactly the same thing. Actually I was astounded that this 600-year old version of my native tongue was so readily comprehensible.
It's a far cry from Anglo Saxon - I can hardly understand Boewulf at all when it's read aloud.
That bastard has been sending me spam! Take a look at this subject line!
"Fynde VYAGRA Cheep Ohnline and increese thine organ by moo proporciouns"
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
"If you want to see some Old English, have a look at an untranslated version of Beowulf (the Epic, not the cluster)."
:)
Oh, good thing you cleared that up.
It's a little primitive, but out of the box it boots faster than my Palm Pilot. Slightly less accurate than my vintage ACME digital watch, though, and a lot more waterproof. You do have to keep ahead of the verdigris though...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I thought Sappho wrote the oldest tech manual....couldnt figure that out either. Think it was designed for lesbians.
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
RTFM - He referenced previous works people can't read because it isnt in English.
Second paragraph:
"This tretis, divided in 5 parties, wol I shewe the under full light reules and naked wordes in Englissh, for Latyn ne canst thou yit but small, my litel sone. But natheles suffise to the these trewe conclusions in Englissh as wel as sufficith to these noble clerkes Grekes these same conclusions in Grek; and to Arabiens in Arabik, and to Jewes in Ebrew, and to the Latyn folk in Latyn; whiche Latyn folk had hem first out of othere dyverse langages, and writen hem in her owne tunge, that is to seyn, in Latyn."
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
"And God woot that in alle these langages and in many moo han these conclusions ben suffisantly lerned and taught..."
(from the second paragraph)
Q
Insert Signature Here
Arguably, some writers would have learned to spell in school (if they were so lucky to attend). But what constituted "Standard English" would vary from town to town. Many people never travelled to other towns, so much of English spelling developed in pockets.
Until the rise of mercantilism in the 1500s and 1700s, variations in spelling and grammar were of minor importance. In time, the move from guilds to mercantalism required precision in business dealings, and the language had to be standardized. For example, English speakers dropped "they" as a singular, finding agreement in number more important than gender neutrality.
Much of "standard English" grammar is based on Latin rules of grammar. The reason we avoid splitting infinitives is that you can't split a Latin infinitive -- it's one word!
Well, that about sums up my English degree. :) I knew I'd use it again one day.
-- SYS 64738 --
Ye find yeself in yon tech manual. Ye see a ASTROLABE. Obvious exits are NEXT PAGE, LAST PAGE, and LEWIS.
What wouldst thou deau?
>Get ye astrolabe
You can't get ye astrolabe!
(with apologies to the Homestar Runner gang...for sooth!)
So...did the original have a mermaid or a unicorn on the cover?
"The books of chess, dice and backgammon", in old Spanish: "Los libros de acedrex dados e tablas" by King Alfonso X, the Wise, 1283 AD.
Book with an interesting introduction in the form of a tale. A Indian king asks 3 wise men which is better to have: intelligence or luck? and to show a concrete example. The first wise man says it is better to have intelligence, and teach the king the rules and strategy of chess. The second one says it is better to have luck, because with very bad luck, no matter how intelligent you are, you are doomed, and discuss the game of dices. The last one says it is better to have intelligence for deal with both bad and good luck, and shows this by discussing backgammon.
A few links on those interested in seeing Beowulf in old English:
Article
Beowulf
The article has some information about the work and its history, as well as some lines(with translation) so that you can get an idea for the work itself.
Braver souls can take the second link to see the full work in Old English(minus wynn). The section with the dragon, from line 2200 up to at least the damaged section at 2230, should be be of interest to Tolkein fans.
Those who'd like some help figuring that out can go to this article on Old English. It features some history on the language, as well as some instruction on pronunciation and grammar.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I think the main amazement is that he spells the same word several different ways in the same text. That doesn't make any sense at all, unless it's some weird form of emphasis that I just don't understand. I can understand the whole no standardized spelling. But really, in the same text?
No, that's Middle English, Late Middle English in fact. Ye True Olde English is not at all understandable today. It's more like a variant of German, Frisian is probably the closest modern analogue, but even that is heavily influenced by Modern German.
Here's an example of *OLD* English:
ealdres scyldig; ond nu other cwom
mihtig man scatha, wold hyre maeg wrecan
etc.
>>No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks... ROFLMAO !!! :-)
Ok, I gotta wonder how many people get that. I doubt it's all that often that the slashdot crowd and the new yankee crowd intersect.
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Have you hugged your penguin today?