Could You Pass Harvard's Entrance Exam From 1869?

erfnet writes "The New York Times remembers back to when 'college was a buyer's bazaar' and digs up 19th-century classified ads from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and others. In competitive efforts to attract students from the limited pool of qualified candidates, applications were taken as late as September for an October freshman class. Vassar offered lush room accommodations. The expectations were high: Latin, Greek, Virgil, Caesar's Commentaries; Harvard's entrance exam from 1869 is posted (PDF). Could any of us pass the exam today?"

Comments

Middle English

[cdecoro]

This is a minor point, but Shakespeare and the King James Bible aren't Middle English; they're Early Modern English from the early 1600's. They are almost completely recognizable to a speaker of modern English, especially once the "thou/you" distinction is explained, and with the occasional vocabulary word. For an example of Middle English, the best known example is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (late 1300's), http://www.librarius.com/cantales/genpro.htm. That's significantly more difficult to understand, though if you sound it out, and read about the rules of grammar, it doesn't take too much practice before you can read it without trouble.

But you're right, the big change was from Old English, which was a Germanic language that is far more intelligible to modern German speakers than modern English speakers. Our current language is highly influenced by the importation of French and Latin words after the Norman invasion of 1066.