The usage of Middle English and Middle High German

[len_von_geist]

Hello there!

I like Middle English and as a German I really like the Middle High German; and I missed Middle English in the “realistic RPG” Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
First I want to talk about the similarity of both languages.

Especially I like the archaic personal pronoun “Thou” for second-person singular.

A few examples in sentences:
Whō art thou? ≙ Who are you?
He talked (I don’t know the grammar of “talked”) abīen thee. ≙ He talked about you.
It īs thy horse. ≙ It is your horse.
Thou shell dọ̄n it thyself/theeself! ≙ You should do it yourself!
That is thine ≙ That is yours.

This is the personal pronoun for somebody you know really and you are close to.

Now let’s look at the German counterpart. We still use this form of second-person singular. The Middle High German grammar is “dû”. Today we write it “du”. The following sentences are compared to New High German, Middle and New English.

Dû bist klouc. ≙ Du bist klug/schlau. ≙ Thou art prūdent. ≙ You are prudent/clever/smart.
Dîn pferd ist brûn. ≙ Dein Pferd ist braun. ≙ Thy horse īs brǒun. ≙ Your horse is brown.
Ich danke dir. ≙ Ich danke dir. ≙ I/Ich/ik thanck thee. ≙ (I) thank you.
Ich libe/liebe dich. ≙ Ich liebe dich. ≙ I/Ich/Ik lǒven thee. ≙ I love you.

The upper sentences have the same syntax in both languages. The next sentence hasn’t the same syntax in both languages:
Dir ane sîn daz hûs. ≙ Dir gehört das Haus. ≙ Thẹ̄̆ hǒus is thine. ≙ The house is yours.
Normally “dir” means “thee” (“dich” is also “thee” btw.). This means that “dir” is a personal pronoun. In the sentence above you can only translate it to the reflexive pronoun “thine” because auf the different syntaxes.

Now I stop my grammatical stuff; but what we see is that German and English is similar because the origin is the same. We can recognise it especially if we compare older versions of them. Since the day I understand where these languages came from, how they work where the similarities are, it became easy to learn English. Now I also understand als Middle High German and Middle English almost as good as the new versions. Okay, I talk about reading the older ones because it’s hard to find someone who knows and speaks them correctly. I think there are some historians and philogists out there which know how to pronounce it right. Why not implement New High German and New English as optional languages? I mean you can chose subtitles, if you don’t understand them. They fit the late Middle Ages.

@warhorse @DrFusselpulli @TobiTobsen @Hellboy and the whole community: What do you think?

(Please excuse possible mistakes. I’m not an expert of the grammar from ancient history. Other grammatical mistakes [New Englisch] you may remark.^^)

[DrFusselpulli]

Why not implement New High German and New English as optional languages?

Because this is a lot of development effort, and if we would take the focus on this, we would have to cut down other more important things.
We thought a lot about the language in the game, and we think language is important to the immersion of the player.
The player should not foreigner in the game, he should be able to feel inside of the main character, and for this reason he have to understand quite well what is going on. The english version already is a translation, not historical accuracte as the people in bohemia would not speak english but an old version of czech.
The game is already a translation, and adding old english or german would not add more historical accuracy as the people would not speak this anyway. It is a translation into our world to let us understand what is going on there.

[len_von_geist]

Okay,

I can understand that. I know it was a little, crazy idea.

[Ambaryerno]

but what we see is that German and English is similar because the origin is the same.

The origin is the same, but English has evolved on a radically different tangent over time. For one thing, Modern English has lost most of its declension, while German retains it. “You” is a great example of this: Most English speakers today no longer differentiate the singular “thee” and “thou,” from the plural “you” and “ye.” English verbs also no longer agree in number with their subjects, etc.

Honestly, most people wouldn’t understand a word of Middle English. ESPECIALLY if you go beyond just the archaic use of “you.” For one thing, there were vowel and consonant shifts, so pronunciation has changed. As a result, words we might recognize in print we wouldn’t understand when spoken.

[ahangor]

I think, that would be a thing for the Mod Community.
call out for all the linguist students: don’t be shy or scared, go to the IT department and ask them nicely, they don’t bit as long as you treat them with the respect they deserve