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by sk5t 2494 days ago
> English, more than about 400 years ago is almost wholly foreign

Are you suggesting this text is from the 17th century? I'm no expert but this much Germanic influence seems much older.

3 comments

Indeed it's much older:

"The poem is recorded in its fullest form in the Vercelli Book, a late-tenth-century West Saxon manuscript which was left in Northern Italy in Anglo-Saxon times. Vercelli is on the road to Rome; the manuscript was either abandoned or forgotten by a pious Anglo-Saxon pilgrim. An Old Northumbrian version of part of the poem also appears, carved in runic script, on the late-seventh-/early-eighth-century"

Source: https://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/stella/readings/OE/ROOD.HTM

It’s Anglo Saxon, which much older. With a bit of effort a modern speaker can read Chaucer which is about 1300
I'm suggesting it's 1) English and 2) more than 400 years old.