I was chatting late at night on a stalled train with my favourite Estonian friend - actually my only Estonian friend - discussing our languages. As with many smaller European peoples who were for years treated as serfs, her language had only been codified in the 19th century. 'When was yours developed?' she asked. I tried to explain and dredged my memory for Chaucer's Prologue. This set me thinking.
It would be bold to say that Beowulf (between 8th and 11th century) was the moment as it hardly looks or sounds like English:
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
... which may mean something like:
Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (14th century), on the other hand, is familiar to anyone who did GCE 'O' Level English and can surely be claimed as something of a defining moment for such discussions:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
... and is a joy in Coghill's translation.
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
She had, she thought, seen a Shakespeare (16/17th century) play in translation. I still find it quite incredible than anyone can translate his plays which are undeniably English. Just slip this into Estonian, would you:
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
Where the late 19th century romantics codified these European languages; L'udovit Stur did it for Slovak. We had Dr Samuel Johnson in the 18th. Should we look to him as the defining moment? How does one answer such questions fairly and without boasting about the Bard? It would be like a German not mentioning Bach when talking of music.
