Awesome textbooks!

[sineala]

Would you like to read a 16th-century English/Latin phrasebook? The phrases are, um, mostly very strange. I think it is supposed to be for people who don't know Latin but yet somehow are intimately familiar with Latin textual abbreviations, of which there are a great number. Anyway, then you can learn the (occasionally hilariously incorrect or at

Comments

[bunn]

"he is a cocolde,"
"thou spekest many words to me but nothynge to the porpose,"
"he is borne to drynke well both on the faders syde and moders syde"

I feel this more or less sums up everything I expect from the 16th century.

Love that font, although reading a whole book in it would be eyewatering!

[sineala]

Judging by this phrasebook there was an awful lot of beer consumed in the 16th century.

The font actually could be a lot worse -- we got through several pages so it can't have been that bad -- but the inconsistently applied abbreviations and, uh, fanciful spelling in both languages makes it a little tricky.

[island_of_reil]

Did you read the comments at The Toast? I think my favorite was:

"My favorite thing about this list, for the record, is that

'We be but of a shorte aquayntaunce.
I trowe we shall be better aquaynted.
I haue begyled hym.
I beshrowe such loue.'

is basically a Taylor Swift song."

[sineala]

Hahahaha.