[Blog Post] Peter Bakker on the VMS

[-JKP-]

I noticed that many of the introductory comments made by Bakker are based on the underlying assumption that the characters map one-to-one. For example, his comments on word length and the different characteristics of vowel-consonant languages and abjads would not be valid if the text were numbers or if it were a verbose cipher.

Of course, one has to remember that it is a medieval language, which may have been quite different from the language it evolved into (medieval Dutch and English, for example, are almost unreadable to modern speakers).

I'm not sure why he writes that medieval languages "may have been quite different". They were different, although I find medieval German easier to read (compared to modern German) than medieval English and French. It seems to have changed less. I struggle with medieval French (even though I can read modern French better than modern German, I find medieval German easier than medieval French). I find it especially difficult to read some of the southern French medieval dialects.