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Comment by dmurray

> Somewhere in this section — and if you’re like most readers, it happened around 1300 or 1200 — the language crossed a boundary. Up to this point, comprehension felt like it was dropping gradually, but now it’s fallen off a cliff.

This is generous to his readers. Most American college students majoring in English can't read Dickens, according to a study discussed here last year [0].

People reading a post on a blog about dead languages are self-selected to be better at this task. But so are people who've decided to spend four years of their life studying English literature.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44070716

parent dmurray 8 months ago

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