Wading through this Old French is a lot like that. It's a challenge! I end up in bungles because my modern french is quite slipshod - but on the other hand I've been reading Middle English for years, and that seems to help.
il se peut fort bien that I'm way out of my league You had a remarkably good stab at it! When I was first studying OF I took the Chanson de Roland to a french-speaking Belgian friend of mine, also a medievalist (and a Latinist at that!), and he couldn't make head nor tail of it. I gather, from being in an honours class with French majors, that Old French is weirdly hard for people who are *good* at French - I think several people in my class gave up entirely and relied on translations the whole way through. Being crummy at french gave me an advantage in general comprehension, but it's coming to bite me on the arse when it comes to translation.
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Wading through this Old French is a lot like that. It's a challenge! I end up in bungles because my modern french is quite slipshod - but on the other hand I've been reading Middle English for years, and that seems to help.
il se peut fort bien that I'm way out of my league
You had a remarkably good stab at it! When I was first studying OF I took the Chanson de Roland to a french-speaking Belgian friend of mine, also a medievalist (and a Latinist at that!), and he couldn't make head nor tail of it. I gather, from being in an honours class with French majors, that Old French is weirdly hard for people who are *good* at French - I think several people in my class gave up entirely and relied on translations the whole way through. Being crummy at french gave me an advantage in general comprehension, but it's coming to bite me on the arse when it comes to translation.
Thanks again for joining in!