I’m sitting here playing with speech recognition software on my computer, and what better to test it with but the first half of the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales in middle English!
We had to memorize this my senior year in high school. Here is the real deal, and I spaced it out how I decided to read it poetically, aren’t I special?:
1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
7: The tendre croppes,
and the yonge sonne 8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
9: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
And here is the speech recognition. It actually sounds very similar if you read it aloud, and well, know how to pronounce the first.. hehe
The church of march half years into the room to
And batted everything in switch for core
All of which virtue engender it is far more
Once a fears speak with his recovery
In spirit happen every holds and he
The tender process
And the yield a seminar half and then ran his hat course he were not
And small a foul as mocking melody
That’s laughing all the night with building the
So precious hand not sure in her garage is
That moment folks to do it on compromises
And Paul Meyers four to see change from fish from this
Two fern a hall is no way of involuntary long as
Especially from every shy roses and the
A single onto Canterbury they went to
The wholly blissful marcher four to seek a
Backhand household and one that they were seeking a