The evidence that medieval PEASANTS could READ! Medieval Misconceptions 

On the subject of reading. Just finished your book "Shadow of The Conqueror". I'll give it 5 out of 5 swords. I really like the way every chapter was a part of the letter.. Uhm.. No spoiler :) The way you worked on how some people was affected by certain actions towards then and the psychological effect it has was great. Details! The focus on details was great and not to much. It was in a great balance. It had me really immerse into Everfall and felt like you put me in the shoes of Daylen. I didn't need VR glasses to see every scene for me. Every emotion from the characters and feel what they felt. Really good job! Thank you for your contribution to the literate world!

"What are you doing?" "I'm writing a letter to my mate". "But you can't write..." "That's not a problem. My mate can't read."

Wow, imagine being the person whose legacy will forever be remembered in the chronicles of history as "That Russian guy who forgot his shirt that one time."

Not medieval, but in line with modern ignorance, one of the dumbest parts of Disney's new Beauty and the Beast was when people objected to Belle teaching a girl to read... Meanwhile at that exact time in history, the original fairytale was published in a quarterly geared for girls. 🙇🏻‍♀

Drink up for Boris, who all the way back in XII century went out shirtless and didn't realize until he was already at work

Chronological snobbery: the insistence that we are better than everyone who came before, so we assume the worst about the past.

Please bring me a shirt, I forgot a shirt.

I always found this misconception very odd. At school we were taught how important the development of an alphabet and language were. About the establishment of literary schools and libraries. So it always came as a shock to me how someone could think that a society that values linguistics and education so much could be illiterate. Yes, defiantly less literate than us today but the only reason we are more literate is because of those people developing the foundations of modern literacy.

The lack of spelling standardization is very accurate. I've read, as part of an old English course as a grad student, old English manuscripts where the same author in the same page of the same codex spells the word oþþe ("or") as oþðe, oþþe, and oððe (etc.) using the two variants of "th", thorn (þ) and eth (ð) interchangeably, seemingly in the whim of the moment and possibly for flair. My teacher claimed they valued being able to spell things many different ways rather than knowing one "correct" way. The thing that brought, and brings, standardization, is not literacy or education per se, but the printing press, and then only for practical purposes. And what's happening is usually selecting one dialect out of many (arbitrarily, or the one spoken by the people with the most power and prestige) and using that, which leads people to erroneously believe that that dialect is superior. Even if you use a true one to one sound-to-symbol system, like the IPA, you're going to get variety in how you record words, because there's always variety in how they are spoken. And all languages are always changing - unless they are a dead language.

I had a German teacher in college who was studying some medieval German medical books, and he proved that they knew a very modern emergency medical procedure hundreds of years ago. A pleural effusion (also called water on the lungs) is a condition that happens in heart disease, kidney failure, pnumonia, infections, several other long term problems, and (in the case he was investigating) traumatic chest injuries where the lining (or pleura) between your lungs and the inside of your ribs begins to fill with fluid, which then displaces your lungs and makes it hard or impossible to breath. In modern times, it is a very commonly treated problem, and the treatment is just to jab a needle or a catheter into your chest cavity in between your ribs and drain out the fluid. It was thought to be a relatively modern procedure, invented sometime in the 1800's, but my teacher stumbled across a description of a case where some guy in the middle-late medieval times had been crushed by a runaway cart, and the physicians rushed to save him. And the treatment described in this old text was that he was having trouble breathing, and so they cut a slit in between his ribs and stuck a tube in there to drain out a clear fluid. The amazing thing about this find was that the way it was described made it seem like the physicians knew _exactly_ what they were doing, not like they were just trying whatever to help him. So he started digging into these old German texts, and sure enough he kept finding references to treating "water on the lungs" in this (or a similar enough) way. Now, remember that a lot of "physicians" back in the day were actually barber and executioners. Physicians were often too expensive for common people, and honestly, a lot of times their methods weren't any better or could actually be worse than what the common folk had access to, depending on when, where, and who it was. So for this to be a common enough procedure for the closest "emergency responders" to perform on the spot means that there must have been a lot of writing going on that we just don't have anymore (not to mention how much of this knowledge was passed down orally). And executioners, especially had to keep pretty detailed and accurate records, since they were operating on behalf of the ruling power/ state.

Hey - I wrote my senior thesis on medieval book production and paleography, and peasants could absolutely read. Many lay families owned a single book (vellum alone cost a pretty penny, let alone the cost of production), which contained their favorite stories/poems, prayers, genealogies, etc. In the margins and flyleaves of these books, you would often find what scholars call marginalia: handwritten poems, prayers, and even medicinal recipes -- confirming that peasants were reader/writers. There was also a ton of lowbrow humor in medieval literature--a friar tricking a man into praying on the roof while he slept with his wife, a priest convincing a young maiden to put the devil (his penis) back into hell (her vagina)--that would have appealed to the peasant class. In fact, Chaucer was so special because he wrote from a commoner's perspective in many of his works (although he was born into an emerging middle class in the mid-14th century). Of course, not every peasant could read, but plenty could -- especially in the late medieval period.

"Anita - writing to you from the war. Send a sword. I forgot my sword."

Things I learned today that can be applied to a DnD campaign: 1) Parchment comes in a variety of qualities, with proportional costs 2) People wrote on bark or carved notes into wood 3) People being screwed over by other people and writing angry notes about it is nothing new 4) It is not out of the question for a laborer to send a letter asking for a ride and a change of clothes, because humans never stop being human Maybe when my players search bodies or stashes of possessions, they'll find notes written on bark giving them hints.

Rudimentary Latin was also understood by peasants. The bar set for Latin "literacy" in medieval Europe and Britain was pretty high. This was the language of every Sunday Mass, official legal documents, etc., while "literacy" would imply a refined understanding of classical literature and philosophy in Latin. Pick up St. Augustine's "City of God" in English, and see how far you get with the detailed refutations of various mythologies and philosophies before your head spins. That isn't very easy in your own mother tongue. Now try it in a foreign language...

In Flanders people could read. The taxes were in Latin in the beginning and afterward they went to French, the Flemish peasants then revolted to get their taxes to be paid in Flemish. So, why would anyone explicitly want their taxes to be in their own language if they cant read anyway? I imagine it would be similar with other language groups as well.

Best channel on RU-vid.

Hiya Shad: I'm an archaeologist, specializing in the archaeology of the Levant, Lebanon, Coastal Syria, Israel and Jordan, in the Bronze and Iron Ages (roughly 3500-330 BCE). The same argument for limited literacy is still made in that region. But the first evidence for the use of early versions of the Canaanite alphabet, from which all other alphabets are derived, dates to around 2000 BCE, and is found in graffiti left by slaves working in the Egyptian mines in the Sinai Peninsula. By around 1200 BCE there are ostraca, pieces of broken pottery, on which someone was practicing their ABCs in ink. These come not from the towns and palaces, but from villages with a maximum population of 200. They were producing olive oil, which they processed and then sold to the merchants in the towns who sold it on to everyone else, including exporting it to Egypt, where the olive doesn't grow, and they had to keep records of these transactions. For every one potsherd there must have been many other writings on perishable materials which haven't survived. There is a wonderful book about the Nablus region in the 19th century which describes how this social and economic system worked in that period, which is very likely to be the tail end of a tradition going back to 3500 BCE. At the great Judaean city of Lachish there is a massive governor's palace. The steps leading into this building wore out in the Iron Age, and had to be replaced. While they were working on that job, in the ancient Judaean equivalent of a tea break, the masons practiced their ABCs by carving the letters into the soft limestone of the new steps. There were skilled workmen, but by no means highly privileged members of the ruling elite! Everything you say about Medieval literacy in the video rings true to me, not only for the Medieval period, but for all earlier periods after the development and spread of the alphabet in the ancient world. Stick to your guns, and don't let the turkeys get you down!

My medieval English lecturer at uni told us people in the middle ages didn't read silently. Reading silent is a later invention, instead people read out loud. Only the most skilled readers would mumble softly instead of read loudly. This makes reading even easier when everything is spelled out phonetically, as you are basically reading the text to yourself. You read out what it says on auto pilot and interpret what you hear.

There's no better proof that the peasantry were able to read than in the justice system of the day. Almost all offenses by peasants, with the exception of crimes against the King, were dealt with through courts made up of fellow peasants in the same village... and they kept records of everything, written by a peasant elected by the peasants to hold the position of reeve for a term of 12 months. The reeve of a village received no special education to make them literate, they were simply informed that they were the reeve for the coming year, and were expected to perform their duties accordingly.

Among Novgorod's birch bark writing, perhaps most important are ones writen by a young boy named Onfim. They include alphabet and writing practice, as well as doodles of rake-handed stickmen striking down foes wand other stuff not unlike what I have done in my young day.

The best thing about the Russian letter is actually how relatable it is. Heck, a "Boris" asking a "Natasha" to send guy with tool plus shirt because there's a lot of work to do could easily be a text message written in Russia today.

I hope Boris got his shirt, it can get pretty cold out in Russia

Meanwhile, in the Beauty and the Beast remake people talk trash to Belle for being able to read and teaching another girl to read. Not like that shitty movie was going for historical accuracy with the agenda it was trying to push, but it still annoyed me

I still haven't got my shirt.

I read somewhere that silent reading used to be an extremely rare skill. I always wondered about that, but if spelling wasn't considered important, it only makes sense that people had to sound out everything they were reading.

Some years ago in Norway they found message on a farm dating from the middle ages. The message stated that they would not be home for dinner. What was most notable was that it was written with the Fuþark alfabet. They thought that only elites knew how to write, and that the alfabet had been dead for several hundred years. The hypothesis is that they used Fuþark because unlike the Latin alfabet, Fuþark is design to be carved.. ᚠᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲ is also known as rune.

This is so instructive and eye opening, I love it. Smashes through that old, old cliche of the classic Monty Python-esque mass ignorance which, even though it is excellent parody, I think too many people believe had basis in fact! Great work Shad and so absolutely wonderful to see you well back to your old self again!

18:39 "English was alot more unrefined, no standardization, spelling and grammar mistakes everywhere, until the poets and writers blazed the trail and evolved and formalized it." Thank you Shad for finally explaining to me the utility of writers and poets.

By the way Shad, have you actually read medieval books? The interesting thing about them is that they seem to have been written in such a way that they are easy to read out loud. There are a lot of opening lines that go like ' no be still and listen good people.' Lots of the written ballads, stories and even legal texts are structured as speeches. The main use of medieval books was to be read out loud for others.

Peasant learn new ability: Reading. Unlock level 50 to reach the next ability: Writing.

Social media writing artifact in the 21st century: "Hey Diane, I'm working hard here; I forgot a hat, send me a hat."

I think an important point that Shad missed about parchment is that Parchment was frequently reused over and over again until it fell apart. You could wash or scratch the words off of parchment and reuse it several times before it became unusable. One of the ways we have been able to recover a lot of texts in recent years is by using digital and UV/ X-ray imaging to look deeper into scraps of parchment to see the stuff that got erased centuries ago. Sometimes books will have reused parchment with scraps of letters or even other books hidden underneath, and similarly sometimes old letters we have will be from books that had either had a page torn out of them or else had been destroyed (whether on purpose or just through wear) and we can sometime find the old text underneath! It makes sense, if you had a scribe or monk copy a book for you because the old copy had been completely worn out, then you would still have the old one that might be too far gone to be repaired but could still have a good number of sheets of parchment in it that could be reused to send a few letters rather than just getting tossed out.

thanks for mentioning novgorod bark letters/ We really do find a lot of them every year. Btw, the most common topics of these barks are lists of goods (mostly furs) from tax collectors. The main user of written language was government willing to manage its resources

Remember that the English alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet which is based on the Greek alphabet which is based on the Phoenician alphabet, and that word right there is where we get words like phonetic. The genius of the Phoenician language is that it's a merchant language. If you can sound it out, you can speak it. So if you can get the sounds right, you can communicate. Also fun fact about Middle English there are no silent letters. All letters in Middle English make a sound in the word. Knight for example is pronounced Ka-nikt. Aprile is pronounce ah-prilla

"(...)And send a shirt. I forgot a shirt." This sounds like a fairly modern conversation on any IM. "Hey Natasja, can you tell someone do drive by and help me out with my work? And let him bring a shirt too" xDD

If they couldn’t read why was one of Martin Luthers biggest points to translate the Bible into languages other than Latin??? 🤔

About poems written in the vernacular: just because we now have written versions of such poems, it doesn’t mean commoners primarily enjoyed them in the written form, whether hearing someone read them aloud or reading for themselves. Poems were usually accompanied by music, so the difference between poems, songs and “lyrics” (a fairly modern word) is often difficult to make. I think that mostly, people just listened to bards and other musicians tell and retell famous songs/poems. This is not to refute your entire argument, which I agree with.

letter and notes from nobles: "blah blah blah blah" notes from peasants "bring me a shirt, i forgot my shirt"

when you forgot a shirt and now all world knows

Not directly within the medieval period, but Martin Luthers graffito in Wittenberg came to my mind. A letter nailed to the church-door WAS ment to been reed by everyone and he was hard on writing in a language onderstood by all (so he choose saxon :P).

In addition to parchment and bark, there's also clay and leaves. Half of the Akkadian corpus is stuff like receipts, legal documents and notes, all written on clay tablets. Memorizing cuneiform signs is marginally more difficult than learning 20ish letters in my experience. Palm leaves were used in at least parts of the Indian Sub-continent. I'm not sure about how suited the leaves found in Europe are for writing, but clay is just pretentious dirt. You can even just write on potsherds, they used those for ballots, notes, grocery lists et c. in Greece. The more I think about, the more I start thinking this illiteracy thing is just a modernist and/or Masonic plot.

"Context is everything." This should be your motto, Shad. Keep those great videos coming. They are informative and interesting.

Medieval literacy. Well, even if illiteracy were true at the very beginning I'm sure 300 years is enough to solve that problem. Besides if nobody could read and write in medieval times, who posted all those witcher contracts on the notice board?

I always imagined it like in civil war movies where not necessarily everyone could read but absolutely everyone knew someone that could and would have a buddy read it to them.

I just love this map 2:15 My country is there (Bulgaria) and it's kinda sad cuz it played kind of a big role in medieval times but nobody talks about it.

One quibble: there was *absolutely* grammar! Just not *standardized* grammar, with standardized literary forms.

Working in history, I'm always surprised by negative reactions to arguments that people in the past weren't ignorant. These are humans with the exact same craving for understanding their world as we have today. Sure, the medieval peasant lacked the means to achieve what the 21st century considers an education, but in many cases so did our own fathers and grandfathers. Did that make them less inquisitive? Of course not. Humans have a problem: in this example, it's the need for communication. And they solve it the best way they can. Everyone understands the spoken word, it's not a leap to learn to phonetically construct enough of a written language to get your point across. We see it today in people who had their education in a different language migrating to a new place where they have few applicable language skills and adapting to the different language. Often that results in a rather grammar-less phonetic attempt to make their message understood. Unsurprisingly, it works (unless the person receiving it decides not to understand it). This should not be controversial.

As italian, I can say that pronounciation in english is a nightmare to learn. Why tf do you say "colonel" like "kernel"? It makes no sense whatsoever. I hated learning verbs in italian, we have too many conjugations, but AT LEAST we are consistent with our phonetics lol if I meet an italian word I never read before I know how to read it, while in english I, most often than not, have no idea.

Shad, whenever you post a video, I get so happy because I know I can get through at least part of my morning at work entertained. Thank you for these videos

I must say Shad, I was about to start some rants about medeival literacy on your last video, but then I started some reasearch and I have to thank you for not only 2 informative videos, but also for making me do my own reaserch! And yes, it turns out they could use letters :D However, this now only raises further questions!

Many areas also had the custom of marrying daughters to husbands in other villages (also avoided inbreeding) so it seems very unconvincing to assume that families didn't keep in touch via written notes. Or all the kids they sent to the castle to work as servants there - surely they were highly motivated to quickly learn the alphabet so they could keep in touch.

Curiously, just like latin was the academic language in medieval times, today ENGLISH has become the academic language. To people from non english-speaking countries, like me, if you want to research papers and studies, you will find something in your own language, but the great majority is writen in english. The same even applies to entertainment content in general. So you could say that anyone that does not know english would not be completely academically literate.

The biggest non-shocker ever? People needed the ability to read in those societies so yes, people learned it.

Some potential lessons to learn. 1) You can't dunk on someone with ten minutes of googling (or less) and a single, not very relevant source. 2) It's a bad habit of our time to have an opinion on everything. But if you're not a researcher, academic, or at least an enthusiast, there's no reason for you to have an established opinion on something like medieval European literacy rates! All you really knew was that most academics thought a thing. And even knowing that what we know changes all the time, people still have a habit of not just having unsupported opinions but of also defending them like they're self-worth is somehow tied to them being right.

I don't know how it is for the rest of Europe but in France we are taught in middle school that all peasant's kids were taught to read by the local priest after 800 ac thanks to our good boy Charlemagne. We are even taught that there were priests who were sent with the mission to create alphabets and teach it to unlettered populations in the east (and also convert them). So we can affirm that those "historians" don't know a loot about European history.

This is perfect because I recently made a D&D character who's a peasant. I'm glad to hear my dear Inga can read, but I'm still gonna say her handwriting looks like it was written by a paraplegic blind man.

I literally just finished your last video and then this pops up. RU-vid’s notifications actually worked for once.

As a librarian, I really, really loved this! The notes made me laugh. Fantastic vid, man!

Great video Shad, very well thought out. One thing I would mention as well is in regard to the primary source material we have been left behind. Obviously, not everything produced in the Middle Ages has survived to today, so we are left with only a small sample of what was actually written back then. This raises an important question of who gets to decide what is saved and what is lost, and what standards are applied to make that decision. In relation to this topic, its important because the people deciding what survives are likely to be those at the top, the nobility who have the money to pay for better quality/more ornate works which carry sentimental value, thus it is more likely that written works geared towards these groups are more likely to survive, thereby fuelling a perception that literacy was the realm of the upper classes.

Well, you made some good points. I agree, being a peasant in the middle ages doesn't say anything about their intelligence. In my opinion it is much harder to only rely on memory instead of writings. As a book historian, there are some things for me you missed out. ;) Yes, being a peasant doesn't mean you didn't had a chance to learn to read, but I still think, it weren't that many. If you have one or to persons in a community or a household who could read or write (because they were taught in monasteries or town schools), they did the job for everybody else. They read letters, announcements etc. and they also wrote in favor of friends and family. You can also pay someone to do so. And those in higher status, who had to address the common people or read something out to them (like poems, announcements) may have done that in their local language directly, because they had to communicate it in that way. You also mentioned pragmatic literacy: thats a good and very important point. Some scribes, who copied texts, may have been very good copiers, but it's not necessarily for them to know how to read (especially latin) . You can see it in old manuscripts when mistakes are copied over and over again. And some peasants may have known some numbers or had skills to read their bills, but not to read big literature (which had a huge oral tradition). In the end, I think, we would have much more traces of medieval peasant writing if your assumptions were true in that scale. Of course the materials are not that likely to survive, but more of them must have had survived as palimpsests or in medieval buildings etc.). See also: The estimated per capita production of manuscripts from 6th to 15th century, which is mostly a couple of hundreds per 1 million inhabitants. In: Eltjo Buringh u. Jan Luiten van Zanden, Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries, in: The Journal of Economic History 69. 2009, p. 409-445, p. 420.

The assumption that literacy was non existant among the lower classes throughout history is a bit annoying. While certainly there would have been people who never learned to read on account of not needing to know or not having access to resources to learn, the assumption that only the ultra educated could read does not seem to be all that justified. Certainly, there have been points in history where literacy was more or less common, but to say that no one but the elite could read until the rise of the modern school system is more a result of our own desire to feel superior than actually being the result of historical evidence.

9:20 I can relate...I started learning Russian on Duolingo because I wanted to try a language with a different alphabet. It didn't take long, maybe a week or two, before I learned the Russian alphabet phonetically and I could start reading Russian words and writing English phonetically with Russian letters. While reading Russian, even if I didn't know what the word was, I could still pronounce it (more or less) by learning the alphabet phonetically. On a side note, there are a surprisingly large amount of words common to both English and Russian, but its hidden because often they look very different.

My ancestor was high noble from Venice. In 1410 he as volunteer fought on Polish side in Battle of Grunwald ( one of biggest medieval battles). In 1430 he moved to Poland permanently. My family since then live in Poland, but still after 600 years we have connection with Venice, and know italian(venetian) language. But the main reason why I told this story, and why I even know this, is that he could read and write. Thanks to him my family at least from 1400 can read and write. Everyone was supposed to read and write notes about their lives in my family. Of course they were nobles, but even not all nobles could read in medieval Europe. It is great. Now my family had hundreds of pages of our ancestors diary's ( diary is best world to describe it, also journal or memory is good). We were mostly fighters- knights, later hussars , then adventurers/ travelers and officers in more modern times, so I could read about many famous wars. It is amazing to see a perspective of my ancestors when they fought on Battle of Vienna 1683( in Polish hussars) , siege of Candia ( volunteer in Venetian army against Ottomans) Napoleonic wars( Napoleon side, in polish army from Warsaw Principality), american civil war ( my grand...grandfather's brother moved to America and bought farm in the South in 1850' and when my grand...grandfather visit him the war started, so both of then went as volunteers to fight from freedom ), I ww (in my family were 2 German Imperial Army capitains - one calvalry, and second fighter pilot, they were my grandgrandfather and his brother ( Poland was participationed, so all poles served in russian,german or austrian army ), and italian capitain, third brother ( we always have connection to Italy, and he liked Italy most), polish- bolshevic war ( Polish side) spanish civil war ( against communists) and and II ww ( Polish army). And I know all this just because "some person" in 1400' was literrated and he belived that his childs and grandchild must also be. And since then around 30 generations later, we still write diaries/ journals ( ofc mine is really boring, no wars, nothing interesting....) to future generations.

Shad, thanks to your videos I have taken up an interest in medieval studies and bested my boss in an impromptu "swordfight" about half an hour ago. He was armed with an umbrella and I was armed with a broom so it was more like longsword vs spear/rapier, since the balance of the broom is very close to the end, though it was actually more like two fools whacking sticks around. I've also started building a castle in Minecraft (machicolations included!!) and when I'm finished I'll post a video tour and explain how learning from you influenced the features and design. Thanks for the good content, Shad!

Oh man, this is the most fascinating of the many videos of yours I have watched! Partly because I'm an aspiring writer for mid-grade readers, and this knocks a common trope of mid-grade novels into a cocked hat! There's still the problem of how a commoner might send a communication some distance, as there was no postal service. They would send it with someone who was going there, especially if the traveler knew who to give it to at the other end. I wonder if that might be a future topic?

Whelp... There goes my fallback plan on "What I'd do if I was teleported back in time."

As a history grad in the medieval and early modern period. Great video nice to see some actual work, however i would argue that the general historiographical consensus is that the general literacy rate of their native language was probably between 10-50%. A huge difference, but it would depend on a variety of factors locally, a key point to follow is the history of broadsidew. The premise of these were cheap "news" articles, by news this could be from songs of battles, stories of monstrous births etc. People would buy these even if they couldnt read and go to a social event, i.e. pub or village hall, and would share with their companions. One person who could read would read it out and teach people songs etc. Even if only one peasant in the whole community could read, it wouldnt matter nearly as much due to the sharing of information through broadsides

I just watched the first reading video, and let me tell you, it was an eye opener. I’m a retired world history teacher , and in all the textbooks in the many years, it all said most people were completely illiterate. There was absolutely no distinction between the vernacular and Latin. This is blowing my mind, and it’s actually pretty upsetting that textbooks tell this lie. I’m looking forward to this deeper dive.

Course a lot could. Gotta keep a record of your livestock and labeling tally marks is surprisingly effective at doing just that. Trade was a MAJOR industry at the time and even most Romans were able to read before medieval times. Wasn't as easy to learn, but there were PLENTY of reasons to even back then.

Thank you, this is an exciting topic for me. My image of 'the medieval villager' just shifted. Now they seem more like normal people to me. People with their own kind of education, but education nonetheless. I'd like to learn more of that.

About birchbark letters I can remember "Kirik's inquiry" that's a compilation of questions from Novgorodian priest to his bishop. Between others Kirik asks about dumped letters thats covered all ground, is here a sin walk by step on it or not? Before investigation of first birchbark letter this moment of "Inquiry" was obscure

From this channel I've learned so much! Especially that the medieval era had many many differences depending on where you live.Thanks for your amazing content keep it up!

The Medieval era gets a lot of hate due to the enlightenment figures dumping on the Church and calling it the dark ages. The reality is the Medieval era is one of the most civilized and interesting periods of history.

I'm very skeptical, that's why when someone comes with new evidence and a solid argument, I get more than excited.

Thanks for giving this information, it really is good to break this trope of medieval times. Also gotta thank you for being so formal with correcting people instead of yelling at them like a lot of the internet likes to do, it's kind of relieving honestly.

Thank you for all of the information you share, and for keeping it so entertaining. I'm writing an epic fantasy adventure with my son and you've saved me a lot of time on research! When we were first discussing plot details, I asked him if he'd heard of your channel. He was already subscribed! We spent the next half hour suggesting your videos to each other, discussing the relevant ones we'd both already seen, and those we found super entertaining. Thanks again!

8:50 you’re spot on about people spelling things the way they sound. But also depends on accents as well. My grandfathers last name is Timperley, and it was a fairly common name in the 16-17th century around northern England. It is very frustrating to find any documents related to my family history because every darn county and church had their own way of spelling it. There are Timperley, Timperly, Timperlay, Timperlee and Timparlee. There’s probably a few more that I’ve forgotten. So yeah, written English can be a pain sometimes.

Makes sense. There wouldn't be a reason for the church to ban translation of the Bible if the masses couldn't read it anyway.

I loved the first video you did on this. Really shifted my perception of the times and of many fantasy worlds (including my D&D campaign). Thanks for doing a followup!

Hey, Shad! Love your content! I would love to see an entire 15 minute episode of you reading Medieval messages and commenting on them! It'd be hilarious and would help us all get great insight into the mindset of these people from oh so long ago! Be safe! Love you!

You have no idea how much you've been helping me Shad.

I believe the fact that we have dozens of written languages and dialects that are not Latin should be quite a bit of proof.

Shad thank you for the Wonderful video! So glad your feeling better

Thanks for the link to the birch bark letters. I am really looking forward to reading those.

I really enjoyed this vid, the idea of pragmatic, phonetic literacy really resonated with me especially when you said you learn your letters VERY early.

“Your mother smells of bear dung.” - Some medieval drunkard wrote on the side of the local tavern at some point probably

Superb video! Thank you for diving deeper into the topic. From your laugh about the bark notes I would suppose that your recovery is on the good path. If that is true, keep it up, stay positive and healthy.

I know you have a lot in your hands now. This kind of content is really appreciated.

Why aren't you a college professor? xD "Professor Brooks-" "No, Shad...o-kay?" "Professor-" "Shad." -Tosses a pommel-

I really love when Shad takes the time to research and present stuff like this. Takes a lot more time and effort thou!

I am British and was learning French in an American college. The teacher was from Normandy and at times her French differed from the French she was teaching but she was completely fluent in bog-standard Froggy. At the end of one of her lessons we were the last two to leave the classroom. She sidled up to me and uttered something along the lines of “oh, what’s it like to everyday day see both our languages butchered’. I actually spoke Cornish dialect English, but the way some of my sentencing was framed she understood it perfectly.

Great video. Very, very enlightening. 10:16am -- Your note sheet with the 'play' on words is absolutely a scream!! Ironically, that page is something very similar to what was shown to me as a grammar student as part of a dictation exercise. Not only did we have to do the dictation (and hopefully correctly) we also, sometimes had to recite the page out loud as a measure for the teacher to see if, we really understood what she had said and what she had written. If I can speak to some of your viewers and in support of you (Shad) and your efforts. For anyone who was educated in the parochial / Catholic school tradition we actually got some of this information. What has thrown many people off is the fact that even, in parochial schools today they don't teach a lot of this literacy (background) knowledge and information to our nation's young people. Unfortunately / sadly, most teachers teaching schedule doesn't allow or accommodate the teaching of, 'non-essential' material. Thank you for sharing your own knowledge and information with the masses.

These commoner notes from history do not disappoint. Would enjoy a whole video of medieval shitposts pls

For the longest time I just went with the common "understanding" that peasants were illiterate. It's what I've always been made to believe. This subject is very interesting, thanks for the video

Shad, glad to see your doing well after your surgery. Cheers!

So happy to see you back on your horse Shad, cant wait to watch this vid, in the comfort of my living room with the fire on.

Same source you linked tells about written texts in both latin and cyrylica circulating in the city of Vilnius. Meaning there were people at the time, living in far north-eastern Europe, that were literate - in modern understanding of the word, not just reading - in more than one language. Makes sense if you think about it.

your love for history is inspiring

These discussion of other aspects of ancient life are excellent. Keep it up.

Thank you Ihave been learning a lot from your channel. I can't wait to see what comes next. Take care my friend and have a wonderful day