Chaucer Hath Spam

[jducoeur]

I don't know how many people are following chaucerhathblog; I suspect that many took a glance at it briefly, appreciated the joke, and wandered off.

I'm only paying half-attention myself, but I must commend today's mailbag entry. From the woes of Leo of Armenia to the "HOTTE COURTLIE ACCIOUN!", it's a real hoot...

Comments

[nazrynn.livejournal.com]

OK, that was the first time I've broken down and given in to the urge to read the Chaucer Blog.... OMG. Hilarious!!!!

Thank you! :D

Blast from the past

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

It may show how much of a dork I am that the one that really had me in stitches was the "Good Tymes" message...

Re: Blast from the past

[jducoeur]

Yeah, I was amused to see that one -- I don't even think about that particular hoax very often any more...

Re: Blast from the past

[eudociainboston.livejournal.com]

Too good

[(Anonymous)]

Fascinating - much like all the kids on AOL and those who pwn. I wonder if someone is merely running english through an application to spit that out.

[jducoeur]

Can't be. Besides the fact that mangling the English in those particular ways is relatively hard (it's pretty good Chaucerian English, which means that it needs more than just word and spelling shifts -- the grammar is subtly different), the humor is *way* too on-target. The jokes aren't just subtituting names, they're using good period metaphors and cognates. That's well beyond the current state of the art in AI to do automatically; the program would require so much hand-coding of the knowledge base that it's far easier to just write the jokes by hand.

No, this is clearly just someone who is good at the English of the time, getting practice by writing this humor column in it. It's rather fun, with its own running jokes and a pretty good sense of the history involved...