The first
sentence ever written in
Dutch.
It was found in 1922 in the
library of
Oxford. The sentence was written by a
Flemish monk in the 12th century. He wrote it to test his pen (since pens made from goose-feathers often failed) on a
fly-leaf of a
manuscript.
The sentence translates:
"All the birds started building nests, except me and you"
After this there's another piece of text which most probably translates to "what are we waiting for?"
According to many scholars the sentence is some sort of love poem.
It's quite strange that a monk wrote a love poem, since he had to live his life in Celibacy.
The complete sentence and litteral translation in English and modern Dutch (between brackets):
Hebban - have (hebben)
olla - all (alle)
uogala - birds (vogels)
nestas - nests (nesten)
hagunnan - begun (begonnen)
hinase - except (behalve)
hic - I (ik)
anda - and (en)
thu - you (jij)
uuat - what (wat)
unbidat - wait (wacht)
ghe - ye (ge)
nu - now (nu)