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The original was posted on /r/askhistorians by /u/Logan_Maddox on 2023-09-01 00:35:01+00:00.

Like, the Icelandic Sagas were written down in Old Norse I think. So a monk copies it, and the language he’s speaking is halfway between Old Norse and Icelandic, for instance. Wouldn’t he just assume the Old Norse idioms were mistakes and “correct” them to how he was talking at his time period, 100 years after the fact? Or did monks eventually reach a point where they were just writing down and copying stuff without even knowing what it said?