Understanding English

[willowman]

If I could travel back in time when would I start to have difficulty understanding what people were saying? When would English as we know it become incomprehensible - bearing in mind I had problems translating Shakespeare when I was at school?

If anyone says the 1960's they will be given detention and lines!!

[jno]

depends - language is a continuum, not a series of boxes with boundaries. Very simple declaratory English, in books, came in with Hemingway really - if you read Dickens, he uses much longer, flowery sentences; but it's hard to say if people talked like that. It's possible you might have understood Elizabethan English - Shakespeare was a poet, and again people may not necessarily have talked the way he wrote. But as well as differences in sentence structure and vocabulary, they probably would have spoken in much stronger regional accents than they do now, so it would also depend just where you were. My guess is you would be okay as far back as the 18th century - say 1750 or so; further than that and comprehension would start to become hard work.

[delboy3]

And don't forget that for at least 200 years after 1066, French was the "official" language.

[Zen]

If you are going to travel back in time apparently Latin would be the most useful language to have.

[maxi29]

Shakespeare wrote for a mass audience so he's not particularly obscure. Will the meanings of some words have changed and pronunciation could be different, you should still understand about 90%.

You could probably go back as far as Chaucer and still understand the gist of what was being said. What intrigues me is the gap between anglo-saxon and middle english - how quickly did the one become the other?

[willowman]

Maxi, to a 13 year old in the early 60's I'm afraid he was a bit obscure. I often ask the question - when did the italians stop speaking Latin and start speaking Italian?