Could you speak in your homeland if you went back to 1300AD?

[Caliga]

Epidemics are OSSUM for the people who manage to survive them.

[Martim Silva]

Yeah, it's we have a fairly good idea who was in my area around 1300.  Sioux speaking peoples had arrived right a little before that.  Before that would have been a Caddo people.  The French documented the peoples in central Missouri in the mid 17th century so it's not to far from 1300.

Note that from 1300 to mid 17th century means 350 years... in other words, we today are closer to 1700 AD than those Native Americans were from their predecessors from 1300.

Also, can one REALLY be sure it was the same tribe? Isn't it possible that the nomadic tribes that lived there in 1300 AD were actually pushed around a century or two later by the tribe that was there in the 17th century? North American tribes could be quite mobile if need be.

In the case of where I live, circa 1300 AD a Native American culture called the Fort Ancient culture inhabited Kentucky, which is believed to be the ancestral culture of the Shawnee.  There is a break in the archaeological record that historians believe was caused by an epidemic introduced into the South by de Soto's expedition... apparently disease practically wiped out the Native Americans in Kentucky, and when later explorers arrived in what is now Kentucky it was almost totally deserted--used as a sort of hunting preserve by both the Shawnee and the Cherokee.

This is an example... can we truly sure that the Fort Ancient culture were indeed the ancestors of the Shawnee? There have been many cases of skeletons proving that the current tribes were not the ones living in those same lands in medieval times.

And your epidemic would indicate it could be so - so many deaths would leave the local tribes quite vulnerable to advances by their neighbors, which would make the Shawnee conquerors of the land, not descendents of the peoples of the 1300's...

And how can we be sure their languages did not change considerably over the centuries?

[Pat]

We had a thread about Turkish Delight and how nobody knows what that is except we all read about it in the Narnia books. 

Heh, I'm the opposite, I haven't read the Narnia books and I know what Turkish delights are (only because I've been to Turkey three times though)

[katmai]

No I don't speak Spanish or basque so i'd be screwed.

[jimmy olsen]

Chaucer's English is pretty straightforward, more like an English dialect than anything else; a couple of weeks and the adjustment would be made.

On the other hand.........Gawain and the Green Knight would involve a lot more work to understand, and the stuff from earlier centuries looks like a foreign language.....

Meanwhile Shakespeare is more or less modern English.

I agree with you, I found Shakespeare quite easy to read, but I know a lot of people who have a great deal of trouble reading Shakespear.

Chaucer, well I haven't read that in so many years I'm having a hard time remembering how difficult it was, just that it was significantly more so than Shakespeare.

[DisturbedPervert]

For Americans, as I reckon nobody knows what kind of language Native Americans used in that era, let us instead say you get transported to the city of London in 1300 AD.

I can't understand people in London now, going back to 1300 certainly isn't going to help

[jimmy olsen]

Though note that 200 years is actually a long time... linguistically, in many countries the 16th century is often more distant from the 14th century than our 21st century is from, say, the 18th century.

That's because literacy preserves language and modern communications even more so.

[HVC]

No I don't speak Spanish or basque so i'd be screwed.

Weren't you trying to learn Basque a little while ago?

as for the question at hand. if i was here in canada i'd be shit out of luck. In Portugual it depends. I've heard that brazillian is supposed to sound like old portuguese. if so i would be able to read it (slowly ), but have no idea what they're saying. Which is weird, because i can understand other accents/dialects in portuguese, just not brazillian.

[katmai]

No I don't speak Spanish or basque so i'd be screwed.

Weren't you trying to learn Basque a little while ago?

as for the question at hand. if i was here in canada i'd be shit out of luck. In Portugual it depends. I've heard that brazillian is supposed to sound like old portuguese. if so i would be able to read it (slowly ), but have no idea what they're saying. Which is weird, because i can understand other accents/dialects in portuguese, just not brazillian.

Still Like to, but haven't found a good program, think I just need to move there and get hands on language training

[HVC]

No I don't speak Spanish or basque so i'd be screwed.

Weren't you trying to learn Basque a little while ago?

as for the question at hand. if i was here in canada i'd be shit out of luck. In Portugual it depends. I've heard that brazillian is supposed to sound like old portuguese. if so i would be able to read it (slowly ), but have no idea what they're saying. Which is weird, because i can understand other accents/dialects in portuguese, just not brazillian.

Still Like to, but haven't found a good program, think I just need to move there and get hands on language training

Just bring over an old live in maid. She'll teach ya :p

[katmai]

[Just bring over an old live in maid. She'll teach ya :p

Why don't I bring in a hot young maid then

[HVC]

[Just bring over an old live in maid. She'll teach ya :p

Why don't I bring in a hot young maid then

Spain isn't poor like it used to be, it's harder to bring over the young ones now. But if you want to learn messed up spanish you could always get a rican or cuban on the cheap

[dps]

Also, can one REALLY be sure it was the same tribe? Isn't it possible that the nomadic tribes that lived there in 1300 AD were actually pushed around a century or two later by the tribe that was there in the 17th century? North American tribes could be quite mobile if need be

Actually, Native Americans were not, in the main, nomadic.  The big exception would be the Plains tribes, but even they were only semi-nomadic until they got horses from the Spanish.

That said, of course over that long a period of time, there can be plenty of cultural and language shifts without the people being nomadic per se.

As to the question in the OP, I think if I had to go back to 1300 London, I'd just learn Latin and try to pass myself off as Italian.

[Fireblade]

An Arkansas Southron in King Henry's Court.

I'd teach them how to brew up moonshine and make shotguns.

[Sheilbh]

I don't know if the spelling there is phonetic or not.

Medieval English spelling is generally phonetic.  The language of the Church was Medieval Latin and the language of the court was Central French; these two have some regularity because they are being written formally.  Medieval English wasn't used for that sort of purpose so most spelling was phonetic.  Some Middle English anachronisms have survived, for example the reason knight is spelled knight is because it was pronounced k-n-igh-t, it's from the Old English cniht and I believe survived in German too as knecht (sp?) at some point pronunciation shifts but we're left with the spelling and Monty Python jokes.

It's a bit easier if you use modern standardization to write the words.

Yeah the section of Chaucer quoted by Silva looks mostly unedited.  Most good editions nowadays standardise the letters so they look modern.

Also isn't Chauncer only writing in the London area dialect.  Someone from say, Northumbria might sound completely different.  If it was spoken to me for a while I think I could puzzle out what they are saying in a few days.

Chaucer's the Middlesex dialect.  As I mentioned earlier an example of the West Midlands/North-West dialect would be the Pearl-poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Another good source is actually 'The Reeve's Tale' which is about a miller and two North-Eastern students and Chaucer plays up the dialect and accent difference quite a bit.