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

[Solmyr]

Old Russian is different from modern but it's still mostly understandable, so yeah, I wouldn't be totally lost.

[Grey Fox]

I can't speak Iroquois nor Huron. I would be shit out of luck in London.

In France, langue d'oil could be do able & apparently, I can understand some part of langue d'oc.

[Iormlund]

I can understand an excerpt from the Liber Regnum, written a century earlier, despite not speaking Fabla (Aragonese). So I guess I would be alright.

[Josquius]

In this case, when he hears "Wee sayen yeaso. Ouriwis, thousay trew", and he gets by the earpiece that "thousay trew" is "you speak the truth" and uses the sentence to confirm what people were asking him.

Aha, when you say it that way it makes sense- true is said and should be written trew, it just isn't. So if someone said to me 'thou-say true' I'd probally get it,

Howbite thou speakst foolsimple ohcopan, eek invich array thouart. Essay thousooth Earisher?

That's how come you speak like such simpletons (ohcopan being?) An English army you are. Are you Irish? I guess??


I think I'd stand a better chance than most English in some ways but worse in others. I'm geordie which is the closest thing to original English you get outside of Friesland but over the past few decades the dialect has really died off a lot so even sent back 200 years and speaking to someone uneducated I would likely have to concentrate to communicate.

I am pretty good at talking with foreigners though and have some basic French, Dutch and Swedish understanding so from there could hopefully cobble together something.

[KRonn]

While there has certainly been drift between various language groups shifting boundaries, and at least some drift within language groups, we generally have a pretty good idea what language or languages would have been spoken in a given area.

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.

Interesting. I have read that the Kentucky area was used by many tribes for hunting. Didn't know that population had been decimated there, leading to that. Also read that the hunting parties from different tribes would try to observe truces in that area, when they might otherwise be at war with each other.

[Martim Silva]

Howbite thou speakst foolsimple ohcopan, eek invich array thouart. Essay thousooth Earisher?

That's how come you speak like such simpletons (ohcopan being?) An English army you are. Are you Irish?

I guess??

The way (Howbite)
you speak (thou speakst)
clearly (foolsimple=to do things in a simple way; without difficulty)
to your companion (ohcopan)
and (eek)
[the] attire in which you are. (invich array thouart.)
Say (Essay)
are you in truth (thousooth)
Irish? (Earisher?)

I think I'd stand a better chance than most English in some ways but worse in others. I'm geordie which is the closest thing to original English you get outside of Friesland but over the past few decades the dialect has really died off a lot so even sent back 200 years and speaking to someone uneducated I would likely have to concentrate to communicate.

I am pretty good at talking with foreigners though and have some basic French, Dutch and Swedish understanding so from there could hopefully cobble together something.

Everything helps, but French won't do much good. Dutch, if from the coastal regions, would be of great use, especially South of the Thames, but also very much in London. Danish or Norwegian would be better than Swedish, but it wouldn't hurt. 

Unlike Polish,  our language has undergone evolution and in the 19th century, a centralized effort of streamlining, so I think I would have serious problems.

I can't recall 14th century examples, but I do know that the earliest written memory of our language (1075 or so) is very hard to understand, the only help is if you know/adopt to the different 'accent' then you can make out some of the basic words.

We had quite many dialects, most only had minor differences but I remember from documentaries that I had a hard time understading the old people speaking some of the more extreme ones.

Hmmm... it would be expected that Magyar would underwent a lot of change. On the other hand, I think your people had a good knack for Latin. At least you made good minstrels.

And still do, if this medieval Latin song performed by Magyars is any indication:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSgGZGt4r7Y

As for me, given that I'm from Northern Portugal, it would be even easier than for Martim. We would  be even in great trouble if we go to pre-1147 Lisbon

Indeed, many of the regional differences still exist today. If one reads the 1296 portuguese text I posted above, we see that the lady's son was a trobador (troubador), as 'v' and 'b' had similar values in Medieval Portugal.

And even now, while portuguese from the Center and South say 'trovador', the North still says 'trobador', just to note one of the many differences.

Brazilian Portuguese does not sound like Old Portuguese which is Galaico-Portuguese. The closest thing to Galaico-Portuguese now is spoken in Northern Portugal.

Note that Galaico-Portuguese was going in one direction, which would have turned out similar to Mirandês (Portugal's second offical language).

We, however, got side-tracked. Our current language was heavily molded in the second half of the 11th century by Geraldo, Bishop of Braga, who was Occitan and gave us their grammar, as well as a good chunk of their orthography - our "lh", "nh" and "ç", for example, are all Occitan - for some reason our language is that different from Castillian.

Portuguese and Galician are the two closest languages to each other. But after that, Occitan is our "godmother tongue", so to say (and, in a lesser way, Catalonian is our far cousin language, as it was once part of Occitan and is now halfway between them and Castillian).

Have you read the Occitan song I posted before? Medieval Occitan is even closer to our language that its modern version, and even that one is very understandable.

This is an example of current Occitan (or more accurately, Llengua d'Oc):

Totas las personas naisson liuras e egalas en dignitat e en drech. Son dotadas de rason e de consciéncia e lor cal agir entre elas amb un esperit de frairesa.

What amazes me is that Paris insists that this is just a patois of regular French and doesn't even consider Occitan a second language of the country!

Tell me, when you read Occitan, what do you use more? Your knowledge of French, or that of Portuguese?

I can understand an excerpt from the Liber Regnum, written a century earlier, despite not speaking Fabla (Aragonese). So I guess I would be alright.

But would you understand Aragonese? And Catalonian? How would you think you'd fare in Occitania?

Old Russian is different from modern but it's still mostly understandable, so yeah, I wouldn't be totally lost.

There seems to be a Slavic pattern emerging; these languages do not seem much affected. By similarity, I suppose Bulgarians (not the mongolian Bulgars) would also be ok in 1300.

I wonder about the Serbs and the Croats, who got separated longer from their northern kin...

[Iormlund]

I can understand an excerpt from the Liber Regnum, written a century earlier, despite not speaking Fabla (Aragonese). So I guess I would be alright.

But would you understand Aragonese? And Catalonian? How would you think you'd fare in Occitania?

I can make some sense of spoken Catalonian, Aranese, Aragonese and Portuguese. I suspect teaching myself to speak their medieval ancestors would be as relatively easy as learning the modern languages themselves. It would take me some time, but things don't seem to have changed that much around the Peninsula.
Modern French, on the other hand, is almost incomprehensible to me, so I don't have high hopes of understanding anyone further than Occitania.

[Sheilbh]

Just to say the examples of Middle English from the Crichton book don't look like convincing Middle English to me - which isn't to say much but I wouldn't put too much faith in them.

Edit:  And for the English speakers 1300 was before the Great Vowel Shift which would significantly impact our language.  I added this just because I love the phrase 'Great Vowel Shift'.  It sounds like tectonic Countdown.

[Neil]

Ethnic Albertans have always spoken modern English.

[Josquius]

Just to say the examples of Middle English from the Crichton book don't look like convincing Middle English to me - which isn't to say much but I wouldn't put too much faith in them.

Edit:  And for the English speakers 1300 was before the Great Vowel Shift which would significantly impact our language.  I added this just because I love the phrase 'Great Vowel Shift'.  It sounds like tectonic Countdown.

Come 2012 we're all screwed. As will become Is, Os Us and no one will have any clue what on earths going on.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Just to say the examples of Middle English from the Crichton book don't look like convincing Middle English to me - which isn't to say much but I wouldn't put too much faith in them.

Edit:  And for the English speakers 1300 was before the Great Vowel Shift which would significantly impact our language.  I added this just because I love the phrase 'Great Vowel Shift'.  It sounds like tectonic Countdown.

Come 2012 we're all screwed. As will become Is, Os Us and no one will have any clue what on earths going on.

that's going to fuck up the MIEUO mod then

[Razgovory]

Just to say the examples of Middle English from the Crichton book don't look like convincing Middle English to me - which isn't to say much but I wouldn't put too much faith in them.

Edit:  And for the English speakers 1300 was before the Great Vowel Shift which would significantly impact our language.  I added this just because I love the phrase 'Great Vowel Shift'.  It sounds like tectonic Countdown.

I thought that was more of a continental thing.  You can actually read Old English right?

[Duque de Bragança]

Note that Galaico-Portuguese was going in one direction, which would have turned out similar to Mirandês (Portugal's second offical language).

What do you mean by that? For me, Mirandês is not a dialect of Galaico-Portuguese, it is a dialect of Astur-Leonese. I get most of it, of course, since it is an influence in the local dialect.

We, however, got side-tracked. Our current language was heavily molded in the second half of the 11th century by Geraldo, Bishop of Braga, who was Occitan and gave us their grammar, as well as a good chunk of their orthography - our "lh", "nh" and "ç", for example, are all Occitan - for some reason our language is that different from Castillian.

Portuguese and Galician are the two closest languages to each other. But after that, Occitan is our "godmother tongue", so to say (and, in a lesser way, Catalonian is our far cousin language, as it was once part of Occitan and is now halfway between them and Castillian).

Have you read the Occitan song I posted before? Medieval Occitan is even closer to our language that its modern version, and even that one is very understandable.

This is an example of current Occitan (or more accurately, Llengua d'Oc):

Totas las personas naisson liuras e egalas en dignitat e en drech. Son dotadas de rason e de consciéncia e lor cal agir entre elas amb un esperit de frairesa.

What amazes me is that Paris insists that this is just a patois of regular French and doesn't even consider Occitan a second language of the country!

Tell me, when you read Occitan, what do you use more? Your knowledge of French, or that of Portuguese?

For me Galician is a dialect of (Northern) Portuguese It has been castillanised though...

ç used to exist in Castillan btw.
Occitan is sometimes used as a synonym for Langue d'Oc ,not always though. As for me, French comes naturally but yeah, the lh/nh thing comes to mind, even more now that you mention it. Hell, it even ended in Vietnamese (nh)...

Paris and everybody north of the Loire.
As for Occitan, there is a -somewhat limited- revival in the South. In Toulouse, streets names are bilingual, for what it's worth... Catalan, gotmother tongue?  It is too close to French for me.

[viper37]

I am not too sure I could understand old French, if I was moved to Paris at the time of the 100 years War.  Understanding modern French people is hard enough, I can't imagine their ancestors...

[Valmy]

I am not too sure I could understand old French, if I was moved to Paris at the time of the 100 years War.  Understanding modern French people is hard enough, I can't imagine their ancestors...

More importantly whose side would you have been during the Revolt of the Jacquerie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquerie