If I was to time travel, how far back could I go and still have a conversation with someone in my high street?

[complexnumber]

I am sorry if I have asked this before, it is one of those things that I think about every now and then, but have no idea what the answer is.

My home town is now a West London suburb and has a quite long history.

I'm fairly sure that if I travelled back 100 years, I would still be able to understand the language of people around me, maybe even 200 years, though I imagine the accent would be a heck of a lot different to nowadays.

300 years ago? I doubt if I could understand much of what was being said.

I have no evidence to base my thoughts upon, so I was wondering if anyone out there could give a rough estimate as to how far back I could travel, and still understand people.

I love this thread! Thanks OP

If you're worried bout ending up in a brothel, you might want to read Fanny Hill (1748 - easily comprehensible; and a mere 49p on Kindle).

It would be a shame if this thread went pfft.

OP: would you consider asking MNHQ to move it from chat to somewhere like the History Club?

I'm loving this thread too. I should have said my link was a ballad called Warrikin Fair, written about my home town Warrington in the mid 16th C. Sounds completely incomprehensible to me.

Zizzo I've heard the noise in the Mills was also the reason for the preponderance of meemawing in the nw.

Hmm. Well my first thought was that this village has been inhabited since at least the 1400s so I could go back 700 years.

Then I remembered that the English language has changed so much over the centuries that I probably wouldn't have been understood or able to understand anything much over 200 years ago.

Then I remembered that when I first moved here I spent a great deal of time doing the Smile-and-Nod manoeuvre whilst struggling to understand even the most basic sentence when spoken in the local accent and dialect.

So I think I could honestly say that if I'd woken up to find myself wandering these streets just 15 years ago I'd have struggled to understand the majority of people here .

I think speaking face to face you'd understand a lot more than you would from listening to a recording, or even reading a transcription - I'm sure I read something before about a huge percentage of understanding being down to body language, facial expressions, etc. I'm learning Welsh at the moment, and listening to the radio find it hard to pick up much beyond the odd word as they go so fast, but when watching something on S4C it's a lot easier as you get the whole context of the situation.

People mentioned some American accents being closer to old English, and that could be true. A lot of current American words are archaic English ones - highway, fall, etc. The richest people in Boston and other areas of the East Coast sounded surprisingly English until recently - Julia Styles was slated for her accent in Mona Lisa Smile and then someone pointed out that it was actually accurate.

Can you imagine what stares you would get if you walked down the High Street 300/400 years ago, dressed as you are now?

I would probably do okay, except my hemline is far too short (just above knees). They would think I was a peasant because of the huge wooly jumper, and think my thick black stockings (tights) were very clean and in good nick. Though they might be astounded by the gold thread in the dress.

And probably be surprised that my hair was flying around everywhere instead of tucked up in a hat. And they would think that I was very clean looking. Maybe a posh woman then, in bad peasant disguise.

I'm a historical anachronism

Fascinating subject!
I love listening to the clipped 1930s/1940s accents.
My own grandparents spoke quite differently,coming from Lancashire and
Manchester with Irish parents.
Am sure they would struggle to understand my and my DCs Cheshire accents now!

Nothing to add except really fascinating thread. Loving listening to the clips on the link.......thank you

This is just such an awesome thread.

ziz, I love that fact about cotton mills.

Btw, re. crossdressing, I've just been researching medieval stories where women cross-dress and one of them gets turned into a man by magic as a 'reward'! Totally irrelevant, but ...!

I remember reading, re. Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, that there used to be this really ridiculous affected accent that the then in-group at court had, where they'd deliberately pronounce things like 'balcony' as 'balCOny'. And it caught on and became the 'posh' way to say things.

I would love to know if it's true.

Also the Liverpool accent of today is much more gutteral than that of say John Lennon in 1966.
I wonder how/why that came about?

fascinating indeed.

while we can't go back 100s of years, there is one person who has been recorded annually for many years, and so we can hear what has changed:

britflorida.squidoo.com/queen-elizabeth-second-accent-changes-over-years

obviously her voice has aged, but still interesting.

I love the archive link, thanks whoever linked it.

Did an OU linguistics course about 10yrs ago and all this stuff is fascinating!

I've noticed that too, NigellasGuest - I thought Paul McCartney had a pretty WC background but he sounds posh as anything to me in interviews. Same with other musicians of his era.

They were recently talking about 'BBC' English on Women's Hour. They played past recordings of current presenters and was surprising how much the accent had changed, much less 'clipped'

I wonder if this is all down to how schoolchildren were taught to read out loud.

They would have had to recite in huge schoolrooms - with no nice and gentle CBeebies singalongs and no happy clappy teachers. Maybe the whole nature of public speaking was intoned differently and it was all more serious sounding with those seriously emphasised vowels. After all, you would be competing over the sound of several different classes reciting.

I wish I had continued learning Latin then I could converse with clerics many centuries ago.

I can't wait for History Google Glasses to come out, so we can walk around towns and see what they were like centuries ago. All the old paintings/photos/documents would be used to create a huge digital 3D overlay.

Hmm, not sure if this is actually being invented as I type yet or not, but it would be very cool.

Go on then, what is the latin for carriage wheel?!

LRD is this the 1400s poem read in a Black Country accent you were referring to? Because as a native Black Country speaker about 60%/70% of this makes sense to me. Fascinating!

Fat lot of good that is!

I think we'd be struggling for the slang, wouldn't we? I remember going to France with a mate when we were 13 or so, and we'd been doing French for a couple of years so we could do the really basic stuff. These two lads started flirting with us and we had No Fucking Clue what they were talking about. I mean, not even when they were obviously trying to be really simple.

Ooh! Yes, that's the one crunchy.

Oh, that's amazing. I knew people got bits of it, but not being from the Black Country I couldn't judge how much, really. I would have guessed something like 40%.

Fascinating thread.

My town first held markets in the 12th Century. As I've wandered around the market, I've often thought how amazing it would be to go back in time and to bring people to now.

I guess I would have no chance understanding anyone from that time.