How far back could one go in time and still communicate effectively? (historical, years)

[PeaceAndLove42]

Specifically, American English. How far back in time could someone from today go and still effectively communicate? And how would they react to modern slang/curses?

[Mikestone8]

Probably about 600 years.

Shakespeare's English is still understandable today (though containing a lot of obscure idioms) but Chaucer's isn't, or at best only barely so. There seems to have been a marked language "shift" about the early 15th Century.

[nightlysparrow]

In Praise of Women c. 14th or !5th Century:

I am as lyght as any roe* (* a deer)
To preyse women wher that I goo.

To onpreyse* women yt were a shame, (*unpraise)
For a woman was thy dame;
Our Blessyd Lady beryth the name
Of all women wher that they goo.

A woman ys a worthy thyng -
They do the washe and do the wrynge:
"Lullay, lullay," she dothe thee synge,
And yet she hath bot care and woo.

A woman ys a worthy wyght*, (*person)
She servyth man both daye and nyght,
Therto she puttyth all her myght,
And yet she hathe bot care and woo.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by PeaceAndLove42

And how would they react to modern slang/curses?

They would not know what they meant, or they would misunderstand by applying an interpretation which prevailed in their time but has subsequently evolved. You do not have to go very far back to get into differing meanings. For example most people take P.T. Barnum's "There's a sucker born every minute" to mean an exploitable rube is born every minute. That is not what Barnum meant because in the mid 19th Century, "sucker" simply meant patron or supporter..a fan. During elections folks identified themselves as suckers for Douglas or suckers for Fremont, someone might note that he or she was a sucker for Ma's apple fritters.

Barnum meant that there is a potential customer born every minute. The negative connotation came along much later.

[cpg35223]

I studied a lot of Medieval lit, so I learned Middle English. Call it 1200 AD. And a lot of those good old Anglo Saxon curse words were around then as well.

[fortwaynebandit]

Most people have very limited vocabularies and they also use many idioms and slang which people in their own time would have trouble understanding. Unless they were well-educated and possessed a strong command of their native language, going back farther than 200-300 years would make most of what they said unintelligible to the people living at that time.

[PeaceAndLove42]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

I studied a lot of Medieval lit, so I learned Middle English. Call it 1200 AD. And a lot of those good old Anglo Saxon curse words were around then as well.

Hmm...So, say you went back to the 18th century and walked up to someone and gave them the finger and said "*** you!!" would they see it as an insult? What about other curse words such as "god ****", "s***"?

[nightbird47]

You also have to consider regional accents and dialects. If you were from York, in 1300, and you came to London, nobody would have a clue what you were saying. And equally, if you were from London and went to York, nobody would understand a word. BBC does many of the non exported shows in the full local dialect and uses subtitles. Before subtitles, people who normally didn't travel communicated with a few words which got the main message out.

[cpg35223]

Originally Posted by PeaceAndLove42

Hmm...So, say you went back to the 18th century and walked up to someone and gave them the finger and said "*** you!!" would they see it as an insult? What about other curse words such as "god ****", "s***"?

Well, I don't read Asterisk, so I don't know what you're going on about.

[jtur88]

Define "effectively". Most parents and their kids can't even communicate effectively with each other. What is the drop-off threshold of "effectively"?

In terms of historical language evolution, pretty far back. English pronunciation hasn't changed very much at all, but several centuries ago, spelling was fluid, and writing worked fine as long as the reader could sound out phonetically what the writer was trying to express.

If I went back in time and said something to Shakespeare or Chaucer, and they didn't comprehend, I'd just reword the statement, a workaround for any terms that they might be unfamiliar with or which had different connotations then. It might be like talking to some guy in a call center in India.