Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for learners. Catch up on past installments here.
Hey there, learners! This week’s question is part linguistics… and part time travel 👀 Hang on tight, and let’s take a look.
Our question this week:
Oh, this is a great linguistic thought experiment! We’ve covered what English might be like in the future, but what if you time-traveled to the past?
English has changed a lot over the centuries, and at some point it’ll seem like a totally different language—one you’d have to study like a foreign language. (So yes, even while time traveling, we recommend studying a new language when you get there—it might be the easiest way to communicate 😉)
Here’s what English speakers (especially those in the U.S.) might expect on their journey:
| You find yourself in... | Your best bet |
|---|---|
| the 1850s | Listen carefully to these folks—this is as good as it’s going to get!—even though they’ll sound a little stilted and you may sound alien with your strange, futuristic vocabulary. |
| the 1750s | Enjoy still being able to speak directly with locals, and summon your knowledge of English accents from The Great British Bake Off for assistance (it’ll be more helpful than Hamilton). |
| the 1650s | This is your last chance to hear Early Modern English—technically the same language stage as today’s English! So release your inner Shakespeare (he lived earlier this century), and hope you remember that sonnet you had to memorize in 10th grade. |
| the 1550s | Find a printing press and communicate via typed pamphlets (and consider working as an apprentice to understand 16th century writing conventions). |
| the 1450s | Turn around and get back in your time machine 🥲 |
Before about 1400, we only recommend English-language time travel to those of you who know French, German, or—even better—the history of French and the history of German.
What you’d be good at
Even if you don’t know specific language things to look out for, you probably know a lot that would help you get through a day with Old Time English speakers. You’ve gathered little bits about them and their lives from TV, movies, and books. This context about their lives could help you guess older meanings of words!
Let’s take transportation as an example. You might not know details about the lives of English colonists in New York in the late 1600s, but you won’t be surprised to learn that they didn’t have cars, trucks, or trains (which you’ll find everywhere in 21st century Manhattan!). However, these words already existed, with different meanings:
- car: showed up in English in the 1300s to mean a “wheeled vehicle,” especially one used in formal or fancy contexts
- truck: a pretty new word in the late 1600s, mostly used for a rolling device to hold up guns on ships
- train: in use at the time to mean something trailing behind, like for skirts, dresses, or processions, and the phrase train of thought was new
Given what you know about a world without motorized vehicles—and maybe even what you could guess from other ways we use these words, like in train of thought or train of a dress—you could probably piece together the older meanings if you heard the words in a conversation.
What would be harder
Quite a lot of older English would be difficult for you, though, to be fair. Some words are pretty resistant to big changes, but basically everything else is going to evolve! That means different pronunciations (even for words that are the “same”), totally new words, familiar vocabulary with wildly different meanings, and all kinds of grammatical details. Not to mention the English-speaking world—while less extensive than it is today—already had lots of different dialects!
In fact, older versions of English grammar might be the hardest part to understand. At first it’ll be mostly odd-sounding word orders or phrases—for example, this line from The Guardian about a new contraption (the bicycle!) is only from 1895… but it sounds ancient:
Before the mid-1700s, you’ll have different pronouns (thou for informal situations, and you for formal and the plural), verb conjugations (like thou hast and he hath), verb forms we don’t really use today (like the subjunctive), and word order will get less and less familiar.
What you might have to rely on is your knowledge of expressions we still use today that have been frozen in time. As a language’s grammar slowly evolves, certain phrases are resistant to that change—maybe because they are part of special rituals, texts, or set phrases. For example, the English subjunctive is not long for this world, but it’s alive and well in the expressions the powers that be, till death do us part, and if I were (which is surviving alongside if I was).
Keep little grammatical fossils top of mind on your journey—there’s a lot to learn from them!
…But could they understand *you*?
On the other hand, they would probably have more trouble understanding you than you have understanding them. The life (and language) that you have today would be pretty hard for them to imagine!
Vocabulary
Your hosts in the English-speaking past could probably never imagine what you mean by train, knowing only trains of dresses and trains of thought. You know both the old and new meanings of some words… and they'd only have old and extinct meanings!
You’d also be arriving with many new words that they have no reference for at all, including when it comes to foods—many of our favorite food words are pretty new to English! You wouldn't be able to use these words before:
- the 1950s: taco, burrito
- the 1850s: pizza
- the 1750s: avocado (from Nahuatl), hot sauce
- the 1650s: banana (from a West African language), tomato (from Nahuatl), chocolate (from Nahuatl)
- the 1550s: potato (from a language in Haiti)
Of course, those foods existed in non-English-speaking places in the past, so consider setting the coordinates of your time machine to other parts of the world. (However, gruel has been around in English since the 1100s, if you're worried about going hungry.)
Pronunciation
Your accent—no matter what kind of English you know—could also pose problems for listeners in the past. You, modern person, have had exposure to English dialects from around the world through movies and TV, social media, and travel. The English speakers you would encounter in the past would probably have more limited exposure to drastically different accents and dialects, so the chance that your pronunciation is similar to one they are familiar with isn’t very good… but you might have heard something like their accent!
Where you’re going, you’ll still need to learn a language
All your language study skills will come in handy for the English of the past. Be observant and patient, and safe travels!
For more answers to your language and linguistic time travel questions, get in touch with us by emailing dearduolingo@duolingo.com.