Sometimes people ask how far back in time you could go without needing an interpreter to understand English. IMO, if you stick to London, any time after 1500 people will be more or less intelligible-ish to you, even if they can't understand your futurespeak.

Here for comparison is my French counterpart to this video. My impression is that a similar threshold for French speakers would be only maybe a century or two earlier.

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I’d just find someone who could speak Latin, so I’d be pretty much fine any time after 43

Diolch. Thanks for this. When was the 'ch' sound lost in words like 'light'?

Good question. The short answer is: it's complicated. Some dialects lost it very early, and others very late. There were dialects that already lost it in the 1400s-1500s, and speech of this type was already widespread in London, though not ubiquitous, under Elizabeth.

How far back do you think somebody from London, who lived in the early 1500s, could understand English?

The serious essay about farting is just epic. 🤣😁💨 Kudos!

What about Arabic do you think @AzizMorfeq? I think at least 2 thousand years, or maybe a bit more depending on what constitutes understanding (full understanding, most, more than half, etc)

What a great piece of work. It brought to mind Michael McClure reading the Canterbury Tales, which I expect you've seen...

From understanding like ~1% of words in the sermon to ~40-50% of the words spoken in Sir Gawain is crazy