How Weird Would Modern English Sound To A Medieval English Person?

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period (also spelled mediæval or mediaeval) lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. This period began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD, this era would transition into the Renaissance and then the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.
Population decline, counterurbanisation, the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in late antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East-most recently part of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire-came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. Secular law was advanced greatly by the Code of Justinian. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated extant Roman institutions, while new bishoprics and monasteries were founded as Christianity expanded in Europe. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries. It covered much of Western Europe but later succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south.
During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, and feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages. This period also saw the formal division of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, with the East-West Schism of 1054. The Crusades, which began in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims, and also contributed to the expansion of Latin Christendom in the Baltic region and the Iberian Peninsula. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. In the West, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. The theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, and the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres mark the end of this period.
The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine, plague, and war, which significantly diminished the population of Europe; between 1347 and 1350, the Black Death killed about a third of Europeans. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, and peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.
Terminology and periodisation
Palais des Papes, Avignon
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Period.[1] A similar term first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season".[2] The adjective "medieval",[A][4] meaning pertaining to the Middle Ages, derives from medium aevum or "middle age",[3] a Latin term first recorded in 1604.[5] Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People (1442), with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries".[6] Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient, medieval, and modern.[7]
#medieval #english #language

[@chumbucketjones9761]

So the French guy from, 'The Holy Grail', was actually saying it right.

[@NewtC1998]

First thing I thought 😄

[@SoiledWig]

And the Knights Who Say Ni were merely standing their ground phonetically.

[@boreopithecus]

The French guy in the movie says k-niggets, but the ‘gh’ sound was never pronounced like that, it would have been pronounced the way Metatron does it at 2:40, like the ‘ch’ in German ‘Licht’.

[@retard4urmom]

Ni ni ni

[@herbiehusker1889]

your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!

[@Reziac]

Would be fun to hear modern written English read aloud by someone who speaks Old English, and pronounces to suit.

[@JMagician.]

I’d give that a shot. I’m far from fluent in Old English, but I know the West Saxon dialect decently. Thing is I don’t have a following, so it’d probably be better if someone like Simon Roper were to do it.

[@christopherellis2663]

They wouldn't have a clue. It's a totally different Orthography æ ð þ ā ē ī ō ū

[@christopherellis2663]

Middle English would be possible

[@JMagician.]

@@christopherellis2663That’s true. Now that I actually think about it😂 we have many diphthongs, among other aspects, that just wouldn’t work in Old English. There’s really no way to pronounce a word like “good” using Old English.

[@Reziac]

@@JMagician. That might be part of the fun -- discovering all the ways it fails.

[@sceema333]

It's always so funny to me as an Austrian to see how close English used to be to german (Ik English is a Germanic language) and its fascinating to learn about the development of English as someone who speaks German as first language, English as 2nd and also knows a bit of French/latin

[@goransekulic3671]

How about Austrian and German? ;)

[@sceema333]

@@goransekulic3671 what about them? I like learning about them too but that's not the topic so what is your question

[@akl2k7]

​@goransekulic3671 They speak German in Austria. It's a form of High German that can be hard to understand for people only accustomed to Standard German (though not as much as Swiss German), but they still consider it a form of German.

[@hueyiroquois3839]

Modern English is about 50% Romance.

[@sceema333]

@@hueyiroquois3839 yeah no shit, what are you trying to tell me?

[@gaius_aerister]

This is such a cool video. I'd be awesome to see the same concept applied to romance languages and Latin.

[@M3nacria]

Same. His perspective as a native Italian speaker would add a lot.

[@adrianomarchesi3982]

I would REALLY love seeing him making this connection between Ancient Latin - Italian - Old and Actual Brazilian Portuguese.

[@Noblebird02]

Yeah. I am writing time travel stories, so I have to ask this question (anthropologist who is bilingual in English and Mexican Spanish, so how quickly do they learn to speak Ceasar's Latin)

[@anjinsantaipan4393]

Yes if you could would becgreat

[@timelston4260]

I'm 61, and I can already hear differences in how the younger generations, especially in power centers of the U.S., like New York and Washington DC, pronounce words. Words like mountain and button, for example, are sometimes pronounced "mowden" and "budden". It drives me crazy, but I do know, since my undergraduate degree was in linguistics, that this is how language changes over time. Since I can tell that in my own lifetime American English has started to change intergenerationally, I have no doubt that it will be a lot different a thousand years from now.

[@GoofyGoober7582]

Going back to the roots, eh?

[@xjdkdndnhzndjfndndnnd5506]

I say mountin or mow’in And bu’in

[@notsocrates9529]

You know what grinds my gears as a layperson? It is when I hear people say "hating on", how the heck do I hate onto something? Do all languages get dumber, or more simple as they evolve?

[@smergthedargon8974]

'murican here Mountain for me is largely the same except the t is a strange "nasal glottal stop".

[@MaxMustermann-tq3lu]

that's mostly a cultural thing, to describe it in one word "niggerification". The way shit is rn the lowest common denominater get's the cultural say, that's why this blight stikes first and hardest in the hoods and ghettos.

[@tomhalla426]

I wonder how much recorded sound has flattened the difference between different accents, and stabilized pronunciation. It has been a bit over 130 years.

[@cahallo5964]

A looooot particularly in the US

[@oyoo3323]

@@cahallo5964 I've noticed. The US in particular, as compared to other English-speaking countries, seems to have lost A LOT of regional variation over time, to the point that now, with the exception of a few standouts (mostly in the east and southeast, where the language began in the area), basically everyone sounds nearly, if not completely identical, stripped of nearly all regional features. I think it's a little sad, actually... To me, the southeastern and eastern accents sound much more melodic and interesting than what most in the country sound like now, with the "generic yank" accent, sounding like something I can't describe as anything but really boring.

[@akl2k7]

Of course, there are still some sound shifts happening (eg, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift), and there are plenty of dialects despite mass media. Basically, it can be attributed to kids speaking more like their peers at school than their parents a lot of the time.

[@maxonite]

@@oyoo3323There is still distinct accents in the US. You’re just used to hearing many of them through modern media and such so you don’t notice them as much. Side by side, you can easily tell who’s from New Jersey and who’s from California, though

[@oyoo3323]

@@maxonite that's just it. It takes the distance from one place to the whole opposite side of the continent to make a difference equally perceptable to most to that of two cities of few dozen km apart in Scotland or Ireland for example. Also, it is a factual truth that almost universally throughout the country regional accents are dying out, in some places faster than others, in others already long gone.

[@ashenen2278]

There is a video on youtube where the English/British queens Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II speak with their accent from their respective times and make fun of each others accent. Also, interestingly, German had a similar vowel shift like English, but Germans still decided to write everything phonetically (at least much more than the English). And I would love to see more of those videos to get an impression how it would feel if our languages changed

[@MatPete]

Ben Crystal’s video :). There are interesting videos in which he presents so called “original pronunciation” or what Shakespeare’s English probably sounded like. really enjoyable to listen.

[@oyoo3323]

More fascinating to that, to me is that High German (but not Low German) also went through a great consonant shift, and that, almost as a mirror to English, it is now the consonants in modern High German which seem to be spelt less phonetically, not vowels (as is in English).

[@oyoo3323]

@@MatPete I love sound of it. More than anything though, the way it sounds is definitely most similar to West Country English (which I love the sound of even more), basically proving what was already suspected, that West Country English is the most conservative form of English known (with some debate, if we count Scots as English). Even pronunciation aside, it is noticable that West Country English is also a lot more conservative in terms of grammar and vocabulary too, often using archiac constructions, and in some varieties, even actively retaining archaic pronouns, such as thou/thee and ye/you etc.

[@MeganMay62442]

I really wish they would have updated the spelling, so mostly everything is spelled how it sounds. Would be nice lol.

[@MatPete]

@@MeganMay62442 I am wondering if it’s possible. English spelling is weird but we are used to it, aren’t we? Btw English dialects evolved phonetically in different ways, I think current orthography in spite of seeming outdated remains functional in all versions of the language regardless of quite significant differences in pronunciation.

[@asdfghjkl123asd]

So English sounded exactly how it was written. And when I learned it my "wrong" slavic pronunciation of the words was actually right for medieval times. That's funny.

[@modern_memory]

Basically. The great vowel shift basically ruined the English language for anyone trying to learn it.

[@holygooff]

Knecht means servant in Dutch and I think German as well. It's weird that it means something very different in English.

[@alexj9603]

Yes, in German, too.

[@blueprairiedog]

Knights did serve the lord and lady.

[@danadnauseam]

This scenario reminds me of a French film from 1993 called The Visitors. A medieval knight and his servant are transported to modern France. They are described as speaking a mixture of Latin and medieval French. I don't think the /k/ would drop from kitchen. The initial cluster in knight was probably a substantial factor in that change.

[@stalfithrildi5366]

A better consonant combination that would change would be "str" like in 'strong' and 'straight'

[@martabachynsky8545]

@@stalfithrildi5366 It would probably change to "srong" and "srait". I've heard drunk people pronounce it that way because for some reason, they couldn't pronounce the "t" sound, so it's possible that "lazy talkers" would eventually drop the hard sound.

[@michaelrs8010]

This was very interesting. I once heard a demonstration of how the Lord's Prayer would sound 600 years ago in English and I could hardly understand anything. This explains a lot

[@Bronte866]

I had to read Beowulf” at university. It’s wild! Just as you’re saying! Barely recognizable as English many times. I believe there is one of two existing original copies of Beowulf in the British Museum. Given the age of this story it was incredible to see it. 🇺🇸

[@egorsozonov7425]

That’s cause Beowulf is pure Old English, before the Norman Conquest and the ensuing Frenchization of English. I.e. the diff is not due to an evolutionary process but due to a revolutionary, violent linguistic change. Middle English is much closer to modern

[@Unpainted_Huffhines]

Yes, this topic has always been one I've found fascinating. As an English speaker, I speak a little Spanish and German. I've always wondered what it must be like to speak a language with a very close sibling language. Spanish-Portuguese obviously cones to mind, but really all the Romance languages that aren't French or Romanian sound similar to my ear. I feel the same with Dutch and German, but apparently, German speakers think the same but in reverse, that Dutch sounds more like English than German. And what a Latin speaker would think of Romance languages is very interesting to. I will eagerly look forward to your breakdowns on the subjects.

[@SaintJames14]

Dutch sounds like English being spoke by a crazy man with wet socks in his mouth to me. Like I can almost detect sense but there's too many vowels. I think that's the closest English can get if you don't include esoteric and distant accents

[@smallhelmonabigship3524]

Find a video to watch of a person speaking Frisian. It sounds like they are speaking English only you can't understand what they are saying.

[@Unpainted_Huffhines]

@@smallhelmonabigship3524 I've been watching the "Friesan Horses" channel for years. A word or two, every once in awhile a string of words. Even if it "sounds like they're speaking English", if you can't understand it, it's not really the same as Romance speakers communicating.

[@smallhelmonabigship3524]

@@Unpainted_Huffhines I never said Frisian was a sister language to English. However, many linguists will say that Frisian is perhaps the closest foreign language to English. The closest thing English might have like the relationships in the Romance languages would be some of the more obscure dialects of English. They can be exceedingly difficult to understand at first, until one gets used to the way words are pronounced. Even then, they can be a challenge.

[@Unpainted_Huffhines]

@@smallhelmonabigship3524 it _is_ a sister language, and is very similar to Old English. It's definitely the closest related extant language to Modern English. But English has undergone drastic changes since the days Old English, in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, to the point where it's _mostly_ unintelligible to its closest relative. Had the Normans never invaded, and English had been left to itself and continued to evolve on its own, it would probably be mutually intelligible with Frisian and Dutch, to a similar extent as Romance languages.

[@Bagginsess]

Yes definitely would like a deep dive video on the vowel shifts. Thanks for this one :)

[@stevenschilizzi4104]

This is a really great idea and so original! Brilliant! Yes, please do more of these.

[@ElmerEscoto]

Fascinating stuff, Raffaello! Thank you for teaching us so much!

[@lelandstottlemeyer8355]

I’d love to hear more on this! All the ideas you mentioned sound very interesting!

[@fatalisticbunny]

I really like your content. I also appreciate the balanced and reasonable approach you bring to the topics you cover.

[@Hellfire_Combustion]

Brilliant! I learned so much in such a short video. Love it.

[@eduardolima5495]

This video is awesome!!! Never knew those changes details, really impressive!!

[@luncius_]

Great video, I would love a full in depth video on the great vowel shift. I often hear linguists talk about it, but it seems to be mentioned in passing more so for many edutainment channels.

[@allexanderchristian3873]

Keep doing your great work mate. Good quality content. Cheers!

[@warrenstutely7151]

Wonderful programme. Many thanks

[@himfalathiel4012]

This is so interesting! I definitely want to see more videos about this.

[@julianneheindorf5757]

Wow, this is a great video. Thank you so much for your detailed explanations. Languages and the evolution of languages is a fascinating subject.

[@MrFirecasters]

Wonderful! Definitely up for more videos 😊

[@lucyvicious6564]

Great video. It was fascinating how German medieval English sounded. I'm definitely using that as a discriptor.

[@marcofaustinelli7010]

Darn interesting, and explained very well. Subscribed on the spot. Looking forward to the GVS video.

[@user-tz9jb4ug4i]

What a great video. Thanks. 💕

[@gesslr]

This was fascinating. Thank you.

[@happywithdrawal]

This video is the PERFECT reference and exactly what I needed! I'm writing something where a Middle English speaker needs to learn Modern English, and the intricacies you described in this video covered EXACTLY what I needed to know! Thanks so much for making this video!

[@_synne]

I would LOVE to read whatever you're writing.

[@litigioussociety4249]

I would like to see a longer video on the Great Vowel Shift. I only know a little about it.

[@WGGplant]

simon roper did a video on it. it's pretty thorough, if you like his style. his videos are often slide-heavy

[@avilacanario]

First time on here. You are brilliant. I've got on my list to watch.

[@samtemporary]

Yes, yes, and yes! I'd love a full video on the GVS!!!

[@Keegerator]

I loved this video. It's so interesting to consider how much language has and will change. I really enjoyed hearing actual examples in succession to best hear the difference. I would love if in future, similar videos, the words could be phonetically or otherwise displayed on the screen for a visual processing component to the information!

[@jennifersciberras7484]

My first video from this channel. It did not disappoint! Intriguing topic, Compellingly presented. Looking forward to checking out your other vids. 😊

[@sceema333]

Amazing video! Frankly an ingenious idea to do this comparison (idk if you came up w it yourself, to me you did either way) would love to see more videos using this analogy

[@metatronacademy]

Thanks and yes it was my idea :)

[@raydail3825]

Yes, I would like to hear a video about language evolution (i.e., English) & the Romance languages. Thank you so much!

[@StanGraham1]

Great work Metatron! I love all that I have learned from you. Keep up the great work!😊

[@baeber]

yes I'd be interested in more of the feeling videos. I enjoyed this one

[@Jacky9071]

Fascinating, I really enjoyed this video!

[@metatronacademy]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@bogdancocarlea]

Very interesting. Thank you.

[@robertjustinoff845]

Very interesting, very educational video. Thanks.

[@hameddadgour]

Great examples!

[@iberius9937]

One of your most interesting videos! I daresay the evolution of English is one of my favorite topics. For all watching, I recommend going to A.Z. Foreman's channel for not only excellent recitations in Medieval and Early Modern English, but in other languages as well. He is an excellent linguist with an ear for phonological accuracy and historical phonetics at that.

[@sarahrosen4985]

Thanks for the recommendation!

[@gazlator]

Absolutely brilliant, Raff - fascinating stuff. I just can't help but imagine that if someone from Chaucer's time did appear in a pub in 2023, there'd be a lot of hilarity as they tried to make sense of a guy's dialect that probably sounds like he came from somewhere in the deepest darkest west Midlands or Norfolk!!

[@MadNumForce]

Excellent video concept! You should really develop it, not only with some generalities about the shifts in pronounciation, and some example words, but with some classical text read in both the old fashion and the future fashion. That would be astoundingly untertaining and bewildering.

[@jonhaas640]

A vid on gvs is a must, my friend!

[@DarkSamus100]

Interesting concept, and nice video. I would be curious to see the same principal with others languages. That part of a medieval knight being sent into the present, and his reaction of the language change(and possibly other things as well), reminds me of the French comedy movie, "Les visiteurs"(1993), starring Jean Reno and Christian Clavier, where a medieval Knight is sent by mistake into the early 90's. Fun movie, I recommend it, and who knows, maybe it could inspire you to make video on it. Anyway, thank you this video, and also for your others videos on your different channels. Have a good day, and bless you. And the same to those who take the time to read this.

[@Octa9on]

wonderful video! I'd love for you to make a video where the entire script is in this hypothetical future English, just to hear how it would sound as a whole

[@MeganMay62442]

Yes I would love more videos on this topic, the Latin one would be cool! And some lessons on Old English would be awesome. I took one course on it at University, and it was really interesting. Unfortunately, I did not have a lot of time to dedicate to that class and didn't really get to learn much so it would be great to delve into it some more!

[@andrewa8765]

Would love to see a video comparison of ecclesiastical Latin and classical Latin, throwing in the Italian as well.

[@15thTimeLord]

Its good explaination for me as kind of a beginner of understanding this, i have spotty knowledge, but the perspective between the two times seems helpful.

[@susanheath5467]

Love that you are so knowledgeable! Yes please, anything on comparisons, developments and change . Never really understood the GVS. I love knowing how languages work. I am fluent in English and some grasp of French and German and wish I know Italian and Latin.

[@giveitaswingoutdoorswithsm2901]

Every generation puts a twist on language! Interesting channel 👍

[@roberthamilton9263]

Fantastic!!!!! David and his son Ben Crystal introduced me to how Shakespeare would have sounded. This was mod. English ... but the difference between OP and RP was amazing for me to hear!!!! How you resurrect these old pronunciations is magical to me (also I grew up in Boston: You can't pahk ya cah in Hahvad yahd ... the guahd won't let ya in without a parkin pass so pahk in the squaha, put some quatahs in the metah and come up to my apahament. (Another interesting note, I'm dyslexic so I will see words as I hear them!!! Wensday, Febuary, Lincon, etc. -- once I know how they are spelled, I see them as they really are spelled.)

[@desmondhughes9143]

Loved this video

[@KnightofWine]

I remember I read some medieval Portuguese "trovadores" in literature classes and it was pretty alien to me, especially when I think about how would be the pronunciation.

[@markw4206]

Brilliant. I knew about the GVS but I couldn't imagine how you would simulate it in reverse from this hypothetical medieval person.

[@Hawaiian_Shirt_guy]

Very cool, and yes, you should definitely make more videos of that type. The only creator I know making quality and really interesting historical lingustics content is nativlang, and his vids are short and he doesn't upload frequently. A video examining the changes from latin to spanish (or another romance language), or a video in which you essentially create a "future English" or show how North American and British english through sound changes could become incomprehensible in 2000 years if they followed the same trajectories as, say, German and Dutch in the last 2000 years, would be very interesting.

[@VTPSTTU]

Thanks for the video. I've experienced some of that with extreme southern accents. I grew up in eastern Tennessee in the USA, but my parents pushed me very hard to have no accent. As a result, I sometimes noticed big differences between the way I said things and the way people around me said things.

[@hashcosmos2181]

I surely need a video about the GVS made by you, Metatron senpai 😊👏🏼

[@WojciechPrzyborowski]

What a great mini lecture! Thank you. And I really appreciate comprehensive description below. Would you consider doing a video about an American accent? Is it similar to anything in an old English? Our is it something completely new? Where did it come from?

[@chazlewis8114]

Great vid. I'd love to see a comparison between modern Spanish and medieval Spanish.

[@Clothmom1]

Yes, yes, yes to a video about the Great Vowel Shift! 👍

[@hoi-polloi1863]

Hi Metatron, lovely video! I believe we *need* the GVS video, as well as the Latin ones. A thought... maybe combine the two: start with how does it feel, then go into the mechanics. Finally, could you explore the transition from Old English to Middle English? I read a story once where a Celtic person who knows Old English travels forward in time and get annoyed that she has to learn English twice!

[@frustrateduser9933]

More great vowel shift videos please and more about languages

[@Procopius464]

Someone from the medieval period would think we are speaking a totally different language. I imagine they would react to hearing it in a similar way to how a modern person reacts to hearing middle period or old English. In both cases you have to be told that it's English. It's the same degree of difference.

[@emilstorgaard9642]

They are two different languages after all

[@harrynewiss4630]

Middle English and Old English are very different. An educated modern English speaker can read middle English to a considerable extent, but will understand little of Old English.

[@harrynewiss4630]

No they are stages of the same language@@emilstorgaard9642

[@archiluis]

Really interesting idea!

[@spanglestein66]

Impressive knowledge and dexterity with ancient languages….bravo 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧❤️

[@kaiserwilhelm5562]

Definitely interested in the Latin to Italian concept

[@IosuamacaMhadaidh]

I heard the surname Knyvett came about from Norman French speakers who had trouble with pronunciation of the "c/k" sound the Ænglisc word for knight had in the 2nd (or 3rd)syllable.

[@okulusanomali9716]

YES! Please make videos re: Classical Latin vs Italian (et cetera), that would be super fun, I've always been intrigued with the way Latin morphed into the Romance languages!

[@TheGreatBunghole16]

I think a deep dive into Chinook Jargon would be pretty cool! Not a lot of people have ever heard of the skookum wawa!

[@TheChiesa]

Fascinating! 👍

[@manuelramospetruchena4620]

Oh, please do. Make that video. I struggle with some students who are Spanish natives, and they try to pronounce certain words in English. I understand how difficult it can be to change the pronunciation of a letter from Spanish to English, especially given some vowel combination can be really tricky. And it's sometimes troubling to explain that. Thank you for this video!!

[@dylanlobley8680]

Those things you said at the end are all great ideas and you should definitely do them if you haven't already (I know I am a couple months late).

[@aoefsmrap]

I would like more videos on vowel shifts.

[@g.v.6450]

I would really like to see a presentation like this on Greek pronunciation across time (and space). Ευχαριστώ πολύ!

[@Taltosmaster]

Fascinating topic indeed, I too always wondered such things. If you feel like having a challenge, please try to compare how the Hungarian language changed. There were quite a few changes in the past 500 years - many of which were a result of a country-wide effort to modernise and standardise the language.

[@pattobyo]

It would be really cool to hear your analysis of modern and some older form of Japanese. I think even comparing the differences between now and pre meiji era Japanese could be interesting.

[@Spartan10k]

Yes a video on GVS would be great

[@LurkerDaBerzerker]

I admit, not all of the videos from this channel draw me, but this one was an instant click.

[@campfireeverything]

Keen for the GVS and the experiential video. And for Latin too. Just make videos, basically 🙂 What I'd love most (from this video anyway) is to hear your rendition of what medieval English would have sounded like - as an example short paragraph.

[@11moonshot]

For me, as a German teacher of English... very interesting! Thank you! You have the gift of being able to explain things really understandably! Excellent Job! Thank you from Dresden, Germany

[@xenomorph6599]

Yes Please do a dedicated video. Also could you compare modern day japanese to an older age of japanese?

[@BUSHCRAPPING]

enjoyed this video, as someone with a H dropping accent i heard Hats and Dogs. i know that this probably wasnt your intention but you are talking about the evolution of language GVS in particular as if it has a clear goal to reach the final prestigious finish when its more like sound changes happen and some sounds change more easily into one other particular sounds. iv spoke about GVS in the same way but as a northerner its annoying being thought of a some half evolved scot who is in turn speaking an ancient dialect. Everyone's English is similarly evolved

[@iberius9937]

Please: A similar video for both Latin AND Greek, si tempus spatiumque conceditur (if time and space allow/yield).

[@GiulioBalestrier]

I love this video. I'd liked to hear a text read in high medieval English.

[@matthewheald8964]

Dude, I've been doing a thought experiment lately on how future English might sound & this whole video was so timely for me it was awesome. Would love to watch ancient Romans flip their crap at your small everyday conversations XD. Or really any Romance language(s).

[@robertosikora]

Yes, please make the comparison between classical Latin and modern version. That would be great

[@MaitlandJones]

I'd love to hear a skit enacting this. Or an example dialogue like your 5 minute speech in classical latin.

[@keithkannenberg7414]

I find the GVS fascinating. I'd love to watch a vid on that subject.

[@allisonwade]

The most curious thing is that the words spelling didn't change along with the pronunciation and this makes things even more tricky for people that want to learn English (especially us Italians that tend to read the words as we write them :D)

[@angeldude101]

I like to describe written Modern English as just written Middle English and that actually written Modern English doesn't actually exist. The closest we have to written Modern English honestly might genuinely be _internet slang._ Of course learning English is hard, because you're basically learning two separate languages; one for writing and one for speaking.

[@allisonwade]

@@angeldude101 if they actually decided to conform the spelling with the pronunciation a lot of people would be very confused for a while 😂

[@ricardokraft6426]

It would be great a video on the feelings of a fiorentino of the Cinquecento hearing the modern standard italian. Greetings from Brazil.

[@HyperboreanAnchovy44]

Very well done

[@brycetheviewer9986]

this "feel like a person from ... century" idea is great❤

[@martijnvandonselaar4274]

@2:50, knecht is still used in dutch language,meaning servant. Fascinating!

[@divicospower9112]

It's a knight (old pronounciation) - English man = so weird - German man = of course I know, keep going.

[@wolfgangpeter2995]

Yes please ..the longer Video If you dont mind 😊

[@JamesJones-zt2yx]

Would love to see (or rather hear) that for Classical Latin versus Ecclesiastical Latin or Romance languages.