What did English originally sound like? A Linguist found out, and even the British are baffled

Every language has its history and evolution, and even with the world's most widely spoken language, English, the case is the same. A linguistic expert, Simon Roper, decided to dive into the history of the language and see how its understanding came to the surface. He played an audio that can be dated to around 450 AD, revealing the initial words and phrases of the language that were very close to German dialects. The 3-minute voiceover eventually progressed to modern English today, and it’s surprising to see how a dialect coach breaks down the history of the prominent language in a video posted on December 27. 

“I think that hearing the gradual progression of accents as in the reconstruction might make it easier to imagine how accents naturally and organically diversify and branch off from each other,” Roper mentioned. The audio began with a totally different and unknown accent; it’s hard to say it was even English. The first minute seemed like complete gibberish, but it was the English Language, all the way back between 400 and 500 AD. Nearing the second minute, the words started feeling more familiar, though the complete sentences could not be understood; one could tell there was some monologue about life away from the "city" with words like “farmer, cow, pig,” and so on. 

Towards the end, the words and structuring were finally clear, now having moved to modern English, anyone could identify and figure out the monologue with excellent pronunciation and rendition. Roper revealed how phrases, terms, and even alphabets transformed over the centuries to produce the proficient language we have today. English has had a vast and dynamic evolution over the centuries, according to Oxford International English. It was noted that even the British no longer use English in its authentic and original manner. Albert Baugh, a notable English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, mentioned that around 85% of Old English is no longer in use. 

The language used today is a modernized version that comes from decades of development and change. It was around the 15th century that early modern English came to be and took its place as a powerful language. With writers like Shakespeare being introduced at the time, the ancient symbols and terms took a backseat. Joey Anderson, who holds a BA in Linguistics from the University of Wales, agreed that no one would be able to understand Old English. “Any speaker of just about any dialect of modern British English would struggle to understand a word of pure Old English. The reasons why shouldn’t be hard to see: The Old English language represented a post-500 AD introduction of continental Germanic dialects to Great Britain from the migration of tribes such as the Saxons,” Anderson noted. 

“Old English before 1066, save for a few loanwords (which were primarily ecclesiastical from Latin), was a more-or-less exclusively Germanic form of speech,” he added. Eventually, with Roman and other additions coming into play, the language developed differently. “Not only were thousands of new words added, but this influx of Romance words resulted in many of the Germanic forms becoming obsolete. Sharing an example, Anderson noted, “You’re much more likely to use the time measurement ‘hour’ (c.f. French ‘heure’) than ‘stound’ (c.f. German ‘Stunde’), an Old English-derived term which, like hour, means a span of 60 minutes.” 

This is but one instance. Similarly, what we call English today has been greatly altered by a variety of factors. “To recap, they would find it all but impossible to understand Old English, and a significant contributing factor was the vocabulary shift facilitated by the 1066 Norman invasion of England,” Anderson concluded. Many viewers on the Internet have mutual feelings about the transition. @armawillo wrote, “It was so crazy listening along to basically gibberish and all of a sudden hearing ‘it is a long winter, the ground is cold' emerge from the fog.” @DugB0915 added, “This basically confirms what I’ve read, which is that most modern speakers could understand back to around the time of Shakespeare.” @seattlegrrlie remarked, “I speak German, and around 900, it started making sense. It's really fascinating to see the path from old German to modern British.”

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