Eternal English: Difference between revisions
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All languages are always changing, all the time, so long as someone is alive to speak them. This is the basic idea behind [[wikipedia:Historical linguistics|an entire discipline of linguistics]]. It means that a thousand years' difference (for example, between [[History of English|Old English and modern English]]) can make two versions of the same language completely unintelligible; another thousand (as with the 2,000 years dividing Latin and modern French) and you might not even realize they're related.
In real life, [[Fish Out of Temporal Water|a character traveling into the distant future]] would literally have to learn [https://web.archive.org/web/20131218051547/http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/futurese.html a completely new language]: even if people are still speaking what they call "English", it won't be similar enough to the character's English to allow intelligibility.<ref>Languages have different rates of change, of course, and English is highly mutable while--for example--Icelandic is quite stable, but all languages change somewhat.</ref> In fiction, however, linguistic drift is almost universally ignored. For writers, it's a lot of trouble to translate into an ancient or imaginary language, and audiences often prefer to watch a show in their native language. Therefore, people hailing from vastly different time periods will almost always speak the language of the audience, and rarely with so much as [[Just a Stupid Accent]] (though characters from [[The Middle Ages]] or thereabouts get to speak [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]]).
In many future settings, the writers will try to balance this out by throwing in [[Future Slang|a couple of new slang words]]. Others will try to [[Justified Trope|attribute this trope]] to the advent of recording technology. This may or may not turn out to be the case: after all, we are discussing tropes and memes on a wiki hosted on the web. Someone from the year 2000 wouldn't understand some of that sentence, while someone from 1990 would understand almost ''none'' of it (hell, a good number of people ''today'' still wouldn't understand it).
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* There is an "Outer World" in ''[[Slayers]]'' that has been blocked off by [[A Wizard Did It|a magical barrier]] courtesy of the [[Exclusively Evil|Monster Race]] for at little over a millennium, hence two different cultures: the "Inner World" (i.e the main setting of the series) thrives on magic, and [[Word of God]] put out that everyone in it speaks the same language. The "Outer World" has little access to magic and thrives on technology instead, and has peoples in various types of environments, including a scant amount of primitive tribes. The third season of the anime has the main party go to the Outer World, but unless one member of the group has a translator on them, it would be unlikely that the Outer Worlders would speak the same language (whatever the heck it is) as they do. This problem doesn't arise in the novels because Lina and Gourry stay in the Inner World for the entire time.
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* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Batman|The Return Of Bruce Wayne #2]]'': a man in Puritan times says to time-shifted Bruce Wayne: "All agree thy speech is ''stranger'' even than the Dutchman's here. As if the ''King's English'' were not thy ''native'' tongue." Which is understandable, since they all speak [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe|(an approximation of)]] 17th century English, while Wayne speaks modern English.
* A ''[[New Mutants]]'' story involving time-travel brought them to the middle ages where Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair, aged 14 or 15) was able to converse fluently with Robert the Bruce just by virtue of coming from Scotland while her teammates weren't. There was no indication that Rahne had learned Middle English or indeed Scots Gaelic (should Robert have even spoken the latter).
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* ''[[WALL-E]]''. Of course, there's a good reason why humans haven't really changed language a lot in a few centuries.
* ''[[Planet of the Apes]]''. It's 2,000 years in the future, and the apes are still speaking perfect English. Although they don't call it that...Cornelius just says it was the language taught to him by his father and his father before him.
* In ''[[Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure]]'', this is mostly averted among the historic figures, with only some minor exceptions:
** The people the duo meet 1501 England speak in modern English, but in that time period, they would be speaking Early Modern English, which would be mostly intelligible but sound quite archaic to modern listeners.
** As a non-English example, Joan of Arc speaks modern French; the real Joan spoke the somewhat different Limousin dialect.
== Literature ==
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* ''[[Xkcd]]'' subverted this [http://xkcd.com/771/ once].
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* Played straight in ''[[Futurama]]''. In the year 3000, there are only a few notable language changes. "Ask" is now always pronounced "aks" (except when the writers forget it), and not just by rappers, and "X-mas" is actually pronounced as "ecksmass". Also, people still speak modern English in the year 50 million.
** Meanwhile, [[Take That|French is an incomprehensible dead language]].
* In the 10th century, the main language of Scotland was Scots Gaelic. Despite this, the main characters of ''[[Gargoyles]]'' have no trouble communicating when they come to 20th century America. Later, Xanatos, Fox, and Xanatos' father have no trouble when they end up going back in time.
* Parodied in a time traveling episode of ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]''
* The illegal immigrants from the future that come to present day ''[[South Park]]'' speak an unrecognizable language. [[Acceptable Targets|And insist on bilingual education]].
* In ''[[Megas XLR]]'', humans in the year 3037 speak modern English.
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* Played straight in ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'', where Mr. Peabody and Sherman never have language barrier problems no matter what time period they go to. One could assume a genius like Mr. Peabody who could build a time machine might have a translator device handy, but then, given the target audience, there's not much detail on the technology.
* In ''[[G.I. Joe|G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero]]'', Serpentor, right from the minute he drew first breath, spoke perfect English, even though ''none'' of the known historic figures who donated their DNA did so. Of course, they used a ''lot'' of [[Artistic License]] regarding history for his origin, even by the standards of that show.
== Real Life ==
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