Eternal English: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Ye knowe eek that in forme of speche is chaunge''
''With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho''
''That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge''
''Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so.''|'''[[Geoffrey Chaucer]]''', 600 or so years ago}}
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 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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The absence of [[Language Drift]]. Compare with [[Aliens Speaking English]].
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', Servants are summoned from the distant past and seem to have no problem conversing fluently in modern (even accentless, in the anime) Japanese. This is probably a case of ''[[Translator Microbes]]'' too, since most of them aren't even from past ''Japan'', instead hailing from places as distant as England. Ninth century England, no less, where they spoke a language even most modern English speakers would be hard-pressed to understand.
* ''[[Inuyasha|Inu Yasha]]''. Kagome falls into around the year 1550 and has no trouble understanding [http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Late_Middle_Japanese Late Middle Japanese]. Inuyasha has managed to come to the present without any trouble either.
** The English translation has Kaede use the archaic thou and thy, hinting at the language changes. 1550 is only five decades away from the start of Modern Japanese, so it's understandable that Kagome wouldn't have too much trouble.
* There is an "Outer World" in ''[[Slayers]]'' that has been blocked off by [[A Wizard Did It|a magical barrier]] courtesy of the [[
== [[
* [[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).
== [[Eastern Animation]] ==
* Played with in ''The Mézga Family'', a Hungarian cartoon from the 70s. The titular family, living in the 20th century, manages to contact a descendant called MZ/X, who lives in the 30th century. At first they don't understand a word he's saying, as MZ/X speaks "new Hungarian", which is just modern day Hungarian with EVERY word abbreviated to one syllable. Thankfully he has a telepathic helmet he can put on when he wants to talk to his ancestors from "the atomic dark age", as he calls them.
== Film ==
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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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* Played ridiculously straight in ''[[Honor Harrington]]'', where everyone speaks Standard English, unless they happen to represent a specific culture/country in real-world Earth. In which case they'll supposedly speak that language and dabble it into their Standard English that they otherwise speak all the time. It's stated that sound recordings have slowed linguistic change to a crawl. Enough that Honor has no problems reading [[Shout-Out|C.S. Forester's]] ''[[Horatio Hornblower]]'' and the only problem she has is in dealing with the archaic units of measurement.
** In some places it is clear [[Translation Convention]]: The Republic of Haven speaks French, the Andermanni speak a bastard German-Chinese language, San Martin spoke Spanish until the Republic of Haven came in. Most language issues are handwaved due to good translation software.
** In another [[David Weber]] book, ''[[The Apocalypse Troll]]'', it's somewhat
* Addressed in David Severn's 'The Future Took Us' in which the protagonists only gradually realise the locals are speaking a futuristic version of English. "Bread" has become "brade" and "man", "mun".
* Addressed in Leo Frankowski's ''Conrad Stargard'' series. When Conrad goes back in time to 13th-century Poland, he realizes how lucky he is to be there, where the language hasn't drifted very much in 700 years, as opposed to England, where he would be completely incomprehensible.
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* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', there are cultures that lived thousands of years before English was born that speak it flawlessly.
** SG-1 began with people on other planets speaking different languages, mostly based on old Earth cultures. By the second episode they realized it wouldn't work with only one main character (Jackson) able to speak to the people, so it was changed.
* ''[[I Dream of Jeannie]]'' Zigzags this. Jeannie only speaks Arabic when she first meets Tony in the pilot (having been cooped up in her bottle for two-thousand years) and is only able to speak English because he makes a wish to understand her, which she quickly grants. Still, this doesn't explain how other genies in the series like the Blue Djinn and Jeannie's sister can speak English.
* In ''[[Sanctuary]]'' Will mentions this as evidence of why three woman claiming to have awoken from hundreds of years of sleep have to be delusional - they all speak perfect English. {{spoiler|As it turns out they simply used their tremendous psychic powers to learn modern English instantly.}} In the first episodes Helen and John's mode of speech is a clue as to their shared origin. Their English is perfectly comprehensible, but slightly archaic and formalized. They and Tesla have all exhibited some distaste for modern conventions of the language.
** Good luck picking up on the fact that Tesla is Serbian, given his near-total lack of an appropriate accent even in flashbacks. The only time this is ever mentioned is when the British government requests they stop {{spoiler|Adam}} and do it for their country, prompting Tesla to mention that he's not British.
* Played straight in ''[[Firefly]]'': despite taking place roughly 500 years into the future, the only differences between their English and ours is some [[Future Slang]] and non-standard grammar. [[China Takes Over the World|Bilingualism in Mandarin Chinese is shown to be widespread]], although the actors understandably struggle with the pronunciation.
* In the ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode "The Big Goodbye," Picard was wrestling with the difficult Jarada language, and we got this gem:
{{quote|
'''Picard:''' I spell knife with an ''N''. But then I never could spell. }}
** For those familiar with the [[Universal Translator]], but not the episode in question, the reason why this is even an issue is because the Jarada are notoriously formal and bent on etiquette when approached by other races; the last encounter with a Federation ship was 10 years before Picard's try, and when that captain mispronounced ''one syllable'' in the greeting they [[Disproportionate Retribution|opened fire and broke off all diplomatic ties]].
* On ''[[Babylon 5]]'', the official language of the Earth Alliance is English. A [[Translation Convention]] is in effect, but it doesn't explain how the characters can get away with verbatim quotes of Abraham Lincoln (or, in Garibaldi's case, ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' cartoons).
** In one episode there is a delusional man claiming to be King Arthur, they figure out that he isn't who he claims to be because he speaks modern English. Though earlier [[Jack the Ripper]] was portrayed with just a British accent.
* In one of the few ''[[Primeval]]'' episodes involving human incursions, a 14th Century knight strays into modern London and speaks perfectly clear Essex English, as does the local back in his time whom the ARC scout questions. Despite the fact that what passed for English back then was actually closer to modern Dutch. Even the fact that the ARC's
* [[Word of God]] says that this was the case in the new ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* Embraced with an almost unseemly eagerness by the 1960s [[Irwin Allen]] series ''[[The Time Tunnel]]''. No matter how many centuries in the past the poor displaced travelers end up, no matter where they are on the globe at the time, ''everyone'' speaks perfect mid-20th-Century American English.
== Tabletop RPG ==
* In ''[[Rifts]]'' the dominant language in the former United States and Canada is called American, which despite the different name, is indistinguishable from Modern English. Despite the game taking place 300 years after the apocalypse, where uneducated humans live in scattered, mostly isolated communities, there have been no regional language shifts.
** In the ''Phase World'' setting, Galactic Trade Tongue Four is in fact the descendant of the English Language, where an English Speaker has roughly a 50% chance to understand Trade Four. Mind you, so much time has passed in the Three Galaxies universe that everyone has ''forgotten where Earth was''.
== Video Games ==
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* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'', at one point in the main quest you either have a vision of the past or travel back in time a couple thousand years. When you do this, you find that people speak the same sort of english they do in your time, though this may be a function of the vision/time travel, rather than a true case. It's fairly vague on this point.
* In ''[[Asura's Wrath]]'', a game with a story not constrained by reason or logic in all other aspects, Asura can no longer understand the language of humanity after 12,000 years in limbo, although he can still understand his fellow gods just fine.
== Webcomics ==
* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' Torg and Zoe have no problems communicating with the locals when they go back to [[The Middle Ages|Medieval Europe]]. Subverted with Berk, a man from 25 years in the future, whose constant use of future slang makes him nearly unintelligible. Even other people from his time can't understand him.
* ''[[Xkcd]]'' subverted this [http://xkcd.com/771/ once].
==
* 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.
*
* 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 ==
* Language change is a constant, which causes problems in real
** This is still the case with the Tamil language of South India. The written standard is still most the same as it was in around the 14th century, while the spoken form kept changing as normal, resulting a written form that contains extra vowels and
** This is also somewhat the case with Arabic, where the written language is closely based on Classical Arabic, spoken at the time
** Tibetan's standard orthography hasn't changed since the 1100s, and is essentially the same in all the Buddhist Tibetan-speaking regions. Amazing for a language that went from having complex consonant clusters and no tones, to having much simpler consonants and many dialects having developed tones to make up for lost consonants. (To give an example, the Dalai Lama's surname 'Gyatso' (generally pronounced ''chatso'') is spelled ''rgyam-tsho'' natively.)
** After the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, literate people (i.e., monks) continued to write in semi-classical Latin, while the spoken Latin language evolved into several Romance languages, though these were still considered "Latin". By the time anybody realized that what people were speaking was no longer Latin, it had become a [[Sacred Language]] in the Catholic Church.
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* Also the case with Burmese, where there is a formal written language and a spoken form which is never written; they are pronounced quite differently.
** Officially, Afrikaans kept spelling in Dutch until a few years in to the 20th century, although some people spelled phonetically before then. One reason for this is that at the time, most people (even the majority of Afrikaans speakers) considered the language to be a dialect of Dutch. Since acknowledging a dialect's status as a language would usually go hand in hand with translating the Bible into it, many Afrikaans speakers were reluctant to do so, considering it disrespectful to translate Scripture into what was then still widely regarded as an uneducated-sounding, slang-littered dialect.
** English has mutated dramatically just in the few centuries since [[Shakespeare]] wrote his plays -- as any high school student will tell you, 90% of his wordplay is completely lost if you pronounce everything in the modern fashion -- but if you pronounce it in authentic Elizabethan English (or, at least, our best reconstruction thereof), it doesn't sound very much like English at all.
* Many <s>ideographic</s> logographic written languages (such as Chinese or Egyptian hieroglyphics) remain readable at least to some degree even after ''millennia'', because often the written glyphs change much more slowly than the spoken languages. And when these are shared for writing across languages whose spoken forms have ''never'' been related (such as Chinese with the native vocabularies of Korean and Japanese adapted to Chinese characters), written texts can be partially readable across language boundaries because of shared meaning of glyphs.
** Only partially - maybe on the level of one or two characters, definitely not whole texts. While the written form of a character may not change much in a thousand years, just like a word its meaning can shift dramatically - 好 in Japanese means "(to) like", and in Chinese means "good". There's a poem written in Classical Chinese deliberately so that when read with modern Mandarin pronunciation, ''every single syllable'' is "shi", just with different tones - surely some of those words have long since fallen out of use.
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** Modern Icelandic speakers often have less trouble understanding thousand-year-old Old Norse than modern Danish speakers have understanding modern Swedish speakers. It's said that Leifr Eiríksson, the first European in America, would be able to be understood in 21st century Iceland.
* For a straight example, the page quote itself. That's obvious in some cases, of course (eek? hadden prys?), but it's even trickier than it may appear; there's at least one false friend in there. "Nyce," to Chaucer, meant approximately what "stupid" means to us.
** James II supposedly described St Paul's Cathedral as "awful", "amusing" and "artificial"
** The English formal written language remains almost unchanged from the late 1800's on, but the spoken language is almost alien to a speaker from 1700.
* Even though it ''did'' lose its incredibly complex and powerful tense system and is still leaking cases, Russian is a remarkably slow-changing language. A 12'th century epic poem "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" is still (barely) understandable to the modern speaker, for example. Even the 9-10'th century texts (like the Novgorodian birchbark letters) can be figured out by the readers uneducated in the language.
* Similar to the Finnish example above, Irish and Scots Gaelic are two Goidelic languages that diverged from one another 1600 years ago. Yet despite this, and despite both going through many many changes in that time, they are still mutually intelligible.
* A subtrope of creationists is Babelists, who believe in, yes,
* Hebrew is an example in that, while there are definitely obvious differences between Biblical and Modern Hebrew, one can nevertheless understand a lot of Biblical passages on the strength of a Modern Hebrew education alone. But this is kind of cheating, since Hebrew was revitalized as a vernacular in the 19th century, so it didn't have the same kind of organic growth as other languages would have.
** For instance, students in Israel going on a field trip to see the Dead Sea Scrolls can simply ''read them unaided''. It's helpful to think of the relation between Biblical and Modern Hebrew as similar to that between Shakespearean and Modern English.
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Eternal English]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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