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How far back in time can you understand English? This site goes back by centuries allowing you to test yourself.
(www.deadlanguagesociety.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Mildly Interesting
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About to 1400, then it starts to look more like Dutch or something. A few hundred years more and it starts to look like Danish or something. I bet it's harder to understand verbally.
Yeah, I said it looked like Dutch in the 1300 and before period. Maybe that's a bias because I can speak danish (okay, anyway) but dutch is like a random bunch of nonsense to me
Yeah same. I wonder how related were English and Dutch around that time period. It seems like the latter is still somewhere in that time period in speech and grammar style.
Surprisingly related