Thursday, August 09, 2007

Language changes

We definitely know that the English spoken in 1652 was quite different than English spoken today. There is also the question of accent, as an American visiting England often has a hard time understanding what people are saying, despite the fact that they are nominally speaking the same English language. I have less exposure to English spoken by the English, and what I have heard is understandable. The question is: how much has spoken Dutch changed since 1652 and how easily would a modern Dutch speaker understand what was being said in 1652 and 1653? We are just guessing when we expect that we would not have a problem understanding 1652 Dutch, as we don't exactly have any recordings just lying around (yet).

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