The English language is about 1500 years old, but that doesn’t mean you could go back to 500 A.D. and converse with someone in England. In fact, you might as well travel to a country where no one speaks English for how far modern English would get you back then.

To demonstrate how English has evolved over the centuries, filmmaker and dialect coach Simon Roper offers a seamless monologue in which he changes his dialect from pre-literary Old English to modern-day English. Along the top of the screen, a ticker moves along a timeline showing the era in which the dialect was spoken.

Listen and see how many words you can pick out from each century:

Roper initially recites the monologue with no subtitles, then repeats it with detailed transcriptions and notes so viewers can see what he was actually saying before most of the words became recognizable.

The Great Vowel Shift that changed the English language

Did you notice that the transition to recognizable English happened somewhere between 1400 and the mid 1500s? There must be a reason for that, right? Linguists have different theories, but a big one is what’s known as The Great Vowel Shift.

Between 1400 and 1700 (approximately), the way........

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