Re: How far back in time could a Japanese-speaking person travel and still understand the language?

From: Jed Rothwell (jedrothwell_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 06/21/04 

Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 17:54:29 GMT

My guess is that a native speaker could understand spoken, urban, mainstream
Japanese from around 1600 (the early Edo period), but not much before that.
I can understand Bunraku dramas from that era reasonably well when I
concentrate. Of course stage language is not like ordinary language, and it
could be that modern actors pronounce things differently than actors did
back in 1600. (I doubt that a modern British actor doing Shakespeare would
be understood by an Elizabethan audience. An American might be a little
easier for them.) I think both Japanese and English have been changing
pretty quickly compared to other languages, because they have a large
population of speakers, many dialects, and lots of eventful history.

As for regional dialects, many people today have difficulty following modern
ones. On NHK news they sometimes show subtitles for dialects. They are
seldom reproduced honestly in movies or television drama. Alas, they are
disappearing under the onslaught of education and television, as are many
colorful English dialects. I suppose a time traveler from 2004 would find
many rural dialects in 1800 or 1700 incomprehensible.

As for writing, I do not know many people who can fluently read or
understand pre-Meiji documents, or the "soorou" style of letter writing. I
cannot understand it. Most people can read pre-WWII script without much
difficulty, especially when it has furigana.

- Jed

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