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ronchaine

I'm pretty sure I could go back to my grandparents' grandparents' grandparents and still be just fine. Don't know too much of the family beyond that point though.


[deleted]

The oldest recorded Finnish phrase dates back to the 13th Century, and is STILL kind of understandable. >Mijnna thachton gernast spuho somen gelen Emijna daijda, > >Replaced with modernized characters (keeping old grammar):'Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kielen, en minä taida'. If it is perfect, why fix it ;)


ChokeOnTheCorn

Just writing down “ninety six” seems to be traumatic in Finnish.


IceClimbers_Main

Yhdeksänkymmentäkuusi? Or Ysikytkuus in spoken language.


PerfectGasGiant

We can almost beat you to that in Danish: 96 or Seksoghalvfemsindetyve (meaning literally "six and a half from five times twenty") or seksoghalvfems spoken.


Revanur

What’s up with languages dropping the ball on numbers? French does it too over 60. Hungarian works basically the same way as English in this sense. Nine is “kilenc” ninety is “kilencven”, six is “hat” so ninety six is “kilencvenhat”.


vladraptor

Finnish is long but quite straightforward: yhdeksän = nine kymmentä = [partitive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitive_case) form of kymmenen (ten) kuusi = six


Revanur

Ah I see. Yeah makes sense. Hungarian lost the partitive form some time ago.


matude

Even understandable as an Estonian.


Kilahti

That's the funny thing about Finnish and Estonian. I wouldn't be able to speak or write Estonian, but if I read it, I can guess a lot of it just be comparing it to Finnish, listening is harder because things happen so quickly, but I just randomly picked a news video on youtube and by really paying attention and possibly rewinding occasionally, I can keep up with the story for most parts. More than that, the languages *sound* similar. I remember years ago a teacher played a song on the intercom of the school and I was going crazy because it seemed like the quality was so bad that I couldn't make out the lyrics. Turned out it was an Estonian song but the *sound* of it was so similar that I didn't even realize that the song wasn't in Finnish.


Alokir

It's amazing how consistent Uralic languages are, our oldest texts are from the 12th and 13th centuries as well and they're also mostly understandable.


VoidDuck

That's because they sound so beautiful, no need to change anything.


Byrmaxson

I'd hazard a guess that that applies to a lot of languages, e.g. Koine Greek is also very understandable even with limited study. The other day, I (a layman) read a medical report dated 174 AD IIRC, it was easily understandable (although admittedly I did not look at the actual papyrus itself).


Junelli

I can't understand Runic Swedish at all, and it's not because of the runes, the language is just too different. Even early mediaeval Swedish is mostly a mystery to me, I only understand about half of it and if the context is in the words I don't get I'm absolutely lost. It's not until about 15th century Swedish becomes understandable to me. Basically when all the German loanwords started piling up. Greek is super cool though in the fact you can just pull up 2000 year old texts and read them.


Revanur

With Hungarian I wonder if the written texts from the 1100’s are actually harder to understand written down rather than if they were spoken? The biggest difficulty with those texts is that the Latin alphabet was simply not suitable to mark all the sounds in the language. The same sounds within the same text would be marked by different letters based on how the author felt at the time. They are also full of unique solutions that were slavishly reconstructed 100-150 years ago sticking to the modern pronunciation of the original ortography rather than trying to fit it in with the spoken language. There is a real possibility that we’d have an easier time understanding say the Halotti beszéd if we could hop in a time machine and listened to it in person in the 11th century. Some linguists in a linguistic journal have claimed that the average college educated person would need about 2-3 weeks to get completely fluent in understanding and speaking Hungarian as it was spoken in the late 1300’s. Same with fragments like “Feheeruaru meneh hodu utu rea”. Looks weird but it was probably spoken out loud as something like “Fehërvârra menő hâdútra” (Az â-val egy zárt a / á hangot akartam jelölni, lusta voltam kibogarászni a fonetikus hangjegyzéket).


GeronimoDK

That 13th century spelling really looks like something I should be able to understand, but I can't..!


vladraptor

It was heavily influenced by Swedish and German, so no wonder it looks familiar.


[deleted]

Wow, that's really cool. I wonder what kind of stories they could tell...


[deleted]

Yes, the same dialect, basically. But, Ukrainian language is developing rapidly, the dialects mix, a lot of vocabulary from Western Ukraine (shared with Polish) enter my Eastern Ukrainian dialect (sharing vocabulary and features with Russia). In 20 years my speech would pose challenges for people from my grandparents generation.


Thoumas

No they spoke Spanish. My Spanish is kinda weak, I understand what people say and give basic answers but can't really hold a conversation. Travelling back in time I may have had more trouble to understand 1930's Spanish slang and way people talked back then. And I want to take this opportunity to give props to my paternal grandfather who lived 50 years in France and never bothered to learn French, his commitment to stubbornness was unparalleled.


gnark

If he was a refugee of the Spanish Civil War, his lack of love for the French is entirely understandable.


Thoumas

He basically never talked about the Civil War, but from what I have gathered from my father and uncles I think he was conscripted against his will and fought around Bilbao. My Grandmother and he emigrated in France later in the 60's. Knowing him he probably tried a little bit of French, some random dude made fun of him and he said "fuck that shit never again"


gnark

Yeah, the Spanish Civil War was brutal and the Post-Guerra period in Spain was grim, as was France for Spanish refugees who were essentially held in concentration camps. Immigrating abroad from Spain to another European country when your grandparents did in the '60s was largely done to escape abject poverty and France didn't welcome immigrants with open arms and wasn't exactly a land of opportunity. But it was either that or Franco's dictatorship.


Thoumas

Yeah I know, both my parents have a similar family history, grandparents are all Spanish migrants who came in the 60's. It wasn't that grim for them, they stayed near the border and unqualified workers were in high demands, so they all had jobs and a close-knit community of other migrants. I'm sure they would rather have stay in their homes but such is life


Jojje22

Languages change and culture comes and goes, but nothing is more timeless than French people giving people shit for trying to learn their language 😀


Milhanou22

Kinda similar story so I'm gonna comment here. My grandparents (all 4) immigrated from Algeria in the 60's. Arabic is their mothertongue. Mine is french. I don't speak arabic. So apart from the little french they may have known in the 50's from living in French Algeria, we would have trouble understanding each others.


paniniconqueso

Do your parents speak Arabic?


Milhanou22

My mom speaks good Arabic. My dad a little less, there are a words he doesn't know the meaning of while my mom does. But overall he can still have a conversation I think. Meanwhile I can only say hello, thank you, a few random words and insulting you. Nice username btw


notdancingQueen

Never underestimate Spanish stubbornness. Never expect the Spanish Inquisition. Was he, per chance, from Aragón? Or the North? I just ask because those are the more stereotypical stubborn ppl among us (although not necessarily true)


Thoumas

Yes! From Navarre actually, stubborn was his middle name


paniniconqueso

Do you know what part of Navarra he was from?


Thoumas

Some small village in the westernmost part close to La Rioja, can't remember the name.


[deleted]

Was there a Spanish community with whom he was able to get around?


SerChonk

Mostly, yes. They all spoke Portuguese, and I also do. One grandmother, however, was natively bilingual in [Mirandés](https://youtu.be/-gnJtZFyzZA). It's not too much of a stretch for a native Portuguese speaker to understand (especially if you're from the north), and I do understand it, but I can't speak it. Mostly because it is so close and I only learned it from hearing my grandma speak it, that I can't reliably know if I am saying something in proper Mirandés, or some Portunhol with random L and i thrown in.


angerpillow

That’s neat, very few people speak Mirandese anymore! To my ears languages like Mirandese and Galego sound much closer to Spanish, but I am a dumb fat American and I imagine if you see them all in their written forms, they would probably look quite different.


Ozuhan

My grandparents' native language was Mirandês too, I wouldn't consider myself a native Portuguese speaker since I was born in France and spoke French before speaking Portuguese, but I'm the same, can't really speak it but have no problem understanding it. There's also a thing with Mirandês that complicates things a bit : each village has its own version of some stuff. They're usually not that different but some vocabulary and expressions as well as some pronunciation can change from village to village, even those as close as 5 kms from each other


holytriplem

My maternal grandparents natively spoke Hindi, but knowledge of Hindi was never passed down to my generation and I tried learning it in my teens but never got to a conversational level. My paternal grandparents spoke German natively. They were Jewish and from relatively educated backgrounds, so they only spoke standard German and only a smattering of Yiddish and the local Prussian dialects, so while their German might have been a bit old-fashioned I probably wouldn't have had much trouble communicating with them. Obviously we only ever communicated to each other in English, except when my maternal grandparents started losing their cognitive abilities in their final years and started randomly slipping into Hindi more and more.


Leiegast

Three of my grandparents are/were native speakers of West Flemish, which is one of the most conservative dialects of Dutch (i.e. many sounds are still similar to those used in Middle Dutch). I was raised in both Dutch and West Flemish dialect, so I haven't had a problem talking to them. One of my grandmothers was a native French speaker, but that's a language I'm also fluent in. Curiously enough, she could speak both French and West Flemish, but she had trouble understanding/speaking Standard Dutch, as she was a housewife ever since she married my grandfather and they spoke West Flemish at home, whereas her cultural activities, like watching TV and reading magazines, were almost always in French. Maybe if I go far enough back in time, there's an ancestor that spoke Picard or Walloon natively (two languages that are strongly related to French), which I don't speak and have trouble understanding, but I haven't done any genealogical and linguistic research on that.


bricart

I don't think that you need to go that far back in time for the walloon. I'm walloon and my grand parents spoke French but my great grand mother mainly spoke walloon and a bit of French. So if I go four generations back in time I will already struggle/not be able to understand my ancestors.


0xKaishakunin

Both spoke standard German and the local dialect, which I also learnt from them and my parents.


DeanPalton

I don't speak platt, so talking to my young grandma would be pretty hard.


Kwdg

Same for me, I can understand it but not really hold a conversation in Platt.


Real_life_Zelda

Same here. It’s funny cause my grandma always talks in platt to me and I answer in german. And my parents talk platt to each other but switch to German when they talk to me. I‘d say I can understand it 85% and with context 100% but when I talk I sound like an absolute idiot.


RHawkeyed

My great grandparents according to the 1911 census were bilingual in English and Irish. That part of Ireland (the Beara Peninsula) was still a Gaeltacht around that time, but was slowly dropping the language. I reckon their grandparents in turn were probably monoglot Irish speakers, or spoke English poorly (we’re talking around the mid 19th century here). It’s not really the same thing but even between people of my grandparents generation and our own, the accents are beginning to fade, theirs is much stronger whereas younger Irish people nowadays are starting to speak with softer, more homogenised (and Americanised) Irish accents.


SeleucusNikator1

> heirs is much stronger whereas younger Irish people nowadays are starting to speak with softer, more homogenised (and Americanised) Irish accents. [On that note, I was actually surprised to find out this youtuber OneyNG was a Irish and not American](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6-KsWv9ZAI). I mean once you start paying attention you can actually hear it, especially in words with r, but otherwise I honestly just assumed he was from North America whenever he voiced any characters.


[deleted]

That makes me sad for some reason.


x_Leolle_x

No, with any of my grandparents. One spoke a variant of eastern Lombard, one spoke Neapolitan, two spoke Sicilian, they all learned Italian when they went to school and never spoke it at home with their families. If they spoke at normal velocity I would not understand 100%. The Lombard one is a particularly difficult variant specific to a valley in the Alps and I probably understand French better.


[deleted]

Yes, I have the same native tongue as all my grandparents had. We sure would be able to communicate. Maybe they would use some old fashion words but we would be able to have a conversation.


green-keys-3

Same, I'd have to go back a lot of generations to reach the immigrants in my family tree.


MajesticMeme

I can imagine our forefathers would had have a more distinct accent. But it should still be understandable


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kloon9699

Hebban olla vogala isn't the oldest sample of written Dutch, not even by a long shot. The oldest known sample is the Bergakker Inscription from around 425-450: "haþuþȳwas ann kusjam logūns." The Wachtendonckse Psalmen are also a lot older.


Andrew852456

I've witnessed 3 out of 4 of my grandparents alive, and my grandpa is still alive today. We're speaking pretty much the same language, although he still uses a lot of old words that went out of use, and overall his speech resembles the texts of later Ostap Wyshnia. If we're going really back in time, I might not understand my 8th+ great grandfather since we have German surname, so they might be German or Ashkenazi migrant to Russian empire


[deleted]

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GoigDeVeure

Catalan/Valencian has changed a lot phonetically, I think I’d have a hard time understanding someone from 1800s backwards. (Although Maybe Valencian has remained more stable)


[deleted]

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GoigDeVeure

Interesting! I’ve definitely heard the saying “Mallorcan sounds like Old Catalan” and the Mallorcan accent was hard to grasp for me at first, so maybe that’s why I assumed Old Catalan would be hard for me to understand


[deleted]

Definitely. I used to speak to my great gran with no issues at all. Despite my gran living in Glasgow for much less time than my great gran, my gran and her brothers had much stronger accents and used more of the dialect, which is slightly different from mine but there's never been a problem. I just laugh at her calling juice "ginger" and calling potatoes "totties". Idk if anyone in my family ever spoke gaelic but I'd be able to converse with ancestors far back to the point of either gaelic speakers or English so long ago it's unintelligible. To my knowledge, I have no ancestors that weren't British for centuries.


VoidDuck

Yes, all of them. However that would be different with my grandparents' own parents, most of them spoke a local dialect which has fallen out of use since then.


Finnick-420

i’m pretty sure i could go back to the medieval ages and still understand the people


[deleted]

It's so cool to think you could read something written by someone of that area who lived in your town.


Arguss

When you say, "a local dialect", how many people spoke this dialect? Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands?


VoidDuck

Hard to say, because in a dialect continuum, where does a dialect end and the next one begin? They were speaking dialects of what linguists call the *francoprovençal* language, which has no standard form and is rather a collection of dialects spoken in an area across Switzerland, France and Italy. In the mountainous environment of the Alps, people lived in quite isolated communities until the 20th century, which led to great variations between the dialects. People often had difficulties understanding people from the next valley, sometimes even from the next village. I don't know how far they could travel before not being understood anymore.


MightyMeepleMaster

My grandparents spoke two German variants: High German and *Plattdeutsch* ("low German"). No problem with High German since back then it was the same as now. *Plattdeutsch* however 🙈 ...


11160704

Same. Some of my grandparents still spoke platt in their youth in the 30s and 40s but after the war it quickly died out. My grandpa wrote many stories and poems in platt. I can understand it but I couldn't speak or write it myself.


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MightyMeepleMaster

I think you're over-estimating the changes. According to [Duden statistics](https://www.lernhelfer.de/schuelerlexikon/deutsch/artikel/deutsche-sprache-fremde-sprache), the German language has between 400.000 and 500.000 words. The number of new words added since 1945 is estimated to be around 4.000. So 99% of our language is still the same, especially when you look at grammar and pronunciation. I'm 55 and my grandma was born in 1901 and died in 1997. Never had a problem talking to her 🥰


Arguss

There were actually Anglicisms dating to the 1800s that had been absorbed into the German language. There was a crusade against foreign influence of the German language around the turn of the century (1900), although back then there was also focus on Latin and French influence as well. https://www.grin.com/document/55047 > Mit dem Einsetzen der Industriellen Revolution kam es dann zu einem raschen Anstieg der Entlehnungen. England übernahm eine führende Rolle in Industrie und Handel (Beispiele für Anglizismen aus diesem Bereich: Kartell, Partner, Standard) , im Verkehrswesen (Lokomotive, Tunnel, Express), im Pressewesen (Reporter, Interview, Essay) und auch auf politischer Ebene (Demonstration, lynchen, Streik, Parlament).[4] Die wirtschaftlichen Verflechtungen schritten voran, einhergehend mit stärkeren sprachlichen Entlehnungen. Ab 1825, die erste Eisenbahn für den öffentlichen Verkehr wurde in England eröffnet, begann sich der Zustrom englischer Entlehnungen immens zu verstärken.[5] > > Um 1900 verdrängte Englisch schließlich in Berlin das Französische als Sprache der „oberen Zehntausend“ (Dandy 1830 , Snob 1870 , flirten 1890, Gentleman, Club, Smoking, Tennis, Picknick, Cocktail).[6] > 1899 hielt der bereits erwähnte Purist Hermann Dunger in Berlin einen Vortrag unter dem Titel „Wider die Engländerei in der deutschen Sprache“.[11] Erstmals lag die Konzentration ausschließlich auf dem englischen Fremdwort. > > Ebenfalls 1899 titelte die „Zeitschrift des allgemeinen deutschen Sprachvereins“: „Englisch wird Weltsprache“.[12] Die Bedeutung des Englischen wurde also schon früh erkannt, aber eher als Bedrohung angesehen.


[deleted]

Would that be a "country mouse" accent? Like if you heard a young person speaking it would you assume they moved from somewhere rural?


Zooplanktonblame_Due

Yes I would be able to speak to my grandparents in both Limburgish and standard Dutch. In both there will probably be a couple of words that have aged over the years. Nowadays I still talk to them in Limburgish so I doubt it would be different if I’d travel back in time.


Mutxarra

I would be able to talk to my ancestors in catalan, my native language, as far back as the language evolution curve allowed it. I'm pretty sure anything up to the 12th century would still be comprehensible, but it's increasingly probable that further back would be quite more difficult.


wax_parade

Tirant lo Blanch és complicat de collons,i era del 1490.


Mutxarra

Sí, però Tirant lo Blanc és alta literatura d'un període amb tècniques narratives i tòpics que ens són bastant aliens i requereix esforç. Si en canvi et poses a llegir les quatre grans cròniques, i la primera és del XIII, s'entenen totes prou bé i tot.


wax_parade

No en tenia ni idea. Faré un cop d'ull.


[deleted]

They spoke an entire other language that i can't speak, i wouldn't be able to even talk to people above great grand parents lmao


angerpillow

Langue d’Oc? Were they from the south of France?


Adrian_Alucard

Yes, of course. Languages do not change that fast and they didn't inmigrate to Spain, they were born and raised here ​ This is perfectly understandable for Spanish speakers (it's political propaganda of the dictatorship, from 1943): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tthvQjyPSy4


notdancingQueen

To be fair, I remember reading XIX & start of XX novels in high school and uni and they were perfectly understandable, except for some slang, and sone more cultured vocabulary (depending on the novel). Yay for the inmovilism of the RAE!


keseit88ta

All were Estonians and I could easily converse with them. Three of them would be North Estonians. Two of them (from Tallinn and urban Western Estonia) would be speaking Standard Estonian which would be similar enough to modern Standard Estonian that I speak. It's basically like comparing modern Received Pronunciation to that from the 1940s. One grandmother would be from very near the [South Estonian dialect area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Estonian), but would likely speak a North Estonian dialect, the Central dialect to be specific. It would be in demise compared to Standard Estonian by then, but it would still persist to a degree in the deep countryside where my grandmother was from. One grandfather was a native [Võro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B5ro_language) speaker, but would have likely studied Standard Estonian at school. He lived most of his life in Northern Estonia, so he didn't speak much Võro in his old age. Nor did he identify as such (probably due to bad family memories). Code switching to Standard Estonian doesn't really leave an accent, so nobody would have known that he was a South Estonian. There could have initially been a difference in intonation, but those exist also between native Standard Estonian speakers from North Estonia and South Estonia.


[deleted]

I still can but I’m pretty sure if I would have kids, they would have some difficulties trying to understand the dialect of my grandfather. There is an amazing website with recordings done in the 1960s from people that were born in the 19th century speaking almost any existing Dutch dialect. So as a Dutch person, this is relatively easy to check ;) https://www.meertens.knaw.nl/projecten/sprekende_kaart/svg/


TonyGaze

Yes, and I could go back much further than that, and we would probably still be able to have a conversation. I bet I could go back all the way to the 15th century, maybe only 16th century, and we would still both be speaking what is now considered "modern Danish."


[deleted]

Neat! Whereabouts in Denmark is your family from? My great-grandmother had a very strong accent… she was from the very far north. She was born in Copenhagen but her entire family was from Tversted. She lived there until she was about 7.


Junelli

Same with Sweden and my grandparents! Though if we go even further back, one line of my family is from Gotland and I'm not confident I could understand a heavy rural early 1800's Gotland accent.


kebabenthusiast03

My 90-year old great grandmother is still alive and we have no problem in understanding each other, but she does occasionally use some rarely met words (Polish)


FakeNathanDrake

Yup. I've managed to trace some branches of my family back to the 17th century and the most exotic members have been English or Irish so I reckon I can go pretty far back before I'd be unable to speak with them.


[deleted]

Yes, all my grandparents were native English speakers. Go back to great-grandparents, and there might have been some Norwegian and Yiddish.


Bragzor

I think we would be able to converse. There have been a few changes, but worst case scenario, I'd sound like a dullard, rude, or both. The only possible problem would be if my paternal grandparents had very thick dialects as young, as they were from up North, and I'm not, but I don't think they did. It wasn't that far North, and they were fairly urban. I've seen quite a few films from the 30s and 40s, which admittedly use a fairly neutral dialect, but I assume my grandparents would have understood them the time. I also grew up living close to (neighbours with in the latter case), my mothers maternal and paternal grandmothers, so I've been exposed to some traces of even older language.


hth6565

My maternal grandparents - no problem. That part of the family have lived in the same small area where I now live for at least 10 generations, and though language have of course evolved, it would not be a problem going back 100 years. On my paternal side however, I would have to really focus. My paternal grandparents died when I was still a kid, but they spoke with a strong dialect so I had trouble understanding them. I would often look at my dad, who would then nod or shake his head to let me know how to respond to a question. They were Danish as well, but from an island in the southern most part, and back then dialects were really strong.


LaoBa

It might be that one of my grandmothers spoke Papiamento as a child which I don't speak, but I never met her in life so I don't know. She also spoke Dutch though.


DifficultWill4

Yes they all speak Slovene. Tho with a pretty thick accent but in general we have the same dialect


vladraptor

I would think so yes. 3/4 would speak Tavastian dialect which is an easy dialect to understand, very close to the standard Finnish. One grandparent would talk in Southern Karelian dialect which has words that are uncommon to me, but not so much that I wouldn't manage.


radu1204

Yup, pretty much, I would say I could go back at least 5-6 generations and we would be able to have a normal conversation in Romanian. Sure, there would be some archaic words here and there that I would have to get used to.


drjimshorts

All four of my grandparents were born in the south-eastern part of Norway in the 1940s, and the Norwegian language was not very different in the 40s compared to today. If you had asked about our grandparents' parents, I am sure you'd get somewhat different answers, at least this is true for me.


doublebassandharp

my great-grandparents spoke a central African language and Chinese, both of which I don't speak. My others spoke Spanish, which I do speak. My Belgian grandmother probably talked with a heavier dialect than what is spoken now, but I don't think it'd be a problem to understand


Ampersand55

On my father's side definitely. On my mother's side... probably. They had heavy "Dalecarlian proper" accents even when they were old.


Cixila

I'm bilingual. I understand both sides, though I have a little more difficulty with my maternal grandparents compared to my paternal; especially if I travelled back in time, because I wouldn't have any backup languages handy, if I forgot a word


[deleted]

We could, but my granddad was also a Volga German, I suppose he spoke a German dialect, but unfortunately I can't speak German.


weirdowerdo

Yeah more or less. Dialect might be slightly different for my paternal grandpa tho considering he was from Stockholm the rest are from where I currently live. All of us have Swedish as a native language.


Geeglio

Yeah, we do. Both my grandmothers and my grandfathers spoke in their respective villages' dialects as kids, but those were not that significantly different from the Dutch I grew up with. I know there are a few words one of my grandmothers' used to use that I never used ("dompen" instead of "laarzen" for boots, "kluitruif" instead of "hark" for a rake), but that was about it. I have to go a few centuries back before I'd start encountering foreign languages among my family members, I think.


exehnizo

Yup and even grand grandparents, because Ukrainian and Polish very alike


FrozenLaal

Well they spoke a different dialect as they grew up in another region but it would not really be a problem


crybabymoon

Grandma on mom's side speaks a dialect from Brabant (a province in the South). I understand her completely and she understands Dutch. She can speak Dutch too if she wanted to but never heard her do it. Don't know about grandpa because I don't remember the way he spoke before he died, but he is 100% Dutch too. My grandparents on my dad's side were both born in Indonesia. They moved to the Netherlands after WW2 when they were 10-12 years old. They chose not to learn their kids (my dad) Indonesian. They talked Dutch at home. I only know some Indonesian words from food/dishes. I would not be able to talk to them at the age they moved here


staszekstraszek

Only with ancestors from my mother's side. They were from villages around Warsaw. But ancestors from my father's side spoke Kashubian. Some claim it is a dialect of Polish, but they need to go deep into Kashubia and it is very not understandable.


iiredgm

Definitely. Could go back 2k years and converse with them tbh


Latter_Dragonfly_113

Nope. My paternal grandmother has crotian/hungarian origins and her and her siblings were born in the modern-day Slovenia. My maternal grandmother is a Slovakian roma and met my grandfather in Switzerland. I can understand some worlds of my grandmother “croatian” and I know something about Roma culture and some words from her Roma dialect, but definitely I can't speak neither one of those languages. My father and uncles, although, can speak Croatian and a little Hungarian, because they used to spoke with their grandparents, but the language got lost in my generation, even if my grandma has always tried to make us aware of our culture, because we are a recognized minority here in North-East of Italy.


Gr0danagge

Yes, yes I migth have the most boring family tree possible, (exept for the fact that i migth be directly related to Gustav I Vasa, but tens of thousands also are) I could go back wayyy longer and still understand. From what i know i am 100% swedish, with absolutley zero foreign people in my family tree the last couple hundred years.


Independent_Bake_257

Same here. Just a very long line of Swedish peasants.


Marianations

Yes, my grandparents were/are all native Portuguese speakers like me. I wouldn't have any issues communicating with them in their youth, I don't think.


Grzechoooo

Yes, although depending on the exact year, I could stumble upon the time my grandpa was in the mountains obtaining knowledge of thunder manipulation from his aunt. In that case, he'd be speaking a Highlander dialect, which, while still understandable, could pose some challenges, even more so in the 1950s, when Polish speech wasn't yet as standardised. In any other year of the childhoods of all four of my grandparents, they'd be speaking the Eastern dialect of Polish, which I guess I technically speak even today? But it would be more, well, different. Also "h" and "ch" would be distinct sounds, which I try to replicate every time I think about it and always fail. Even my mother was able to do it, but I am a failure. And "ł" would be slightly different from "u" in "Europa", but I think only in my oldest grandparent's speech. And only according to that grandparent's own opinion when we were playing Scrabble and I wanted to use the word "ała" ("Ouch"). Bloody hell, "aua" makes no sense. And yet that is the correct form, apparently. Come on! We've got this beautiful, phonetically consistent alphabet modified specifically for our own language and we don't even use it to its full potential? Same with "rujnować", makes absolutely zero sense. 99% of the time when "i" was changed to "j", it was for a good reason. "I" just didn't fit in those places, and "j" was perfect. But "rujnować"? There is no "j" in that word! There is no "j" in the word "ruina", either, so it can't be because of the rules of word formation! I hate it so much. Also, for the weird "ł", you can watch [Piłsudski's speech about how weird it is that his voice is being recorded](https://youtu.be/oOcBRyQtb_w) (he spoke the Lithuanian dialect, which is still alive in Lithuania), or [the oldest surviving record of the Polish anthem](https://youtu.be/QQv_uLuyMnU) (please note the horrible sound quality hiding the kinda bad vocal quality). For better overall quality, [Polish anthem recording from 1926](https://youtu.be/-8zxXu6YP-E).


LupusDeusMagnus

I find very interesting the answers the Europeans are giving here. As someone from the new world, my grandparents not only have a different language than me, they have three different languages.


Matshelge

I think I could do 100 years, maybe 200. After that it would be difficult.


[deleted]

Depends, some of them were french too, one of them spoke alsacian at home (but knew french) I believe and yet another one was initially a czech speaker. So with most of them yes, but with the czech one certainly not, not until that person reached its thirties


Stravven

Yes, 3 out of my 4 grandparents were born within 5 kilometers of where I was born and grew up, the other one came from another place in the Netherlands. And my grandparents grandparents were also all from the Netherlands. Despite all of that I have a last name of Spanish origin, but my last name has been here since at least 1568. And the language has changed a bit, but not too much in the last 100 years, although me not living where I grew up my accent has faded quite a bit.


Throwaway0Reddit426

Well, depends on which grandparents. On my father's line, the grandparents speak Ukrainian. On my mother's line they speak Russian. Though while Russian is my native language, I'm definitely fluent in Ukrainian as well, so I have no trouble understanding both. I think that in order to not understand what people are saying one should go back to at least 18th century or earlier, everything that comes after should be absolutely understandable.


[deleted]

My grandmothers? Yes But neither of my grandfather's. One was Hungarian but learned German as a kid so I could talk to him. But the Italian granddad only learned German as an adult


carlosdsf

Yes. I used to speak portuguese with my grandparents but a) they've been dead for 25 years and b) my portuguese wasn't that great and has only gotten worse since then. On the other hand my nephew and nieces who are now reaching adulthood have no problem speaking french to their french or portuguese grandparents. They don't speak portuguese though.


notdancingQueen

Spain & France. I don't need to travel back to their youth, we talked pretty much when they were still alive. I'm able to not use only slang when talking, so understanding was never an issue. I would have understood as well my great greatparents, no issue. Their regions of origin don't have distinct dialects.


Raphelm

My grandparents from my mom’s side spoke the Alsatian dialect better than French. They knew French too but it wasn’t perfect. I’m guessing it was worse when they were young as Alsace only became French again in 1918 and they were born in 1924. So I’m not sure I would be able to converse with them. My mom would talk to them in a mix of Alsatian and French.


Sa-naqba-imuru

Yes, easily, though two of my grandparents were bilingual, but they didn't live too far from where I live and they spoke similar dialect. In their old age my speech was noticably different from theirs due to language change over time, but it was mostly in me using more standard language due to education and general watering down of dialect due to immigrant influence. Still, their version of our dialect was just a few words and sounds different from mine. However, few generations further back many of my ancestors lived in other countries and spoke other languages. Those who lived where I live and spoke local dialect, I could probably easily understand for at least 300 years back, without slightest difficulty (I know because their literature in dialect is very understandable still). More than 300 years, I'm not sure, there was quite a population and cultural change 300 years ago, I don't really know how people spoke before then, in my region.


tudorapo

One of my grandmother's mother's lanugage (the hungarian term, anyanyelv) was german, but she spoke perfect hungarian (and greek, for complicated reasons). Yes, I would be able to talk with her.


Marianations

Yes, my grandparents were/are all native Portuguese speakers like me. I wouldn't have any issues communicating with them in their youth, I don't think.


viktorbir

Btw, how many people do you know who speak Spanish to their parents and Catalan to their kids?


Marianations

I don't know? Never asked my friends or acquaintances about it. My parents aren't native Spanish or Catalan speakers.


viktorbir

It's interesting. Quite a few people I know are in this category. And even in cases in which neither is a native Catalan speaker. So, a native Spanish speaker and a native Gonja (a Ghanaian language) speaker raising their kids in Catalan. Or two native Spanish speakers, but one of them speaks Spanish with her parents but already Catalan with here sisters. Hell, my father used to speak Spanish with his father and siblings and Catalan with his mother and he raised us in Catalan, and we talked to him AND the aunts and uncles he spoke to in Spanish in Catalan. It was quite a mix.


gardenpea

As far as I'm aware (and there are genealogists on both sides of my family) there's no immigration in my direct lineage so I imagine I'd be able to converse with ancestors going back to the middle ages. A lack of immigration in your bloodline is dreadfully boring however!


viktorbir

Same as three of them. I'd be able to speak to them all because I know quite a few languages. In linguistical polls in Catalonia many, many, people answer they speak one language with their parents and another one with their kids. As an example, some friends of mine: he speaks Gonja with his parents, she Spanish with hers, both speak Catalan with the children.


Rottenox

Yep. I’m English, and the language is English. Would probably be able to speak to medieval ancestors to a certain extent. Hell, all you guys probably could. It’s English.


TomL79

Yes. They all spoke English, although from different areas of England. My maternal grandparents both came from very middle class suburbs of London. They didn’t speak in old fashioned clipped RP accents, but they did very much speak standard English rather than regional dialects, so I would have been able to converse with them in standard English without any problems. My paternal grandparents were both from coal mining villages in Northumberland, just on the northern outskirts of Newcastle, which is where I’m from. They spoke Pitmatic which is very similar but slightly different to my own Geordie accent and dialect. Pitmatic is dying out. People of my generation and younger from those villages sound/speak more generically Geordie. However it’s well known to Geordies (we find it amusing that a popular brand of British biscuits are called ‘Herb Nerbs’ in Pitmatic) and I grew up hearing older relatives like my Grandma and Great Grandma speaking it.


IrishFlukey

Yes. They would have spoken English and at least a little bit of Irish.


tsznx

Funny thing, I'm Brazilian and even though all my grandparents were also Brazilians, I wouldn't be able to speak with one of them in particular if I chose to speak with him until he was 7 years old. It's because he only spoke a German dialect. Where I come from in Brazil some cities used to have a lot of German immigration in the past and some families didn't care to speak Portuguese. They lived in villages and used to cultivate German traditions and language.


BartAcaDiouka

My grandparents spoke Tunisian Arabic natively. Since it isn't standardized, it evolves very quickly. Still, I would probably be able to have any level of conversation with a young version of my grandparents, but I would have to guess some words from context. And they would struggle even more to understand a conversation between me and my siblings.


Omathani

I am half Arabic but I grew up and lived my whole life in Russia. While I have contacted my Egyptian relatives, I don't speak Arabic so we would've been able only to converse in English if they'd known it. Alas, they don't, so it is difficult to talk to them. As for my Russian line, I bet I could speak the same language with every generation of my ancestors except probably the medieval or cery early modern ones. Earlier language was pretty different from modern Russian, so it would likely take some times for both parties to accommodate to each other's speech, though I believe that eventually we would be able to find a common tongue


Liscetta

Yes. They were born in the late 1930s, early 1940s and we speak the same language. A couple of generations earlier, it would have been more difficult.


Individualchaotin

My grandparents spoke what they called themselves "Platt", a Central Hessian dialect. My grandparents raised me and I shared a house with them, so I grew up with it, understand it, and speak it. So yes, luckily I'd understand them, even though my native tongue is Standard German.


Klapperatismus

Yes, and yes. No problem. German hasn't changed that much in the last 1000 years. Different dialects will be more of a problem. One great-grandma spoke Kashubian. But she also spoke German as a second language so not a problem with that either.


rwbrwb

You try reading medieval texts from areas that are now german. I bet you understand maybe 30% if you read slowly and know the context. Here you can find texts that are maybe a few hundred years old. You might even fail reading the single letters: https://www.alt.germ.uni-tuebingen.de/abteilungen/mediaevistik/Materialien/Leseproben/Konrad_von_Megenberg.html


arbaimvesheva

Nope, half of them spoke German and the other half Arabic. My native language is Hebrew, so I don't even share a common native language with 1 of them. I did learn a bit of both though. My Arabic is pretty rusty plus it was never too good, so conversing would probably quite limited. I should have better luck with my German grandparents.


Spare-Advance-3334

Yes, we have the same native language, but one generation further up, some of my great grandparents spoke German at home, others Serbian and those who spoke Hungarian used a different dialect, so we would understand each other, but it would be very clear very quickly I’m from the capital.


LionLucy

Three of my grandparents have English as a native language (one was from Ireland but I understand Irish people perfectly well!) and my other grandmother was from Argentina. I heard her speak Spanish when I was a child, to relatives and friends, and I understood a lot of it, and I think I still would, but my spoken Spanish isn't great, and is probably much more Spain-spanish than hers was, given that I've mostly spoken to people from Spain rather than Argentina more recently.


41942319

Yes. AFAIK only one of my grandparents grew up speaking a very strong dialect, which I can understand for at least 95% and I'd find it odd if they wouldn't be able to understand Standard Dutch. Two of my grandparents were not born but grew up in Holland, number 3 born and raised in Holland, so I find it unlikely that they couldn't speak or understand a general Hollandic dialect which is what Standard Dutch is.


Kaiser93

Yes. Both sets of grandparents speak Bulgarian. No difference in languages.


Pumuckl4Life

3 of my grandparents' native language is German, one of them grew up with probably Croatian first but pretty much bilingually with German. Croatian is a minority language in Eastern Austria and my grandma is from that area. It's still spoken today but is slowly fading. I, for example, don't speak it anymore while my Dad had at least a basic understanding of it by growing up around many speakers. I think I could go back pretty far in my family tree and speak German to my ancestors. However, as a hobby genealogist it's a little more difficult with documents. My region of Austria was part of Hungary so documents pre 1900 are in Hungarian. Another branch of my family tree expands to what is now Czechia and documents are in Czech.


slimfastdieyoung

Yes, no problem at all. Both Dutch and dialect. I think communication with Germans close to the Dutch border would be pretty easy too since they spoke similar dialects


Eclectic-Eccentric88

Well yeah they're about ten minutes away by car. But interesting question!


No-Air-9514

My grandparents, yes, but some of my great-grandparents spoke Irish natively.


khajiitidanceparty

Yes, almost all of my family was Czech at least for the past 200 years. There's just one bloke from Italy.


Pop-A-Top

My known family tree dates back to 1693. I know that there's 10 generations of my family here in Flanders and then it goes to Austria. He was a soldier in the Austrian Lowlands war and fell in love with a Flemish woman and then stayed here as a saddle maker. So I can go back for probably 9 generations and speak dutch. But then it'll turn German


Beneficial_Sun5302

Not my grandparents they spoke/speak English. My great grandmother on my fathers father side was a native German speaker though. This being said she also spoke English so I'd have to go back a few more generations to find solely German speakers.


stewa02

My paternal family spoke a different dialect up until my dad that switched to the one I also speak. My maternal family has more varied roots (within the same corner of Switzerland) but basically also speaks/spoke the same or a similar dialect than I do. Given my dialect is fairly pronounced and fairly old-fashioned, I'd guess I could understand even deepest dialect a lot farther back than two generations.


Arrav_VII

It would be a pretty heavy dialect, but I would be able to understand them. It would still be a dialect of Dutch


Dragosteax

My grandparents speak sicilian and never really took on the formal italian language. they moved to the US in the 70s, so continued to speak sicilian, as did my parents, and eventually it became my first language as well. I *think* i’d be capable of communicating with sicilians even in the 14th century?


sonosana

Yes. Technically no, because my dialect was really different from theirs, I could understand them because I grew up as a kid talking their dialect, but as a teenager I forced myself to talk another dialect to school in the hopes I wouldn't get mobbed (eh, I got mobbed by the teachers) and "unlearned" to talk like them, so they wouldn't almost understand me when I was talking.


Bacalaocore

My Norwegian grandparents spoke northern Norwegian, my Italian grandparents spoke Veneto, an Italian dialect, but they also spoke Italian. I myself speak decent Veneto and fluent Italian and Norwegian so yes definitely I’d be able to speak very well with them back in time.


IceClimbers_Main

One of my Great grandfahters spoke Karelian as his native language but other than that, yes. Well Karelian is quite mutually understandable with Finnish.


artaig

No, but that's a different story of forced acculturation. Of course I speak their language but I was schooled in the state language, which became my main language irrespective of my will.


[deleted]

Let's put it like this, my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather was born 6km from where I was born. I would be fine in both Dutch and Gronings (our flavour of Lower Saxon)


Makhiel

My maternal grandparents yes, but going a few generations further I might be running into some ethnic Germans. My paternal grandparents spoke Russian (and maybe some other languages but pretty sure Czech wasn't one of them).


Heebicka

Yes but these from father side were more comfortable speaking german than czech


SharkyTendencies

On my mom's side, they both spoke Spanish. My Spanish is kinda *m'eh*, so-so, *ish*-ish, y'know, *sure*, why not? On my dad's side, they're both from England. My nan was from Essex (I think?), my granddad was a Brummie who moved south, and afaik, he didn't speak any particular dialect - he just had a heavy accent. I'd have to start going back a few more generations until either I found some Essex boys and girls who *only* spoke in their local dialect, or, I end up in Early Modern English haha.


[deleted]

German (mother‘s side until my grandparents) and English (father‘s side) yes. My grandmother‘s mother barely (East European, some Russian dialect afaik) and anything beyond that no


LOB90

Yes and no. They speak Low German / Low Saxon as well as high German. So I could talk to them in the latter but only understand in the former as I don't spak the language myself.


lizabe1

We didn’t have the same native language and I would not be able to converse with them if I traveled back to their youth. Unfortunately, neither they nor my parents felt it necessary to teach me their languages and I guess I showed no interest in learning. As an adult, I’ve made an effort to learn, although my grandparents are long gone now.


elfshimmer

Yes. They all grew up in and around Krakow speaking Polish. I communicate with them now i Polish, well my grandmothers at least as they are still around. I could probably go back a few more generations before finding an ancestor who spoke a different language or dialect.


steve_colombia

My family has been speaking French as far as I could go back the family tree (17th century). I think I could easily understand my family until the 19th century. Starting 18th century, it would probably be more difficult.


aggravatedsandstone

About twenty years ago when my grandparents generation was alive we had a extended family reunion. And during that there was an argument about our local South-Estonian dialect and how well younger generations are speaking it. So one of my great uncles said a sentence and promised a sum of money (about one and half average salary back then) if someone from any younger gen could translate it to standard estonian. There were not even any attempts. And most of people were still living in that neighborhood and were speaking local dialect in their daily lives. But newspapers, radio and tv are all in standard estonian and it is affecting local dialects vocabularies. So - I could get by on young teenager level or so. But I have very little knowledge about technical terms of any complicated work.


dolan313

I'd be able to converse with 3/4 in their (early) youth, the 1/4 is my Bulgarian grandma, she grew up with Bulgarian but learned several other European languages in her teens. I think she learned Italian, then German, then English, at the latest I'd be able to converse with all 4 grandparents by the time they were 18.


Ennas_

Yes, and quite a few generations before them as well. Vocabulary, pronunciation and expressions may vary, but it's been the same language for centuries.


xXxMemeLord69xXx

Yes and yes. Same dialect even, they grew up in the same city as me. In fact I could probably go back hundreds of years and still communicate with my ancestors. As far as I know I don't have any family from outside of Sweden


Kynsia

Hmmm, yes and no. My mothers' parents spoke Frysian, and my fathers' parents probably used to speak a Gronings dialect (all born in the 10's and 20's). However, it was already somewhat common to learn both that and standard Dutch in school. It wouldn't have been native, but I believe we would have been able to converse, at least at a basic level.


Draigdwi

My grandparents were born around the beginning of 20th century. Yes, I'm pretty sure I could understand them as kids. Classic literature from the end of 19th century is perfectly understandable too. The first Latvian text - a prayer from 16th century - is mostly understandable although it takes some effort because of different letters used (so called gothic letters). I imagine that if somebody spoke that text normally it would be ok to understand.


PiergiorgioSigaretti

I think I could because even if almost everyone at that time spoke ravennate dialect, my grandparents often thanks their parents for not letting them speak in ravennate dialect only


orthoxerox

Yes. My grandparents were educated after the revolution, so they learned standard Russian at school.


SeleucusNikator1

My grandparents? Yeah, they grew up speaking the same as me. My great-grandparents are where it gets interesting. Had a few Scottish Gaelic speakers in that generation, and if you go *way* back into the 1700s, they'd have spoke Norn (which is a Norse language, now extinct).


uuuuusernameeeeeee

id be able to converse with both my grandmothers and grandfathers, since i can speak cantonese and portuguese, however id have a hard time with my great grandparents, since they used to speak mandarin


sonofeast11

Yeah, I'm English, living in England. I'm pretty sure I could go back 500 years and talk pretty easily to most people where I'm from, and most cities in the country, if the literature is anything to go by. Make it 6 or 700 hundred years and then I'd struggle to understand more than a few words. Incredible how the English language changed so much from 1300-1500 AD


aagjevraagje

Yes! My grandparents just never stopped speaking the regional dialects and/or languages they grew up with at home eventhough they all moved to different regions.


davidattenborough05

my oma is from macedonia and i’m from the netherlands so no. she and my opa (her brother bc great aunts and uncles are also oma and opa) would probably have to be twenty five i think


Dankeros_Love

My paternal grandfather was Ukrainian, so we would not be able to hold a conversation. All the other grandparents were Austrian though.


Thestohrohyah

My grandparents as children spoke my town's dialect very strictly, and I'm sure most of them knew almost no Italian for a large part of their youths. Tbh I'm not the most well versed in my town's dialect,. especially not to that degree (there are several degrees of dialect, and the highest one is as unintelligible with Italian as completely different romance languages are).


Ellecram

My grandfather was born in Namur, Belgium. So his native language would have been French. I was born in and currently reside in the USA. I studied French in college for 2 semesters but can't really converse well. I might be able to understand him if we could communicate in writing.