Copyright � 2026 by Shane
Tourtellotte
The average traveler, going someplace with a different language, will make an effort to learn that language1. This appears at first glance to translate directly for the time-traveler: learn the language of the place you're going, and all will be well. One must remember, though, the extra dimension the problem has picked up. Your knowledge of the local language must be correct not only for location but for time.
Languages evolve in many ways. Pronunciation changes, with vowels shifting and consonants eliding. Vocabulary not only gets larger as new objects and concepts are invented, but undergoes many internal changes, as words become more specific or more general, inch over to include a new meaning and then leave the old meaning behind, or are abandoned as social conditions shift2. Grammar can gain, or more often lose, inflections, alter the conjugation of its verbs, and make old irregular verbs and plurals into regular ones. The French you learn today is going to make you sound mighty strange when you go back to visit Joan of Arc. And if you're venturing two centuries into the future, you won't even have historical records to guide you in how people will be speaking.
I cannot cover all the underlying principles of how languages evolve in my limited space, and fortunately, I don't have to. Noted science fiction author L. Sprague de Camp wrote an article for Astounding Science Fiction back in 1938, titled "Language for Time-Travelers." For a concise and penetrating look at the subject, nothing has yet surpassed it. It will be a little difficult to find today, though old anthologies and e-books give you a good chance. If all else fails, go back and pick up the July 1938 Astounding: I know just where you can buy a copy. (See "The 50.")
For forays into the future, de Camp's general wisdom will be your best guide. When traveling to the past, you will have historical records of how people spoke at the time, at least for many major languages. To give you a notion of what you may face, we return to our trusty three example eras.
Latin
To those having only a casual acquaintance with Latin, the way Roman natives speak it will be a shock. Pronunciation has evolved greatly over the last two thousand years. The Church Latin familiar to Catholics (especially old Catholics) and the version used to render scientific terms are a far cry from Latin as the Caesars spoke it. Indeed, the way we today pronounce "Julius Caesar" would leave contemporary Romans baffled, muttering under their breath at how we barbarians mangle their language.
If you studied Latin in school, you may have been fortunate enough to learn the pronunciation as I am about to outline it. If you learned it differently, or never at all, I will skim through some of the most important points here:
"C" always has a hard "k" sound, never a soft "s." The famed orator and politician Cicero would be pronounced not "sis-ero" but "kicker-o" (or at least very close to that). The "CH" combination is likewise a "k," but a more pronounced one. (Likewise for "PH" and "TH": the added "h" gives emphasis to the preceding consonant.)
"G" is always a hard "g," never a "j" sound.
There is no "J," either the letter or the sound, in Latin. There is "I," which when starting a word is pronounced like a "y" as in "yell." These initial "I's" were changed to "J's" long after Rome fell. That means Caesar's first name is pronounced "yoo-lius."
"Y" in Latin is always a vowel, and sounds close to the umlauted "u" in the German "Führer."
"S" is always a sibiliant "s," never the "z" sound you hear with most plurals. (Like that one.) The Romans borrowed the Z (okay, the zeta) from Greek to handle the "z" sound.
"V" is pronounced like a "w," always. Seriously. Yes, this means Mister Chekov from Star Trek has better Latin pronunciation than you do. You're not going to let that stand, are you? So learn this!
"AE" is pronounced "eye": therefore, "Caesar" sounds like "Kye-sar." "AU" is pronounced "ow," as though someone just hit you: "Claudius" is thus rendered "Cloudy-us." "OE" is pronounced "oy," as in "Oy vey!" "UI" sounds like the end of "Phooey."
One fortunate point is that you won't have too many worries about the evolution of vocabulary and grammar in Latin. Our sources for the language come largely from the late Republic and early Empire, so you learned it, or will learn it, as they spoke it. This won't always be true for other languages.
English
Pronunciation in Elizabethan England may pose a more severe problem of adjustment than ancient Rome, mostly because we are so much more accustomed to hearing English spoken a particular way than we are Latin. A traveler expecting to hear modern London accents in the London of the late sixteenth century is going to be disillusioned, fast and hard.
It works the other way also. De Camp in his "Language for Time-Travelers" speculated that Shakespeare, if plopped down in the modern day3, would be hopelessly lost in the middle of London, the sounds of its language all but incomprehensible to his ear. Put him in Edinburgh instead, and he'd be much more comfortable.
The primary differences in Elizabethan English are vowel shifts. Their long "E” sounded like our long "A"; their long "A" resembled our short "A". "Feet" will sound like "fate," "fate" will sound like "fat," and so forth. "R's" are always pronounced, not swallowed up as in modern British English. The general sound, close to Scottish as mentioned before, would be more like rural English or even Irish today.
Fortunately, you don't need perfect London pronunciation to get by. There was no standard English as such at this time: local pronunciations varied substantially. Get close enough, and you'll appear to be a reasonably intelligent speaker, just not from those parts. At worst, you'll come off as something of a yokel. Since you should be trying to pass yourself as a stranger to the area you're visiting, this works all right.
A greater pitfall than pronunciation is common vernacular speech. "Thees" and "thous" are important, but pretty easy to learn. Much trickier is remembering that "Hello" is not a greeting, but an expression of surprise. This in itself isn't so tough, but multiply that by the thousand everyday differences in language use that could trip you up and expose you before the locals, and the scope of the problem becomes clearer.
This won't be easy or swift to correct. One method would be to find yourself a local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, the medieval hobbyists. Identify their language expert, and beg for a crash immersion course in the Shakespearean idiom. Online resources can assist, giving you some of the more common differing words and phrases, but there's nothing like live drilling.
At the very least, buy yourself a heavily annotated copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare, and get reading. All those notes to the text will give you some feel for how the language was different back then. Read aloud with the lines, and work to understand, not just to recite. Beware, of course, of sounding too poetical: any passage by Falstaff should be a good antidote.
Completing your education on the matter of vocabulary is the work of a whole book, not of one subsection of one chapter, so I won't attempt it here4. As compensation, however, I will now straighten out the whole "thee" and "thou" thing for you5.
“Thou” is the subjective case, used for the subject of a sentence or clause. (E.g., “Thou hast the bottle.”) “Thee” is the objective case, used for the object of the sentence. (E.g., “William would speak to thee.”) The “th” forms are used by a higher rank speaking to a lower--parent to child, master to servant, noble to commoner -- or to affect a poetic style. They’re also used among equals of lower rank, and curiously toward supernatural beings. You pray to God as “Thou” or “Thee,” but if you’re communing with ghosts, witches, or demons, you “thou” them too.
“Thy” and “thine” are the possessives. The former goes before a consonant, the latter before a vowel: “thy friend,” but “thine enemy.” The rule, which also applies to “my/mine,” parallels use of the “a/an” indefinite article.
“You” is used by lower ranks toward higher ones, and also among high-class equals. “You” is only singular: the plural is “ye.” This form has dropped out of modern English, the space filled by non-standard terms like “y’all” and “you’uns.” In this, Tudor English is clearer than our version.
As for those verb endings, “-est” is used for second person (“thou goest”), while “-eth” is for third person (“she goeth”).
Not so hard, was it? And you didn’t have to attend a RenFest to learn it.
Before departing the problems of speaking English in England, I must return briefly to Latin. A well-educated person in Elizabethan England will have learned to speak Latin. If you mean to pass yourself off as someone of substance, you’ll probably need to speak it as well, or at a bare minimum understand it. You’ll have to unlearn the lessons of the last sub-section: they won’t speak Latin with the original accent. You’ll be hearing, and pronouncing, J’s and V’s and soft C’s.
Oh, and the truly erudite will know ancient Greek as well. This may be a good opportunity to masquerade as middle-class, but you must judge for yourself.
Japanese
The Japanese language during the Sengoku Jidai was a curious mix, partly ossified, partly evolving rapidly. The former may assist you, but you’ll need to be aware and nimble to keep on top of the latter.
Written Japanese was formalized into a system called bungo starting in the late 8th century. This system remained almost static through the centuries as the spoken language continued to develop, starting to give way to the modern writing system only in the late 19th century. Much Japanese literature is written in this form, and there are some long-standing Japanese laws still codified that way.
If you learn bungo (also called Classical or Medieval Japanese) for your trip, you will be well prepared to read any signs or documents you happen across. Everyday speech will be trickier, and already knowing Modern Japanese could well be a hindrance. As examples, “ashita” meant “morning” in Classical Japanese, but means “tomorrow” in Modern, and that’s an obvious stumbling block. “Ari” today means “to be,” referring only to things, but four and five hundred years ago, “ari” also covered people. There will be other concepts covered by different words from Classical to Modern, and some bungo terms may have no current equivalent.
It will take serious study to become proficient in the Japanese of that era, possibly close to an immersion. As it happens, the Society for Creative Anachronism has its own Japanese sub-culture, and the instruction you could get for Tudor English may be replicable for Sengoku Japanese6. Be highly selective in choosing an instructor if you go this route. The degree of difficulty, especially if you are not fluent in modern Japanese to start, is much higher than with English.
Doing your studies by watching period-piece movies or television episodes will be far less helpful. Japanese may love their past, but that doesn’t make their screenwriters less lazy about portraying the language accurately. Those who are sort of trying will use contemporary adjectival endings and a few older words, but it will probably be on the level of just adding “thee” and “thou” to a show about Henry VIII7. Others freely use modern language in their jidai geki, on a par with a Roman citizen talking about “lawyering up” or an Apostle saying people could “weaponize” Jesus’ deeds against him8. Don’t take the short cut.
But do cut out the “-san.” This ubiquitous, near-stereotypical Japanese honorific wasn’t the standard in the 16th century. There was “-sama,” which would develop into “-san,” but the primary honorific would have been “-dono.” That term still exists in modern Japanese, but as an archaism, akin to appending “Esquire” to someone’s address on an envelope.
The evolving language of this era got a complicating boost when Europeans started showing up. Most early visitors were Portuguese, and Portuguese loan words began filtering into Japanese. If you’re visiting the 1540s or earlier, you don’t have to worry about this. If your destination is later, you’ll have to be increasingly alert to these innovations.
Much of the new vocabulary will be in reference to things the Portuguese are introducing themselves, which fortunately keeps it compartmentalized. Be aware, however, that a few things you think of as Japanese will turn out to be from that exotic continent of Europe. Tempura, that familiar Japanese deep-fried dish, derives from Portuguese cuisine, the word being adapted from “têmporas,” which meant “seasoning” in early Modern Portuguese. A lot of new Japanese words will be food-related. If you’re visiting a city in the late 16th century that’s connected to trade routes, expect to hear them, and maybe eat them, frequently.
The influx will go beyond food and standard trade goods. “Botan” for “button” will arise from “botão”; “kurusu” for “cross” will come from “cruz9”; the Portuguese raincoat called “capa” will become the Japanese “kappa10.” Languages from other trading nations will make their inroads as well: Dutch, a spot of German, a dash of English11. You can find and learn lists of all these loan words, but you’ll need to be wary about which ones have come into use by a certain time and which have not.
Footnotes:
This goes out the window when the traveler has some expectation that they'll speak his language as a second language over there. This lets a lot of modern Americans skate by, but it'll do you far less good where and when you're going.
Just to take English forms of address, "sirrah" as an address for a socially inferior man vanished as the force of social hierarchies grew less intense. In the lifetime of this author, "Miss" as a term for a young woman not known to be married went from ubiquitous to dated, rebounded briefly to retro-chic, then collapsed to outright archaic.
De Camp's modern day was 1938, but the sounds of English have not changed too much in the intervening generations, for reasons he laid out expertly. Seriously, find "Language for Time-Travelers."
Okay, I'll make one exception: never say "okay." That word's a good two centuries too modern for the Elizabethans. It would confuse them just as much as "yeet," “sus,” or "pwned!" (And saying "pwneth" doesn't help either.)
No thanks are necessary. Buying the book was thanks enough.
It’s fortuitous that a deeply romanticized era of Japanese history coincides neatly with a deeply romanticized era of English history. Don’t question it: just take advantage.
On that subject, Japanese has different linguistic terms for different social levels of speaker and addressee, and the differing levels of respect shown in various relationships. This resembles Tudor English, but goes far beyond “thou” versus “you.” Since this remains part of modern Japanese, however, there’s much less shock of transition going from one to the other.
Neither of these examples is hypothetical.
The neologism, somewhat surprisingly, would survive the later Japanese crackdown on Christianity.
Surprisingly, Japanese’s “arigato” for “thank you” is not derived from the Portuguese “obrigado,” even though both have the same shade of meaning of being placed under a burden. It’s a coincidence -- or conceivably the effect of some time-traveler to an earlier era in Japan. My money’s on the coincidence.
The real influx of English would come with the Americans in the mid-20th century. This is when Japanese stopped calling it a “kappa” and began calling it a “reinkoto.”
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