This always intrigued me. Say youre fluent in modern standard Japanese and took a time machine back in time. How far back in time would you be understood and be able to communicate with Japanese people then? For example, if you were to land yourself in Oedo, would you be able to understand and be understood? How about the Kamakura period or even farther back in time?
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The Edo period: Yes, if you avoid loanwords.
Farther back: while Middle Japanese can be understood by speakers of Modern Japanese with some minimal study, this is only in written form. The actual pronunciation of the spoken language was quite a bit different, so even if you modified your speech to avoid loanwords and follow older grammatical conventions, they may still have a difficult time understanding you. The pronunciation of Middle Japanese is not taught in schools, it is instead convention to read aloud classical Japanese texts using modern pronunciation (in which case they are 100% intelligible). With their original pronunciation, it’s still kind of intelligible, but quite a bit more difficult (let’s say 75%).
Even father back: Old Japanese is nowhere near mutually intelligible with Modern Japanese in terms of pronunciation; it would be an even bigger problem than with Middle Japanese. I would put intelligibility at below 50%.
MacArthur forced a core standard two thousand words to eliminate dialects. A professor of mine, born in 1930, described the occupation with one word “kindness”.
Watch Jidaigeki on TV.