Language Evolution Over Time (New Words; Inter-Era Intelligibility; Etc.)

[Peripart]

A good example of how English has changed is The Lord's Prayer.

The top version is in Early Modern English from around the year 1600 and, despite some slight variations in spelling and grammar, is perfectly understandable. Go back another couple of centuries to Middle English and it starts to get slightly more tricky.

When you take into account pronunciation, accents and so on, that does seem to suggest that we'd really struggle to have a conversation with anyone much older than Shakespeare.