Lingual Problems and Time Travel

I'm in a bit of trouble.

As a part of a story I am writing, a very large group of people end up being sent back to the First Crusade. This is all very confusing and I have a good idea of some of the ramifications, but there is a distinct problem I've been avoiding. Namely, language.

As you are probably aware, the languages spoken in 1095 are nothing like those spoken today. For one thing, the Normans have only just invaded England and the blending that would eventually create modern English has not happened yet. The only language even vaguely similar to modern French is only being spoken in Ile de France and even that is barely related.

For my concept, I need to have the characters able to communicate with the medieval world. The plot cannot really progress until the characters are able to communicate with their predecessors. While I can handwave one or two characters having an extensive knowledge of Old English, having the entire group know it would be too convenient. So, I need a language which is still in some use today that is at least similar to an early medieval language. Does anyone have any solutions?

The only possible solution I've been able to think of thus far is Church Latin. How many 1095-people are likely to understand my characters if they start rambling on in Church Latin? Does anyone know how comparable Vulgar Latin is to Church Latin?

Are there any other languages I can try? How about Arabic?

You have characters travelling back in time, yes? Use said phlebotinum to give them happy language skills.

Do they get sent back in time because of magic or science? Use that for instant translation skills.

Edit: Ninja'd.

edited 7th Apr '11 6:40:53 PM by Leradny

^ Alien Space Bats send them back in time.

I was hoping for the time travel incident to be the only real inexplicable event in the story. I was hoping for a solution that did not involve magic. If need be, I can always give everyone a Babelfish, but again, I would like this to be a last resort.

edited 7th Apr '11 7:04:41 PM by Pentadragon

Any modern spoken Arabic language is probably not mutually comprehensible with a thousand year old one, but written Classical Arabic would work, I think, and they might be able to pick up the speech.

Using Latin could make sense. However it would be a double-edged sword. The people who could best understand you would also be the ones most likely to burn you at the stake. Maybe you could get an alchemist heretic to believe your story and get him on you side.

Sounds like you are going for very hard Sci-Fi.

This is a guess, since I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, but I think Church Latin would work — or at least it would among ether clergymen and anyone who had a higher education. Normal people, though… not so much. I imagine they'd all have to wing it until the one or two people who know Old English could teach the others how to speak it.

Also, I'm guessing this is bound up in other parts of your narrative as it is, but I'll mention it just incase. How much something can be Justified has to do with perspective the audience has, and since you're the author you can pretty much manipulate the perspective as you please. Random six people off the street? A big coincidence that one of them knew Latin. Random six people taken out of a nunnery? Suddenly makes a lot more sense, and might even hold up Suspension of Disbelief if you stretch it and say all of them know Latin, if you play it right.

That means that if this is a really big problem that breaks the story, you're perfectly justified as the author in reworking the beginning and altering all the elements introduced until it makes sense. So if changing things around until everyone that got sent back was a linguistics/language student, or where all working in a museum dedicated to British history — or any other radical solution for that matter — can fix this problem, it might be worth considering an overhaul.

Do they all have to know Old English or Norman French? You could have one or two of the characters act as an interpreter.

Make one of them Dutch. Old English is a lot more similar to modern Dutch than modern English. (So my father, who speaks English, French and Dutch and studied Old English in university, claims.) The Dutch guy won't necessarily understand all that they say, but he'll have an easier time of it than the others.

Incidentally, did you know the one living European language that has changed the least is Icelandic? It's virtually identical to Old Norse.

^ Thanks for the info. I did not know those facts. They could prove very useful, thanks.

^^ It's a big group, so I need more than two interpreters.

^^^ The group contains quite a lot of priests and scholars, so having them know Church Latin would make sense. I could also handwave a couple of characters knowing Old English, but I am afraid that too many would look like a bit of a stretch.

^^^^ Yep. After the initial event, the story goes into very hard sci fi.

edited 8th Apr '11 2:36:51 PM by Pentadragon

Well, since the group is so large, have a professor of Old English. He could teach the others.

edited 18th Apr '11 9:29:40 PM by HG131

Greek is also a decent choice for a language that has changed little over the time period, and which people would have a good chance to know.

It all depends on the region you're in. In most of Western Europe, Church Latin as it is in the contemporary world would be similar enough to the Latin of the period to be understandable, if not fully so. There's about a five century difference between the Church Latin of today, as Latin was well on the way to disuse as a lingua franca by the late sixteenth century and was largely being retained as an ecclesiastical scholarly language.

With that said, Vulgar Latin had already transitioned into the Romance Languages by the eighth century, so the Latin spoken would be Church Latin.

If heading towards the Eastern Roman (i.e. Byzantine) Empire and the Black Sea, then Byzantine Greek becomes you primary lingua franca, even into Muslim lands, as Greek endured as a major trade language into the Middle East.

edited 17th Oct '14 10:23:43 PM by jgkitarel

A couple off-the-cuff ideas:

1. If you're using characters that know Church Latin, have their back-in-time cover identities be, say, itinerant priests from somewhere far enough away that a strange accent/not understanding the local language is expected. As a bonus, this also excuses things like strange clothing and not knowing local customs.

2. Have their inability to understand the locals at first be a plot point, and have them gradually pick it up.

Yep. After the initial event, the story goes into very hard sci fi.

The interesting thing is that Machine Translation is rapidly advancing in real life. Now, translating without a preexisting corpus is infinitely harder, but it's still plausible to immagine sufficiently advanced tech that can do it. It wouldn't be able to understand everything right away, but it could quickly learn to understand enough to get by.

I'd say having a machine translator is much more plausible than the initial time travel premise, especially if you set it in the future.

S.M. Steriling explored this idea in his Nantucket Trilogy, with the whole island of Nantucket being sent back to the Bronze Age. Luckily for them, one of their residents spoke Lithuanian and another spoke Greek, and then they ran into a Tartessian merchant who was able to understand them enough to learn English from them, and then he in turn taught them the local languages. Perhaps you could have a similar idea?

I thought that the "Lingua Franca" (pun intended) in those days was aristocratic French.