[bluGill]

The same applies to German, what is spoken today isn't much like the German spoken 150 years ago. English of today is close enough to English back to around 1500, but go back to 1400 and it starts to become a different language.

Talk to a linguist if you want the very messy and complex details I just summarized to the point of butchering the truth.

[veddox]

> The same applies to German, what is spoken today isn't much like the German spoken 150 years ago.

How do you mean that? Of course there were different styles of speaking (especially in polite speech), but it‘s perfectly intelligible either way. In fact, even Martin Luther‘s German still sounds colloquial today (although the spelling was vastly different).

> English of today is close enough to English back to around 1500

That‘s a hundred years before Shakespeare. Who is decently understandable with some practice, but not what I would call „close“ to modern English.

[cambalache]

> The same applies to German, what is spoken today isn't much like the German spoken 150 years ago.

This is an amazing piece of information, even more incredible it is the fact the modern speakers can read Nietzsche with no problem at all, what a fantastic coincidence.

I mean, what native German speaker could even begin to understand this Schiller poem, it is 200! years old!! It could be very well be written in proto-Germanic:

An den Frühling

Willkommen, schöner Jüngling!

Du Wonne der Natur!

Mit deinem Blumenkörbchen

Willkommen auf der Flur!

Denkst auch noch an mein Mädchen?

Ei, Lieber, denke doch!

Dort liebte mich das Mädchen

Und’s Mädchen liebt mich noch!

Willkommen, schöner Jüngling!

Du Wonne der Natur!

Mit deinem Blumenkörbchen

Willkommen auf der Flur!

[bluGill]

Written German of them past has little in common with the spoken language.

In practice natives had trouble understanding each other if they traveled just a few villages over

[veddox]

Irony doesn‘t come over very well online...

[cambalache]

Thanks god this is sarcasm