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<blockquote data-quote="SpiralBound" data-source="post: 3021267" data-attributes="member: 8396">I wasn't only refering to new words.&nbsp; Don't forget the shift of idioms and the redefining of existing words.&nbsp; In the early decades of the 1900's the word &quot;gay&quot; meant &quot;happy &amp; carefree&quot;, while a &quot;calculator&quot; or a &quot;computer&quot; was a person whose job it was to calculate or compute, usually numbers, &quot;logging in&quot; might conceivable refer to making an entry in a logbook, but would likely just be gibberish! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />&nbsp; Take a person from even as recent as 1950 and drop them into an average conversation today and the idioms, slang and new cultural concepts will make the otherwise perfectly understandable english unintelligable to him.&nbsp; He would understand most of the words, but he'd often be lost as to just what we were using them to mean, and most of the connotations of many statements would be lost on him.&nbsp; Heck, the concept of a &quot;credit card&quot; didn't exist prior to the 1970's.&nbsp; Just picture this theoretical time traveller listening in on a conversation between two 20-somethings in 2006, talking about being surprised that they had &quot;maxed out their credit card when they bought a pdf online using their Visa.&quot; and being suspicious that a hacker had committed identity theft upon them...&nbsp; A &quot;visa&quot;? Are they foreigners working here?&nbsp; What's a Pee-Dee-eff?&nbsp; &quot;maxed out&quot;?&nbsp; Who is Max and where did he go? &quot;credit card&quot;?&nbsp; Is this a bank note?&nbsp; Some kind of index card with a citation on it? &quot;hacker?&quot;&nbsp; Is this some weird slang for a butcher?&nbsp; How do you steal someone's identity from a card?&nbsp; He'd know the 1950's era meanings of some of the words but the sentences themselves would be gibberish.&nbsp; Don't underestimate how quickly a language can get it's meanings &quot;re-purposed&quot; without requiring massive changes to either the vocabulary or the syntax.Hmmm.... I guess that depends on your purpose for travelling in time.&nbsp; You're also making a lot of assumptions about what the future would be like and what a future culture would place importance on.&nbsp; Our current views regarding the importance of history and concepts of preserving them are far from having continuously existed throughout history.&nbsp; Even in previous periods when history was culturally important, it wasn't always important in the same ways as we think of it today...As for being personally used for commercial endorsements, what about that would encourage the future people to want to educuate or protect you?&nbsp; That's a situation where you're being exploited for their own monetary gains, (again, assuming that in the distant future such concepts have an equivalent), your personal wellbeing and enrichment isn't guaranteed to be on the top of their priority lists! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="SpiralBound, post: 3021267, member: 8396"] I wasn't only refering to new words. Don't forget the shift of idioms and the redefining of existing words. In the early decades of the 1900's the word "gay" meant "happy & carefree", while a "calculator" or a "computer" was a person whose job it was to calculate or compute, usually numbers, "logging in" might conceivable refer to making an entry in a logbook, but would likely just be gibberish! :D Take a person from even as recent as 1950 and drop them into an average conversation today and the idioms, slang and new cultural concepts will make the otherwise perfectly understandable english unintelligable to him. He would understand most of the words, but he'd often be lost as to just what we were using them to mean, and most of the connotations of many statements would be lost on him. Heck, the concept of a "credit card" didn't exist prior to the 1970's. Just picture this theoretical time traveller listening in on a conversation between two 20-somethings in 2006, talking about being surprised that they had "maxed out their credit card when they bought a pdf online using their Visa." and being suspicious that a hacker had committed identity theft upon them... A "visa"? Are they foreigners working here? What's a Pee-Dee-eff? "maxed out"? Who is Max and where did he go? "credit card"? Is this a bank note? Some kind of index card with a citation on it? "hacker?" Is this some weird slang for a butcher? How do you steal someone's identity from a card? He'd know the 1950's era meanings of some of the words but the sentences themselves would be gibberish. Don't underestimate how quickly a language can get it's meanings "re-purposed" without requiring massive changes to either the vocabulary or the syntax. Hmmm.... I guess that depends on your purpose for travelling in time. You're also making a lot of assumptions about what the future would be like and what a future culture would place importance on. Our current views regarding the importance of history and concepts of preserving them are far from having continuously existed throughout history. Even in previous periods when history was culturally important, it wasn't always important in the same ways as we think of it today... As for being personally used for commercial endorsements, what about that would encourage the future people to want to educuate or protect you? That's a situation where you're being exploited for their own monetary gains, [i](again, assuming that in the distant future such concepts have an equivalent)[/i], your personal wellbeing and enrichment isn't guaranteed to be on the top of their priority lists! :D [/QUOTE]

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