- Being dropped 500 years ago into your ancestors’ community.
- Being dropped 500 years into the future in your community.
You have a day to source some clothing appropriate to the time period. Unfortunately, that’s not enough time to learn a dialect.
I mean this seems like an easy answer to me no? People in the past wouldn’t suspect you’re from the future, they’d think you were posessed or something. People in the future would be much more likely to think of time travel, plus they’d have records of old accents and stuff.
500 years in the past, I’d not survive long enough to be outed. It was not a good time to be a woman.
500 years in the future, hard to predict but I’d take that option if offered. Except with none of whatever currency they use and no ID would likely starve or be arrested for trying to evade identification.
I wouldn’t make it with the Vikings man. I wouldn’t be outed as a time traveler but I would die
Is this like that “the 90s were 10 years ago” effect? The viking age was 1,000 years ago. More, really.
500 years ago the world had been circumnavigated
Oh fuck me I didn’t process the 500 year mark when writing this. In that case I’d probably just starve
Which ancestor? I’m a mutt of several different European ancestries, I don’t speak a word of even modern Polish, Italian, or Albanian, let alone any archaic dialects, so I doubt they’re going to be able to sus out that I’m a time traveler, what they do make of me is up for debate, probably nothing good but I doubt they’d land on time traveler from the future. If I end up in one of my Irish ancestors’ villages, odds are they’re speaking Gaelic, but can probably find an English speaker somewhere who might catch on that my dialect is very unusual, though unless I do something to tip my hand about my future knowledge, I still doubt they’d suspect time travel. Scientific knowledge could be written off in different ways, and I don’t know enough 16th century history to really be able to say or do anything prophetic.
If my goal is to avoid being outed as a time traveler, I can probably play dumb well enough not to tip my hand. They might assume I’m an idiot, insane, a witch, a demon, a fairy, etc. but I can probably avoid being outed as a time traveler.
The future is harder, if time travel is a known technology/phenomenon, I imagine I’d be outted pretty quickly. If not, I suspect I’d probably be treated as insane or an amnesia patient or something, I can’t think of any reason they would assume I’m a time traveler unless I make it a point to bring it up, maybe if they run some blood tests and notice I’m missing immunity to common future diseases or radioactive contamination from WWII or something. Even then they would probably assume I’m a descendant of a secret bunker cult or something along those lines that wouldn’t break the laws of physics.
I think the language/dialect barrier would be a huge one in either case. To wit, the historical versions of the lords prayer- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Lord's_Prayer_in_English
Future would be rough with a near complete lack of knowing current cultural norms, lingo, history, and knowing how the three seashells work. Top that off with all the stuff developed in just the past 100 years vs. the amount of progress we could be making in 5 times that length of time, and I feel like the future would be a lot rougher then the past.
In the past you could excuse a minor faux pas by saying you didn’t get off the farm much and maybe folks would just think you were a bit slow. Not being socialized in the present or future? Bit less reasonable.
So 500 years ago would put me just ahead of the warring states in Japan. Aside from me not speaking fluently, I am very well versed in sword.
I think I come out okay.
I think you have the advantage there. Japan’s language and culture has been preserved better than many other civilizations.
I’m thinking past could work better, as you could pretend to be mute or have a very limited vocabulary. Future could be anything and will probably have an uninhabitable atmosphere.
In the past, I probably wouldn’t be found out, but I’d probably also die more easily. I’d have to be in Tudor England to even have a chance of speaking the language. If it was a dice roll of going to where “my ancestors” lived, I could end up anywhere in Europe, and parts of western asia and north africa.
In the future, they might find me out, but I’d also probably have a much better time of surviving. I’d prefer to go to the future.
A translator app on a phone could probably make heads and tails of my English dialect (I mean, they can do that today), and travel would be as fast as modern travel or faster, so once I identified a locale that I thought I’d like I could try to get to it. Basically, more opportunity would mean more options to be safe, and to survive.
500 years into the future. Far easier to adapt and hopefully the English dialect hasn’t changed severally or devolved into random internet jibberish.
