In which scenario would you last longer before being outed as a time traveller?
In which scenario would you last longer before being outed as a time traveller?
- 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.
Scenario 2 is where you would be outed as a time traveller.
Scenario 1 is where you would be outed as a witch.
Not sure witch would happen first.
Scenario 2 you could probably get away with being a dumbfuck foreigner.
Unless 500 years in the future travel has been so easy for so long that all cultures have merged into one. Then you'll be the only foreigner.
Well with scenario 1, it would be fairly quick because people speak way different now than 500 years ago.
They will also likely speak way different in 500 years than we do now. We have an idea what 1523 English sounded like. 2523 is uncharted territory.
That would be an interesting one, because I speak enough old norse and Latin to pass as a foreigner from the far east (until they realise I don't speak Arabic). But 2523 English will be unrecognizable, and worse, they'd probably recognize our "old" English. It's like if Shakespeare showed up today, vs some guy from the future who barely speaks English and pretends to only speak an uncommon foreign language.
European colonization of America wouldn't have started yet so a majority of Americans wouldn't even be on the same continent. Most of us wouldn't even speak the same language as our ancestors. My ancestors would most likely understand English but wouldn't speak it as their primary language. That may somewhat disguise the dialect difference but would cause all sorts of other problems. They may be actively fighting a war with England or they may be in a period of uneasy peace getting ready for the next war with England.
You could play dumb.
Unlikely, since I am a man :-)
I have some bad news for you...
In fact, between 20-25 per cent of those we know to have been executed for the crime of witchcraft were men. In what is now Ukraine, Russia and Finland, up to 80 per cent of those accused were men.