posting late because i typed this on the train with no wifi orz
I like to think they can (if they wish to) hang on to past languages for a good long while, even while it comes to feel like a distinct language from the modern one, like speaking multiple foreign languages. I don't have any doubt that England could still use some form of ME easily, considering how modern speakers can still pick it up! I tend to assume he can still also do some form of Old English. And he must have been able to clearly pick out the Romance elements when those started becoming part of English... If you assume the nations aren't ridiculously mobile or at least maintain something that feels like an area of residence for a solid chunk of years, then I think 'it works the same as for people' reasonably well solves the problem of which they pick up of the hundreds+ regional dialects each constantly changing in tiny ways- they persist or transition to new ones about the same way any person would, and just live long enough to rack up a lot (being more likely to do a shift/switch when they make a big physical or political move?). This is my linguistic version of 'let's make it happy OT3+ and everyone wins everything', and I seem to have added infinite language memory/facility in as part of the immortal nationhood thing, for which I can make no apologies.
I don't know how to define a good backwards stopping point; Proto-Indo-European seems way too much of a stretch, but I don't know how many Scandi nations would use Old Norse vs something else they might have like Old Swedish (which looks fucking weird, in my completely unnecessary opinion, so if he wants to troll...). Iceland absolutely has to still be totally proficient in the saga language though, and for Norway-- perhaps there are some languages where he has reading knowledge of a centuries-old form but really doesn't speak the present language. Old books and all that.
Also the only good answer I can come up with for phonology is a) it's at least not impossible for adult language learners to acquire/merge new phonetic contrasts and b) I want one of them to speak something from 600+ years ago so we can hear it, oh please, but what an unproductive thought. Well, it would be kind of funny if sometimes their pronunciation shifted unconsciously over the centuries based on influence from their current language's phonetic inventory and the lack of any other speakers of the old one to maintain with, just written sources, so they don't realise they're talking any differently, but...
Re: ooc≁❀
I like to think they can (if they wish to) hang on to past languages for a good long while, even while it comes to feel like a distinct language from the modern one, like speaking multiple foreign languages. I don't have any doubt that England could still use some form of ME easily, considering how modern speakers can still pick it up! I tend to assume he can still also do some form of Old English. And he must have been able to clearly pick out the Romance elements when those started becoming part of English... If you assume the nations aren't ridiculously mobile or at least maintain something that feels like an area of residence for a solid chunk of years, then I think 'it works the same as for people' reasonably well solves the problem of which they pick up of the hundreds+ regional dialects each constantly changing in tiny ways- they persist or transition to new ones about the same way any person would, and just live long enough to rack up a lot (being more likely to do a shift/switch when they make a big physical or political move?). This is my linguistic version of 'let's make it happy OT3+ and everyone wins everything', and I seem to have added infinite language memory/facility in as part of the immortal nationhood thing, for which I can make no apologies.
I don't know how to define a good backwards stopping point; Proto-Indo-European seems way too much of a stretch, but I don't know how many Scandi nations would use Old Norse vs something else they might have like Old Swedish (which looks fucking weird, in my completely unnecessary opinion, so if he wants to troll...). Iceland absolutely has to still be totally proficient in the saga language though, and for Norway-- perhaps there are some languages where he has reading knowledge of a centuries-old form but really doesn't speak the present language. Old books and all that.
Also the only good answer I can come up with for phonology is a) it's at least not impossible for adult language learners to acquire/merge new phonetic contrasts and b) I want one of them to speak something from 600+ years ago so we can hear it, oh please, but what an unproductive thought. Well, it would be kind of funny if sometimes their pronunciation shifted unconsciously over the centuries based on influence from their current language's phonetic inventory and the lack of any other speakers of the old one to maintain with, just written sources, so they don't realise they're talking any differently, but...