Would we understand Shakespeare?

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Given that Chaucer's writing is usually almost unintelligible, I can only imagine that his speech would be completely unintelligible.>>

Well, that's writing though. Even today a lot of modern poetry is unintelligible without deep concentration.

No.
We wouldn't understand each other. Perhaps through writing yes, but the English pronunciation has evolved so much in the course of the centuries that it would be very hard to understand Shakespeare speak English, much less he us.

I don't doubt it would not be easy, but I do think we'd be able to understand him. The earliest voice recordings are from 1860, and those are not difficult to understand at all. Granted, 400 years is a lot longer than 148, but not in the grand scheme of things and i can't imagine that language would have changed to the point of mutual unintelligibility. 1500 perhaps, but by 1600 the Great Vowel Shift was pretty much complete.

I see your point Skippy, but the different pronunciation, added with the words and expressions which are today either out of use or have different meanings. All that would make it very difficult to understand Shakespeare. Even reading his works is not an easy task for many of us because of obsolete words or those which have completely different meanings today.

Another comparison is the different accents or dialects in the British Isles today, many of which retain characteristics of Middle English. Even today with them having a modern vocabulary you often simply don't understand what they're saying.

Why do you assume that question is aimed at USans? Those speakers of British dialects would prob'ly understand Old Will perfectly. Even more so after he's had a few pints, I suppose. lol

USans?? What's that??

It's true that the lexicon, phraseology, and popular terms have changed significantly in the past 400 years. But I think this could be overcome without difficulty.

Many archaic words are understood by modern English speakers, and Shakespeare would probably be able to pick up on modern terminology rather quickly.

With regard to pronunciation, only English vowels have remained constant over the past several hundred years, with "r" being the only sound I can imagine would be pronounced differently between the languages. The vowels would create some problems for native speakers, but not as much as one would expect. For example, assuming Shakespeare spoke sans GVS vowels, to a modern English speaker this would be like an American English speaker speaking to a Scottish English speaker (I say American due to the lack of exposure to Scottish English, and yet it is still mutually intelligible). However, my understanding is that the GVS had was wrapping up by the turn of the 16th century, 100 years before Shakespeare became buddy-buddy with King James.

Lexicon and terminology would probably be the most significant barrier to communication between an American (I can only speak for Americans here, because I am an American...) but I do not believe it would be so great as to cause unintelligibility. Americans are still forced to read Shakespeare pretty much every year of junior high and high school, and they get through it just fine, not to mention those who prefer the King James translation of the Bible, for that matter.

It always helps to know Latin. Then you can pull apart the words and understand the meaning. Also, as for death=sex, purse=scrotum etc. I think that we just have to concider it what it is, slang. There are different forms of slang even within contemporary English. And as with contemporary slang, it's not a problem as long as it's avoided when talking to people from different parts of the English speaking world. I think the same would hold true for Wil.

At least here, I would have to say that a Shakespeare transported to the present probably would have trouble with more progressive forms of the dialect here due to phonological changes (particularly many elisions and the use of allophonic vowel length and nasalization to mark elided consonants), while he would probably find more conservative forms thereof to be relatively intelligible (as they really are often quite close to conservative General American in nature, which itself is actually quite conservative in nature aside from a number of vowel mergers).

I barely understand Austin Powers!