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> (I'm also told that the American accent is more similar to that spoken in Shakespeare's day, too, but I'm doubtful about how anyone would know.)
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> In a linguistics class I once heard a demonstration of Old English (think Chaucer instead of Shakespeare). It was not intelligible.

No, Chaucer is Middle English, which is intelligible to the average speaker of modern English. Old English is not. It's a different language. Think Beowulf instead of Chaucer. ;-)

Brunnen-"it's not hard to learn, though"G