Dating a vampire

[Incubus]

No, I don't mean on Tinder.

Sometimes, you can hear roughly which decade someone was born in based
upon how they speak. The accents you can hear in films of the 1940s
have almost died out now but there are some people still alive who have
such an accent. (It's also interesting to note that depending on the
speakers, some English and American accents were a lot closer than
people might think.)

Imagine a vampire who was born years ago and hasn't lost their accent,
or has consciously changed their accent but still reverts during bouts
of emotional intensity. With examples from film and radio, it wouldn't
be impossible to place the year of their birth with reasonable
precision.

For an older vampire born before the era of radio and film, someone
trained in comparitive linguistics should still be able to give a rough
indication of when and where they were born, even if within an era
before their native language was recorded where reconstructions is relied
upon. Imagine the information that a vampire could provide if he or she
spoke what is now termed Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo European.

Vampires have long been associated with gothic horror but imagine a
genuine Goth who speaks the Gothic language as it was spoken every day
rather than the heavily artificial style of Wulfila's Gothic, which was
an attempt to establish a formal style in the vein of ancient Greek.

But what about a vampire who speaks a language that isn't attested at
all? There are a number of languages that we know about by historical
reference that simply died out leaving no permanent record - certain
Scythian dialects or the Vandal language. The overall form of the
language would give clues as to when it was spoken, but some languages
can retain archaic features for a long time when isolation preserves
those features. Nevertheless, it would be evidence that one might be
dealing with a very ancient being.

[Marcovaldo]

These are some really interesting thoughts. They would make for a great plot point for a book or movie. Vampire stories often have a character who is an expert, e.g., Van Helsing. Why not a linguist?

[Incubus]

It might prove rather boring for the general population but the thought
of someone overhearing a vampire speaking a dead language that is
clearly Germanic and has the lack of i-umlaut that is also characteristic
of Gothic but cannot be Gothic due to loss of iniitial H and certain
differences of vowel sounds making it dawn upon the expert that he is
hearing someone speak Vandalic does rather amuse me.