A while ago, one of my professors at Leiden University, Michiel de Vaan, was asked to help out with an episode of a new television series on Belgian television about language. He was asked to write a small conversation in Dutch as it was spoken 500, 1000 and 1500 years ago, and to explain what kind of development the language has gone through during that time.
The resulting episode is quite nice. I hope my non-Dutch readership will still be able to pick up some of the stuff that is being said. Because it is absolutely worth checking out, also, because it isn't particularly time consuming.
Het Nederlands van eeuwen geleden
If there's anything to complain about is that de Vaan uses Proto-Germanic for Dutch of 1500 years ago, I'm not very familiar on this stuff, as Germanic isn't my specialty, but there seems to be enough evidence that around 500 there must have at least bean a little bit of differentation, but who cares, it's cool.
As a result of this episode, the Dutch artist Spinvis decided to write a small song forming a small dialogue between old Dutch and modern Dutch.