Yes, I have gotten used to some Northern British accents that retain a lot of older forms, the vowels are much different than modern taught forms of Englsih you would get as a non-native speaker. 1390 is right as the Great Vowel shift was about to begin.

I learned mostly by immersion in *written* English: books and magazines during the dark ages and then the internet. As a result, for a long time I could read English just as well as my native language but could barely understand spoken language. Now I’ve made a lot of progress on that front but…

…it still depends much on who’s talking. I was stricken by that fact once when watching a video with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and I noticed I understood Dawkins perfectly but struggled a lot with Hitchens…

Because the printers fossilized spellings written English has very little to do with spoken English. Word like to, too and two were once pronounced slightly differently. Even since Shakespeare his rhymes often no longer rhyme