Early Modern English

January 18, 2016 1:59 PM

Shakespeare: Original pronunciation. What Shakespeare Sounded Like to Shakespeare.
posted by the man of twists and turns (40 comments total)

very neat!
posted by crush-onastick at 2:20 PM on January 18, 2016

That is fantastic! Thanks for posting.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:23 PM on January 18, 2016

Very interesting!
posted by swlabr at 2:29 PM on January 18, 2016

Now, if 't be true only I could learneth to writeth like that gent!
posted by swlabr at 2:35 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was half-certain that this was a build-up to a comedy sketch, and that the 'OP' would be a horrendously bad english accent by way of a pirate.

Romeo: Oooh, there be Juliet, yee hardie!
Professor of Period English: Make sure the emphasize the 'Ooooh!'
*aside*
Professor of Period English: I never actually graduated from University, but I do love a good pirate!
posted by leotrotsky at 2:37 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Fascinating! I find what they're proposing to be the original pronunciations very lovely.

Thanks for the post, the man of twists and turns.
posted by lord_wolf at 2:38 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is really interesting, thanks. As it happens I am reading through all of the comedies now. Almost feel like I have to start over.
posted by falsedmitri at 2:50 PM on January 18, 2016

People still talk like this in Norfolk.
posted by Summer at 3:05 PM on January 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Previously (1, 2, 3)
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:06 PM on January 18, 2016

People still talk like this in Norfolk.

Heck, people still talk like this in MetaTalk! If we could just get them to do blank verse, it would be great!

(No really, this is now my voice for cortex from now on.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:07 PM on January 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, Shakespeare is totally OP. Wait, this isn't the "speak like a gamer" thread?
posted by sfenders at 3:09 PM on January 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

(No really, this is now my voice for cortex from now on.)

Get thee to RRReddit, Doubleposterrrrr!
posted by leotrotsky at 4:12 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

So, no mention of Mesh & Lace or Gathering Dust.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 4:16 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I thought early modern English was meant to sound more like a northern Irish accent than the Mummerset accent David Crystal does in these videos.
posted by Mocata at 4:22 PM on January 18, 2016

People still talk like this in Norfolk.

I was thinking West Country, but yeah. There's a strong trace of this accent in Canadian Newfoundlandish, slightly less so in the Maritime provinces - a vestige of the early settlers.
posted by Flashman at 4:26 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Love it. My favorite Shakespeare teacher always said that Shakespeare was earthy and commercial on purpose and was an eloquent artist simply because his genius overflowed his intent.
posted by MattD at 5:08 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Now, if 't be true only I could learneth to writeth like that gent!

I sometimes think the reason we can't is that we insist on separating the elevated and sublime from the "earthy and bawdy", whereas Shakespeare unites them in the same passages, even in the same words, and as a result, the elevated rides so high only because it's borne up by the vast bulk of the bawdy just below the surface.

As in a passage from As You Like It mentioned in the first inline video in the What Shakespeare Sounded Like link in the FPP:

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.

For Elizabethans "ripe" and "rape" sounded alike, as did "hour" and "whore", which makes this a philosophical reflection and a "very bawdy sex joke" simultaneously, complete with a reference to venereal disease which serves as a bridge between the two.
posted by jamjam at 5:31 PM on January 18, 2016 [13 favorites]

I wonder how much of that bawdy stuff is also glossed over by high school teachers who don't want to talk about rape and whores with 16 year olds. I heard about all this stuff only way after high school.
posted by bleep at 5:56 PM on January 18, 2016

Wouldn't "rot" sound like "rut" too?
posted by benito.strauss at 6:30 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

"If there’s something about this accent, rather than it being difficult or more difficult for people to understand … it has flecks of nearly every regional U.K. English accent, and indeed American and in fact Australian, too. It’s a sound that makes people — it reminds people of the accent of their home — and so they tend to listen more with their heart than their head." - Ben Crystal from the second link which links to an NPR piece


When I watch and listen to the videos and audio, I hear the the top of the trunk of the tree before the major branches of British English and North American English branch off. It is a very easy accent for me as a Californian to understand.
posted by msjen at 6:35 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

p.s. The YouTubes suggested another Ben Crystal video, a presentation to the British Council: Shakespeare's accent
posted by msjen at 6:51 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is extremely damn cool. My modern ear hears a much earthier and human sound than the received pronunciation. In the woman's accent in the first Romeo and Juliet clip I also hear a little Welsh and some hints of Middle English (e.g. Swate for Sweet). Crystal the younger does a slurry and growly thing in the video. I'm fascinated by accents. I'd love to hear The Tempest (probably my favorite Shakespeare play) in OP.
posted by Divine_Wino at 6:57 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

To my American ears it sound Irish, or perhaps Scottish, or...both? Those trilled R's just don't exist in modern American or U.K. English.
posted by zardoz at 8:39 PM on January 18, 2016

I'm getting more Lancashire from the video, but it certainly sounds not too far removed from modern regional accents in the UK.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:53 PM on January 18, 2016

Yeah Ben sounds just like Mr. Drew from Downton Abbey.
posted by bleep at 9:57 PM on January 18, 2016

I imagine there is a pub out there somewhere were people still talk like this. It sounds very modern. I'd love to hear a whole play done this way.
posted by squeak at 10:43 PM on January 18, 2016

The original pronunciation sounds very much like the voice Roy Dotrice used for EVERY SINGLE female character in his readings of the Song of Ice & Fire audiobooks.
posted by deadbilly at 11:04 PM on January 18, 2016

The Crystals have a site on learning OP.

The transcripts are probably the most interesting bit, but read the notes first (as the transcriptions aren't strictly IPA but a mixture).
posted by zompist at 11:49 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

The thing I don't understand about this is that modern pronunciation often cuts a syllable from the word. Our "invent-shun" versus Shakespeare's "invent-she-un", for example.

So why is it that the crucial rhythm and syllable-count of iambic pentameter (and all his other poetry) still seems to work perfectly well in our modern pronunciation? You'd think knocking off syllables here there and everywhere would destroy Shakespeare's rhythms completely. I'm sure the experts in the film are right, but I don't understand how this aspect of the change works.

Also the UK comedian Jeremy Hardy used to do a routine based on the fact that Shakespeare was from the English Midlands, and hence could be expected to speak with a Birmingham accent. He got his laughs by pronouncing this Hamlet extract in a broad Brummie accent:

"Fie on't! Oh fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature,
Possess it merely."
posted by Paul Slade at 1:12 AM on January 19, 2016

I had an english teacher, many years ago, who used to ready Chaucer to the class in the full original dialect. I can still hear his wording:

"A poorverah wydwa, samdel stape in argue..."

(I know that's not how it is spelt, but it is an attempt at his accent)...
posted by greenhornet at 1:26 AM on January 19, 2016

What?! In Shakespeare's day, everyone spoke like Hagrid?
posted by sixohsix at 1:28 AM on January 19, 2016

I suppose it's the rhotic R that makes it sound West Country. But as someone who lived in Birmingham for a while I wish there was just one portrayal somewhere that suggested, however offensive the RP-types find it, that a guy from the Midlands might have had a Midlands accent...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:30 AM on January 19, 2016

So was this accent a London accent or what? The Elizabethan version of RP?

I presume England would have had even more regional variation then that it does now.

Would they have used a different accent for the rustic characters (as happens in modern productions)?
posted by Summer at 3:48 AM on January 19, 2016

I find this extremely cool, but part of me always wonders about the logic behind it. Shakespeare slips in and out of verse so often that I half expect someone to tell me that "invention" rhymes with "head" (and, indeed, you can't get the pun if it doesn't.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:42 AM on January 19, 2016

What?! In Shakespeare's day, everyone spoke like Hagrid?
I should not o' said that.
posted by plinth at 6:59 AM on January 19, 2016

I've had some experience with this--I met both Crystals at a lecture a couple of years ago, and I've done a couple of workshops with Ben, one entirely focused on RP. (I had to do Sonnet 73: "That time of year thou mayst in me behold...")

It really is different doing Shakespeare that way. It feels earthier, faster, more visceral. There's an urgency to it that I think can be lost in modern accents.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:01 AM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

But as someone who lived in Birmingham for a while I wish there was just one portrayal somewhere that suggested, however offensive the RP-types find it, that a guy from the Midlands might have had a Midlands accent...

Peaky Blinders is all Birmingham accents (with, I would guess, varying degrees of fidelity).
posted by Flashman at 10:39 AM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

(Agggh, damn it. I meant "OP" up there. Stupid fingers.)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:47 AM on January 19, 2016

As someone who just moved from the north of the Netherlands (Groningen) to Birmingham, the OP tickles my ear in a lot of ways. I'm struck by how some of the vowels and dipthongs being used in this video are similar to Dutch sounds that are usually "unpronounceable" for English speakers, e.g., the second 'a' in 'fatal' == 'ij' in 'fijn' in Dutch; the 'oi' in 'loins' == 'ui' in 'uit' or 'eeuw' in 'leeuwen'. The whole 'accent' sounds incrementally closer to modern-day Dutch, to my ears…
posted by LMGM at 2:09 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Very cool, thanks for posting this.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:32 PM on January 19, 2016