"An Earthier Accent"
09/09/2013
Shakespeare in the original pronunciation. Completely fascinating.
Post a comment
Your Information
(Name is required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Verify your Comment
Previewing your Comment
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment
As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.
Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.
This is engaging. Supposedly the younger fellow is an actor; I wish his enunciation were better.
Supposedly, the English spoken on Pitcairn Island is a survival of 18th century vernacular.
Posted by: Art Deco | 09/10/2013 at 08:16 AM
I think they're overstating their case a bit in saying that this is how it sounded. Seems like there's necessarily still a certain amount of conjecture involved.
I've heard that about Pitcairn Island, too. Also that Appalachian accents, at least a generation or two ago, preserved Elizabethan elements, but this doesn't sound much like anything American to me.
Posted by: Mac | 09/10/2013 at 09:40 AM
Interesting about the "r's" and spellings etc.
So, this is why I don't understand Shakespeare very well? :)
Posted by: Louise | 09/10/2013 at 06:36 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt_I8aKxOC8
Posted by: Art Deco | 09/10/2013 at 07:52 PM
That sounds like a New Zealand accent to me.
Posted by: Louise | 09/10/2013 at 10:40 PM
I expected it to sound more strange. I might have guessed Australian or New Zealand, just for lack of anything better to say. Or else just some UK variant that I'd never heard.
But what immediately came to mind is a recording of one of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin novels, which are set in the Royal Navy of a couple of decades after the Bounty mutiny. It doesn't sound like Aubrey or Maturin, both pretty upper-class, but like the voice the actor used for the sailors. Which of course fits perfectly and makes me think the actor who did the reading really did his homework. I don't think it was the fact that it's Pitcairn that made me think that. I wonder who it was...I think this is the recording: Tim Piggot-Smith. What a very English name. Almost Wodehousian.
Posted by: Mac | 09/10/2013 at 11:01 PM
I love O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin novels! I must read one I haven't already read. Nick has the whole set.
Posted by: Louise | 09/11/2013 at 12:08 AM
Do they say it is how it sounded? I caught "an accent that's as close as we can get to a 400-year-old accent" (my italics).
It does put me in mind of what Frank Skinner says about George Formby, though (here at 44:10).
Posted by: Paul | 09/11/2013 at 03:55 AM
That sounds like a New Zealand accent to me.
I wonder if that's what's happened due to broadcasting and labor migration. There is another Youtube of a talk given by Jacqui Christian, who is native to Pitcairn (and lives there now) but has spent much of her life in either Australia or New Zealand working as a pharmacist. I cannot place her accent, but it does not sound all that distinctive.
Posted by: Art Deco | 09/11/2013 at 07:55 AM
I found another video of an interview done in 1963 with a young woman in Tristan da Cuhna, which has a 3 digit population thousands of miles away from any other place in the world. This would have been prior to a time when such a place would have had much other than the BBC World Service for exposure to the world abroad. She seems to speak with a generic British vernacular.
Posted by: Art Deco | 09/11/2013 at 08:02 AM
I recommend those audio versions, Louise. The reading is so well done that it really adds to the excellence of the novels.
Posted by: Mac | 09/11/2013 at 09:48 AM
"Do they say it is how it sounded?" I was thinking they did, but I'd have to listen to it again. Will have to wait till later to hear the Frank Skinner remark.
Posted by: Mac | 09/11/2013 at 09:50 AM
"an accent that's as close as we can get to a 400-year-old accent"
I think they said something like that.
Posted by: Louise | 09/11/2013 at 11:52 AM
It sounds good, Maclin - do you know if I could only buy them on Amazon?
Posted by: Louise | 09/11/2013 at 11:53 AM
It does put me in mind of what Frank Skinner says about George Formby, though (here at 44:10).
Do you mean seeing references to sexuality in everything?
Posted by: Louise | 09/11/2013 at 12:00 PM
I don't know about buying them, Louise. I got them at the library. On cassette!
Posted by: Mac | 09/11/2013 at 01:20 PM
Yes Louise, that's exactly what I mean. Seeing double entendres where they might or might not be.
Posted by: Paul | 09/11/2013 at 02:58 PM
Oh good! I'll see if my library has them!
Right, Paul. Well you know what I think of the double entendre!
Posted by: Louise | 09/11/2013 at 03:15 PM
Funny how you see a rare word or a name one day, and right away see it again somewhere else. George Formby turned up in a New Criterion article I was reading this morning.
I haven't listened to this again, but maybe the reason I thought they were claiming a bit more confidence than justified in their Shakespearean pronunciation was based on the headline on the web page where I saw it: What Shakespeare Really Sounded Like.
Posted by: Mac | 09/12/2013 at 12:27 PM
I'm very curious as to what New Criterion had to say about George Formby, Mac.
Posted by: Paul | 09/13/2013 at 03:06 AM
Heh. I was at work and in too much of a hurry to be more specific. It's in this piece of art criticism, which is mostly not available to non-subscribers. The artist spent much of his life as a rent collector, and the exhibit under review includes "a recording of a comic song about the payment and non-payment of rent by the popular Lancashire music-hall comedian George Formby, a contemporary of Lowry. At that time Lancashire was famous for its comedians; Stan Laurel was a Lancastrian."
Posted by: Mac | 09/13/2013 at 07:17 AM
I'm glad to see Lowry getting his due. I used to have a Lowry reproduction on my bedroom wall as a teenager (not this, but something very like it). You never hear much about him from art experts.
Posted by: Paul | 09/13/2013 at 10:10 AM
I had never heard of him. I think Christie takes the critics to task for not giving him his due. I get The New Criterion in print, which rather lowers the interest of the art criticism, and I forget that their web site usually has images of art reviewed in the mag. I'm glad you reminded me. It would have been a shame to have missed this.
I think I like Lowry, by the way.
Posted by: Mac | 09/13/2013 at 10:35 AM
You need to make some amendments to the spam filter, I am afraid.
Posted by: Art Deco | 09/14/2013 at 01:52 PM
What I notice most about the New Zealand accent is the way they pronounce the "e" in a word like "yes". They say it with a drawn-out long-e sound, like the "yeas" in "yeast", only longer. The Pitcairn fellow doesn't pronounce his "yes" that way; his is more American-sounding -- you can hear it at about the 2:07 mark in that YouTube video Art Deco linked to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt_I8aKxOC8
Posted by: Marianne | 09/14/2013 at 04:36 PM
Unfortunately I have no control over the spam filter. All I can do is try to keep an eye on it. At least it hasn't marked a legitimate comment as spam for a while.
Posted by: Mac | 09/14/2013 at 07:16 PM
I was about to say I don't hear that, Marianne, then I realized you were saying he *doesn't* do it. I noticed "reashoorance" just before that.
Posted by: Mac | 09/14/2013 at 07:23 PM
That's funny, because I do hear it a bit, Marianne! Although, not at 2:07 admittedly.
The funny thing for Australians is that New Zealanders typically sound to us as though they are saying "sex" when they say "six". Then they use the schwa sound for their "i" sound, the classic being "fish and Chips" which sounds to me like "f*sh and ch*ps" (put the schwa in there).
Having said that, I have a NZ friend who has an accent which I call "Posh Kiwi" but which I can hardly distinguish from "Posh Australian" and even "Posh English."
Posted by: Louise | 09/15/2013 at 12:24 PM