Posted on 03/11/2025 2:30:37 PM PDT by nickcarraway
You don’t have to go that far back.
I can speak Chaucerian Middle English.
When that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote...” is how the General Prolog to the Canterbury Tales starts.
Translation is poor; it simply means “When the sweetness of April’s showers ends the root-deep drought of March...”
Pronunciation is way more melodic. “Hwang that app-reel-er with his shall-ooo-rez sue-teh” is not far off.
But you don’t talk like a fairy bard when doing it.
The correct attitude to adopt is ribald raconteur. A bit like the scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels where a shaggy dog story is being told in rhyming slang.
Middle English meets cockney.
....and bathed ever vein in rich liquer of which virtue engendered is the cure
Now Floridian accents are Southern New York.
cannot really find a maine or new hampshire accent either
thanks
I started watchin’ that and now your gonna make me late for work!
Those islands (Tangier Island, I think) were featured in Robert McNeil’s PBS series, “The Story of English.”
There was a guy in college. I could never understand what he was saying. He came from Martha’s Vineyard and grew up there and spoke with the accent of the island. Somebody did a study years ago and found that young people were using the accent to show that they weren’t summer people from the mainland, but I don’t know how much of the accent remains now.
The True Sound of Medieval Music | History vs Hollywood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWQY2QaVrxg
You mean it didn’t sound like a Mannheim Steamroller album?................
I’ve never read that, but it looks like a book I’d enjoy. Thanks.
That’s an interesting video.
It’s really great stuff, I re-read it at least annually.
I just realized I transposed the way they really say it ‘ should be ‘Day Clean’, for Dawn.
I put it on my list.
Tangier Island has a runway there. It is like an aircraft carrier landing strip. The people there gave me the creeps. I took off asap.
If you’re interested in the Chesapeake watermen and their boats, this is a fun site:
Back when I was young and hale, and screwing up at Michigan State, there was a music prof who gave musical open lectures where he'd play vintage tunes on pianos as they were tuned in various earlier eras, the try them on the modern tuned piano. He wrote a couple of books about it, alas, I can't recall his name.
The equal temperament system -- where the half step intervals are, in cycles, the 12th root of 2 higher or lower than the adjacent notes -- evolved over the past few centuries, more or less during and since the era of JS Bach.
All of this is a bit like finding out for the first time about how the calendars were changed starting in the 17th century but at different times in different polities, with the final adjustments occurring in the 20th century. :^)
I think so! Thanks!
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