English spelling largely reflects the state of the language in the late 1500s. In this episode, we look at one of the first English spelling books, and we explore several plays by William Shakespeare to examine the way he rhymed words. We also explore the way modern spellings reflect the pronunciation of words during the Elizabethan period. Works discussed in this episode include:
‘King John’ – William Shakespeare
‘Richard II” – William Shakespeare
‘The English School-Maister’ – Edward Coote
‘Haue With You to Saffron-Walden’ – Thomas Nashe
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – William Shakespeare
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Take your time, no need to rush and continue to have fun. It’s all good–as people like to say nowadays.
Interesting the change to the “oo” sound continues. In my lifetime “book” in Received Pronunciation seems to be getting shorter and is getting closer to “Berk”
Don’t pronounce Uranus like that. It sounds really weird.
Don’t worry about it though. I really appreciate your podcast, it’s what got me interested in linguistics.
He should Pronounce it that way.
Thank you for this enjoyable and informative podcast, Kevin, which helps to make sense of some of Shakespeare’s rhymes. The spelling of English was long interested me, and I learned a good deal on this from David Crystal’s ‘Spell It Out’.
It’s great to hear about the Elizabethan age. I’m from Dublin and the aspects mentioned in the show are slowly turning up in my lived experience.
Some of the pronunciations of English in the early 1600s are not uncommon in Ireland & Dublin (a quare fella, for example, tae (=tea), rayin (=rain: c.f. Regen in German). There is also an Essex Street & an Essex Gate.
Dublin University (aka Trinity College Dublin) was also founded around this time period too.
When I was in church choir, we sang a large number of Tudor pieces, some were written during the Elizabethan age. I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I definitely made note that sometimes, some of the words should have rhymed but didn’t. It would seem really out of place with the flow of the words and music at times!
When we list the letters of the alphabet — “a is for apple”, etc. — we pronounce the letters in the same way all over the English-speaking world, with the exception of “zee” or “zed”. But how did they pronounce these letters in the past, prior to the Great Vowel Shift, or in the middle of the GVS? Did people pronounce them the same way French people do today? Thank you, Kevin.
More or less yes (though no French “u” = /y/). Here you have a pdf document that tells you how the letters were pronounced, probably easier document than the Wiki Middle English phonology page or Wiki entry about the Great Vowel Shift -you have sound files at mid page on this one.
As Monique noted, the pronunciation of the letters would have been different in earlier periods of English. For example, the name of letter A would have been pronounced more like ‘ah,’ the name of letter E would have been pronounced more like ‘ay’, the name of letter I would have been more like ‘ee’, the name of letter O would have been ‘oh’ similar to today (though not a diphthong), and the name of letter U would have been ‘oo’.
Hi. Another fascinating episode. A comment about the “oo” sound. In Lancashire where I live words like “book” and “look” are still pronounced with a long “oo” as “boook” and “loook”. Does this mean Lancashire is in a different dimension of the Great Vowel Shift? Incidentally you mention the word “her”; in some parts of Lancashire it’s pronounced “hoo”, although confusingly that’s also used for “she” as in “hoo says”.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream also contains some really great, creative insults. My favorite is possibly when Hermia refers to Helena as ”You painted Maypole”. 😀
It’s also worth mentioning that while the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is a tragedy, the Rude Mechanicals unintentionally perform this play within the play in such a bad way that it instead becomes a slapstick comedy. It’s hilarious.
Also, Puck’s end monologue spoken directly to the audience, ”If we shadows have offended”, is very famous as well, and one of my favorite endings to any Shakespeare play. Gives me goosebumps.
For those who might want to listen to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in its entirety, there is a excellent free audio recording of the play at Librivox, recorded by volunteer voice actors:
https://librivox.org/a-midsummer-nights-dream-version-2-by-william-shakespeare/
Such a good play!
What is the source of your theme music? My daughter is producing a live performance of a medieval tavern for one of her Performance Studies classes at Texas A&M University and she has been looking for public domain music.
It’s a stock audio clip by Shawn Pigott called ‘Medieval Faire.’ I licensed it when I started the podcast. Here is a link to some of Shawn’s historical music pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZfLbnFwvs0
I’m about eight years behind you, having got to episode 42 since Christmas. I’m loving it and learning a lot. I listen as I walk the dog and there are hundreds of points that I want to revisit, but it’s very complicated in an audio podcast.
I’ve downloaded a dozen or so transcripts and converted them to searchable epubs, which is a fiddly error-prone process.
You mentioned in an episode around 40 that you were planning to write a book version. Did it ever happen? Is it available to purchase anywhere?
Very pleased to see the podcast is still going. Keep it up!
It occurs to me that the the expression “fancy that” literally means “imagine that”, based on the etymology given here.
I keep getting confused when you talk about the rhyming of words like fear/there because in my accent they still do rhyme.
I’ve talked to people that can’t process that to me bare/beer/bear are all homophones.
I have the same problem, but with words like “one” and “done.” Not only do I say them the same, but I can’t *hear* a difference in the podcast.
(bare and bear are the same, beer is very different. Learned to talk in SE Michigan, now live in San Francisco, via Lincoln, NE.)
Your comments on vowel+r explains some things. In my (Philly) dialect, all of Mary, marry, merry are distinct, but merry is homophonous with Murray. In my wife’s (NYC) dialect, all four are distinct. But many American dialects merge the first three, all not the fourth.
I had a friend who grew up partly in Atlanta and partly in Savannah who did not distinguish between pen and pin. Also his name, Wells, came out sounding like Wales.
I was surprised to hear you say that Bottom’s head’s transformation into a donkey’s in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (I think it was in this episode; it’s taken me a while to get to writing this) was a deliberate play on bottom = ass. As I understood it, the acquisition of this meaning of “ass” was the result of the much later shift of RS into SS in USAn English that also gave us “hoss”, “cuss” and so forth; is there any evidence that the shift goes this far back?