BS: Pronunciation of Middle English

Subject: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Stower
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 08:04 PM

This is a thread about the pronunciation of old or Middle English, and by extension Tudor English, from an ignorant skeptic on the matter who wishes to be better informed by those who have studied it more closely.

Nowadays we know that the spelling of a word is not a definite guide to the way it is pronounced. As I understand it, the assumption is that in the days before standardised spellings and dictionaries, spelling was regional, reflecting local pronunciation, and therefore more or less phonetic.

But is it true that pronunciation followed spelling? I am not entirely sure this works, for several reasons. Even within the same work written by the same person, the same word may be written several different ways. This surely vastly reduces our chances of knowing how anything would have been pronounced? Surely if spelling itself was non-standard and unreliable even within the same text, then our chances of ascertaining pronunciation must be low?

Nowadays, we have technology to record people's voices to hear how people pronounce words, in ways we could never guess if we couldn't hear them. How then, can we possibly know what Middle English sounded like when we have no chance of ever hearing it spoken? Is 'authentic pronunciation' of Middle English and Tudor English an unattainable dream, or are there rules of thumb we can know with some certainty?

The few examples I have come across of reasoning for Elizabethan pronunciation (for example), have left me very skeptical of the whole endevour. John Dowland, for example, wrote a piece called 'Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens' - always Dowland, always doleful. I read an article that argued this was a clue that Dowland would have been pronounced Doe-land to rhyme with dolens, but this surely rests on the completely unsafe assumption that this was a perfect rather than imperfect rhyme? Are other assumptions about pronunciation safer?

Any informed contributions would be most welcome, including the correction of any errors I may have made in this opening post.

Cheers all

Stower

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Bert
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 08:17 PM

I think that a lot of information comes from poetry. They compare a word with a known word that rhymes.

Also the meter can give clues that syllables which are silent now were pronounced then.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 09:13 PM

I wouldn't use Dowland's piece as a guide because three of the four words are in Latin and that changes the meter and rhythm of the line. We also run against the problem that we don't know how the Latin was pronounced by Dowland.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 09:30 PM

Approximating Middle English pronunciation is pretty well impossible, but with the invention of the printing press at the end of this time, Early Modern English inc. Tudor, much more can be done with approximations.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 09:40 PM

Bert wrote:
"I think that a lot of information comes from poetry."

And music. Poetry and music from those times can give you an idea of
the pronunciation of old and middle English. An example would be the
song "Sumer Is Icumen In". Pronounced: "Soomer is eecoomen in." That
was a song I had to learn at one time, and that was how the teacher said
that it was pronounced. He taught both music and English.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 11:15 PM

When language changes or words move from one culture to another, the consonants tend to stay the same while the vowels change far more.

One of my favorite ME poems is

Lenten is comen with love to town
with blosmes and with brides round.

We might argue with love is 'loove' or 'luv' or even 'lohve,' but L remains l, c is c, b is b, and v is v. But whatever vowel you advocate for 'love,' I'm sure somebody in some other region pronounced it differently.

'Brides' is 'birds'. R was and still is a slippery devil.

Just a thought: given the variations in English vowels today, you'd have a hard time saying how 21st-Century English is pronounced.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Eiseley
Date: 05 Jun 10 - 11:55 PM

There is a piece of family lore about my great-great-great-grandfather who immigrated to the US in 1850. He was from the border of England and Wales. Now I know Middle English wasn't spoken in 1850, but here is an example of what his accent sounded like to others:

One summer when Great-great-great-grandpa was getting on in years, he asked his grandson's new wife if she would hand him the flashwater. She didn't understand, so fetched him a nice glass of water instead. He became frustrated and said, "No, the flashwater, the flashwater!" The poor dear still didn't understand, so the old man hobbled out into the kitchen and came back, furiously swinging the Flyswatter!

Eiseley

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: mousethief
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 12:02 AM

I'd be wary of using rhymes in songs as a surefire guide to pronunciation, because of the use of slant rhyme and consonance.

Since spelling back then was much more phonetic than it is now, I'd trust that far more. If words are spelled more than one way, that's a clue that those different combinations of letters sounded the same.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Bupkes
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 12:09 AM

I think it's reasonable to assume that the unpronounced letters in the modern spelling of many English words are vestigial clues to how the words were once pronounced.

Time to relisten to John Fleagles haunting recording "World's Bliss: Medieval Songs of Love and Death".

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 05:29 AM

Short of having a time machine, I don't see how an accurate assessment of middle English pronounciation can be made!

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 08:00 AM

Regional variations in pronunciation exist today, so how much more must there have been when most people's world didn't stretch more than a few miles from their homes? As a northerner, I pronounce the "a" in past and bath exactly the same as in cat and mat while those in the the south of England seem to say parst and barth to my ears.

Rhymes may also not be of much help. The phrase "put up or shut up"   rhymes exactly for me, the "u" having the same sound throughout. When Prime Minister John Major used it to challenge rebellious back benchers, it sounded more like "poot uhp or shaat uhp".

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 08:17 AM

I think knowledge of recent dialects helps: for example, the progression from "nicht" (as modern Scots) through "neet" to "night" is a potted history of yogh. I did help one of my nephew's girlfriends by demonstrating that a ME passage she had been struggling with made easy sense when read out loud in a Lancashire dialect (though even Yorkshire moght have done as well).

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 08:48 AM

It's guesswork, though we can tell some things from texts. We can be pretty sure that tongues and tongs were homophones in Shakespeares time, as they appear as a pun in 'Twelfth Night.' In leicestershire tongue is still pronounced tong. Mind you, we don't know if Shakespeare ( who spelt his own name three different ways in his Will) wrote in a way that reflected gis Warwickshire background, or the London of his audience.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Howard Jones
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 09:39 AM

It may not have been too far from some dialects still (just) spoken today, or at least in living memory.

In this newspaper article the author Alan Garner explains how the language of the mediaeval poem "Gawain and the Green Knight" closely resembles the Staffordshire dialect still spoken today. The text is often required study for university students of English Literature, but the obscure language presents problems for most of them. Garner explains his puzzlement at finding so many footnotes to the text, since the language was what he knew as "talking broad", and was how his father spoke. His father had little difficulty in understanding the poem and became an interpreter for a professor working on it as he was able to explain many of the obscure words.

The article also explains how the poem is rooted in the local landscape and how Gawain's journey can be traced through the sometimes strange landscape of the Roaches to Lud's Church - which I can vouch makes a fascinating walk.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 09:42 AM

"I don't see how an accurate assessment of middle English pronounciation can be made!"

Why worry about it? Isn't it more important to keep the poetry alive than to wonder if I'm pronouncing a vowel right?

If you change the vowels from 'ay ee eye oh you' to 'ah ay ee oh oo' (which is what most of the Western world uses) and keep the consonants the same, you will be close enough. In fact, you might be doing it right.

There will be a few exceptions and hiccups - words like knight or cough - but they are not important in my view.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 09:45 AM

Eiseley, I loved your story about the flyswatter!

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Bert
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 02:36 PM

As well as regional variations there were class variations. The upper classes having a French speaking background.

As for poetry, I don't think that individual rhymes were always perfect but from the study of many rhymes there would be definite indications.

Also, as the documents were hand written there would be a definite tendency to only write letters that were pronounced. So reading the words pronouncing all the letters would give a closer view than trying to force modern English on them.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Jun 10 - 04:00 PM

The upper classes having a French speaking background.

Mais pas du tout! Or at least by Middle English days it wasn't French French like qu'est dite en France. Mind you, the Guardian (liberal paper: editor's salary merely a third of a million) has a link to "most clipped articles", which makes me think of the old BBC news reports.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 08:51 AM

Accents can totally divide, even on this small island. My dear old uncle jack was born in a mining village between newcastle and Sunderland, and although he lived in London for 70 years, never lost his broad accent. During WW2 he was an air raid warden, and knew his way around. The family was short of soap, and asked jack to use his contacts to procure some. he arrived home triumphally bearing a tablet of soap. When asked where he had got it, everyone thought he was saying he bot it from the butchers....eventually they realised he was saying 'Bootses' ( Boots, the chemist). You will hear this better if you are acquainted with the geordie Bwu , with a rising inflection, at the beginning.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 09:18 AM

Interesting story, Tug. Wouldn't it be fun if there was a site where we could click on a map of the world and hear how people speak in the different places?

Speaking of soap - I had a co-worker recently whose husband is Cuban. He visited his family there and had a very heavy suitcase - packed front to back and top to bottom with bars of precious soap.

Back to Chaucer - a few months ago, my husband brought home CD's with a professor of English reading aloud from The Canterbury Tales. I could understand them just fine, although reading them is real work. The DH says that he could get 'maybe 50%.'

Unfortunately, the Tales weren't divided into handy sections. I got to a part where a knight returning from the crusades encountered some ladies stranded by the roadside and they started telling him their entire life story. I couldn't go forward and I couldn't go back, and the life story was boring, so I took the silly CD's back to the library.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 09:58 AM

The variety of English accents over quite a short distance is fascinating.

I was born in the South of England, although I now live "oop North". Once when my parents were visiting us they got lost, and stopped a local to ask directions to Buxton, which my father pronounced in the southern way. The man was puzzled, although Buxton was the largest town in the area. "Buxton? Buxton?". Eventually light dawned. "Ah, you mean Booxton!"

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 01:23 PM

I can relate to that, Howard. In Port Mouton, people from away would
say Mootawn or Muhttun, but in the surrounding areas the people
pronounce it as Muhtoon. There are multiple accents and dialects
in the small area of atlantic Canada as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 07 Jun 10 - 07:22 PM

In Lancashire the only people in the country who pronounce the town as 'Boory' are the inhabitants of Bury itself!

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 06:02 AM

You should try Croydon - especially Surrey Street Market!! You will hear "pan a boaw, pan a boaw"..........What??????????

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 07:49 AM

Pound a bowl...irrespective of contents ( bananas, melons etc)end of day trading...common throughout home counties.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 09:50 AM

Thank you for that translation from the English, Tug. :)

What are the 'home counties'?

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 12:00 PM

The home counties are the counties in the South East of England which are dominated by varieties of the London accent.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Stower
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 01:15 PM

I heard something on the radio the other day. Forgive me if I get this a bit wrong, as I was only half-listening when this caught my attention and I can't remember the programme it was on to listen again, but ...

The presenter said that something happened to the English language in the time of Chaucer's grandchildren. People stopped pronoucing 'e's as a separate sound (so, for 'love', people would now say 'luv' or 'lov' instead of 'lov-er'). She didn't say exactly what the change was, how it came about, but I'm sure it was something to do with the Danish language.   

If any early language knowledgables can elucidate on this (or the subject of Middle English pronunciation generally), I'd be very interested and grateful.

Stower

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 01:36 PM

Three big things affected the WRITTEN language between the fortheenth and sixteenth centuries: vowel sounds shifted, the remaining inflexions were reduced practically to their modern vestigial state, and the population became massively more literate- this last accelerated greatly towards the end of the period by the availability of cheap printed books. My own pet theory is that the spread of literacy actually caused the written language to import features that were already present in the spoken language- the written language and its custodians always tend to be far more conservative than the slangy crowd.

It's worth noting that people have always used different "registers" - ways of expressing themselves- in the more formal media such as writing and oration than in everyday speech (spoken Latin was not at all like the Classical Latin used for such formal occasions), and there's no reason to think that things would have been different for Mediaeval writers of stories, devotional tracts, hymns etc., especially when writing materials were scarce and expensive. And of course there was no standardised orthography- the mapping between the written and the spoken forms.

So I'd suspect that when people wrote "love", whether it was pronounced "luv" or "lohver" would depend on the context. Not forgetting the requirements of rhyme and scansion- compare with modern poetry, songs, pop music, adverts, whatever.

And with a greater variety of dialect (because of slower communications and the total absence of any way of communicating sound except face-to-face), whatever the dialect of the author, each reader would have had to reconstruct it (especially poetry) in their own way.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 03:18 PM

Thanks for explaining about the home counties, Tug. I've often wondered about that.

Stower, as Paul says, the radio program was probably talking about The Great Vowel Shift. You can google 'great vowel shift' and soon find yourself lost in a welter of technical terms, diagrams, and funny-looking letters.

Let me give you the C student's version. When I went to school, the teacher told me the vowels were A E I O U and sometimes Y. These were pronounced

ay ee eye oh you.

(This is easier to get if you read it out loud.)

Then I got older and took German class. In German, the vowels are said

ah ay ee oh ooh (Forget about y.)

Basically, this switch is the Great Vowel Shift.

Now do a little experiment. Say ah, which is Europe's version of A. Notice that it comes from the back of the mouth, down low. Say ay, which is English's version of A. Notice that it is closer to the front and you moved your tongue higher. Same for ay vs ee.
This shift up and to the front is what all the excitement's about.

I think ee to eye breaks the rule, but don't quote me.

If you want to mess with ow as in 'how' or au as in 'cough,' you write a PhD thesis on it.   (Remember this is the C student's view.)

The Danish part is that a Danish scholar wrote all this up a long time ago.

And that is why I said upthread that if you just change the vowels in Middle English and keep the consonants okay, you will probably be okay.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 11:34 AM

The superfluous 'e' at the end of many words was put in place by printers, who followed a convention that engliash words did not end in certain letters...v, j, qu, z,. The marker e is also sometimes used to denote a long vowel ..mat mate. and also to end certain words ending in r ( here were where more, snore). These are al to do with orthography rather than phonology.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 11:57 AM

Pound a bowl...irrespective of contents ( bananas, melons etc)end of day trading...common throughout home counties


All day at Surrey Street Market in Croydon - I have a recording of them somewhere!

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 08:34 PM

maybe they're deaperate for a sale in Croydon. This market bawl was always associated with the end of the day, when produce was sold off at knock down prices so that everyone could clear up and go home.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 10 Jun 10 - 04:57 PM

Ah, dear Croydon and Stre'm (Streatham). Many a Ram'n'Special/Finger'n'Special have I downed there.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 10 Jun 10 - 08:21 PM

Now gentrified to Saint Reetham, just down the road from Clarm, and South Chelsea.
(before the Yanks ask for translation, Streatham, Clapham and Battersea)

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: Mr Red
Date: 11 Jun 10 - 07:57 AM

Language is a living monster.

As fast as oiks simplify words like referenda and gymnasia they obfuscate the plurality of data. I am expecting within my lifetime to see a serious amount of datums in print.

It is not an oversimplification to describe spelling, pronunciation and meaning as a fashion.

And when did fashion ever demonstrate functionality?

Apparently the language of Shakespear was defined by his actors. Babbage was reckoned to be from the West Country and one school of reconstructed Shakespear puts the accent as Mummersetish.

Hence the rhyming of "wound" and "found" - try woond and foond instead. Blank verse? Eye rhymes? near rhymes? Assonance? Dissonance? Don't be fooled. They were proper rhymes after all.

Subject: RE: BS: Pronunciation of Middle English
From: mousethief
Date: 11 Jun 10 - 01:36 PM

They were proper rhymes after all.

Dude, if you have a time machine you should make it available to the world. Don't be selfish.