In this video, I explore a 1586 work by Jacques Bellot, and what it can tell us about 'street English' in the early modern period. ________ This channel's Patreon (thank you to anybody who subscribes): / simonroper
I actually have a friend with this exact background (Swedish, practiced English primarily with an Irishman growing up) and honestly you're kinda dead on LOL
The interesting thing about this, is it's held it's meaning depending on where you say it. Saying Howdy in the south us usually results in an answer responding to the question. Where it's just a simple greeting in other places
I loved hearing that! It's what you'd say today in German, rechnung, or Norwegian, regning, meaning "the bill". You'd call the waiter after you've finished your meal and request it.
I love this sort of thing. Just a French lad trying to help his fellow French refugees, and accidentally creates a brilliant primer on honest-to-goodness 16th c. street English, not the "proper" stuff taught at school. I'm sure Mr. Bellot would've been pleased to see us finding such utility in his humble phrasebook, all these centuries later.
its funny because more of these sort of language-to-language transliterations are incredibly helpful at preserving a time's pronounciation (in both languages)
I am not sure how humble it is to write something and than translate it twice.^^ The only reason I imagine him being so pedanticly is either, because that was his character or he wanted to profit of it.
Regardless, he was just some schmuck as we all are, and probably knew it too! I don’t do much of anything to directly benefit future generations, doubt he did either. Well, he did write a book, he was proud of all the work he put into it over the years, and was happy with the profit it (hopefully) brought him. Love to learn who he was, what he did in his free time, where he lived, was he an introvert or an extrovert (as someone who wrote a book about conversation in another language, it’s kind of a toss up!)
I'm honestly amazed at how comprehensible this is. I had expected much more Middle-English era words and grammar to be present, especially in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift, but now I'm happy that, were I to acquire a time machine, I could have a pint with the lads 400 years ago 😂
I think that sentence structures, pronunciation and vocabulary are unfamiliar to a speaker of modern English, but yet they are understandable (especially when they were spoken slowly). A quite short exposure to this Middle English speech (maybe some weeks just living amongst 16th century Londoners, NOT formal training) should be enough to bridge the language gap. I bet that there are remote *modern* dialects of English, that are harder to understand.
this is early modern English, progressed well past Middle English even of Chaucer’s time. He died 1400. In 1586, the time of Bellot’s book, Shakespeare was 22 years old.
@@Galenus1234I’m from Northamptonshire, though I’ve lived on the south coast for 30 years. About 18 years ago I was talking to some drunk geordies and I could only understand about two out of every five words. You’d think being from the midlands I’d have had more chance of understanding them than a southerner would… but nope!
@@greva2904 I am sometimes a drunk Geordie, and I feel like there's a few similarities especially to the way older people used to speak in the 90s. They would have been born at the turn of the century if you're wondering. I do wonder if we just continue the southern dialect from previous generations as we stubbornly cling on to our regional speech over generations.
My great grandfather, a former native of Galway, born 140 years ago, used "tis" a lot. He also would pronounce a lot of words with extra syllables and then skip entire words if he thought you would think them implied by context. "Tis fine moranin, tain't na rain in sight." is an example. Or "ga fetcha me slippers lad, under bed." would be another. He died in 1964. He learned Irish from birth and spoke it exclusively until he was in his teens when he found it necessary to learn English to transact business in the nearest town, Loughrea.
'Tis still gets used in Ireland. Hiberno-English retains features of older forms of English alongside influences from the Irish language.Younger people such as myself use "'tis" slightly jokingly, I think, but it keeps it alive. It would be a shame for us to lose our dialect, after all.
I found the phrase right at the end of this video really interesting, “what is of the clock?” “it is two of the clock” and explains why we say 2 o’clock now.
actually yea it does. what about the "i used to do (x)" thingy tho? like now to me in modern english it sounds kinda archaic ngl. like i think its one of the only actual archaic things people still use regularly
'What do you lack?' sounds like my late grandmother, who lived in the Appalachian mountains, when asking if we wanted seconds at the dinner table. This is a fascinating book! Thanks for the excellent video.
a lot of appalachian communities have been isolated from the rest of the world for quite a bit, so much so that linguistically they're said to be closer to the form of english from just before the period this video discusses.
@@rakninjaI'd be interested to see that quantified. Even in isolation language evolves. Is the speech of Appalachia closer to English of the 1500's or just different in different ways? It also depends on which 1500s dialect you compare it to. I hear a number of things I associate with Northern Ireland, but that accent probably hadn't formed yet,
@@Allan_son if i recall the research, it's mostly referencing the great glottal shift. i wish i could help point you to the correct papers, but you know how youtube comments don't like links. it is pretty dang fascinating, though!
I've heard it all my life in west Texas, too. Plenty of people here whose ancestors came from the southern states within the last 150 years or so, of course. But it's pronounced "like" here. For example, if you're short of money when it comes time to pay, your companion (or a friendly bystander) might ask, "How much do you like?"
@@UmbrellaGent Lol my Grammy is from TN. Whenever I ask her “Grammy aren’t you gonna tip him?” She always says “shit, I’ll tip my hat and say good day, but I’ll be damn if I got any more to pay.”
As an American, if I were greeted with the word "how", I would be compelled to include in my reply a phrase such as "paleface" or "smoke-um peace pipe" 🤔
@@Kerithanos I know that the first native American to make contact with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony spoke English. His first words were "Welcome Englishmen". I wonder whether the "how" greeting was actually borrowed from English. btw I live in Plymouth England where the Mayflower set sail from.
@@bootmii98 Very interesting, thank you! Regarding the use of 'ye' as a plural, I wonder if it was once more often used as an address to a group than to an individual. 'Howdy folks' will be familiar to anyone who's ever seen a Western.
As an Australian born in the 1960s, I've both heard and used "How goes it?", "How's it going?", and "How's it hanging?" The first of those is more old fashioned, the middle one still current, and the last is both more casual and more ... crude or uncouth.
*Working with a crew of hillbillies in western North Carolina years ago.* The boss comes over the radio: "Hey, Buster, how much d'you lack on that job?" Buster, visibly frustrated, answers, "I don't lack none of it". The boss goes silent for a moment, gritting his teeth at the pun. "Damn it, Buster..."
@@zeedub8560 Bill Bryson mentions a southern lady who asks him "How d'ya lack Miss Hippy?" and he is quite confused, not being acquainted with one Miss Hippy and certainly not experiencing any lack of her. Of course, she asked him what he thought of Mississippi.
@@DrWhom I was in class one day during my freshman year of h.s., only a year after moving from PA to TX. A girl asked, "Anyone have any type?" I thought, huh? My grandfather was a printer, so I though of printer's type. After a few seconds of confusion, I figured out she was asking for tape.
@@SupahTrunks7 In Western North Carolina, they pronounce the i sound in night, kite, bright, and etc very...widely. I'm from the Piedmont, and though we're very Southern it is something we don't do. It's jarring even to us. So, I take it that the long i sound made like and lack almost sound the same, so Buster is saying he doesn't like the work he is having to do and being a smart ass.
I don't know a lot about how Londoners spoke in 1586, but I do remember when I was a young child in NE England in the 1960s, that when counting money in shops, in phrases like 'two pence', 'three pence', 'six pence', people always used to stress the number and not the word 'pence'. So they said 'tuppence', 'threppence', 'sixpence' as if they were single words. The coins were known as 'tuppney, threpney and sixpenny' bits. But when the UK currency was decimalised in 1971, people in shops started saying, instead, "That will be six new pence, please' stressing the fact that it was new pence and not old. After a few years, they stopped saying 'new pence'. But the word pence continued to hold its stress. I never heard the word 'bit' used for coins any more after that. They became known as two-pence, five-pence and ten-pence pieces. Does anyone else remember this?
being an American no, I don’t remember that, but I remember the word “bits” being used to indicate monetary value. There was a sports cheer in which the usage appeared for a long time, “two bits four bits, six bits, a dollar, all for the Tigers, stand up and holler!” I remember reasoning that if the progression was two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, then a dollar must have been eight bits, so two bits was 12 1/2 cents! I asked my dad and he had no idea what I was talking about.
@@dibblethwaite You're right, we spoke of "tuppence" but the 2d coin only existed in Maundy Money, which was worth far more than its face value. There was, however, the half penny coin, or "hA'penny bit." It had a galleon on the back: referenced by JK Rowling in the "Galleon," the largest coin in Wizarding Britain. Something cheap or tawdry could be described as "tuppenny ha'penny" or worth 2.5d, which at one time was enough to send a postcard, or an unsealed Xmas card: what later became second class post. Now that costs 85p, or 17 shillings in old money: though inflation means the increase is nothing like as bad as it looks.
What's funny about English in this time (say, 1500-1640ish) is that when subtitles are included, as you've done here, it's really easy to understand. But if the subtitles were to go away (i.e. if I were that time traveler) then I could maybe pick up about half of the conversational speech I heard. What I love about your videos is the eerieness of Middle and Early Modern English, almost like you're listening to some buried ancestral memory. I keep looking for ways to include your inspiration in my fiction. Thanks so much for this rare window into the past, Simon. ❤
Interestingly, I'm starting to hear modern youth say, "Can I come with?" not, "Can I come with you?" Mitkommen is German, but in English this appears to be making a strange comeback.
"Come with", at least in American English, has been around for a long time I'm pretty sure! It was a Germanism (or maybe a Yiddish-ism?) originally, but spread from the language of German immigrants to colloquial speech more generally in some regions. Compare also "what gives?" from "was gibt's"?
Interesting….Growing up in the ‘80s in Northern Virginia in the U.S., I had a friend who always said “come with” without the “me,” and I always found it annoying somehow-like, “Just finish the sentence!!” But now I see there are historical reasons for that expression. I’m not sure where she got it from since no one else in our area seemed to say it that way, but it must have been something passed down in her family.
A common mistake for german speakers learning english: Asking for the time. They don't ask "What is the time?" or even "Is it late?", but "How late is it?", implying that they are late at any given moment and just request an estimation of their relative lateness.
I like how this is pretty much how conversational or utilitarian language books are written today. Everyday dialogues, sometimes a bit stilted, and often presented in the same three columns: the language to be learned, the meaning in your own language, and a transliteration of the new language in your own phonetics.
Probably one of the best talks yet. A controversial view but one I am growing more and more to believe is that what Shakespeare wrote in the 1590s to 1610s was NOT everyday speech of that time but was some sort of confected recollected speech from perhaps 50 years earlier and then corrupted by memory and grandeloquence. I have a long text written by a very articulate man, John Mayer, Master of Sedbergh School in the 1590s. He was no fool, but a fellow of St. John's Cambridge. Like this gentleman he writes much more freely that Shakespeare makes his characters speak. The text was an answer to a Chancery Bill, but John Mayer was not a Lawyer and so he literally wrote to describe his everyday experience as articulately as he could, and he was articulate.
I think Shakespeare wrote in a register that was slightly above the everyday use of his time, but not so much that everyday people would not understand it.
Shakespeare wrote in blank verse, so it was already not a normal speech pattern. And sticking to the rules of the verse would have influenced word choices and and style.
Didn't he write plays set in the past? I know people weren't as educated back then, but maybe it would've still sounded weird if those historical kings sounded "contemporary", same as if we made a WW2 movie where Churchill says things like "cringe", "yikes" or "rizz"
It's interesting that modern English has the opposite trend. The vowel in "the" strengthens before a word starting with a vowel rather than disappearing. "Thə man" but "thee opposite".
That's because modern English diphthongises every tense vowel apart frombroad a, and at the end of the day this means they all get an optional final semiconsonant, preventing hiatus that English so hates
I read books from the 1500s, albeit printed in the early 1600s. Sometimes people look over my shoulder and ask me if it's Old English. "No," I tell them. "It's Early Modern English. Not too different from today, innit?" Cheers! Thanks. Lovely, this. Keep making these videos.
@@jsmithy643 I don't know how to respond, other than with 'ok'. The colosseum is about 2000 years old, but if your house was built in the 1800s I'm still going to call it an old building. Perhaps a useful distinction would be 'old English' vs 'Old English'. The latter is a term of art, while the former is more of a personal opinion.
thank you for the tips, going to gradually pepper these phrases into my casual speech to subconsciously manipulate my friends into adopting them and spreading it to their friends
I was also surprised about how easy it was to understand 95%, the rest I would pass over. As a Brit thats been in the US for 40 years, I have the same problem today, I'm still acquiring UK English again, and many street talk I overhear is nearly incromprhensible to me.
I feel ya! I got back to Australia after 15 years in China, and the service staff in McDonald's were utterly unintelligible. I found myself thinking, "I speak English, German and Chinese, plus a smattering of Swedish. I've taught English for many years, and I have no idea what that kid just said!"
I find this fascinating. As a school psychologist who is highly interested in dyslexia, this is a treasure trove of information about our use of language and the written symbols that allow us to reproduce the sounds of said language. The evolution of the language and the written words of it is itself fascinating.
I follow you Simon for years, since your early "on a chair" videos and untill now I find you my best discovery on YT. Not only the great knowledge and passion but the voice as well. Thank you for all you make and as always, best wishes from Poland :)
I think you'd find the 1819 Burslem Dialogue quite interesting, its an account of two men from Stoke-on-Trent in the early 19th century, it's avaliable from Google books for free.
@@stephenryan7855 There are some differences, but it's hard to tell because the author wrote it phonetically, but not using a modern phonetic transcription. But when I've read it it doesn't sound too different from some of the oldest people I've met in the North of Stoke-on-Trent near to where the dialogue is supposed to have taken place.
9:30 My god, I’ve just realized that the “o” in “o’clock” stands for “of”, so when we say something like “it’s 5 o’clock”, we’re actually saying “it’s 5 of (the) clock” 😮
I'm from Lancashire, 60 years old now and people regularly used thee when I was a kid, pronounced 'the' or 'tha'. There was a joke we'd say, but only works in a Lancashire accent from that time. Someone wants to throw some rubbish away, and asks: "Where's the bin?" In an old Lancashire accent we'd answer ... "Nowhere. Where's you been?"
I was born in Lancashire but have lived most of my life in the Netherlands. I speak Dutch fluently and without an English accent and am convinced that me having a broad Lancashire accent helped me as there are so many words and ways if speaking Dutch that are almost the same. We always hear English compared to French or German but really Dutch, Flemish and most of the Scandinavian languages are more similar.
As a Lancashire lass living in Sweden, I can only agree! I studied languages and I once read in an authoritative book that the closest language to English is in fact Dutch, but I think the Scandi languages of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian come a close second.
@@LMB2301A week ago I was having dinner with two Danish friends. I'm a Lancashire lad, the other guest is from Yorkshire. Half way through, Lars, at of the blue said, why is it so easy for me to understand you two so easily. I couldn't find any explanation, but after your comment, I can now.
If you find someone with a broad dialect in Sunderland or Newcastle, half the worlds are still Dutch and Scandinavian. I'm from Sunderland, and if I was to say "I'm going home" I'd say it in what is basically a pidgin Norwegian: "am gaan hjem".
Dutch and Flemish really are English's closest blood relatives, and the Danelaw saw to the Scandinavian influence being stronger than the French in many dialects. It's interesting seeing a map of the Danelaw reach right up to Lancashire.
As far as the informal use of "thou" as distinct from the more polite "you" is concerned, Shakespeare (and presumably his audiences) was keenly aware of the social nuances involved in the choice. Sometimes a speaker will even shift from one to the other to emphasise a shift in attitude. If I were to suddenly address you as "thou" rather than "you", it would mean I was either trying to be rude or, alternatively, trying to get more familiar in other ways!
There’s an old English folksong (As I roved out one May morning) where a man meets a maid and begs her to stop a while with him. He begins by addressing her with ‘you’ but after they have lain together he addresses her with ‘thou’. One can only imagine why…
Sounds to me (French Canadian) like an exact parallel of the French use of 'Tu' - singular familiar - and vous - plural, or singular formal/respectful.
You should visit the west of Ireland where some of these things are still common. One weird thing is that we use "ye" (pronounced "yee") strictly as a plural for "you". Most of the time, people who hear this don't realize it's a plural and assume it's just a weird way of pronouncing "you". One time on a work trip to the US someone asked why we sometimes say "you" and sometimes "yee". I realized then it's not obvious because a lot of English speakers don't make any singular/plural distinction for "you" at all.
Actually many of us do have a plural for the you pronoun, but it isn't anything like "yee", in my area it "you guys" (regardless of gender), in some parts of North America is Y'all, (which is you+all).
Im learning Dutch (in Belgium). The first time I went to see Shakespeare since starting, I had a similar surprise. My understanding was improved allot by learning another germanic language.
@@sirkalasnefzenlot That was how I maintained a grasp on Dutch grammar too when I was studying it. I was just sat there thinking "Wow, this feels a lot like archaic English"
Also closer to modern German. I'm curious about when the "do" forms became required rather than optional for questions and negations in English, as in "Where do you live?" rather than "Where live you?" and "I don't live in London" rather than "I live not in London."
This older syntax is closer to other germanic languages in general, not just scandinavian languages. The ‘do’ forms likely arose as a result of the Norman invasion. If I remember correctly, in most romance languages descended from Vulgar Latin, the primary way in which you ask a question is simply with rising intonation, not necessarily with subject/verb inversion like in germanic languages. As the Norman-French speaking upper classes gradually intermixed with the Anglo-Saxon lower classes over the centuries, the ‘do’ form probably arose as a sort of grammatical compromise that tried to reconcile the germanic requirement that a question begin with a verb with the romance tendency to maintain SVO word order.
@@geisaune793 “The ‘do’ forms likely arose as a result of the Norman invasion.” One blog post, summarizing John McWhorter’s view in his book _his book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue,_ says “What specific elements of the English grammar can be said to be of Celtic origin? One well-studied example of a trait now thought to derive from Celtic is the so-called do-support. In English, a “dummy” auxiliary _do_ must be used to form negative and interrogative sentences; hence, we say _John does not swim_ (instead of _*John swims not_ or _*John not swims)_ and _Does John swim?_ (instead of _*Swims John?)._ Other Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Norwegian, Afrikaans, etc.) do not have this construction (note that the English use of do-support is different from the so-called emphatic _do,_ as in _John does swim!,_ which is found in other Germanic languages). Nor do Romance or Slavic languages have anything resembling do-support. In fact, it’s a rather rare quirk, cross-linguistically. “We now think that English picked it up from its Celtic neighbors. Unlike Germanic languages, Celtic languages like Cornish have had do-support since before English started using it. It is used in Celtic exactly as in English: to express tense and agreement in negative and interrogative sentences.” It then gives several objections to this Celtic hypothesis.
Native Quebec French speaker here. I'll start off by saying that Quebec French has many archaic or unique features compared to Metropolitan French, and that's a whole Pandora's Box of its own, and Quebec French is closely related to older forms of French which had a lot of influence on Old English. Now to the point I mean to make, old English seems to have many grammatical structures that are similar to French. Inverting the verb and subject in a question for example, without the need for an auxiliary "do" for it to make sense. It "feels" natural to a French speaker. Also, I have some degree of knowledge of the Icelandic language, and an equivalent of "thou" is still used by the Icelanders. As a matter of fact, they still use it with the "original" letters "thorn" - Þú - when used in a more formally correct way, and with "eth" - ðu - when slipped into casual speech. The transition from þú to -ðu is similar to contractions using the apostrophe in the English language (you are not = you aren't, etc). A simple Icelandic greeting: What say you? (that choice of words for a greeting already feels archaic by modern English perspective) Formal - Hvað segir þú? Casual - Hvað segirðu? Considering Old English in the context of it historical linguistic ecosystem makes it all the more interesting, I find.
I like how you can vary the sound of your voice enough to make the two sides of the conversation sound different, but without either of them sounding cartoonish. I always do the audible equivalent of a double take, because it sounds like two different people with similar voices rather than one person playing two characters.
Interesting how a French refugee wrote such an amazing way to communicate in a foreign land, centuries ago. This is much better than the phrasebooks of now.
The King James Bible & the Church preserved the use of “thou” in addressing God precisely because it was the informal “you”; the idea was that one’s relationship with God should be the most intimate relationship of all. It’s one of those funny bits of linguistic history - it’s because “thou” was eventually preserved *primarily* in Scripture and worship, it over time came to be understood as the more formal pronoun. The exact opposite of what it originally was. I love that.
@@bacicinvatteneaca Hmm, I've never heard that explanation. I'd be skeptical, though ~ I don't think that Shakespeare was trying to make Hamlet sound older, you know? And his writing was contemporary with the KJV.
Fascinating. It occurred to me the lack of contractions may be to ensure non-native speakers aren't misunderstood, since accents can mess with pronunciation. But all the discussion about evolution of informal speech has made me want to listen to Fairport Convention's "Come All Ye". 😀
I really enjoy these Simon. I've been subscribed for some time now - since your very early videos - and I'm glad to see you're not only keeping up with it, but that you've really taken it to the next level.
My man, that was absolutely brilliant. And really educational on so many levels! I learned more about 16th century speech. I learned one of the ways we know how people spoke. I got to hear a likely genuine conversation, from 400 years ago. And I leaned the etymology for goodbye. Do more of these!
I don't comment a lot here, but I just like to say thank you for this and all your posts. I am chuffed that without reading the text, I understood the conversation. Thanks to early exposure to dear Catweazel, I have grown up with a passion for English in it's many manifestations. Truly thou art a delver of words. 🇦🇺🙏👍
I'm one of those Americans who like to hear people from various parts of England and Scotland speak. So, I always enjoy you videos. It sounds as if I, even a speaker of urban Midwestern American English, would have been able to get by in Elizabethan London. I wonder if reading several religious and historical texts from the period helped a bit. Anyway, I'm just a retired guy who enjoys your videos. Thanks for posting them.
Hey Simon. There were love letters from king Henry the 8th to Anne boyelin. I thought: how about using that source and reading them as they were been read at the time? You would have a real cotemporary example from the early 1500s
i remember reading that Quakers in the mid to late 1600s got into a lot of trouble by speaking informally to nobility, as per our stance on radical equality, and that included them using "thou" instead of "you"
"how are you going " for "how are you doing" is the way we say it in German, but also in norwegian. Good example for how out languages were more similar the further you go back
In Norwegian it would most likely be "how is it going?" or, if directly translated, "how goes it?" (hvordan går det?) or "how is it going with you?", which directly translated is, "how goes it with you?" (hvordan går det med deg?).
Its absolutely fascinating how languages change over time you only have to jump 50 years sometimes to see a massive changes in the accent and pronouncation..
I might have misconstrued, but it may be worthwhile considering the the "y' " is not just a short form of ye, but the french pronunciation of 'y' - 'ee' (...mal y pense). I often had shouted at me as a boy "I'll give ee a thick ear if...".
Not just that - French's "y" as a particle, is related to Italian "ci" and galloitalic "ghe", meaning it was probably originally a consonant+vowel sequence; it could be that, at Bellot''s time, "y" was still pronounced [ji] or [i:] rather than [i] a in modern French
Like a bullet to the head I’ve just realised that growing up in Rotherham I used to hear “How do” (as a greeting) all the time between grown ups. Fantastic vid as always mate.
Very interesting. Would you please do a reading of William Caxton's Preface to Eneydos (1490), in the pronunciation of the time, where he discusses the difficulties of translating into English? Thank you very much!
Hello Simon. I have heard many of these sentences uttered by both rural dwellers and traveling people in Cumbria, so the language is still extant. The countryside is so conservative in nature and so steeped in heritage that some phrases are as enduring as the seasonal traditions, especially in this sometimes forgotten nook of furthest north-west England. I enjoy listening to your presentations and look forward to more of them.
Fascinating similarities with Dutch! de rekening - the bill Hoe is het met jou/je? - How are you? Disclaimer: I'm not a Dutch native speaker, I'm just familiar with it from frequent travelling to Flanders and NL, but I recognise some terms and a lot of the sentence structure. On a related note, Simon, could you look into the history of Dutch influence on English through East Anglia? I have read that, in 1578, before which Elizabeth I allowed a large number of Dutch-speaking refugees to settle in the area, around a third of the population of Norwich were Dutch speakers. I've also heard that, during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, Dutch culture and architecture seen as highly admirable. I wonder if this too entailed influence on English, particularly through commerce.