Shakespeare: Original pronunciation (The Open University) 

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HkO0Nk6V1_s.html

I have a friend who actually speaks like that on occasion and it's the most annoying thing

@Quentin Shock lol 😆

😁

It’s beautiful tho

Shakespeare sounds like county English then and now. BBC made English a bit robotic but it was in 20's-30's.

I know!! I loved it!!

Enviably awesome dynamic

Agreed. And it's apparent that they have such esteem for one another as professionals.

The father shows professionalism by wearing a suit for this, but the son is dressed as if his attire doesn’t matter

As a son, this also made smile

I love the look that passes over Ben's eyes as he tries to remain focused on his father's spiel that he's been listening to since childbirth. :D

Loved this Shakespeare nerd father-son duo! They would probably be having this same conversation even if nobody was around.

Best part of the video, that pair. Makes me miss my dad, who couldn't recite verse, but was my business partner and a fascinating bloke.

It’s cute. I like how they can work together

👍🏻👍🏻

So deep and so soothing

He’s also super handsome

ASMR

Yea record Shakespeare's books especially!!!!

I was gonna say Agird too Aryy

I thought Barbossa from PotC

Yeah, because Hagrid's and Barbossa's dialects are from approximately the same region: Somerset and Avon.

scots kept it alive

It sounds rather like some irish -and Yorkshire mix.

Shakespeare playd

He also needs to make an ASMR channel.

Its been done!

Yesssss

His voice is honey on french toast.

Irish... yeah seems like it.

Actually, it's neither. I can hear bits of Irish and bits of West Country in there, but there's bits of other accents in there too. Which makes sense really, London at the time was as much a melting pot as it is now, and people were also leaving London to go to other places; this is why we hear Irish and West Country, and why in some bits or OP performances you hear bits of Australian accents and US accents too.

@@eruantien9932 there were no British people in Australia until 1788. There were no British people in what is now the USA until 1607. Shakespeare died in 1613. There was no such concept at the time- let alone 'American' or 'Australian' accents, so what you're saying about those is completely irrelevant. My comment was actually a light-hearted dig because a lot of people in the UK have preconceptions about West Country people which don't particularly fit in with the thespian scene, and Irish people sound completely different to OP, so that leaves, well, West Country....

Yep, even if they do have trouble with 'open' vowels. The name of the city of Bath might well be correctly pronounced as it's spelled ('baath'), rather than the way those from the Thames Valley do ('barth'), but at least the latter can do the both the open and closed 'a' (along with the other vowels) required for both pronunciations.

Owen Palmer indeed good sir, sounds very West Country. You can hear West Country in Appalachia America and the islands off North Carolina as well.

You should search for that Eddie Izzard video where he buys a brown cow from a farmer in Friesland, using middle english

Well it's a Celtic language and Germanic. There's a lot of research now into how Germanic it really is, both Germanic and Celtic languages possibly come from the same Proto base and Celtic influenced Germanic languages a lot, but for a long time that's gone understated.

+TheTaterTotP80 English is a Germanic language with a few Celtic borrowings. It has a lot more French borrowings.

thats because old english is built upon german dumbass

Einarr Michaelsson Correct. English is Germanic with mostly French borrowings. If one goes back far enough in the language family tree, most, but not all, languages in Europe in recent centuries have a common ancestor in Proto-Indo-European. That was quite far back in human history.

Could you perhaps make a video of you reading it in said accent? I’d be curious to hear

I think Simon is doing things to our heads. 😁

l1233799 me too!

Me too!

As am I.

Likewise...

Cultures comedy, expression, irony, satire change entirely in languges especially when u go back hundreds of years

😂😂😂😂😂

Interesting, I agree. I think your comment puts it into words for me. It changes the whole tone tbh. Much better imo.

Well said...I’ve always felt the same.

@Bigdog Billdog yep, and very bawdy at times 😅 he knew what was popular

Also I could listen to this guy read me his grocery list and still fall in love lol

You should see drunk productions of Shakespeare and you'll see how grounded his works are

Ben already has several audiobooks including Shakespeare in OP.

@@beth9015 Awesome, thanks!

I knew Shakespeare could be bawdy but I had this reaction to Charles Dickens. We expect the Victorians to be so austere but he is hilarious.

He also invented a lot of phrases we use today like “wild goose chase”

A similar lofty ideal can be applied to Mozart.

absolutely! for the average person who didn't do music, they know mozart the music prodigy and a fancy composer. for musicians classically trained, we can't not have a laugh about it. "Leck mich im Arsch" (literally "Lick Me in the Ass")

well the bible has a lot of violent and raunchy stuff in it too

Good spot.

Joe Walker / in this instance, the word 'eye' is pronounced - aye, that would rhyme with symmetry - as should be pronounced - 'sim-e-tray' (short - e). | The 'ay' in pronouncing 'eye' are slurred together almost as if the 'a' can barely but noticeably be heard. Kind of either old-style cockney or Irish accent on the word 'eye'. | 'Symmetry', is not pronounced 'symme-try', but here, as well, the 'y' has an 'a' invisibly sitting on its left, and is also slurred in to the 'y'. ~Now read the lines again, pronouncing them in the above noted fashion. Hope this makes sense. | Again, 'aye' & 'simetray'. | The 'y' in symmetry is cut short, not dragged out. [Don't forget the accent when pronouncing]

I think by the time Blake was writing, we were in the modern English period. Shakespeare lived 200 years earlier.

@@badjemima It's called the Modern English period, but the most widely spread accent in London at the time was probably closer to OP than modern accents. Whether they still pronounced "eye" and "-y" endings exactly as in Shakespeare's day probably depended on the person, since some areas might have held onto the pronunciation longer than others. I *think*, though I'm not sure, that there might be some areas that still use a similar pronunciation. I don't know where Blake was from originally, but he lived in London for years, so quite possibly spoke with an OP like accent. Accents probably changed a bit slower thanks to there being no way to transmit the sound of human speech except actual contact.

Me too ! It stumped me in high school and college and for decades afterwards. It's jarring in modern English, but it's stellar in OP !!!

Well, you must be very smart. Give yourself a pat on the back.

You want to be upper class Irish?

VarietyGamer Actually yes, that would be awesome. I actually love Irish culture. My channel name is even made up of phonetic Gaeilge.

No one will ever know what in hell you are talking about. :-)

Never mind, he will suffer the consequence, not you. Who cares???

Problem is just that most people wont understand you.

Freitag T15 lol

Freitag, yer pushin me ovar the fockin loin!

"You're warlike, Harry... Wait..."

LMAO

I’m a what?

Yes, and scholars studying his work claim to find Warwickshire dialect words here and there. But he wrote his plays for a London audience in the first instance and the actors were probably mostly Londoners too. He could not have afforded to be too Warwickshire, I suspect.

Given the difficulties of travel in those days, I suspect most of them were from the southern half of England at least. In "A Dead Man In Deptford", Anthony Burgess has Londoners trying to lynch a man from northern England because they believe he is Flemish. Looking at Shakespeare's contemporary playwrights and where they came from, Marlowe was from Canterbury, Ben Jonson was born in London though his family reputedly originated in the Borders near Scotland, Thomas Nashe was from Suffolk and Gabriel Harvey from Essex. In fact Shakespeare's origins lay further north than most of them, and he may well have had a distinctive accent in London terms.

"Even Americans, perhaps." LMAO!! I love us Americans, but I have to admit that we have the least expressive, least interesting of all the major English-language accents!!! :P

Good point; the peripheral (read: non-general) accents of American English seem to be far more expressive! Unfortunately I'm "cursed" with having the blandest, most Midwestern of American accents-but don't get me wrong: I completely appreciate sounding like the likes of George Clooney, et al. ;)

Did Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs" have a Shakespearian accent?

Michael Berthelsen you have nothing to apologize. It's fucking amazing accent! It really shows what means to put something out of context. It sterilize the plays in a way, methinks...

I know this was 3 years ago, but... “Pardon the language”... Boomer spotted

@@CelestialExility I'm 32, dipshit.

@@CelestialExility A boomer in his prime.

He needs to read audio books.

@@2HRTS1LOVE He probably does...

jack johnson I mean, it also helps that he's a handsome dude

That's so specific but I know exactly what you mean lmao

Trekkie 135 he seems like a really nice guy. Both of them, actually.

I agree. I’ve been to several of his lectures (first in about 1996, last in 2019 I think). He is incredibly knowledgeable but also very friendly and approachable. He’s got an infectious enthusiasm for his subject, and he really brings it to life. An amazing scholar and teacher.

Thank you! I knew I wasn't crazy

iOnlySignIn Robert Newton as Long John Silver

lol

+iOnlySignIn LOL I was just about to say that!

yayyy

Yow shud tri it inna brummie accent bab

colin Paterson lol!!!

Personally I think it sounds a bit German. It shows the roots of the English language more than todays modern pronunciation

Matilda S I’m from England I don’t think it sound like German, it sounds like Old English

He really sounds like he should VO for Dark Souls or something. It would fit right in.

"Fillum" for "film" (or similar) also appears in Irish.

It does, but my great grandad was still calling film "Fillum" in the 1930's.And he was from Shropshire-not too far from Warwickshire or the Midlands ,where the OP accent derives in this video.

Also, Fire = "Fiyer" in the song "Fire" by the Ohio City Players. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1xqMY8UAGgg.html

Fiyer is Yorkshire as well. Depending on how rural the speaker is. I've heard fire pronounced like that in Holmfirth. To me OP sounds like a mix of Yorkshire and Norfolk/Suffolk accent. Often archaic pronunciation and older words have been preserved in more isolated parts of the country. I used Thee and Thou as a child as did my peers. I only dropped it when I had speech therapy to overcome a lisp. Although Thou was pronounced Thar and thy self was thissen.

Joke... why do Shakespearean actors sound like pirates? Because they ARRRRRRR

A pirates favourite letter isn't Rrrrr . They loves the Cccc !!!

Most modern Americans essentially sound like pirates. It’s all rhotic. Indeed, only a few American dialects are non-rhotic, most obviously Boston, and this is regarded by Americans as sounding very funny. Whereas of course in the UK it’s the rhotic accents that seem comedic.

No. This is one dialect and accent of the many accents that exists now in Britain and did then.

Americans don't sound like Pirates at all. Nor West Country (except for that West Country region in North Carolina where they still sound British and somewhere in Virginia with the same). Rhoticism =/= Pirates. There's more to the accent and dialect than that.

Exactly my reaction to hearing it as well!

More like the West country

***** Christ, stupid people are quick to jump to the sexuality "insults." Do you kiss your mum with that mouth?

Kids, stop taking the internet so seriously. The sooner you stop, the sooner the trolls will go back under their bridges, m'kay?

+SQUAREHEAD Kinda makes sense really . Modern english accents came into being with immigration caused by large industrial cites (London,Birmingham,liverpool, Newcastle ect). discounting North Yorkshire and Cumbria (who have been more isolated and culturally distinct until recent times) the only other relativity rural areas (south west, east anglia, welsh border) Have maintained an accent similar to this one

+Robert Anderson The immigration factor that you cite accounts only for those regional urban accents that you mention. But what does that have to do with the content of this video? They are comparing Shakespeare's accent with modern Received Pronunciation, also known as Oxford English or BBC English, which is an accent that has evolved since Shakespeare's day for purely domestic reasons, with no input from immigrants. And, yes, SQUAREHEAD is right, in a sense. The modern West Country accent is one of the most conservative accents in England. People across much of England - with the exception of the north - would have spoken like this in the 16th-17th centuries.

+SQUAREHEAD Of course, everyone was a pirate then ;)

+channelnw I was referring to Industrial migratation (irish and whatnot rather than a UKIP approach) . didn't know that about American thanks :)

+DieFlabbergast I was just comparing why Norfolk and the south westen accents are so similar and how it links back to the content of this video

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HkO0Nk6V1_s.html

+Finnegan Hartross It does, doesn't it. Like Hagrid from harry potter

+Finnegan Hartross Gloucestershire was my first thought when I heard it.

Tasteful Tuna lmao same

We're you watching prosthetic penis videos like me lol

benjamin woodrow I don't believe so.

Not to worry then

This is what happens if you shout on a stage for years.

He could read me the phone book any ol' time!

I'm a what?

Stephen Day Sounds like hagrid when he does the voice

Haha I know mate, I was doing the response from Harry in the Gary's Mod video.

Stephen Day Cheers

Because Robbie Coltrane is Scottish, and the OP sounds a lot like a Scottish accenr.

Except it's called the Globe theatre if it's in London dear.

Man, consider yourself lucky: I have an exam tomorrow morning for my undergrad Elizabethan Shakespeare class with the most boring professor of all If I had your professor maybe I would've read the plays a bit more!

My twelfth grade English teacher danced around the waste basket as she chanted "Double double toil and trouble fire burn and cauldron bubble".

Ass is spelled the spelled the same way whether you're British or American.

Aysar, my Shakespeare prof played all the parts, too, with great gusto! His classes were the most popular in the department!

Yes, this explains the North American accents very well.

Side note : In german language Messner means ,church servant' , the man , who helps the priest ( Heilige Messe/ holy mess).

***** Yes, and that's exactly why English is the global language and continues to evolve and improve naturally, whereas Spanish and German have been rotting away for centuries and will likely disappear within the next decades.

Enter a name here Exactly why? Spanish and German are easier to learn and comprehend, my friend. In so many ways.

Enter a name here English is the global language because "it won" two world wars.

***** First of all, I'm not your friend. Secondly, you addressing me with "you guys" reveals what a presumptuous and superficial individual you are (try to say that in Spanish or German, fronted gerund.) I was born in Germany (I'm fluent in German) and I speak some Italian and French. I know a thing or two about linguistics, which prompts me to doubt your ability to have a serious discussion on the subject of languages given your outrageous statements. Normally I wouldn't have responded, however your reply is simply too delicious to ignore. You've got it TOTALLY backwards. Your embarrassing bias conceals from you the fact that English not only has by far the largest vocabulary of all languages but is also the shortest and most easily comprehensible. Spanish and German aren't more complex. Their grammar is just more complicated in tense, gender and case markings, all of which are obsolete in English. The more primitive the language, the more complicated its grammar. The proto-indoeuropean language from which almost all languages from Iceland to India descend had the most complicated grammar. It was continuously simplified so that you get Koine Greek and Latin around the first century B.C. before finally arriving at English. Ludicrous language regulation in Spain, Germany and France are the exact reason why these languages don't change, even though linguists agree on a descriptive, not prescriptive approach. One ought to record what the people are saying, not dictate what the people should say. We would still communicate with grunts and barking if language had never changed. (Hey, do you have three different if-clauses in Spanish, too?) English dropped most of that complicated grammar in favor of brevity and a focus on more complex distinctions in meaning. That's why English is the easiest to learn at the start but gets the most difficult once you arrive at idiomatic expressions, tense and aspect. Every linguistics professor I've ever spoken to agrees. Spanish, Italian, French and German may have a shitload of irregular verb forms and case markings you have to slavishly memorize but English possesses true diversity and challenge in meaning. Spanish isn't the third most important language, it has merely the third largest population of native speakers. In the scientific community, German, Italian and Japanese are all more important than Spanish. Furthermore I disagree on the point that most native Spanish speakers are more proficient in their language than the English ones (and it's not the English language's fault that you express yourself so poorly). Clearly you are mistaken since the vast majority of Spanish speakers reside in developing countries whereas the largest population of native English speakers, Americans, also happen to comprise the world's largest middle class as well as its largest and most advanced scientific community. Why would the former be smarter than the latter on average? Your evidence to the contrary must be anecdotal. Besides, I would in turn wager my life that even a fairly uneducated native English speaker could still express themselves about a number of issues more briefly, precisely, adequately and with more wit than even a highly educated native Spanish or German speaker with their lame, antiquated, out-of-touch vocabulary and 800-year-old grammar.

***** It's nice of you to admit your defeat. I knew you'd be afraid to read my reply. By the way. English has more second-language speakers than Mandarin plus it is the international language of science and technology. That's what makes it the global language. And in an increasingly globalized society, other languages including Spanish and German will perish (especially since Europe's population is rapidly declining.) My argument still stands. Yours is unfounded and biased, muchacho.

Visit Bristol, we all talk like this 😝

Sounds like Bristolian 😉

If it be that I cannot smook nor sware, alas! Then I am well and truely fook'd.

There's 2 accents in Newfoundland. One's Irish and the other West Country. We immigrated to Canada from Somerset in England. Most English people in Canada at the time were from either the north or London and Canadians couldn't figure out our accent. They thought we were Newfoundlanders. :)

I was led to understand that Shakespearean English resembled that spoken today in Newfoundland.

+Fernando Batista Whether he speaks RP or OP, he makes me melt. I bet he sounds great even in Cockney, Brummie, or Geordie.

I know right!?

Quite dreamy. And he doesn't hurt the eyes either.

+Fernando Batista I think he eats gravel. I want to give him water and a cough drop. Also, I feel that my manhood has been challenged.

I think it moved.

what accent do you have? received pronunciation?

SteveTwoTheO I think he means he doesn't have the Somerset accent. And he may have the neutral received pronunciation accent which can be found all over the country.

SteveTwoTheO Where did that aggression come from mate? I don't have a typical regional West Country accent and have a neutral English accent. Why is that hard for you to comprehend and resort to calling me a fucking moron?

***** I think he thought you meant that you didn't have any accent at all. Which is commonly thought of because you don't notice your own accent.

That's exactly what I thought; I'm from Bristol!