Old Norse and Earlier English Pronunciation

[Paul Johnston]

I once saw a production of a 15th century play by a company based in
Cambridge, England, who used, not 15th century pronunciations but
early 17th century ones--in fact, since it was a crowd of historical
linguists going out to this performance, which grammarian the company
used as the source--Wilkins, Hodges or Robinson? (We settled on
Hodges).  The result was intelligible--kind of SW English or Irish-
sounding, but you could make it out.
Since I'm analyzing the dialect of the York plays myself, I'd be very
interested in what pronunciation  model dramatists would use.  If
they really used a York pronunciation of say, 1475, since the final -
e's are gone and the Great Vowel Shift's early stages are completed,
the result would probably only be a bit less intelligible than our
early 17th Standard model, or real Shakespearean pronunciation.  The
Northern vocab might be a problem.

Paul Johnston
On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:43 PM, Dave Wilton wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Old Norse and Earlier English Pronunciation
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Regarding Chaucer and Shakespeare, part of the difference in
> replicating
> authentic pronunciation is undoubtedly in performance vs. reading.
> Shakespeare, the plays at least, have a long tradition of
> performance to
> large audiences. Not only are there many different actors, not
> intensely
> trained in authentic pronunciation, who must deliver the lines, but
> there
> are audience members who must understand the pronunciation without
> too much
> difficulty. Reading, even aloud to small groups, is a very
> different setting
> that is more conducive to replicating the original pronunciation.
>
> It would be interesting to find out how medieval dramas, such as
> the Chester
> cycle, are performed nowadays. Are medieval pronunciations insisted
> on? The
> audience for these more obscure works is, of course, more select
> and more
> likely to appreciate the finer points of authentic pronunciation
> (as far as
> that can be determined,  of course) than that of Shakespeare. The long
> tradition of Shakespearian performance may make those works
> exceptional.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of
> Robin Hamilton
> Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 11:10 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Old Norse and Earlier English Pronunciation
>
> I'd agree with Ron that this is entirely to the point of the list.
> Amy has
> raised lots of fascinating issues in her posts on this thread.
>
> Picking up Ron's point about Wyatt, and Chaucer and the Gawain
> Poet, could
> this be carried further?  Chaucer, read in a contemporary voice, is
> intelligible, but the rhythms of his poems are completely lost; the
> Gawain
> Poet (at least to me) is writing in what is virtually a foreign
> language;
> but Langland, from exactly the same period, *can be read in a
> contemporary
> voice without (too much) loss.
>
> To which of these three writers would Old Norse correspond, for a
> contemporary Icelandic speaker?
>
> Robin
>
> From: <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
>
>> Thanks to Amy for the information. I have removed her "OT"
>> designation
>> because this is clearly a linguistic topic and relates directly to
>> issues
>> involving the rationale for pronunciation of written texts.
>>
>> Do the Icelanders give some rationale for reading 13th century
>> texts with
>> 21st century pronunciations? If not, then it must be so obvious to
>> them
>> that they do not even think of giving a rationale--any more than
>> we see a
>> need for giving a rationale for not reading 16th century texts
>> (Wyatt, for
>> example) with 16th century pronunciations, even though the actual
>> differences might well be viewed as considerable to a philologist.
>>
>> I have been told by Icelanders who are also medievalists that the
>> early
>> texts are linguistically quite accessible to living Icelanders.
>> These are
>> highly literate people, of course. But my guess is that, even
>> though the
>> phonological differences may seem considerable to a nonnative
>> speaker,
>> they seem relatively minor to an Icelander; insisting on the earlier
>> pronunciations would seem trivial and distracting. I can't imagine
>> teaching "Fairie Queen" and insisting on 16th century
>> pronunciations. They
>> probably feel the same way about classic ON literature. Moreover,
>> given
>> that the texts range in age from 900-1400, there is no single
>> pronunciation set that would be completely accurate for all texts.
>>
>> It does seem a bit odd that I could not imagine teaching Chaucer or
>> "Gawain" and not insisting on authentic pronunciations. This may
>> be in
>> part simply tradition. But I suspect that the tradition is rooted
>> in the
>> native speaker perception that Chaucer spoke the equivalent of a
>> psycholinguistically different language, whereas Shakespeare just
>> spoke
>> "funny" English.
>>
>> Stage presentations, of course, have their own constraints: a tug
>> of war
>> between intelligibility and verisimilitude. Historically accurate
>> renderings of Shakespeare would be even less intelligible.
>> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
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