![]() There is thus no such thing as a single "Elizabethan" or "Shakespearean" pronunciation. ![]() (A few Englishes, such as the older West Country Newfoundland accent, have this in many other words like sea, beak and leak.) The merged forms of Sociolect 2 and the residual highfalutin yet low-vowelling pressure of Sociolect 3 allows the /e:/ of DEAL to hang on in a few words ( great, steak, break etc.) long enough to merge with the PAIL/PALE vowel instead of the PEEL vowel. For a while the DEAL vowel retains two alternate pronunciations. Sociolect 3 seems to hold the day as the high English literary norm through most of the rest of the century, but remains in competition with Sociolect 2, and by the 18th century both have begun to give way to Sociolect 1. What was Shakespeare's pronunciation? And when during his own lifetime shall we place "his pronunciation?" Cranky orthoepists give evidence that Sociolect 3 still has conservative stragglers resisting the PAIL/PALE merger for a century. Between Shakespeare's birth and his death, just looking at these four vowels, the sounds of English rearranged themselves in different ways in three different accents all available to him in a single city. The times they were a-changing and the language did too. Sociolect 3 has merged PAIL/PALE raised it to /pɛ:l/, while at the same time raising DEAL up to /de:l/, and keeping them both distinct from PEEL /pi:l/. Sociolect 2 has merged and raised PAIL, DEAL and PALE as /e:l/. Sociolect 1 is on its way to raising DEAL to /di:l/, merging it with PEEL, and raising PALE/PAIL to /pe:l/. The three Englishes of London continue their developments in broadly similar but distinct directions. Sociolect 3 keeps them (mostly) distinct with /pæ:l pæil dɛ:l~de:l pi:l/ for PALE, PAIL, DEAL, PEEL. Sociolect 2, has merged PAIL and DEAL into /ɛ:l/ while keeping PALE distinct as /pæ:l/. Sociolect 1 has merged PALE and PAIL into /pɛ:l/ while raising DEAL to /e:l/. They can very tentatively, generally and probably over-simplistically be identified with particular social groups. There is good evidence for at least three (actually probably four) different sociolects in the city at this point. PALE is being, or has already been, raised to /pæ:l/ in innovative speech. These words are pronounced /pa:l pail dɛ:l pe:l/ There are uncertainties about what happened when, but I've tried to be vague enough to accommodate them. This chronology (mostly) takes after Roger Lass in the Cambridge History of the English Language, Jeremy Smith's Sound Change and the History of English, and Dick Leith's Social History of English. For the benefit non-linguists, I've linked all my IPA transcriptions to audio files of me articulating the sounds. To illustrate the problems of reconstructing "Elizabethan English" pronunciation, here is a brief and rough and stupifyingly simplistic history of the pronunciation of the words PALE, PAIL, DEAL, PEEL in London English over the course of two and a half centuries. (2) the linguistic attitudes of our time.Īs David Crystal reminds us on his website, Shakespeare's London was in great flux, linguistically as much as anything else. ![]() (1) the linguistic situation of Shakespeare's time Talking about "Shakespearean pronunciation" is complicated by two factors: But I have many things to get done and only so much time. At some point I intend to recombine it all into a more structured post. It ended up taking the form of a series of loosely connected ruminations on this or that aspect of the reconstruction. When I began this post, it was as a simple diagnosis of what was wrong with David Crystal's ill-named "original pronunciation".
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