English Versus Itself.

[UltraBudgie]

Still going with the theory that Great Vowel Shift that occurred in the 15th century was the result of the Mandela Effect, where a large portion of the population transited or merged from one timeline to another. Everyone started pronouncing English differently in large areas with no discernible cause. It was because they always pronounced it that way, actually. Back then the system or "prime mover", which avoids unambiguous residue, did not need to be so subtle in its mechanization.

[Oldcarpy2]

I'm from Sarf London but been in darkest Wiltshire for 30 odd years.

So I'm a bit "Oi! Oi! Savelloy!  Moi luvver.  Gerroff moi laaaand".

[BeTheGoddess]

I should have clicked on this thread when I first saw it, I thought it was about soccer (or football in England). 

There are "people" here in Australia who can not even pronounce Australia correctly, and yet still claim to be patriots. If they truly loved the country they could at least pronounce it correctly.

Class, education and region influence our accents. And this is why "Standard English" or "BBC English" was formed, for it was much more accessible to have people with Oxbridge accents on BBC rather than regional accents. 

Some of these dumbfk Australians think I'm English, it fkn shits me no end. 

[Oldcarpy2]

I should have clicked on this thread when I first saw it, I thought it was about soccer (or football in England). 

There are "people" here in Australia who can not even pronounce Australia correctly, and yet still claim to be patriots. If they truly loved the country they could at least pronounce it correctly.

Class, education and region influence our accents. And this is why "Standard English" or "BBC English" was formed, for it was much more accessible to have people with Oxbridge accents on BBC rather than regional accents. 

Some of these dumbfk Australians think I'm English, it fkn shits me no end. 

[Video: https://youtu.be/ks7RrRFd-20?si=rRA6tvQ04QDaV71q]

Do you speak 'Strine?  

[BeTheGoddess]

Do you speak 'Strine?  

I fkn hate that shit, its a manufactured "nationalist identity' that is easy to push on migrants and their children by this "no true Scotsman" approach.

I love being told to fk off back to where I come from by eastern europeans.

[ArMaP]

Still going with the theory that Great Vowel Shift that occurred in the 15th century was the result of the Mandela Effect, where a large portion of the population transited or merged from one timeline to another. Everyone started pronouncing English differently in large areas with no discernible cause. It was because they always pronounced it that way, actually. Back then the system or "prime mover", which avoids unambiguous residue, did not need to be so subtle in its mechanization.

I wonder how they know how words were pronounced back then.

[Vermilion]

This is an entertaining way to read the BBC news…

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

[ANNEE]

In the SE US/North Carolina to Florida we have the Gullah Geechee people. Descendants of slaves. They speak a unique Creole language called Gullah. 

The song Kumbaya comes from the Gullah Geeche.  Kumbaya means “Come by here” in the Gullah language, originating from a heartfelt African American spiritual plea for God's presence, . . .

[UltraBudgie]

I wonder how they know how words were pronounced back then.

It's an interesting study. I think the best evidence comes from poetry — what people thought rhymed.

Middle English vowels are pronounced as in modern European languages. Consonants are like those in Modern English, except that gh in a word like knight is pronounced as in Yiddish loanwords like chutzpah, and there are no silent consonants: the k in knight is pronounced. (So that "the knights who say Ni!" are really the knights who say k'neeght.)

This sounds simple, but there are several obstacles to pronouncing Middle English properly. The most obvious is that there are no native speakers living, and our pronunciation guides involve guesswork and sometimes controversy. Was a in a closed syllable pronounced as in Old and Modern English (mat, bat, cat), or, under French influence, as in a romance language? Still, the guesses are mostly well educated. Before dictionaries petrified spelling, spelling was phonetic, and some pronunciation changes can be tracked by spelling changes. Middle English mus (pronounced moose) became Modern English mouse.

Another obstacle is the unexplained phenomenon called the Great Vowel Shift, which affected all long vowels in English. During the fifteenth and succeeding centuries, all long vowels in English were raised and fronted, in other words were moved forward and higher in the mouth. ME grene (pronounced grain) became MnE green; ME name (pronounced nahm) became MnE name; ME bone (pronounced bawn) became MnE bone; ME boot (pronounced boat) became MnE boot. High vowels became diphthongs: ME mus (pronounced moose) became MnE mouse; ME write (pronounced wreet) became MnE write. The shift is still ongoing. The noun route re-entered English from French in the twentieth century with the pronuncation root, but in some uses and speakers the pronunciation has changed to rout.

A third obstacle is final -e. During the process of inflectional decay, the vowels in inflectional syllables were reduced from full vowels (-o, -a, -u) to -e. By Chaucer's time, these final -e's were probably silent in normal speech, as in Present Day English, but still pronounceable (as ə, like the a in sofa) in poetry. In this edition, pronounced final -e's are identified by the diaresis: My purpose is, ere that I partë fro ye.

A fourth obstacle is that in Middle English manuscripts, u is used for both u and v word internally (honour, but also loue) and v is used for both letters word initially (verray, but also vsed). Modern editors typically use modern spellings for these letters, and this edition does the same.

https://www.agnesscott.edu/english/troil...guage.html

Also some Chaucer here: https://cb45.hsites.harvard.edu/middle-e...nd-grammar

[BeTheGoddess]

In the SE US/North Carolina to Florida we have the Gullah Geechee people. Descendants of slaves. They speak a unique Creole language called Gullah. 

The song Kumbaya comes from the Gullah Geeche.  Kumbaya means “Come by here” in the Gullah language, originating from a heartfelt African American spiritual plea for God's presence, . . .

There are around 150 traditional language groups in pre-European Australia, and one that slightly differs is the language of the Bardi people at Cape Leveque (One Arm Point) in our lovely north west.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardi_people