Does anyone know of any recordings of whole productions performed in a Reconstructed pronunciation of Shakespeare’s period? I have heard of the Globe story before, but the recordings are scanty. Failing a long comprehensive recording, the next best thing would be a book with IPA, does anyone have any leads?
Well, I don’t know of any such recording, but much of the original pronounciation can be gleaned from the text through analysis of scansion and historic rhyme. This method is by no means complete, and has an element of subjectivity.
For an example of historic rhyme, look at Sonnet 35. There are two examples - “compare/are” and “advocate/hate”. In Shakespeare’s time, these words rhymed, though they do not rhyme in today’s speech.
Now, I’m not a native speaker, but I always though advocate and hate did rhyme. How to pronounce advocate?
When ‘advocate’ is a verb, they do rhyme. When it’s a noun, the last ‘a’ is degraded to a schwa, you hardly hear it at all. I don’t know why. In tis last case it’s a violation of the spelling rule which governs the pronunciation of vowel + consonant + e.
But then, English is an example, like Linear B, of a language using a writing system which is almost completely unsuitable for it. One horrible result of this is that we often have to guess at how to pronounce unfamiliar words and especially names.
Sorry, GlottalGreekGeek did not write that, Timeodanaos did. Someday I’ll get the hang of using quotes in my replies.
Bob
That reminds me of a book I just came upon recently. I’ve been trying to translate some Babrius, and in looking through Google Books I came upon a version of English fables, which states, among other things:
The purpose of this publication is to awaken attention to the Spelling Reform movement, and also to shew the application of the “English Demotic Alphabet.”
Now, I never heard of the Spelling Reform movement, nor the “English Demotic Alphabet,” but they’ve got the rules in the book and most of the fables written out that way, new additions to the alphabet and all. I can only assume this idea was developed to address the problems with written English, particularly for young children just learning to read. Given that the book was written in 1879, I suspect that the movement lost its momentum, but it’s interesting to look at. The book is:
and the explanation of the writing system begins on what Google calls page 31.
“What father or teacher will not gladly hail and earnestly work for this great boon to education,—this powerful machine for diffusion of knowledge.”
Well, so much for that idea…
Thanks, Ed.
Fables by Aesop. I love it! A progressive tutorial in spelling reform. How do you find this kind of stuff?
Regarding spelling reform, check out these for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform
Cheers,
Int
Spelling reforms have been proposed many times since English spelling came to a halt in the 15th century, and they always fail. I ask any supporters to consider this, whose dialect will we use as the basis for the reform? If you want to spell things phonetically then the spelling is only going to mirror one dialect and the others will have the same problem. Spelling reform also obscures etymology, which isn’t that important, but I still like it anyways.
As for the OP, here are some things I found (sadly no audio):
http://www.amazon.com/Pronouncing-Shakespeares-Words-Dale-Coye/dp/1579580815
http://books.google.com/books?id=MqQKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1176&lpg=PA1176&dq=shakespeare+restored+pronunciation&source=web&ots=Fy8eG3BRCX&sig=foLKEMo6Njv0LospK8UMY4nx_vo#PPR1,M1
Hearing Old English like Beowulf or Middle English like Chaucer read in the original is a treat, too. I’ve never been able to find it, but my Anglo-Saxon professor played us a tape recording of T.S. Eliot reading “The Seafarer” in the original. I’d love to hear that again…
Well, at this point, the easiest reform would be to just convert to IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), or a simplified IPA. But when phonetic pronunciation really matters (such as when comparing the features of different dialects of English), we already have IPA. Of course, we could just have multiple spellings of each word, to reflect the local dialect (much as in Ancient Greece).
Me, I don’t think it’s worth the effort of trying to transliterate all of the existing material in English, as a lot of stuff will be missed and people will start having to learn the archaic spelling to read it (not unlike how Japanese have to study obsolete Kanji to read anything before the 20th century).