Re: Hamlet - Just Booked My Tickets

On 25 Oct, 05:39, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"solar penguin" <solar.peng...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On 25 Oct, 01:24, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"solar penguin" <solar.peng...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On 25 Oct, 00:05, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To a foreigner all working class English accents sound the same.

Are you including yourself as a foreigner, even though you were born

No.

Then why did you imply that Geordie and Scouse sound identical, in a
previous thread?

I did not. IDIOT. I said to a foreigner they do.


As you would say, "POPPY***!"

I've just been and had look at that previous thread ("Only 16 Months
Of RTD To Go...", posted in March) and you said that modern Scouse and
Geordie sound exactly the same as Shakespearean English, implying that
they also sound exactly the same as each other too.

At _no_ point did you ever say it was only foreigners who thought
this. Go and check Google Groups yourself if you don't believe me.


If so, are you really saying that you can't tell the difference
between Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston's voices? It must've

I am talking about people like Americans who as the history of this
groups
shows could not tell the difference between Billie Piper and Christopher
Eccleston's voices.

Well, so what? I can't tell the difference between so-called
different American accents. That doesn't mean _everyone_ in the USA
has "exactly the same" accent as Shakespeare!

IDIOT! I never said Americans has the same accent as Shakespeare. I said
they change every vowel into E.


That's right. You also said that modern Scouse and Geordie sound
exactly the same as Shakespearean English. That is nonsense, just as
my similar example above is exactly the same sort of nonsense. That
was the whole point!

WHOOSH! London isn't in the Midlands either. Or didn't you see the
"just like hers" at the end? That should've been a big clue that I
was being sarcastic.

IDIOT!


Yes, you must've been an idiot if you couldn't see the "just like
hers" at the end! I hate to keep saying it, but "Re-read for
comprehension."

For example is the "local pronunciation" supposed to be London or
Stratford? And when you "read Shakespeare in the original spelling"
how can you even be sure the correspondence between written letters
and pronounced sounds was the same then as now? If the written

Because back then the alphabet was taught phonetically just like it
was
taught when the Greeks invented it and has always been taught in
Greece.

But how can you be certain that it was taught phonetically using the
_same_ phonemes that are associated with the letters nowadays? (e.g.

Because Dionysios Thraikos wrote a treaties on it and how it was
pronounced

Dionysios Thraikos wrote a treatise on how the English alphabet was
pronounced by working class people in the 16th century...?

We were talking about Greek you IMBECILE!

No we weren't. We were talking about about reading Shakespeare "in
the original spelling." I asked, "And when you 'read Shakespeare in
the original spelling' how can you even be sure the correspondence
between written letters and pronounced sounds was the same then as
now?" It's there in the quoted material just above this paragraph.

Then you started rambling on about Greeks, "Because back then the
alphabet was taught phonetically just like it was taught when the
Greeks invented it and has always been taught in Greece."

Now I'm not totally convinved that the Greeks did "invent" the English
alphabet. It sounds as unlikely as your theory that a Greek king
called Saasi-Tepi invented the anus before he was even born. (Just
for the record, is there anything you _don't_ think was invented by
Greeks?)

But let's assume, for sake of argument, that you're right. Let's
assume that Greeks _did_ invent the English alphabet. And we'll also
assume that it "has always been taught in Greece" in exactly the same
way ever since then. This still tells us nothing about the way it was
taught _in Shakespearean England_. Nothing at all.

(BTW I feel sorry for those poor Greek students if Greece's methods of
teaching English as a foreign language really haven't changed in the
past 1,000 years. Just imagine all those Greek tourists coming over
here, speaking with Chaucerian pre-shift vowels, and unable to tell
the difference between "i/j" and "u/v/w".)

Dionysios Thraikos wrote in 100 BC. I even gave you a link, but obviously
you did not follow it.


I followed it, but it was just stuff about ancient Greek, and _didn't_
answer the question, "When you 'read Shakespeare in the original
spelling' how can you even be sure the correspondence between written
letters and pronounced sounds was the same then as now?"

and it corresponds exactly to modern Greek pronunciation.

Sixteenth-century working-class English pronunciation corresponds
exactly with modern Greek pronunciation...?

Stop trying to discuss things you know absolutely NOTHING about. IDIOT!


And you know SOMETHING about 16th-century working-class English
pronunciation???

Or are you off on some irrelevant red herring about ancient Greek
again, instead of actually answering the questions put to you?

It is impossible
for Dionysios Thraikos pronunciation guide to apply to any other way of
pronunciation and still make sence.

http://www.enthymia.co.uk/Greek.htm

I see nothing about 16th-century working-class English pronunciation
on that web page.

That's because its about ancient and modern Greek. IDIOT!


So why did you post the link? Why do you keep bringing Greeks into
this?

Newsflash: Shakespeare wasn't Greek.

Or is this the latest, most extreme anti-Stratfordian position?
Forget Bacon. Forget the Earl of Oxford. The latest candidate for
being William Shakespeare wasn't even English, but some foreigner from
the far end of the Mediterranean. And _that's_ why he thought Scouse
and Geordie accents sounded the same! All foreigners do. Yes, it all
makes perfect sense now!!!

Oh, no, wait, it doesn't...

So, don't bother introducing more Greeks unless you can explain why
they're relevant to the question of what Shakespeare sounded like.

The 18th-century vowel shift mentioned in Andrew's post should have
had an effect on the pairing of phonemes with letters.)

Vowel shift? Nobody in the island or Britain who speaks English has ever
spoken using the same vowel sounds. They have always pronounced them
differently. There was no vowel shift.

I refer you to Andrew's post above, "You're ignoring the accent shift
of the 18th Century that (in most parts of England) lengthened vowels,
whatever 'class' you belonged to."

IRRELEVANT.


How is it irrelevant to the question of how English has changed since
Shakespeare's day?

Andrew must've thought it was relevant, otherwise he wouldn't have
posted it in the first place. I think it's relevant, otherwise I
wouldn't have quoted it.

And it's certainly more relevant than your ancient Greeks! It's in
the right country for a start.



See alsohttp://www.io.com/~dierdorf/ww-43.html, "well into the 18th
Century sea and tea were usually pronounced 'say' and 'tay', as yea

POPPY***. Sea was pronounced Se-ah. There was NO ay sound. A was pronounced
as a distinct alpha sound. Tea was pronounced Te-ah. Same reason. If they
had been pronounced otherwise they would have been spelled say and tay, but
the were not, meaning that the "a" was pronounced "a" as in alpha.

That's putting the cart before the horse. You're pre-supposing that
your theory about phonetic pronunciation is true, and then applying it
to the words 'sea' and 'tea' in an attempt to assert that it's true.

But I don't trust circular arguments. And since you haven't yet
managed to prove to my satisfaction that it's true, I'm going to be
sceptical about your claims about the historic pronunciation of those
words.

Have you get any actual, factual evidence, similar to the 'tea'/'obey'
rhyme which the article cites? Probably not, knowing you.

still is. For example, in 1720 the meticulous Alexander Pope rhymed
'tea' with 'obey', and that sound is still heard in Ireland."

More BULL***. You are correct that it is pronounced correctly in Ireland
but you are WRONG about how it was pronounced.

Not me. I'm just quoting the article on someone else's website.

The Irish said Te-ah, as I
have explained above. Obey was pronounced O-be-yh.

Once again, you're pre-supposing that your theory about phonetic
pronunciation is true, and then applying it to the words 'tea' and
'obey' in an attempt to assert that it's true.

But if it were true, why did Pope rhyme 'tea' with 'obey'? Doesn't
that imply that they rhymed even though 'te-ah' and 'O-be-yh' don't?

In future look at how the
words are spelled and apply the original values of the Greek-Latin alphabet
and say the words phonetically pronouncing EVERY letter.

You still haven't given me any reason why I should. And there are
many reasons why I shouldn't. For a start, "the original values of
the Greek-Latin alphabet" will be wrong for Shakespeare's era because
they won't take into account the first Great Vowel Shift in English,
in the late Middle Ages.

It was a shift in written dialect,
similar to the Greek poets switching from Epic Doric to Attic Koine when
Attic became dominant.

Is there such a thing as "written dialect" in English? And how do you
lengthen a vowel in writing but not in pronunciation? More
importantly, why would you want to do it in the first place?

IDIOT! The people in the South of England have a completely different set of
vowel sounds than those up north, or Narf as they would say in Cornwall or
Norf as they would say in Norf London. Vowels were not lenthened after the
18th century. A different dialect become dominant.

Isn't that saying the same thing, but in different words? It's like
that optical illusion where the picture can be a vase or two faces,
depending how you look at it, but there's no one correct viewpoint.

From the point of view of the people in England at the time, it
would've been a case of one dialect spreading and becoming more
dominant. But from the point of view of the outsiders, there was a
shift in the average vowels in the average English dialect.

Two different ways of looking at the same thing. Sometimes one way
will be more useful, sometimes the other one will. But neither of
them is the only way of looking at it.

To
find out what English originally sounded like, pronounce each letter
that
appears in every word when you say it and remember that A is alpha, E
is epsilon, I is iota, O is omega, and U is ypsilon.

That's a red herring. You can't know how a working-class person in
16th-century Stratford would have pronounced those Greek letters.

But I know how a Greek would have pronounced them

Why do you keep bringing up Greeks? We are discussing Shakespearean
working-class English accents. Greeks are irrelevant!

IDIOT! Greeks are completely relevant. The alphabet which you are using
today was invented by the Greeks.


Was this before or after they invented the anus? ;)

Seriously, the modern English alphabet has evolved a very long way
from its Greek ancestor. It has matured into its own, unique
identity, drawing on the past but not restricted by it.


The fact that the spelling was standardised on "English", "same", etc.
gives us some clue as to how the literate, educated upper classes
would have pronounced the words at the time. They fixed the spelling

Which is NOT they way they are pronounced today by the upper classes.

Well, what do you expect? The upper classes traditionally have more
money, leisure time, and opportunities to travel abroad on Grand
Tours, meet foreign royalty, study other languages, etc. It's not
surprising that their accents, exposed to all these outside
influences, evolved faster than written language could keep up.

But that doesn't change the fact that the standardised spelling gives
us some clue as to how the literate, educated upper classes would have
pronounced the words at the time that spelling was standardised in
English.

WRONG. It does no such thing. What you have is two options. Either the
codification of English was based on how the common working classes spoke up
north or the upper class and southerners all changed their accents at the
same time in the space of only 200 years.

Why are those our only two options? You can always find more options
if you use a bit of imagination.

Only
the accent of the working class sounds anything near to the way the words
are spelled.

Ignoring the fact that there isn't only one "accent of the working
class", you're right that working class accents would evolve much
slower, since peasants who never left their villages or towns in
generations wouldn't be exposed to as many new outside influences.
And it's no surprise that what little evolution there is will be
towards pronouncing written English, since as literacy starts to
spread, that will be the first major outside influence they're exposed
to.

It is more likely that the south of England which was influenced more by the
Franks who invaded than the north changed its accent over the past 1000
years whereas the northerners who were more isolated from the Franks have
not changed their accent much at all.

There might be some truth in that, if you ignore the fact that the
Normans weren't Franks, and that the North (especially the north-east)
had many more Viking invasions than the South did, leading to many
Viking loan words in northern dialects, and which must have had an
effect on northern pronunciation.

But even if there's some truth there, it's still not very useful in
finding out how English has changed since Shakespeare's day, since
there haven't been many Frankish (or Norman or Viking) invasions
recently.

Remember for 3000 years since the time
of Homer Greek has always been pronounced in exactly the same way with only
minor changes

The people at sci.lang and soc.culture.ancient all disagree. And even
if it were true, it still wouldn't be relevant, since the Greek
language _not_ changing has got nothing to do with the English
language changing since Shakespeare's day.

such as in the diphthongs, and even these were pronouced as
the were today in the time of Dionysios Thraikos 2100 years ago. This is
because the Greeks have stayed an ethnically homogenous people unaffected by
foreign occupation because of their religion for over 3500 years. Whereas
the English are a mixture of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Frankish Normans.

Let's assume for sake of argument that your theory's true, and that
the Greeks really have remained an ethnically pure, backwards-looking,
stagnant race, unwilling to embrace change or look outwards to the
modern world (which would certainly explain a lot). But even if that
were true, it still has _nothing_ to do with how English regional
accents have changed since Shakespeare's time.

BTW I see you've now replaced "exactly the same" with "near to".
Since you're now making the point I've been making all along, does
that mean you admit I was right, and it's not necessarily exact?

NO.


So is it "exactly the same" or is it just "near to"? Which is it?
Make up your mind!

If it's "near to", then you're probably right. If it's "exactly the
same", you're probably wrong. So which is it?

according to their own pronunciation. It tells us nothing about
individual regional working-class accents of the time.

Yes it does. It tells us how the words were originally pronounced if the
spellings are now pronounced correctly using original Greek-Latin values
for the letters,

Why would we want to use Greek-Latin values if we're not speaking
Greek or Latin?

IDIOT! See above.


And you've said _nothing_ above to explain why Greek-Latin letter
values will give the correct results when speaking Shakespearean
English, since they don't take into account the first Great Vowel
Shift in English which had already occurred before Shakespeare's time!

.

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