Accents

It has been noted that the actor playing Henry Tudor, in the egregious "Historyonics" yesterday, had a Welsh accent, despite the original being 75% English.
Ray Winstone (Henry VIII on ITV in November) was on "Millionaire" on Saturday night and described his part as "The Godfather in tights". When someone on Ceefax's CHATTERBOX criticised Winstone's accent, another writer said that HIS accent should also have been Welsh.
Just to remind anyone who needs it: The Chopaholic's great-grandparents were 6 English, 1 French and 1 Welsh. Not even qualified to represent Wales at rugby or soccer!

--- In , "Stephen LARK"
<smlark@t...> wrote:
> It has been noted that the actor playing Henry Tudor, in the
egregious "Historyonics" yesterday, had a Welsh accent, despite the
original being 75% English.

75% English and having lived in an entirely French-speaking
environment since the age of 14. Apparently he remained most at ease
speaking French for the rest of his life.

Marie

75% English and having lived in an entirely French-speaking
environment since the age of 14. Apparently he remained most at ease
speaking French for the rest of his life.



Just a little question. Seeing that Henry VII liked to push his Welsh background could he actually speak Welsh?

Helen



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> It has been noted that the actor playing Henry Tudor, in the egregious
> "Historyonics" yesterday, had a Welsh accent, despite the original being 75%
> English.
> Ray Winstone (Henry VIII on ITV in November) was on "Millionaire" on Saturday
> night and described his part as "The Godfather in tights". When someone on
> Ceefax's CHATTERBOX criticised Winstone's accent, another writer said that HIS
> accent should also have been Welsh.
> Just to remind anyone who needs it: The Chopaholic's great-grandparents were 6
> English, 1 French and 1 Welsh. Not even qualified to represent Wales at rugby
> or soccer!

Hi Stephen.
My mother is three quarters Welsh and is always very upset that 'that
ghastly man should call himself Welsh. He wasn't.' :-)
Paul

Marie wrote: 75% English and having lived in an
entirely French-speaking environment since the age of
14. Apparently he remained most at ease speaking
French for the rest of his life.

***

Could that be evidence in support of my notion that
Henry Tudor's version of English history owes a lot to
Louis XI's disinformation team?

Marion






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--- In , marion davis
<phaecilia@y...> wrote:
> Marie wrote: 75% English and having lived in an
> entirely French-speaking environment since the age of
> 14. Apparently he remained most at ease speaking
> French for the rest of his life.
>
> ***
>
> Could that be evidence in support of my notion that
> Henry Tudor's version of English history owes a lot to
> Louis XI's disinformation team?
>
> Marion

I think so. I actually meant to come in on that one. I don't know
about the Breton court, but I suspect that it was a miniature copy of
French government practices. And then, of course, HT was in France
itself. I've no doubt he came to the throne of England not so much
deliberately copying Louis XI, as with French attitudes and outlook
which he had imbibed naturally over the years, probably not even
totally aware of how radical his way way of doing things was.
Not that that excuses it.

Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
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hello everyone, I am new to the goup and am very pleased to belong to it, I have a question, you will probably think that it is stupid one, but here goes, it is said that Henry Tudor live most of his life in France and that he was "very low done" on the inheritance claim for the Throne of England, when he lived in France in who's house was it and where did he get the money to live on from as I assume he lived well...was it relatives???? I would appreciate any information on this and how was he able to raise an army to invade England, who paid them and who were they...English or French....I find it all very confusing.........thank you ......Liz

mariewalsh2003 <marie@...> wrote:--- In , marion davis
<phaecilia@y...> wrote:
> Marie wrote: 75% English and having lived in an
> entirely French-speaking environment since the age of
> 14. Apparently he remained most at ease speaking
> French for the rest of his life.
>
> ***
>
> Could that be evidence in support of my notion that
> Henry Tudor's version of English history owes a lot to
> Louis XI's disinformation team?
>
> Marion

I think so. I actually meant to come in on that one. I don't know
about the Breton court, but I suspect that it was a miniature copy of
French government practices. And then, of course, HT was in France
itself. I've no doubt he came to the throne of England not so much
deliberately copying Louis XI, as with French attitudes and outlook
which he had imbibed naturally over the years, probably not even
totally aware of how radical his way way of doing things was.
Not that that excuses it.

Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢
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Liz wrote: hello everyone, I am new to the goup and am
very pleased to belong to it

***

Welcome Liz!

***

I have a question ... it is said that Henry Tudor live
most of his life in France and that he was "very low
done" on the inheritance claim for the Throne of
England, when he lived in France in who's house was it
and where did he get the money to live on from as I
assume he lived well...was it relatives????

***

Here are two quotes from the sources I have read most
thoroughly:

"Henry's foreign exile was not an easy experience for
him, and he was to tell the chronicler Commynes that
he had spent most of it as a captive or a fugitive,
confined to a series of Breton castles, sometimes
remote and gloomy. It was a peripetetic existence, in
which Tudor grew into young adulthood under close and
watchful supervision. Henry VII remains unique among
the kings of England for his upbringing: not as a
prince or son and heir of a great noble, but as a ward
and then a penniless courtier." (Michael K. Jones,
"Bosworth 1485; a psychology of a battle," p. 115)

"...adverse winds landed them in Brittany, and they
were duly received into the protection of Duke Francis
II. There they were destined to stay for thirteen
years." (S.B. Chrimes, Henry VII, p. 17)

Because Edward IV tried hard to regain custody of
Henry and Jasper Tudor from Francis II, Francis II
decided it was more profitable to keep his "guests"
than to return them to England. He used Henry and
Jasper Tudor as pawns in his efforts to stay
independent of Louis IX. Francis II separated Henry
and Jasper Tudor from each other and all other English
contacts, and they lived under constant surveillance
by Breton servants. He moved them from castle to
castle. When Richard III became king, Francis II
threatened to turn Henry and Jasper over to Louis XI
unless Richard sent 4-7,000 archers to help Francis II
fight Louis XI. (My summary of S. B. Chrimes, Henry
VII, pp. 17-20)

After Louis XI's death, Francis II fell ill, one of
his officials agreed to turn Henry over to Richard,
and Henry just managed to escape to France. The
minority government of Charles VIII then used Henry
Tudor as a pawn in their own efforts against Richard
III. (My summary of M.K. Jones, "Bosworth 1485," pp.
123-127)

Years later the French said they regretted putting
Henry VII on the throne of England. (S. B. Chrimes,
Henry VII)

***

... how was he able to raise an army to invade
England, who paid them ...

***

"Toward the end of their stay in Brittany, Henry and
his supporters had been in the receipt of a monthly
stipend in recognition of their rank and status. The
French were not moved to continue this and in its
place made a one-off payment, with conditions. Tudor
was in no position to decline. He would play his part
as a pretended son and heir of the Lancastrian Henry
VI." (Michael K. Jones, "Bosworth 1485," p. 125)

"Then, in the summer of 1485, [Henry Tudor's] French
backers did seem to rouse themselves with a firm
pledge of men and money for the invasion. ... But at
the last minute, the promised funding was withdrawn as
his hosts' political focus shifted and Tudor was no
longer a significant part of their strategy. In May
they had extolled Tudor's claim as being the most just
and apparent of anyone living. By July he was pawning
his household possessions to survive. A month is a
long time in politics." (Michael K. Jones, "Bosworth
1485," p. 131)

I remember the phrase "a great good sum of money" used
to describe funds that Margaret Beaufort sent to Henry
before he invaded. But I haven't found the source for
that, and I'm not sure if she sent that before Henry's
attempt in 1483 or before his invasion in 1485. When
it turns up, I'll try to remember to post it.

"Henry VII responded positively to all appeals from
the coterie of supporters in 1485, and his deep
gratitude remained until his death in 1509. By then
one might have expected all such claims on the King's
patronage to have been made. But as he drew up his
last will, Henry set aside funds for any man who had
risked his life for him at Bosworth. The King cared
so much that he took steps to ensure no possible
suitor could ever go empty-handed. ... Henry well
knew the extreme danger his men had faced." (Michael
K. Jones, "Bosworth 1485," p. 184)

***

and who were they...English or French....

***

"... die-hard Lancastrian Earl of Oxford" and a
"precarious coalition" of "French backers" who left
Henry Tudor to "scrape together what manpower he could
on the strength of his hard-won loan." (Michael K.
Jones, "Bosworth 1485," p. 131) ... "trained pikemen
from a recently disbanded war camp in Normandy ...
drilled in the Swiss fashion ..." The captain of the
mercenaries was a Savoyard, Philibert de Chandee.
"Even with this mercinary contingent, the army that
set sail on 1 August 1485 can have numbered scarcely
more than 1,000 men." (Michael K. Jones, "Bosworth
1485," pp. 131-132)

"...a polyglot band, an assorted mix of nationalities:
English exiles, French, Bretons, Scots and Welsh,
along with those who had joined it for their own
reasons as it entered England ... The majority were
mercinaries, paid for the duration. ... (Michael K.
Jones, "Bosworth 1485," p. 162)

If you can get a copy of Michael K. Jones, "Bosworth
1485," I believe you'd find it worth reading. I
waited until I could see it for myself before I bought
it, and I think it was worth the wait and the price.
You may not agree with Jones' theories, but he gives
you a lot to think about. S. B. Chrimes' study of
Henry VII is very informative, but not as readable or
controversial. If you want to go further with this,
I'd recommend reading that, too.

Hope this helps,

Marion










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Just for the sake of fiction, what dialect and accent would Richard and his family have, rounded to the nearest modern equivalent?

Normally I would just write everything in American English (my native tongue), but I want it to contrast with the main character of the book, who is an American. (It's a Bangsian fantasy.)

Thank you!
Megan

Megan

There's no simple answer to this one, or the simple answer is we don't know.

In the 15th century what we now know as Standard English did not exist, in either written or spoken form, and people spoke in various regional dialects, which were often mutually unintelligible. Richard was born in Northamptonshire, spent his early life moving around between his parents' propertires, and then spent a period in Warwick's household, though whether he was mainly at Middleham or followed Warwick around is unclear. He may have emerged from all this with a particular dialect and accent; he may not. I spent my first 18 years moving about because my father was in the RAF; though both my parents were Standard English speakers, I started out with a Teesside accent (not unlikely Geordie), because that was where we were when I learned to speak, lost it on the next move, picked up and lost various other bits of regional accent, and emerged a Standard English speaker.

My solution, for what it's worth, has been that my various northern characters speak 'the northern tongue' among themselves, but the more upper crust will switch to 'court English' when among southerners, 'court English' for this purpose being a sort of lingua franca. I don't do much in the way of phonetic spelling to indicate accent or dialect, though I do when my hero, a Northumberlander, is talking to his groom, a Lowland Scot. Most of the time I just throw in the odd dialect word.

Hope that helps

Ann

Megan Lerseth <megan_phntmgrl@...> wrote:
Just for the sake of fiction, what dialect and accent would Richard and his family have, rounded to the nearest modern equivalent?

Normally I would just write everything in American English (my native tongue), but I want it to contrast with the main character of the book, who is an American. (It's a Bangsian fantasy.)

Thank you!
Megan






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The Canterbury Tales, Piers Ploughman* and Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight are almost contemporary in authorship (late fourteenth century),
but represent three different dialects. There has been speculation that
speakers from various parts of the country would be almost
unintelligible to each other.

Also of interest is how novelists from different eras portray medieval
utterances. In the 1906 novel, /*Sir Nigel*/, the author, Arthur Conan
Doyle has a character say, "Alas, alas! Brother John is dead, and the
holy subprior is dead, and the Devil is loose in the five-virgate field!"

Somewhat less convoluted, but equally elevated, is this passage from
Bernard Cornwell's recent novel, /*Harlequin*/, in which a character
says, "I would just talk to you, madame...of the complaint you made to
the Earl of Northumberland. You fouled my honour, lady."

Cornwell allows his characters to swear, a practice that would not be
allowed in Victorian/Edwardian novels. Also, Cornwell's characters are
also more inclined to speak in sentence fragments than are Doyle's
characters.

*As I was running this post through spellcheck, it was suggested that
the word 'ploughman' be replaced by the word 'snowplough'. So my day is
off to a roaring start.



A LYON wrote:
> Megan
>
> There's no simple answer to this one, or the simple answer is we
> don't know.
>
> In the 15th century what we now know as Standard English did not
> exist, in either written or spoken form, and people spoke in various
> regional dialects, which were often mutually unintelligible. Richard
> was born in Northamptonshire, spent his early life moving around
> between his parents' propertires, and then spent a period in Warwick's
> household, though whether he was mainly at Middleham or followed
> Warwick around is unclear. He may have emerged from all this with a
> particular dialect and accent; he may not. I spent my first 18 years
> moving about because my father was in the RAF; though both my parents
> were Standard English speakers, I started out with a Teesside accent
> (not unlikely Geordie), because that was where we were when I learned
> to speak, lost it on the next move, picked up and lost various other
> bits of regional accent, and emerged a Standard English speaker.
>
> My solution, for what it's worth, has been that my various northern
> characters speak 'the northern tongue' among themselves, but the more
> upper crust will switch to 'court English' when among southerners,
> 'court English' for this purpose being a sort of lingua franca. I
> don't do much in the way of phonetic spelling to indicate accent or
> dialect, though I do when my hero, a Northumberlander, is talking to
> his groom, a Lowland Scot. Most of the time I just throw in the odd
> dialect word.
>
> Hope that helps
>
> Ann
>
> Megan Lerseth <megan_phntmgrl@...> wrote:
> Just for the sake of fiction, what dialect and accent would Richard
> and his family have, rounded to the nearest modern equivalent?
>
> Normally I would just write everything in American English (my
> native tongue), but I want it to contrast with the main character of
> the book, who is an American. (It's a Bangsian fantasy.)
>
> Thank you!
> Megan
>
>
>
>
>
>
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--- In , Megan Lerseth
<megan_phntmgrl@...> wrote:
>
> Just for the sake of fiction, what dialect and accent would Richard
and his family have, rounded to the nearest modern equivalent?
>
> Normally I would just write everything in American English (my
native tongue), but I want it to contrast with the main character of
the book, who is an American. (It's a Bangsian fantasy.)



For what it's worth, and speaking as an editor, a little dialect goes
a long way. A very long way. Too much can make a a reader crosseyed
and impatient. Take Mark Twain's Mississippi River novels for
example, or a more recent case, for me, was Ellis Peter's A Bloody
Field Near Shrewsbury...I couldn't wait for Percy to get killed
because I coulda nae put up with his accent much longer.

Perhaps a better course is the one several others have suggested --
showing differences in speech by means of vocabulary and syntax, with
an occasional bit of dialect or regionalism for color.

Katy

I agree entirely. One reason I got impatient with Diana Gabaldon's Jacobite saga was her attempts at writing dialect; not very well - with their frequent 'ye ken' her characters appear more Lowland than Highland. In fact, mother-tongue Gaelic speakers (and Welsh speakers) quite often speak Standard English with little if any accent at all (or they did when English was taught properly in schools).

Ann

oregonkaty <[email protected]> wrote:
For what it's worth, and speaking as an editor, a little dialect goes
a long way. A very long way. Too much can make a a reader crosseyed
and impatient. Take Mark Twain's Mississippi River novels for
example, or a more recent case, for me, was Ellis Peter's A Bloody
Field Near Shrewsbury...I couldn't wait for Percy to get killed
because I coulda nae put up with his accent much longer.
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Thanks for all the advice. Generally, I've been using "court English" and the occasional "sen" for self and "gerroff".

Actually, it's been hard of keeping those words out of the mouths of my American characters, because I am that Anglophile one encounters every once in a while who uses such (stereotypically, I know, but it's hard to pick up on any true British-isms where I live) words as dodgy, bloody, ruddy, fab, brilliant, bollocks, berk, bilge, filch, muck-up, naff, and virtually anything I could pick up from the episodes of Monty Python they air over here. My friends often think I'm trying to talk like a pirate.

Out of curiosity, what do we Americans sound like to the Brits on this board?

A LYON <A.Lyon1@...> wrote:
I agree entirely. One reason I got impatient with Diana Gabaldon's Jacobite saga was her attempts at writing dialect; not very well - with their frequent 'ye ken' her characters appear more Lowland than Highland. In fact, mother-tongue Gaelic speakers (and Welsh speakers) quite often speak Standard English with little if any accent at all (or they did when English was taught properly in schools).

Ann

oregonkaty <[email protected]> wrote:
For what it's worth, and speaking as an editor, a little dialect goes
a long way. A very long way. Too much can make a a reader crosseyed
and impatient. Take Mark Twain's Mississippi River novels for
example, or a more recent case, for me, was Ellis Peter's A Bloody
Field Near Shrewsbury...I couldn't wait for Percy to get killed
because I coulda nae put up with his accent much longer.
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Probably like American pirates But then, what do I know? I'm a Canuck.

Megan Lerseth wrote:
> Thanks for all the advice. Generally, I've been using "court English"
> and the occasional "sen" for self and "gerroff".
>
> Actually, it's been hard of keeping those words out of the mouths of
> my American characters, because I am that Anglophile one encounters
> every once in a while who uses such (stereotypically, I know, but it's
> hard to pick up on any true British-isms where I live) words as dodgy,
> bloody, ruddy, fab, brilliant, bollocks, berk, bilge, filch, muck-up,
> naff, and virtually anything I could pick up from the episodes of
> Monty Python they air over here. My friends often think I'm trying to
> talk like a pirate.
>
> Out of curiosity, what do we Americans sound like to the Brits on
> this board?
>
> A LYON <A.Lyon1@...> wrote:
> I agree entirely. One reason I got impatient with Diana Gabaldon's
> Jacobite saga was her attempts at writing dialect; not very well -
> with their frequent 'ye ken' her characters appear more Lowland than
> Highland. In fact, mother-tongue Gaelic speakers (and Welsh speakers)
> quite often speak Standard English with little if any accent at all
> (or they did when English was taught properly in schools).
>
> Ann
>
> oregonkaty <[email protected]> wrote:
> For what it's worth, and speaking as an editor, a little dialect goes
> a long way. A very long way. Too much can make a a reader crosseyed
> and impatient. Take Mark Twain's Mississippi River novels for
> example, or a more recent case, for me, was Ellis Peter's A Bloody
> Field Near Shrewsbury...I couldn't wait for Percy to get killed
> because I coulda nae put up with his accent much longer.
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> card United kingdom hotel
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Megan-

I'm an American author and one of those who use British-isms occasionally too. I used British-isms such as bollocks, rotter, old (as in old mum, old chap) etc., to make my British characters speech sound more authentic.
I didn't use these words in excess, yet I get constant questions from my American readers about these words. My advice to you, if your audience is going to be mostly American - leave the British-ism's or give a quick explanation of them in a 'notes' section prior to chapter 1.
A couple months ago, I made an appearance at a local book club, and one reader was offended that my British Characters called a 102 friend "Old Mum. She didn't realize that "old" is sometimes a British term of endearment.
If you're dead set upon throwing in an accent, a while back, the History or Discovery channel had a six part program called the "History of the English Language". I found the program which covered the middle ages extremely informative; they gave many examples of middle-English accents from all the various regions of England. I couldn't tell you which accent Richard would have spoke, but the show would probably be a big help to you. Perhaps you can find a copy for sale on the History channel website.

Sheri Vangen-Ratcliffe
www.sherivangen-ratcliffe.com

Megan Lerseth <megan_phntmgrl@...> wrote:
Thanks for all the advice. Generally, I've been using "court English" and the occasional "sen" for self and "gerroff".

Actually, it's been hard of keeping those words out of the mouths of my American characters, because I am that Anglophile one encounters every once in a while who uses such (stereotypically, I know, but it's hard to pick up on any true British-isms where I live) words as dodgy, bloody, ruddy, fab, brilliant, bollocks, berk, bilge, filch, muck-up, naff, and virtually anything I could pick up from the episodes of Monty Python they air over here. My friends often think I'm trying to talk like a pirate.

Out of curiosity, what do we Americans sound like to the Brits on this board?

A LYON <A.Lyon1@...> wrote:
I agree entirely. One reason I got impatient with Diana Gabaldon's Jacobite saga was her attempts at writing dialect; not very well - with their frequent 'ye ken' her characters appear more Lowland than Highland. In fact, mother-tongue Gaelic speakers (and Welsh speakers) quite often speak Standard English with little if any accent at all (or they did when English was taught properly in schools).

Ann

oregonkaty <[email protected]> wrote:
For what it's worth, and speaking as an editor, a little dialect goes
a long way. A very long way. Too much can make a a reader crosseyed
and impatient. Take Mark Twain's Mississippi River novels for
example, or a more recent case, for me, was Ellis Peter's A Bloody
Field Near Shrewsbury...I couldn't wait for Percy to get killed
because I coulda nae put up with his accent much longer.
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--- In , Megan Lerseth
<megan_phntmgrl@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks for all the advice. Generally, I've been using "court
English" and the occasional "sen" for self and "gerroff".
>
> Actually, it's been hard of keeping those words out of the mouths
of my American characters, because I am that Anglophile one
encounters every once in a while who uses such (stereotypically, I
know, but it's hard to pick up on any true British-isms where I live)
words as dodgy, bloody, ruddy, fab, brilliant, bollocks, berk, bilge,
filch, muck-up, naff, and virtually anything I could pick up from the
episodes of Monty Python they air over here. My friends often think
I'm trying to talk like a pirate.


I'd think that any words picked up from Monty Python would be at
least 20 years out of date, and quite possibly far more -- I think
they used some words specifically because they were already stale
cliches.

Slang usually has a short shelf life.

As for what Richard and his contemporaries would sound like to us --
incomprehensible, I'd imagine.

What do Americans sound/seem like to Brits? I'm not sure I want to
know -- I'm thinking of Arthur Conab Doyle's take on Americans. In
his stories they were always either cowboys or Chicago gangsters,
except in The Dancing Men, when they were both.

Katy

I've never heard anyone come out with 'old mum' but I can confirm that 'old' is often used in an affectionate sense over here. However, the nuances can be quite subtle - 'old girl' or 'old boy' has a different sense from 'old woman' or 'old man' - the former involves affection and possibly admiration. I happily describe a friend of mine who is an 86-year-old widowed lady as 'a great old girl' and when she is having a difficult time in her life as 'the poor old girl', but never as an 'old woman'.

For a man to address his pals as 'old boy' or 'old chap' is distinctly dated nowadays, although in her final years my mother (born in 1929) used occasionally to address me as 'old girl'. The only person I knew well who used 'old boy' was the great old girl's late husband, a fairly upper crust retired naval commander, who used to address his son as 'old boy' and occasionally even the cat!

As to speech for medieval characters I get very irritated at writers who lard their dialogue with 'tis' and 'for certes'. I prefer to have them talking rather formal conventional English - avoiding present-day slang - and put in the occasional 'Christ's Wounds!' or similar, in the same way as I will put in the odd regional dialect word (the Earl of Warwick comes out with the odd 'owt' or 'nowt' to indicate a Yorkshire accent).

Ann

Sheri Vangen-Ratcliffe <ladyrat1442@...> wrote:


I'm an American author and one of those who use British-isms occasionally too. I used British-isms such as bollocks, rotter, old (as in old mum, old chap) etc., to make my British characters speech sound more authentic.

I've always imagined Richard spoke much like myself, i.e.
identifiably from Yorkshire, but without the rather harsh pseudo-
Lancastrian vowel noises of the West Riding.
This is probably incorrect however, as I'm pretty sure the
aristocracy regarded themselves as a class (and, until very recently
perhaps, a race) apart.
I would expect that they all spoke much alike with very little trace
of regional accents. It was less than a century, after all, that the
English magnate class had spoken Norman French as their first
language.

-- In , oregonkaty
<no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> --- In , Megan Lerseth
> <megan_phntmgrl@> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for all the advice. Generally, I've been using "court
> English" and the occasional "sen" for self and "gerroff".
> >
> > Actually, it's been hard of keeping those words out of the
mouths
> of my American characters, because I am that Anglophile one
> encounters every once in a while who uses such (stereotypically, I
> know, but it's hard to pick up on any true British-isms where I
live)
> words as dodgy, bloody, ruddy, fab, brilliant, bollocks, berk,
bilge,
> filch, muck-up, naff, and virtually anything I could pick up from
the
> episodes of Monty Python they air over here. My friends often think
> I'm trying to talk like a pirate.
>
>
> I'd think that any words picked up from Monty Python would be at
> least 20 years out of date, and quite possibly far more -- I think
> they used some words specifically because they were already stale
> cliches.
>
> Slang usually has a short shelf life.
>
> As for what Richard and his contemporaries would sound like to us --

> incomprehensible, I'd imagine.
>
> What do Americans sound/seem like to Brits? I'm not sure I want
to
> know -- I'm thinking of Arthur Conab Doyle's take on Americans. In
> his stories they were always either cowboys or Chicago gangsters,
> except in The Dancing Men, when they were both.
>
> Katy
>

I'm not sure. I have certainly read more than once that the accents we now associate with the aristocracy were a product of the nineteenth century, not least because of the advent of large numbers of public schools, to which pupils went from all over the country. Before that, the only public schools were Eton, Harrow and Winchester, which could educate only a relatively small proportion of the upper classes, so most upper class boys were educated locally and did not have the same opportunity to lose their regional accents. Also, according to what I have read, there was less snobbery about regional accents than there came to be in the nineteenth century and which persists today (there was a report only 3-4 weeks ago which claimed that people with Liverpool accents were thought to be the least trustworthy in Britain, while those with moderate Scottish accents were thought among the most trustworthy).

Ann

theblackprussian <theblackprussian@...> wrote:
I've always imagined Richard spoke much like myself, i.e.
identifiably from Yorkshire, but without the rather harsh pseudo-
Lancastrian vowel noises of the West Riding.
This is probably incorrect however, as I'm pretty sure the
aristocracy regarded themselves as a class (and, until very recently
perhaps, a race) apart.
I would expect that they all spoke much alike with very little trace
of regional accents. It was less than a century, after all, that the
English magnate class had spoken Norman French as their first
language.

As much as I love the thought of Richard having a Yorkshire accent,
I think it highly unlikely he did. The nobility would not have
picked up the regional accent of those who below them socially.

Also when it comes to the issue of peppering your historical novel
with "archaic" language, I think its a case of less is more. The
most annoying thing about Sharon Penman's novel was the pseudo-
medieval language....the lads be dead...and the overuse of did to
convey the past tense. Very few of us can say with accuracy how
people spoke then. If I were writing a historical novel I would use
modern English, while avoiding slang.

Angela



--- In , "theblackprussian"
<theblackprussian@...> wrote:
>
> I've always imagined Richard spoke much like myself, i.e.
> identifiably from Yorkshire, but without the rather harsh pseudo-
> Lancastrian vowel noises of the West Riding.
> This is probably incorrect however, as I'm pretty sure the
> aristocracy regarded themselves as a class (and, until very
recently
> perhaps, a race) apart.
> I would expect that they all spoke much alike with very little
trace
> of regional accents. It was less than a century, after all, that
the
> English magnate class had spoken Norman French as their first
> language.
>
> -- In , oregonkaty
> <no_reply@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In , Megan Lerseth
> > <megan_phntmgrl@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Thanks for all the advice. Generally, I've been using "court
> > English" and the occasional "sen" for self and "gerroff".
> > >
> > > Actually, it's been hard of keeping those words out of the
> mouths
> > of my American characters, because I am that Anglophile one
> > encounters every once in a while who uses such (stereotypically,
I
> > know, but it's hard to pick up on any true British-isms where I
> live)
> > words as dodgy, bloody, ruddy, fab, brilliant, bollocks, berk,
> bilge,
> > filch, muck-up, naff, and virtually anything I could pick up
from
> the
> > episodes of Monty Python they air over here. My friends often
think
> > I'm trying to talk like a pirate.
> >
> >
> > I'd think that any words picked up from Monty Python would be at
> > least 20 years out of date, and quite possibly far more -- I
think
> > they used some words specifically because they were already
stale
> > cliches.
> >
> > Slang usually has a short shelf life.
> >
> > As for what Richard and his contemporaries would sound like to
us --
>
> > incomprehensible, I'd imagine.
> >
> > What do Americans sound/seem like to Brits? I'm not sure I
want
> to
> > know -- I'm thinking of Arthur Conab Doyle's take on Americans.
In
> > his stories they were always either cowboys or Chicago
gangsters,
> > except in The Dancing Men, when they were both.
> >
> > Katy
> >
>

--- In , A LYON <A.Lyon1@...>
wrote:
>> As to speech for medieval characters I get very irritated at
writers who lard their dialogue with 'tis' and 'for certes'.


Someone described this sort of writing as "godwottery."


I prefer to have them talking rather formal conventional English -
avoiding present-day slang - and put in the occasional 'Christ's
Wounds!' or similar, in the same way as I will put in the odd regional
dialect word (the Earl of Warwick comes out with the odd 'owt'
or 'nowt' to indicate a Yorkshire accent).


Another method for indicating formal conventional English for your well-
born, well-educated characters is to avoid contractions in their speech.

And do be extra careful of speech anachronisms. The Oxford English
Dictionary is a great source of when a word was first used.

And speaking of anachronisms, the most seemingly obvious and
safe "facts" can trip a writer up. The other day I saw a Western movie
in which a dancehall girl was singing "Danny Boy." The Old West in
America was a very short period of time, roughly from the end of the
Civil War (1866) to about 1900. "Danny Boy" was written in response to
a contest to put words to the beautiful old tune "Londonbderry Aire"
and was first published in 1913.

Katy

Out of curiosity, what do we Americans sound like to the Brits on this board?


Er -it varies enormously.

Some of you could pass as English. Some of you couldn't. I think that's as far as I'd go. Some English people criticised Gwyneth Paltrow's accent in _Emma_ but I think she did a good job. Tony Curtis in _Black Shield of Falworth_ was about 3000 miles west of an English accent. The American accent can be quite subtle, however - it depends on the individual.

On the original question, I think it might just be possible, given the willingness to conduct PhD style research, to figure roughly what Richard sounded like. However for all practical purposes it's impossible.

I recall an article a few years back in the Ricardian where the Earl of Suffolk's letters were analysed (this earl being one of Richard's nephew) and the author suggested that Suffolk probably had a yokel-style Suffolk accent.

If you want a guess, Midlands English with some strong Yorkshire inflexion and dialect words. However, the writing of speech in historical novels is a very fine art - if in doubt I would run it past an experienced editor. I must admit, I hate books with badly rendered accents, och aye tha noo, look you.

Brian

oregonkaty <[email protected]> wrote: Another method for indicating formal conventional English for your well-
born, well-educated characters is to avoid contractions in their speech.
I agree entirely. My aristocrats also tend to use longer sentences and longer words.

And do be extra careful of speech anachronisms. The Oxford English
Dictionary is a great source of when a word was first used.

And speaking of anachronisms, the most seemingly obvious and
safe "facts" can trip a writer up. The other day I saw a Western movie
in which a dancehall girl was singing "Danny Boy." The Old West in
America was a very short period of time, roughly from the end of the
Civil War (1866) to about 1900. "Danny Boy" was written in response to
a contest to put words to the beautiful old tune "Londonbderry Aire"
and was first published in 1913.

And in a First World War novel a bunch of drunken soldiers were singing 'I belong to Glasgow', not published until the 1920s.

Ann









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> I'm not sure but I heard that Tangier Island accent is one of the oldest
American Accents that has mostly remained unchanged for close to 400 years.

>
This youtube comment says the BBC thinks so:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E

Cheersn
Mishka

...........................................
http://www.mishkajaeger.com

I don't know about Tangier Island but Okricoke (sp?) Island off North Carolina has always been held up as a place where traces of the original accents and dialect of the 16th century settlers survive. I believe there are recordings made by researchers of those speech patterns. I tend to agree that with the advent of radio and television
much of the "old" tongue has modified. Okricoke has many visitors now and that has to impact current speech.
However, my husband and I visited Newfoundland 2 years ago and the residents up at L'Anse aux Meadows speak one way to the tourists and another way between themselves....and that sounded very Yorkshire to me!

L.M.L.,
Janet

--- In , "J. T," <treenbagh@...> wrote:
>
> However, my husband and I visited Newfoundland 2 years ago and the residents up at L'Anse aux Meadows speak one way to the tourists and another way between themselves....and that sounded very Yorkshire to me!


I used to say that I couldn't visit the UK because I didn't speak the language, but I did, in 2007, and everyone was very kind about my tin ear for accents (I know, I was the one with the accent) and my propensity for trying to hail cabs from the wrong side of the street.

Katy

Check out this link for the Okracoke dialect -

http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~berling/Lang_seb.htm

Seems the islanders settled there in 1700s, so a little later than Tangier.
The 'oi' sound for long 'i' is typical 17th/18th century English, and of course survives in the English West Country, Dublin, etc. The sound in Richard's day would have been ee, developing to 'i(as in bit)-ee' by 1500.


I don't know where the ancestors of the families of l'Anse aux Meadows came from. According to the Wiki article, Newfoundland English is generally derived from English West Country & south of Ireland:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_English

I have looked aq bit at the history of the trappers and fishermen of the areas round Newfoundland's Fogo Island by way of a family history offshoot. Most of them came from the New Forest (West Hampshire) - something the historians have only just twigged - and East Dorset. A nice little dialect term I came across in a Newfoundland document of c.1800 was "swile cruncheons". 'Swile' is Newfoundland for seal - probably derives from SW English dialect, and 'cruncheon' is an old Hampshire word for a snack (yes the Native peoples chopped up their seal meat into handy portions).

Marie

--- In , "J. T," <treenbagh@...> wrote:
>
> I don't know about Tangier Island but Okricoke (sp?) Island off North Carolina has always been held up as a place where traces of the original accents and dialect of the 16th century settlers survive. I believe there are recordings made by researchers of those speech patterns. I tend to agree that with the advent of radio and television
> much of the "old" tongue has modified. Okricoke has many visitors now and that has to impact current speech.
> However, my husband and I visited Newfoundland 2 years ago and the residents up at L'Anse aux Meadows speak one way to the tourists and another way between themselves....and that sounded very Yorkshire to me!
>
> L.M.L.,
> Janet
>

I have never been to Okracoke but my grandson's grade school class took a trip there. (I understand they were pretty well inundated by Hurricane Igor this year.) Perhaps, like the L'Anse aux Meadows natives they save their 'real' accents for amongst themselves and talk 'English' to the day-trippers.

I do not have enough exposure to many English accents to be able to distinguish between counties but I do know L'Anse aux Meadows has been pretty isolated for most of its existance. The road from the main highway was only put in in the 1960's or '70's after the fabulous Viking finds there. Before then, you had to go by boat if you went any distance. So, whatever the original English settlers spoke, you can still hear it in their patois today.

By the way, there is a wonderful gourmet restaurant in L'Anse aux Meadows. Seems like the owner went to a blue ribbon cooking school and is a first-rate chef...such an unexpected find 'way out there on the tip of Newfoundland!

L.M.L.,
Janet

As part of my research, I found this website at the North Carolina State
University that includes sounds from The American Front Porch
<http://ils.unc.edu/afporch/audio/audio.html> . The collection
includes samples of Ocracoke.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "J. T," <treenbagh@...>
wrote:
>
> I have never been to Okracoke but my grandson's grade school class
took a trip there. (I understand they were pretty well inundated by
Hurricane Igor this year.) Perhaps, like the L'Anse aux Meadows natives
they save their 'real' accents for amongst themselves and talk 'English'
to the day-trippers.
>
> I do not have enough exposure to many English accents to be able
to distinguish between counties but I do know L'Anse aux Meadows has
been pretty isolated for most of its existance. The road from the main
highway was only put in in the 1960's or '70's after the fabulous Viking
finds there. Before then, you had to go by boat if you went any
distance. So, whatever the original English settlers spoke, you can
still hear it in their patois today.
>
> By the way, there is a wonderful gourmet restaurant in L'Anse aux
Meadows. Seems like the owner went to a blue ribbon cooking school and
is a first-rate chef...such an unexpected find 'way out there on the tip
of Newfoundland!
>
> L.M.L.,
> Janet
>

--- In , "oregon_katy" <oregon_katy@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "J. T," <treenbagh@> wrote:
> >
> > However, my husband and I visited Newfoundland 2 years ago and the residents up at L'Anse aux Meadows speak one way to the tourists and another way between themselves....and that sounded very Yorkshire to me!
>
>
> I used to say that I couldn't visit the UK because I didn't speak the language, but I did, in 2007, and everyone was very kind about my tin ear for accents (I know, I was the one with the accent) and my propensity for trying to hail cabs from the wrong side of the street.
>
> Katy
>
Carol responds:

I had a similar experience when I visited London and Oxford in the summer of 1995 (the so-called heatwave commemorated in J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"--yeah, I read and reread the whole series. It rained only once--hauled my umbrella in my suitcase for nothing!) Anyway, everyone knew I was an American from my accent (I asked for overseas postage rates and the man at the counter asked if I meant the USA) and even from the way I looked to the left first for oncoming traffic before I crossed the street. Any time I couldn't understand someone's accent, the person kindly switched to what sounded to my ears like BBC English. At any rate, I could understand them.

Carol, for whom Britain's "heatwave" was perfectly bearable because she's from Tucson where it really does get hot

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:


> I had a similar experience when I visited London and Oxford in the summer of 1995 (the so-called heatwave commemorated in J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"--yeah, I read and reread the whole series. It rained only once--hauled my umbrella in my suitcase for nothing!)

> Carol, for whom Britain's "heatwave" was perfectly bearable because she's from Tucson where it really does get hot


I live in Oregon, by choice -- I love the rain and mist and fog and drippy forests and the dozens of waterfalls including the second-highest one in the US and the little ponds and creeks everywhere including behind my house -- so I was right in my element in the cool damp UK May of 2007. It was drizzling intermittently when we visited the Tower of London so the crowds were sparse, which was a blessing. There were low scudding clouds and spates of hard rain at Stonehenge -- it wouldn't have been nearly as evocative under a bright sunny sky. In Yorkshire the weather was merely clouds with unfulfilled threats of rain, but that may have discouraged tourists, because at Bolton Castle there were only four other people there, and when we explored Middleham Castle in late afternoon, we were the only ones except for the castlekeeper's white cat, who shadowed us around the ruins like a ghost.

Katy

As a Brit, I have to say it sounds like a strange accent.  Definitely American
to me but then with occasional odd words or sentences that sound more like a
very rural English accent - West Country or East Anglian.    A real mix.




________________________________
From: joansr3 <u2nohoo@...>
To:
Sent: Friday, 8 October, 2010 15:56:13
Subject: Re: Accents

 
As part of my research, I found this website at the North Carolina State
University that includes sounds from The American Front Porch
<http://ils.unc.edu/afporch/audio/audio.html> . The collection
includes samples of Ocracoke.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "J. T," <treenbagh@...>
wrote:
>
> I have never been to Okracoke but my grandson's grade school class
took a trip there. (I understand they were pretty well inundated by
Hurricane Igor this year.) Perhaps, like the L'Anse aux Meadows natives
they save their 'real' accents for amongst themselves and talk 'English'
to the day-trippers.
>
> I do not have enough exposure to many English accents to be able
to distinguish between counties but I do know L'Anse aux Meadows has
been pretty isolated for most of its existance. The road from the main
highway was only put in in the 1960's or '70's after the fabulous Viking
finds there. Before then, you had to go by boat if you went any
distance. So, whatever the original English settlers spoke, you can
still hear it in their patois today.
>
> By the way, there is a wonderful gourmet restaurant in L'Anse aux
Meadows. Seems like the owner went to a blue ribbon cooking school and
is a first-rate chef...such an unexpected find 'way out there on the tip
of Newfoundland!
>
> L.M.L.,
> Janet
>

and when we explored Middleham Castle in late afternoon, we were the only ones
except for the castlekeeper's white cat, who shadowed us around the ruins like a
ghost.



Katy



If it had been a white boar, I'd have said it was Richard's ghost, but at least
the colour is right.



It's nice if you manage to see these tourist attractions when it's empty. We
got to Pompeii only one hour before closing time, and though it was a very
rushed visit, we basically had the place to ourselves. The same happened at
the Alhambra.

Cheers, Dorothea

--- In , "J. T," <treenbagh@...> wrote:
>
> I have never been to Okracoke but my grandson's grade school class took a trip there. (I understand they were pretty well inundated by Hurricane Igor this year.) Perhaps, like the L'Anse aux Meadows natives they save their 'real' accents for amongst themselves and talk 'English' to the day-trippers.
>
> I do not have enough exposure to many English accents to be able to distinguish between counties but I do know L'Anse aux Meadows has been pretty isolated for most of its existance. The road from the main highway was only put in in the 1960's or '70's after the fabulous Viking finds there. Before then, you had to go by boat if you went any distance. So, whatever the original English settlers spoke, you can still hear it in their patois today.
>
> By the way, there is a wonderful gourmet restaurant in L'Anse aux Meadows. Seems like the owner went to a blue ribbon cooking school and is a first-rate chef...such an unexpected find 'way out there on the tip of Newfoundland!
>
> L.M.L.,
> Janet

Hi Janet,

I tried googling to discover the origins of the l'Anse aux Meadows families - no luck, I'm afraid, except they seem to have settled there comparatively late - 2nd half of nineteenth century onwards, I'm afraid. I couldn't get any joy on where the families came from, but my guess is maybe from other places in Newfoundland. The surnames (Eddison/Heddurson, Coulbourne, Wamstad, Decker, etc) are not familiar to me from my dabbles in Fogo/ Trinity area and so I have no reason to suppose they are Hampshire/ Dorset folk. Eddison could well be a Yorkshire surname, and Wamstad appears to be Norwegian.

The Newfoundland accent is different because very isolated, but actually not that antique. Proper settlement doesn't seem to have got going until 2nd half 18th century. Before that Brits used to go to the Newfoundland area in the summer to fish, then come home again. I have read that it was the predations of Her Majesty's press gangs that first got them settling permanently. L'Anse aux Meadows continued to be just a stopping place for French seasonal fishermen into the 1800s, and was not included on any census until the 1870s presumably because it had no settled population.

In the area I've looked at (Fogo, etc), at any rate, to begin with the settlers preferred offshore islands to the mainland because they feared attacks by the native Beothuck population. The Beothuck died out about 1820, though. But evidently at that early stage the main connective route between settlements was the sea, and the island was frozen solid over the winter, the planters using snow-shoes ('rackets') to travel overland. This is actually very clear from late 18th/ early 19th century accounts.

In assessing the antiquity & provenance of isolated American dialescts, always the first two questions have to be:-
1) Where did the ancestors of these people come from? and
2) When did they arrive?

I know this seems a bit off topic, but it really is worth bearing in mind that if people isolated for even such a relatively short period of time sound so odd to speakers of standard English, Richard's English would have been very odd indeed. I recently heard on the radio a recording (1930s?) of a Yorkshire woman giving instructions on making Yorkshire pudding [?] - I thought I caughter bathur (for batter) and wathur (for water), but nothing else at all. It was so far removed fro anything I'm used to that I wouldn't even have been able to diagnose it as Yorkshire if I hadn't been told. In fact, I could easily have been persuaded it was a foreign language.

Here's a link to archive recordings of English dialects:-

http://sounds.bl.uk/BrowseCategory.aspx?category=Accents-and-dialects

Best,

Marie






>

Maybe Richard came back as a cat? lol That's cool. You're so lucky you got to go! Someday I'll get to go, but not anytime soon....I must graduate from college first : (

--- In , Dorothea Preis <dorotheapreis@...> wrote:
>
> and when we explored Middleham Castle in late afternoon, we were the only ones
> except for the castlekeeper's white cat, who shadowed us around the ruins like a
> ghost.
>
>
>
> Katy
>
>
>
> If it had been a white boar, I'd have said it was Richard's ghost, but at least
> the colour is right.
>
>
>
> It's nice if you manage to see these tourist attractions when it's empty. We
> got to Pompeii only one hour before closing time, and though it was a very
> rushed visit, we basically had the place to ourselves. The same happened at
> the Alhambra.
>
> Cheers, Dorothea
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--- In , "queenanneneville" <queenanneneville@...> wrote:
>
> Maybe Richard came back as a cat? lol That's cool. You're so lucky you got to go! Someday I'll get to go, but not anytime soon....I must graduate from college first : (
>
> --- In , Dorothea Preis <dorotheapreis@> wrote:
> >
> > and when we explored Middleham Castle in late afternoon, we were the only ones
> > except for the castlekeeper's white cat, who shadowed us around the ruins like a
> > ghost.


If so, he came back as a beautiful one. I posted a photo in the Photos, under "Kay's Album."

Katy

Marie wrote:
<snip>
> I know this seems a bit off topic, but it really is worth bearing in mind that if people isolated for even such a relatively short period of time sound so odd to speakers of standard English, Richard's English would have been very odd indeed. I recently heard on the radio a recording (1930s?) of a Yorkshire woman giving instructions on making Yorkshire pudding [?] - I thought I caughter bathur (for batter) and wathur (for water), but nothing else at all. It was so far removed fro anything I'm used to that I wouldn't even have been able to diagnose it as Yorkshire if I hadn't been told. In fact, I could easily have been persuaded it was a foreign language.

Carol responds:
But didn't you say earlier that he probably didn't have a Yorkshire accent? Obviously, he could understand Yorkshire dialect, but he wasn't placed with the Earl of Warwick until he was twelve or thirteen, if I recall correctly, by which time he would have long since developed his speech patterns. And there's no reason to suspect (is there?) that the earl and his countess spoke Yorkshire dialect despite living in the north. Certainly, Richard would have had plenty of exposure to Edward, who probably would have teased (or even reprimanded) him if he started sounding like a Northerner.

I'm guessing that he could "speak Northern" if he wanted to, just as a person who was born in Connecticut but moved to Alabama in his early teens can "speak Southern" in Alabama but abandon the regionalisms and most of the accent when he crosses the Mason-Dixon line.

I'm not so sure about no differences between upper-class and lower-class accents. Certainly, in Norman times, the aristocrats spoke French (of sorts) while the rest of the country spoke regional varieties of English. I'm guessing that by Richard's time, most of the upper class spoke with a London accent, which by the time of Chaucer was becoming the standard.

Carol, whose books on the history of English are inaccessible at the moment so she can't consult them to see if they deal with class

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> Marie wrote:
> <snip>
> > I know this seems a bit off topic, but it really is worth bearing in mind that if people isolated for even such a relatively short period of time sound so odd to speakers of standard English, Richard's English would have been very odd indeed. I recently heard on the radio a recording (1930s?) of a Yorkshire woman giving instructions on making Yorkshire pudding [?] - I thought I caughter bathur (for batter) and wathur (for water), but nothing else at all. It was so far removed fro anything I'm used to that I wouldn't even have been able to diagnose it as Yorkshire if I hadn't been told. In fact, I could easily have been persuaded it was a foreign language.
>
> Carol responds:
> But didn't you say earlier that he probably didn't have a Yorkshire accent? Obviously, he could understand Yorkshire dialect, but he wasn't placed with the Earl of Warwick until he was twelve or thirteen, if I recall correctly, by which time he would have long since developed his speech patterns. And there's no reason to suspect (is there?) that the earl and his countess spoke Yorkshire dialect despite living in the north. Certainly, Richard would have had plenty of exposure to Edward, who probably would have teased (or even reprimanded) him if he started sounding like a Northerner.
>
> I'm guessing that he could "speak Northern" if he wanted to, just as a person who was born in Connecticut but moved to Alabama in his early teens can "speak Southern" in Alabama but abandon the regionalisms and most of the accent when he crosses the Mason-Dixon line.
>
> I'm not so sure about no differences between upper-class and lower-class accents. Certainly, in Norman times, the aristocrats spoke French (of sorts) while the rest of the country spoke regional varieties of English. I'm guessing that by Richard's time, most of the upper class spoke with a London accent, which by the time of Chaucer was becoming the standard.
>
> Carol, whose books on the history of English are inaccessible at the moment so she can't consult them to see if they deal with class
>


Hi, Carol,

I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was merely an illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is from the modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more archaic than the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and vocabulary that either never existed in standard London English or have been lost from it over the centuries.
Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own independent changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of people frequently mixing with others from different places, that change fastest. In a rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe the closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even 300 years ago would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a 15th-century time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of modern standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the written form of 15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the spoken form would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it would be nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all communicate fine, but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the problem, try listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but not far off.

Marie

Marie wrote:
>
> I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was merely an illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is from the modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more archaic than the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and vocabulary that either never existed in standard London English or have been lost from it over the centuries.
> Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own independent changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of people frequently mixing with others from different places, that change fastest. In a rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe the closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even 300 years ago would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a 15th-century time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of modern standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the written form of 15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the spoken form would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it would be nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all communicate fine, but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the problem, try listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but not far off.
>
> Marie
>
Carol responds:
Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have a good general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through Middle English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I once had to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from "The Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale") for a History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea how Middle English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect) must have sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.

Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the written form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward) was somewhat closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the Gawain poet with his Northwest Midlands dialect). I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but weren't the vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the vestigial inflected endings had been dropped.

At any rate, my point was that since he spent so much time with Edward (and in his early years with his mother), I think his speech would have more closely resembled theirs (and whatever was spoken at court) than it would the Northern dialect spoken by the people of Yorkshire. I imagine that the Earl of Warwick also spoke a dialect similar to Edwards' since he wouldn't have wanted the prejudice against Northerners to interfere with his ambitions. Richard, I think, must have learned the Yorkshire dialect as a boy so that he could speak it with the men of York, but I doubt that it would ever be natural to him.

I can't help jumping ahead about three hundred years and thinking of the class distinctions between, say, Cathy and Joseph in "Wuthering Heights." Something similar may have existed in Richard's time given the prejudice against Northerners and their proximity to Scotland, and even though it was more a matter of regional differences than class differences, I can imagine aristocrats like Warwick and possibly even the Earl of Northumberland speaking a more "courtly" dialect than the people around them.

Carol, who agrees that we'd have difficulty understanding Richard regardless of which dialect he habitually spoke

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> Marie wrote:
> >
> > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was merely an illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is from the modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more archaic than the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and vocabulary that either never existed in standard London English or have been lost from it over the centuries.
> > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own independent changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of people frequently mixing with others from different places, that change fastest. In a rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe the closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even 300 years ago would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a 15th-century time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of modern standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the written form of 15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the spoken form would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it would be nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all communicate fine, but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the problem, try listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but not far off.
> >
> > Marie
> >
> Carol responds:
> Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have a good general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through Middle English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I once had to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from "The Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale") for a History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea how Middle English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect) must have sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.
>
> Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the written form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward) was somewhat closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the Gawain poet with his Northwest Midlands dialect).

Marie:
Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 - something which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande had pretty much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's speech would have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that modern English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern. For instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was northern), and I have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect - southerners of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not 'them'. I'm sure there must be many more.

Carol:
I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but weren't the vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the vestigial inflected endings had been dropped.

Marie:
Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts were still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete" till about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds before the modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate issue - these were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out the Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table charting vowel sounds at various dates.

Southerners also said 'hem', not 'them'.

Just an extra note on 'hem'. I've browsed a few documents and it was a form definitely still in use in Richard's day, but already giving way to 'them'. Some documents alternate between the two forms.

Marie

I would imagine that he was sort of bilingual. I grew up in Germany where local
accents are very much alive. My parents spoke high (= standard) German. When I
was six we moved to the Rhineland, where most of my friends at school and in the
neighbourhood would speak with a Rhineland accent. As I didn't, I had to adapt
pretty quickly. So I ended up speaking with (a sort of ) accent to my friends
and without to my parents, who would have been rather horrified if I had done
anything else. However, the degree of accent in other peoples speech patterns
also varied. As they grew older my friends would also speak high German at
school and at the workplace. However, I would quite often hear (on the bus etc.)
hear older people talk to each other and I had no idea what they were talking
about, because they were speaking in the local dialect (accent + vocabulary),
and that after having lived there for 25 year.

I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his background he
would have been expected to speak the English of an educated Englishman of his
time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would have
learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well. While they on
the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.


Cheers, Dorothea




________________________________
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 8:09:10 AM
Subject: Re: Accents




--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...>
wrote:
>
> Marie wrote:
> >
> > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was merely an
>illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is from the
>modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more archaic than
>the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and vocabulary
>that either never existed in standard London English or have been lost from it
>over the centuries.
>
> > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own independent
>changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of people
>frequently mixing with others from different places, that change fastest. In a
>rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe the
>closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even 300 years ago
>would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a 15th-century
>time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of modern
>standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the written form of
>15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the spoken form
>would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it would be
>nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all communicate fine,
>but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the problem, try
>listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but not far off.
> >
> > Marie
> >
> Carol responds:
> Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have a good
>general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through Middle
>English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I once had
>to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from "The
>Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale") for a
>History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea how Middle
>English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect) must have
>sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.
>
> Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the written
>form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward) was somewhat
>closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the Gawain poet
>with his Northwest Midlands dialect).
>

Marie:
Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 - something
which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande had pretty
much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's speech would
have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that modern
English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern. For
instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was northern), and I
have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect - southerners
of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not 'them'. I'm sure
there must be many more.


Carol:
I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but weren't the
vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the vestigial
inflected endings had been dropped.

Marie:
Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts were
still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete" till
about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds before the
modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate issue - these
were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out the
Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table charting
vowel sounds at various dates.

Much like being a Briton in modern Nigeria. Pidgin English is the national language there but the version Nigerians use to talk to each other is significantly different from when they are talking to a Briton. Conversely for the Briton to be understood by the Nigerian slowing down speech and trying to use something akin to BBC English is helpful.

Richard G

--- In , Dorothea Preis <dorotheapreis@...> wrote:
>
> I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his background he
> would have been expected to speak the English of an educated Englishman of his
> time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would have
> learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well. While they on
> the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.
>
>
> Cheers, Dorothea

As well as being able to speak in more than one English dialect of the
time, I think Richard was probably multilingual. He was well educated
and probably knew Latin more than rote, since, as the fourth living son,
he well might have been destined for the clergy until Edmund was killed.
I would also think he was probably fluent in French, and based on the
account with Von Poppolau (sp?), he probably knew some German, although
not necessarily fluently. My impression is that Richard's brain was most
likely plastic at least when it came to languages because of his early
influences.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , Dorothea Preis
<dorotheapreis@...> wrote:
>
> I would imagine that he was sort of bilingual. I grew up in Germany
where local
> accents are very much alive. My parents spoke high (= standard)
German. When I
> was six we moved to the Rhineland, where most of my friends at school
and in the
> neighbourhood would speak with a Rhineland accent. As I didn't, I
had to adapt
> pretty quickly. So I ended up speaking with (a sort of ) accent to my
friends
> and without to my parents, who would have been rather horrified if I
had done
> anything else. However, the degree of accent in other peoples speech
patterns
> also varied. As they grew older my friends would also speak high
German at
> school and at the workplace. However, I would quite often hear (on the
bus etc.)
> hear older people talk to each other and I had no idea what they were
talking
> about, because they were speaking in the local dialect (accent +
vocabulary),
> and that after having lived there for 25 year.
>
> I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his
background he
> would have been expected to speak the English of an educated
Englishman of his
> time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would
have
> learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well.
While they on
> the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.
>
>
> Cheers, Dorothea
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: mariewalsh2003 [email protected]
> To:
> Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 8:09:10 AM
> Subject: Re: Accents
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "justcarol67"
justcarol67@
> wrote:
> >
> > Marie wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was
merely an
> >illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is
from the
> >modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more
archaic than
> >the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and
vocabulary
> >that either never existed in standard London English or have been
lost from it
> >over the centuries.
> >
> > > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own
independent
> >changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of
people
> >frequently mixing with others from different places, that change
fastest. In a
> >rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe
the
> >closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even
300 years ago
> >would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a
15th-century
> >time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of
modern
> >standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the
written form of
> >15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the
spoken form
> >would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it
would be
> >nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all
communicate fine,
> >but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the
problem, try
> >listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but
not far off.
> > >
> > > Marie
> > >
> > Carol responds:
> > Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have
a good
> >general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through
Middle
> >English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I
once had
> >to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from
"The
> >Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale")
for a
> >History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea
how Middle
> >English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect)
must have
> >sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.
> >
> > Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the
written
> >form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward)
was somewhat
> >closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the
Gawain poet
> >with his Northwest Midlands dialect).
> >
>
> Marie:
> Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 -
something
> which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande
had pretty
> much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's
speech would
> have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that
modern
> English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern.
For
> instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was
northern), and I
> have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect -
southerners
> of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not
'them'. I'm sure
> there must be many more.
>
>
> Carol:
> I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but
weren't the
> vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the
vestigial
> inflected endings had been dropped.
>
> Marie:
> Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts
were
> still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete"
till
> about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds
before the
> modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate
issue - these
> were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out
the
> Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table
charting
> vowel sounds at various dates.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

I agree about the dialects being something he would probably have learned. We have to remember that there was no special reason for him to learn the southern dialect--they lived all over, north and south. As for his Latin, it was a universal language for among the educated class. There is an account of, I think, an Italian gentleman visiting Richard's court, and the two of them conversed in Latin. Richard complimented him on his accent. He also owned books in Latin and French as well as in English--I assumed that meant he could read them.
Samuel Johnson had not yet written his dictionary by then, so you'll see a large variation in spellings. It isn't too bad a guide to the way people pronounced words, allowing for vowels which still would have sounded odd to us.
Sheffe

--- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@...> wrote:
>
> As well as being able to speak in more than one English dialect of the
> time, I think Richard was probably multilingual. He was well educated
> and probably knew Latin more than rote, since, as the fourth living son,
> he well might have been destined for the clergy until Edmund was killed.
> I would also think he was probably fluent in French, and based on the
> account with Von Poppolau (sp?), he probably knew some German, although
> not necessarily fluently. My impression is that Richard's brain was most
> likely plastic at least when it came to languages because of his early
> influences.
>
> Joan
> ---
> author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
> 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
> website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
> ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
>
> --- In , Dorothea Preis
> <dorotheapreis@> wrote:
> >
> > I would imagine that he was sort of bilingual. I grew up in Germany
> where local
> > accents are very much alive. My parents spoke high (= standard)
> German. When I
> > was six we moved to the Rhineland, where most of my friends at school
> and in the
> > neighbourhood would speak with a Rhineland accent. As I didn't, I
> had to adapt
> > pretty quickly. So I ended up speaking with (a sort of ) accent to my
> friends
> > and without to my parents, who would have been rather horrified if I
> had done
> > anything else. However, the degree of accent in other peoples speech
> patterns
> > also varied. As they grew older my friends would also speak high
> German at
> > school and at the workplace. However, I would quite often hear (on the
> bus etc.)
> > hear older people talk to each other and I had no idea what they were
> talking
> > about, because they were speaking in the local dialect (accent +
> vocabulary),
> > and that after having lived there for 25 year.
> >
> > I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his
> background he
> > would have been expected to speak the English of an educated
> Englishman of his
> > time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would
> have
> > learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well.
> While they on
> > the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.
> >
> >
> > Cheers, Dorothea
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: mariewalsh2003 [email protected]
> > To:
> > Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 8:09:10 AM
> > Subject: Re: Accents
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , "justcarol67"
> justcarol67@
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Marie wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was
> merely an
> > >illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is
> from the
> > >modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more
> archaic than
> > >the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and
> vocabulary
> > >that either never existed in standard London English or have been
> lost from it
> > >over the centuries.
> > >
> > > > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own
> independent
> > >changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of
> people
> > >frequently mixing with others from different places, that change
> fastest. In a
> > >rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe
> the
> > >closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even
> 300 years ago
> > >would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a
> 15th-century
> > >time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of
> modern
> > >standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the
> written form of
> > >15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the
> spoken form
> > >would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it
> would be
> > >nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all
> communicate fine,
> > >but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the
> problem, try
> > >listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but
> not far off.
> > > >
> > > > Marie
> > > >
> > > Carol responds:
> > > Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have
> a good
> > >general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through
> Middle
> > >English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I
> once had
> > >to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from
> "The
> > >Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale")
> for a
> > >History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea
> how Middle
> > >English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect)
> must have
> > >sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.
> > >
> > > Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the
> written
> > >form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward)
> was somewhat
> > >closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the
> Gawain poet
> > >with his Northwest Midlands dialect).
> > >
> >
> > Marie:
> > Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 -
> something
> > which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande
> had pretty
> > much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's
> speech would
> > have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that
> modern
> > English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern.
> For
> > instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was
> northern), and I
> > have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect -
> southerners
> > of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not
> 'them'. I'm sure
> > there must be many more.
> >
> >
> > Carol:
> > I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but
> weren't the
> > vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the
> vestigial
> > inflected endings had been dropped.
> >
> > Marie:
> > Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts
> were
> > still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete"
> till
> > about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds
> before the
> > modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate
> issue - these
> > were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out
> the
> > Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table
> charting
> > vowel sounds at various dates.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

--- In , "Shethra" <shethra77@...> wrote:
>
> I agree about the dialects being something he would probably have learned. We have to remember that there was no special reason for him to learn the southern dialect--they lived all over, north and south.

Except the family had to be able to communicate at court; and we know from Caxton's apologies for his own English that there was a fashionable standard. Worth bearing in mind that the court drew on London dialect, and that was, for historical reasons, actually a form of East Midlands, and not actually directly related to the dialects of the surrounding counties (hence Caxton's embarrassment at his rude Kentish speech).
But, yes, he would have had to understand the folk of the places he lived - a lot of them would have worked under his roof!

I agree with what you say below, Sheffe, (except the gentleman he spoe Latin with was a German, Von Poppelau) and with Joan's post. Joan maks a very good point in that Richard's early start wih language learning would have made it a natural faculty. He would certainly have started learning Latin and French very young, and appears to have picked up the odd phrase of Flemish whilst in Bruges. Spending his life travelling about a country with such diverse regional accents as England had at that time would also have been something he would not have thought twice about. Learning languages as necessary was part of the job description for an aristocrat of the time. His sister Margaret would have had to pick up Flemish after her marriage, and seemingly took this in her stride.
Even more interesting, I wonder if the reason Richard chose Tyrell as his steward of the lordship of Glamorgan was that Tyrell's wife was from Cornwall and could probably have taught him Cornish (very nearly the same as Welsh).
Marie

As for his Latin, it was a universal language for among the educated class. There is an account of, I think, an Italian gentleman visiting Richard's court, and the two of them conversed in Latin. Richard complimented him on his accent. He also owned books in Latin and French as well as in English--I assumed that meant he could read them.
> Samuel Johnson had not yet written his dictionary by then, so you'll see a large variation in spellings. It isn't too bad a guide to the way people pronounced words, allowing for vowels which still would have sounded odd to us.
> Sheffe
>
> --- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:
> >
> > As well as being able to speak in more than one English dialect of the
> > time, I think Richard was probably multilingual. He was well educated
> > and probably knew Latin more than rote, since, as the fourth living son,
> > he well might have been destined for the clergy until Edmund was killed.
> > I would also think he was probably fluent in French, and based on the
> > account with Von Poppolau (sp?), he probably knew some German, although
> > not necessarily fluently. My impression is that Richard's brain was most
> > likely plastic at least when it came to languages because of his early
> > influences.
> >
> > Joan
> > ---
> > author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
> > 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
> > website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> > blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
> > ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
> >
> > --- In , Dorothea Preis
> > <dorotheapreis@> wrote:
> > >
> > > I would imagine that he was sort of bilingual. I grew up in Germany
> > where local
> > > accents are very much alive. My parents spoke high (= standard)
> > German. When I
> > > was six we moved to the Rhineland, where most of my friends at school
> > and in the
> > > neighbourhood would speak with a Rhineland accent. As I didn't, I
> > had to adapt
> > > pretty quickly. So I ended up speaking with (a sort of ) accent to my
> > friends
> > > and without to my parents, who would have been rather horrified if I
> > had done
> > > anything else. However, the degree of accent in other peoples speech
> > patterns
> > > also varied. As they grew older my friends would also speak high
> > German at
> > > school and at the workplace. However, I would quite often hear (on the
> > bus etc.)
> > > hear older people talk to each other and I had no idea what they were
> > talking
> > > about, because they were speaking in the local dialect (accent +
> > vocabulary),
> > > and that after having lived there for 25 year.
> > >
> > > I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his
> > background he
> > > would have been expected to speak the English of an educated
> > Englishman of his
> > > time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would
> > have
> > > learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well.
> > While they on
> > > the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.
> > >
> > >
> > > Cheers, Dorothea
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: mariewalsh2003 [email protected]
> > > To:
> > > Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 8:09:10 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Accents
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --- In , "justcarol67"
> > justcarol67@
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Marie wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was
> > merely an
> > > >illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is
> > from the
> > > >modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more
> > archaic than
> > > >the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and
> > vocabulary
> > > >that either never existed in standard London English or have been
> > lost from it
> > > >over the centuries.
> > > >
> > > > > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own
> > independent
> > > >changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of
> > people
> > > >frequently mixing with others from different places, that change
> > fastest. In a
> > > >rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe
> > the
> > > >closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even
> > 300 years ago
> > > >would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a
> > 15th-century
> > > >time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of
> > modern
> > > >standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the
> > written form of
> > > >15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the
> > spoken form
> > > >would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it
> > would be
> > > >nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all
> > communicate fine,
> > > >but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the
> > problem, try
> > > >listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but
> > not far off.
> > > > >
> > > > > Marie
> > > > >
> > > > Carol responds:
> > > > Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have
> > a good
> > > >general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through
> > Middle
> > > >English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I
> > once had
> > > >to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from
> > "The
> > > >Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale")
> > for a
> > > >History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea
> > how Middle
> > > >English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect)
> > must have
> > > >sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.
> > > >
> > > > Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the
> > written
> > > >form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward)
> > was somewhat
> > > >closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the
> > Gawain poet
> > > >with his Northwest Midlands dialect).
> > > >
> > >
> > > Marie:
> > > Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 -
> > something
> > > which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande
> > had pretty
> > > much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's
> > speech would
> > > have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that
> > modern
> > > English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern.
> > For
> > > instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was
> > northern), and I
> > > have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect -
> > southerners
> > > of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not
> > 'them'. I'm sure
> > > there must be many more.
> > >
> > >
> > > Carol:
> > > I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but
> > weren't the
> > > vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the
> > vestigial
> > > inflected endings had been dropped.
> > >
> > > Marie:
> > > Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts
> > were
> > > still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete"
> > till
> > > about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds
> > before the
> > > modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate
> > issue - these
> > > were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out
> > the
> > > Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table
> > charting
> > > vowel sounds at various dates.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

"But, yes, he would have had to understand the folk of the places he lived - a lot of them would have worked under his roof! "


Or were important people in the area who did not necessarily go to court--Lord Mayors and such.


I agree with what you say below, Sheffe, (except the gentleman he spoe Latin with was a German, Von Poppelau)



Ah!  Thanks, I sure didn't remember that right.I'd never thought about Richard perhaps being intended for the clergy.  Certainly it could have been a thought his mother might have entertained.  But did the chief families involved in the struggles for the throne give their sons to the priesthood so readily?  I would have thought that they might be wanted for fighting.
Sheffe

--- On Fri, 10/29/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:

From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Accents
To:
Date: Friday, October 29, 2010, 3:48 PM







 













--- In , "Shethra" <shethra77@...> wrote:

>

> I agree about the dialects being something he would probably have learned. We have to remember that there was no special reason for him to learn the southern dialect--they lived all over, north and south.



Except the family had to be able to communicate at court; and we know from Caxton's apologies for his own English that there was a fashionable standard. Worth bearing in mind that the court drew on London dialect, and that was, for historical reasons, actually a form of East Midlands, and not actually directly related to the dialects of the surrounding counties (hence Caxton's embarrassment at his rude Kentish speech).

But, yes, he would have had to understand the folk of the places he lived - a lot of them would have worked under his roof!



I agree with what you say below, Sheffe, (except the gentleman he spoe Latin with was a German, Von Poppelau) and with Joan's post. Joan maks a very good point in that Richard's early start wih language learning would have made it a natural faculty. He would certainly have started learning Latin and French very young, and appears to have picked up the odd phrase of Flemish whilst in Bruges. Spending his life travelling about a country with such diverse regional accents as England had at that time would also have been something he would not have thought twice about. Learning languages as necessary was part of the job description for an aristocrat of the time. His sister Margaret would have had to pick up Flemish after her marriage, and seemingly took this in her stride.

Even more interesting, I wonder if the reason Richard chose Tyrell as his steward of the lordship of Glamorgan was that Tyrell's wife was from Cornwall and could probably have taught him Cornish (very nearly the same as Welsh).

Marie



As for his Latin, it was a universal language for among the educated class. There is an account of, I think, an Italian gentleman visiting Richard's court, and the two of them conversed in Latin. Richard complimented him on his accent. He also owned books in Latin and French as well as in English--I assumed that meant he could read them.

> Samuel Johnson had not yet written his dictionary by then, so you'll see a large variation in spellings. It isn't too bad a guide to the way people pronounced words, allowing for vowels which still would have sounded odd to us.

> Sheffe

>

> --- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:

> >

> > As well as being able to speak in more than one English dialect of the

> > time, I think Richard was probably multilingual. He was well educated

> > and probably knew Latin more than rote, since, as the fourth living son,

> > he well might have been destined for the clergy until Edmund was killed.

> > I would also think he was probably fluent in French, and based on the

> > account with Von Poppolau (sp?), he probably knew some German, although

> > not necessarily fluently. My impression is that Richard's brain was most

> > likely plastic at least when it came to languages because of his early

> > influences.

> >

> > Joan

> > ---

> > author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century

> > 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist

> > website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/

> > blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/

> > ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

> >

> > --- In , Dorothea Preis

> > <dorotheapreis@> wrote:

> > >

> > > I would imagine that he was sort of bilingual. I grew up in Germany

> > where local

> > > accents are very much alive. My parents spoke high (= standard)

> > German. When I

> > > was six we moved to the Rhineland, where most of my friends at school

> > and in the

> > > neighbourhood would speak with a Rhineland accent. As I didn't, I

> > had to adapt

> > > pretty quickly. So I ended up speaking with (a sort of ) accent to my

> > friends

> > > and without to my parents, who would have been rather horrified if I

> > had done

> > > anything else. However, the degree of accent in other peoples speech

> > patterns

> > > also varied. As they grew older my friends would also speak high

> > German at

> > > school and at the workplace. However, I would quite often hear (on the

> > bus etc.)

> > > hear older people talk to each other and I had no idea what they were

> > talking

> > > about, because they were speaking in the local dialect (accent +

> > vocabulary),

> > > and that after having lived there for 25 year.

> > >

> > > I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his

> > background he

> > > would have been expected to speak the English of an educated

> > Englishman of his

> > > time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would

> > have

> > > learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well.

> > While they on

> > > the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.

> > >

> > >

> > > Cheers, Dorothea

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > > ________________________________

> > > From: mariewalsh2003 [email protected]

> > > To:

> > > Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 8:09:10 AM

> > > Subject: Re: Accents

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > > --- In , "justcarol67"

> > justcarol67@

> > > wrote:

> > > >

> > > > Marie wrote:

> > > > >

> > > > > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was

> > merely an

> > > >illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is

> > from the

> > > >modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more

> > archaic than

> > > >the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and

> > vocabulary

> > > >that either never existed in standard London English or have been

> > lost from it

> > > >over the centuries.

> > > >

> > > > > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own

> > independent

> > > >changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of

> > people

> > > >frequently mixing with others from different places, that change

> > fastest. In a

> > > >rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe

> > the

> > > >closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even

> > 300 years ago

> > > >would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a

> > 15th-century

> > > >time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of

> > modern

> > > >standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the

> > written form of

> > > >15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the

> > spoken form

> > > >would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it

> > would be

> > > >nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all

> > communicate fine,

> > > >but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the

> > problem, try

> > > >listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but

> > not far off.

> > > > >

> > > > > Marie

> > > > >

> > > > Carol responds:

> > > > Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have

> > a good

> > > >general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through

> > Middle

> > > >English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I

> > once had

> > > >to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from

> > "The

> > > >Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale")

> > for a

> > > >History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea

> > how Middle

> > > >English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect)

> > must have

> > > >sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.

> > > >

> > > > Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the

> > written

> > > >form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward)

> > was somewhat

> > > >closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the

> > Gawain poet

> > > >with his Northwest Midlands dialect).

> > > >

> > >

> > > Marie:

> > > Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 -

> > something

> > > which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande

> > had pretty

> > > much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's

> > speech would

> > > have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that

> > modern

> > > English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern.

> > For

> > > instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was

> > northern), and I

> > > have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect -

> > southerners

> > > of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not

> > 'them'. I'm sure

> > > there must be many more.

> > >

> > >

> > > Carol:

> > > I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but

> > weren't the

> > > vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the

> > vestigial

> > > inflected endings had been dropped.

> > >

> > > Marie:

> > > Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts

> > were

> > > still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete"

> > till

> > > about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds

> > before the

> > > modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate

> > issue - these

> > > were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out

> > the

> > > Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table

> > charting

> > > vowel sounds at various dates.

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > >

> >

>

--- In , Sheffe <shethra77@...> wrote:
>
> "But, yes, he would have had to understand the folk of the places he lived - a lot of them would have worked under his roof! "
>
>
> Or were important people in the area who did not necessarily go to court--Lord Mayors and such.
>
>
> I agree with what you say below, Sheffe, (except the gentleman he spoe Latin with was a German, Von Poppelau)
>
>
>
> Ah!  Thanks, I sure didn't remember that right.I'd never thought about Richard perhaps being intended for the clergy.  Certainly it could have been a thought his mother might have entertained.  But did the chief families involved in the struggles for the throne give their sons to the priesthood so readily?  I would have thought that they might be wanted for fighting.
> Sheffe

In families which had a few sons, it was totally the done thing for at least one of the younger ones to enter the priesthood. Such priests had a very good chance of rising to become bishops (or even archbishops). All helped to keep the English church power structure on side. Rutland's death, and Edward IV becoming king before having sons of his own, may have helped to alter family plans.
Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, received an interesting payment in December 1471 for having "supported the king's two brothers the dukes of Clarence and Gloucester for a long time at great charges". Nobody knows when or why he had done so.

Marie


>
> --- On Fri, 10/29/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Accents
> To:
> Date: Friday, October 29, 2010, 3:48 PM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "Shethra" <shethra77@> wrote:
>
> >
>
> > I agree about the dialects being something he would probably have learned. We have to remember that there was no special reason for him to learn the southern dialect--they lived all over, north and south.
>
>
>
> Except the family had to be able to communicate at court; and we know from Caxton's apologies for his own English that there was a fashionable standard. Worth bearing in mind that the court drew on London dialect, and that was, for historical reasons, actually a form of East Midlands, and not actually directly related to the dialects of the surrounding counties (hence Caxton's embarrassment at his rude Kentish speech).
>
> But, yes, he would have had to understand the folk of the places he lived - a lot of them would have worked under his roof!
>
>
>
> I agree with what you say below, Sheffe, (except the gentleman he spoe Latin with was a German, Von Poppelau) and with Joan's post. Joan maks a very good point in that Richard's early start wih language learning would have made it a natural faculty. He would certainly have started learning Latin and French very young, and appears to have picked up the odd phrase of Flemish whilst in Bruges. Spending his life travelling about a country with such diverse regional accents as England had at that time would also have been something he would not have thought twice about. Learning languages as necessary was part of the job description for an aristocrat of the time. His sister Margaret would have had to pick up Flemish after her marriage, and seemingly took this in her stride.
>
> Even more interesting, I wonder if the reason Richard chose Tyrell as his steward of the lordship of Glamorgan was that Tyrell's wife was from Cornwall and could probably have taught him Cornish (very nearly the same as Welsh).
>
> Marie
>
>
>
> As for his Latin, it was a universal language for among the educated class. There is an account of, I think, an Italian gentleman visiting Richard's court, and the two of them conversed in Latin. Richard complimented him on his accent. He also owned books in Latin and French as well as in English--I assumed that meant he could read them.
>
> > Samuel Johnson had not yet written his dictionary by then, so you'll see a large variation in spellings. It isn't too bad a guide to the way people pronounced words, allowing for vowels which still would have sounded odd to us.
>
> > Sheffe
>
> >
>
> > --- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > As well as being able to speak in more than one English dialect of the
>
> > > time, I think Richard was probably multilingual. He was well educated
>
> > > and probably knew Latin more than rote, since, as the fourth living son,
>
> > > he well might have been destined for the clergy until Edmund was killed.
>
> > > I would also think he was probably fluent in French, and based on the
>
> > > account with Von Poppolau (sp?), he probably knew some German, although
>
> > > not necessarily fluently. My impression is that Richard's brain was most
>
> > > likely plastic at least when it came to languages because of his early
>
> > > influences.
>
> > >
>
> > > Joan
>
> > > ---
>
> > > author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
>
> > > 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
>
> > > website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
>
> > > blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
>
> > > ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
>
> > >
>
> > > --- In , Dorothea Preis
>
> > > <dorotheapreis@> wrote:
>
> > > >
>
> > > > I would imagine that he was sort of bilingual. I grew up in Germany
>
> > > where local
>
> > > > accents are very much alive. My parents spoke high (= standard)
>
> > > German. When I
>
> > > > was six we moved to the Rhineland, where most of my friends at school
>
> > > and in the
>
> > > > neighbourhood would speak with a Rhineland accent. As I didn't, I
>
> > > had to adapt
>
> > > > pretty quickly. So I ended up speaking with (a sort of ) accent to my
>
> > > friends
>
> > > > and without to my parents, who would have been rather horrified if I
>
> > > had done
>
> > > > anything else. However, the degree of accent in other peoples speech
>
> > > patterns
>
> > > > also varied. As they grew older my friends would also speak high
>
> > > German at
>
> > > > school and at the workplace. However, I would quite often hear (on the
>
> > > bus etc.)
>
> > > > hear older people talk to each other and I had no idea what they were
>
> > > talking
>
> > > > about, because they were speaking in the local dialect (accent +
>
> > > vocabulary),
>
> > > > and that after having lived there for 25 year.
>
> > > >
>
> > > > I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his
>
> > > background he
>
> > > > would have been expected to speak the English of an educated
>
> > > Englishman of his
>
> > > > time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would
>
> > > have
>
> > > > learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well.
>
> > > While they on
>
> > > > the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > Cheers, Dorothea
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > ________________________________
>
> > > > From: mariewalsh2003 [email protected]
>
> > > > To:
>
> > > > Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 8:09:10 AM
>
> > > > Subject: Re: Accents
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > --- In , "justcarol67"
>
> > > justcarol67@
>
> > > > wrote:
>
> > > > >
>
> > > > > Marie wrote:
>
> > > > > >
>
> > > > > > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was
>
> > > merely an
>
> > > > >illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is
>
> > > from the
>
> > > > >modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more
>
> > > archaic than
>
> > > > >the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and
>
> > > vocabulary
>
> > > > >that either never existed in standard London English or have been
>
> > > lost from it
>
> > > > >over the centuries.
>
> > > > >
>
> > > > > > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own
>
> > > independent
>
> > > > >changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of
>
> > > people
>
> > > > >frequently mixing with others from different places, that change
>
> > > fastest. In a
>
> > > > >rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe
>
> > > the
>
> > > > >closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even
>
> > > 300 years ago
>
> > > > >would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a
>
> > > 15th-century
>
> > > > >time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of
>
> > > modern
>
> > > > >standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the
>
> > > written form of
>
> > > > >15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the
>
> > > spoken form
>
> > > > >would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it
>
> > > would be
>
> > > > >nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all
>
> > > communicate fine,
>
> > > > >but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the
>
> > > problem, try
>
> > > > >listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but
>
> > > not far off.
>
> > > > > >
>
> > > > > > Marie
>
> > > > > >
>
> > > > > Carol responds:
>
> > > > > Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have
>
> > > a good
>
> > > > >general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through
>
> > > Middle
>
> > > > >English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I
>
> > > once had
>
> > > > >to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from
>
> > > "The
>
> > > > >Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale")
>
> > > for a
>
> > > > >History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea
>
> > > how Middle
>
> > > > >English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect)
>
> > > must have
>
> > > > >sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.
>
> > > > >
>
> > > > > Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the
>
> > > written
>
> > > > >form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward)
>
> > > was somewhat
>
> > > > >closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the
>
> > > Gawain poet
>
> > > > >with his Northwest Midlands dialect).
>
> > > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > Marie:
>
> > > > Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 -
>
> > > something
>
> > > > which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande
>
> > > had pretty
>
> > > > much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's
>
> > > speech would
>
> > > > have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that
>
> > > modern
>
> > > > English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern.
>
> > > For
>
> > > > instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was
>
> > > northern), and I
>
> > > > have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect -
>
> > > southerners
>
> > > > of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not
>
> > > 'them'. I'm sure
>
> > > > there must be many more.
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > Carol:
>
> > > > I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but
>
> > > weren't the
>
> > > > vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the
>
> > > vestigial
>
> > > > inflected endings had been dropped.
>
> > > >
>
> > > > Marie:
>
> > > > Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts
>
> > > were
>
> > > > still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete"
>
> > > till
>
> > > > about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds
>
> > > before the
>
> > > > modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate
>
> > > issue - these
>
> > > > were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out
>
> > > the
>
> > > > Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table
>
> > > charting
>
> > > > vowel sounds at various dates.
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > >
>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--- In , Sheffe <shethra77@...> wrote:
>
> "But, yes, he would have had to understand the folk of the places he lived - a lot of them would have worked under his roof! "
>
>
> Or were important people in the area who did not necessarily go to court--Lord Mayors and such.
>
>
> I agree with what you say below, Sheffe, (except the gentleman he spoe Latin with was a German, Von Poppelau)
>
>
>
> Ah! Thanks, I sure didn't remember that right.I'd never thought about Richard perhaps being intended for the clergy. Certainly it could have been a thought his mother might have entertained. But did the chief families involved in the struggles for the throne give their sons to the priesthood so readily? I would have thought that they might be wanted for fighting.
> Sheffe

In families which had a few sons, it was totally the done thing for at least one of the younger ones to enter the priesthood. Such priests had a very good chance of rising to become bishops (or even archbishops). All helped to keep the English church power structure on side. Rutland's death, and Edward IV becoming king before having sons of his own, may have helped to alter family plans.
Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, received an interesting payment in December 1471 for having "supported the king's two brothers the dukes of Clarence and Gloucester for a long time at great charges". Nobody knows when or why he had done so.

Marie

Henry VIII is a case in point until Arthur died. Bourchier himself was royal, so was Bishop Scrope of Carlisle and there were others.
Then came the Reformation - Cranmer and his colleagues married so priests were no longer genealogical dead ends. Recusant families such as the Howards carried on as before.

Stephen

>
> --- On Fri, 10/29/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Accents
> To:
> Date: Friday, October 29, 2010, 3:48 PM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Â
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "Shethra" <shethra77@> wrote:
>
> >
>
> > I agree about the dialects being something he would probably have learned. We have to remember that there was no special reason for him to learn the southern dialect--they lived all over, north and south.
>
>
>
> Except the family had to be able to communicate at court; and we know from Caxton's apologies for his own English that there was a fashionable standard. Worth bearing in mind that the court drew on London dialect, and that was, for historical reasons, actually a form of East Midlands, and not actually directly related to the dialects of the surrounding counties (hence Caxton's embarrassment at his rude Kentish speech).
>
> But, yes, he would have had to understand the folk of the places he lived - a lot of them would have worked under his roof!
>
>
>
> I agree with what you say below, Sheffe, (except the gentleman he spoe Latin with was a German, Von Poppelau) and with Joan's post. Joan maks a very good point in that Richard's early start wih language learning would have made it a natural faculty. He would certainly have started learning Latin and French very young, and appears to have picked up the odd phrase of Flemish whilst in Bruges. Spending his life travelling about a country with such diverse regional accents as England had at that time would also have been something he would not have thought twice about. Learning languages as necessary was part of the job description for an aristocrat of the time. His sister Margaret would have had to pick up Flemish after her marriage, and seemingly took this in her stride.
>
> Even more interesting, I wonder if the reason Richard chose Tyrell as his steward of the lordship of Glamorgan was that Tyrell's wife was from Cornwall and could probably have taught him Cornish (very nearly the same as Welsh).
>
> Marie
>
>
>
> As for his Latin, it was a universal language for among the educated class. There is an account of, I think, an Italian gentleman visiting Richard's court, and the two of them conversed in Latin. Richard complimented him on his accent. He also owned books in Latin and French as well as in English--I assumed that meant he could read them.
>
> > Samuel Johnson had not yet written his dictionary by then, so you'll see a large variation in spellings. It isn't too bad a guide to the way people pronounced words, allowing for vowels which still would have sounded odd to us.
>
> > Sheffe
>
> >
>
> > --- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > As well as being able to speak in more than one English dialect of the
>
> > > time, I think Richard was probably multilingual. He was well educated
>
> > > and probably knew Latin more than rote, since, as the fourth living son,
>
> > > he well might have been destined for the clergy until Edmund was killed.
>
> > > I would also think he was probably fluent in French, and based on the
>
> > > account with Von Poppolau (sp?), he probably knew some German, although
>
> > > not necessarily fluently. My impression is that Richard's brain was most
>
> > > likely plastic at least when it came to languages because of his early
>
> > > influences.
>
> > >
>
> > > Joan
>
> > > ---
>
> > > author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
>
> > > 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
>
> > > website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
>
> > > blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
>
> > > ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
>
> > >
>
> > > --- In , Dorothea Preis
>
> > > <dorotheapreis@> wrote:
>
> > > >
>
> > > > I would imagine that he was sort of bilingual. I grew up in Germany
>
> > > where local
>
> > > > accents are very much alive. My parents spoke high (= standard)
>
> > > German. When I
>
> > > > was six we moved to the Rhineland, where most of my friends at school
>
> > > and in the
>
> > > > neighbourhood would speak with a Rhineland accent. As I didn't, I
>
> > > had to adapt
>
> > > > pretty quickly. So I ended up speaking with (a sort of ) accent to my
>
> > > friends
>
> > > > and without to my parents, who would have been rather horrified if I
>
> > > had done
>
> > > > anything else. However, the degree of accent in other peoples speech
>
> > > patterns
>
> > > > also varied. As they grew older my friends would also speak high
>
> > > German at
>
> > > > school and at the workplace. However, I would quite often hear (on the
>
> > > bus etc.)
>
> > > > hear older people talk to each other and I had no idea what they were
>
> > > talking
>
> > > > about, because they were speaking in the local dialect (accent +
>
> > > vocabulary),
>
> > > > and that after having lived there for 25 year.
>
> > > >
>
> > > > I imagine it would have been similar in Richard's time. From his
>
> > > background he
>
> > > > would have been expected to speak the English of an educated
>
> > > Englishman of his
>
> > > > time (I can just imagine mum having a fit if he didn't), but he would
>
> > > have
>
> > > > learnt to understand and sound like the local population as well.
>
> > > While they on
>
> > > > the other hand would also have made an effort when talking to him.
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > Cheers, Dorothea
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > ________________________________
>
> > > > From: mariewalsh2003 [email protected]
>
> > > > To:
>
> > > > Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 8:09:10 AM
>
> > > > Subject: Re: Accents
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > --- In , "justcarol67"
>
> > > justcarol67@
>
> > > > wrote:
>
> > > > >
>
> > > > > Marie wrote:
>
> > > > > >
>
> > > > > > I'm just back so only just seen this. The Yorkshire woman was
>
> > > merely an
>
> > > > >illustration of how different ANY regional dialect form of English is
>
> > > from the
>
> > > > >modern standard form. The regional dialects are, in general, more
>
> > > archaic than
>
> > > > >the sort we speak, including pronunciations, grammatical quirks and
>
> > > vocabulary
>
> > > > >that either never existed in standard London English or have been
>
> > > lost from it
>
> > > > >over the centuries.
>
> > > > >
>
> > > > > > Of course, the provincial dialects have also made their own
>
> > > independent
>
> > > > >changes as well, but as a rule it is urban accents, and the speech of
>
> > > people
>
> > > > >frequently mixing with others from different places, that change
>
> > > fastest. In a
>
> > > > >rough sense, listening to a mid-20th-century country dialect is maybe
>
> > > the
>
> > > > >closest we can get to a sense of how 'foreign' the English of even
>
> > > 300 years ago
>
> > > > >would sound to us (and how very foreign our speech would sound to a
>
> > > 15th-century
>
> > > > >time traveller). Just because what Richard spoke was an ancestor of
>
> > > modern
>
> > > > >standard English, it doesn't mean it sounded much like it (the
>
> > > written form of
>
> > > > >15th-century English is actually more accessible to us than the
>
> > > spoken form
>
> > > > >would be because our spelling system has been fossilized). I know it
>
> > > would be
>
> > > > >nice to imagine that if Richard popped in for tea we could all
>
> > > communicate fine,
>
> > > > >but I think actually we'd really struggle. To get a feel for the
>
> > > problem, try
>
> > > > >listening to recordings of Chaucer - not quite as hard as that but
>
> > > not far off.
>
> > > > > >
>
> > > > > > Marie
>
> > > > > >
>
> > > > > Carol responds:
>
> > > > > Right. I know about the rural dialects being more archaic and I have
>
> > > a good
>
> > > > >general idea of the development of English from Anglo-Saxon through
>
> > > Middle
>
> > > > >English to Modern English and the various influences along the way. I
>
> > > once had
>
> > > > >to memorize "The Lord's Prayer" in Anglo-Saxon and a passage from
>
> > > "The
>
> > > > >Canterbury Tales" (I think it was part of "The Wife of Bath's Tale")
>
> > > for a
>
> > > > >History of English class in grad school, so I have a pretty good idea
>
> > > how Middle
>
> > > > >English (specifically, Chaucer's London or East Midlands dialect)
>
> > > must have
>
> > > > >sounded as contrasted with both Modern English and Anglo-Saxon.
>
> > > > >
>
> > > > > Of course, by Richard's time (some forty to eighty years later), the
>
> > > written
>
> > > > >form (though still variable in spelling for a long time afterward)
>
> > > was somewhat
>
> > > > >closer to ours than the works of Chaucer (much less those of the
>
> > > Gawain poet
>
> > > > >with his Northwest Midlands dialect).
>
> > > > >
>
> > > >
>
> > > > Marie:
>
> > > > Well there were some changes (quite a lot between, say 1440 and 1470 -
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> > > something
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> > > > which Caxton actually remarks upon. Present participle ending -ande
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> > > had pretty
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> > > > much changed to modern -ing(e). But in the pleading that Richard's
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> > > speech would
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> > > > have been a more recognisable southern variety, let's not forget that
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> > > modern
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> > > > English has taken some forms from northern varieties, not southern.
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> > > For
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> > > > instance, 15th-century southerners said yeve for give (give was
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> > > northern), and I
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> > > > have seen yate for gate. Eggs also comes from the northern dialect -
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> > > southerners
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> > > > of Richard's day said 'eyren'. Southerners also said 'hem', not
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> > > 'them'. I'm sure
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> > > > there must be many more.
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> > > >
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> > > >
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> > > > Carol:
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> > > > I'm not sure how much closer it would *sound* to modern English, but
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> > > weren't the
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> > > > vowel shifts complete by that time? I'm pretty sure that most of the
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> > > vestigial
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> > > > inflected endings had been dropped.
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> > > >
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> > > > Marie:
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> > > > Carol, if you go back over my posts you will see that the vowel shifts
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> > > were
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> > > > still in early stages in Richard's day - the process wasn't "complete"
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> > > till
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> > > > about 1650. There were a lot of intermediate changes in vowel sounds
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> > > before the
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> > > > modern values were reached. Vestigial case endings are a separate
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> > > issue - these
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> > > > were being dropped but were not yet completely redundant. Check out
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> > > the
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> > > > Wikipedia article on the Great Vowel Shift - it's got a useful table
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> > > charting
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> > > > vowel sounds at various dates.
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I'm sure accents were as important in Richard's time as they remained up until the late nineteenth century. Further, I am convinced that one factor in Richard's fall was that he was among the few kings of England to attempt to impose a Northern power base on London. I put these words in his mouth: "I would to God the power lay at York!"

Philemon Holland writes (or translates) in 1610, describing "Contention between the Northren and Southren students at Oxford."

Robert Fripp