English Has Changed Since Shakespeare’s Day

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 29, 3 May 1950, Page 6

English Has Changed Since Shakespeare’s Day

The pronunciation of English has changed very considerably since the time of Shakespeare. Elizabethan English that the bard knew so well had a fine rural quality and his matchless poetry spoken in the old English seems to have a lovelier ring than the familiar pronunciation.

Shakespeare rhymed would with cool’d indicating that the “1” of would was then pronounced. He also rhymes swah with can, though never with words like on; water with flatter, but never with daughter, suggesting that the short “a” was used at that time. Further information can be found in books by grammarians and scholars of the period, books showing that words such as brew and you were pronounced as the Spanish word ciudad, stressing two vowels and not one as now. ,

The foundation of the study of early English pronunciation rests on the pronunciation of the Vulgar Latin of about the fifth century A.D. from which so many modern languages stem. When all or most exhibit a particular sound in corresponding words it is safe to presume that that sound was the original Latin one. From the sixth century onwards missionaries came to Britain from Italy, bringing ■'their alphabet with them and writing down the Anglo-Saxon language in it as well as they could. Many of the sounds, particularly the long vowels, have changed since then, especially after the thirteenth century. It is possible to date with fair accuracy various stages in the development of sounds, the introduction of new and the disappearance of old ones.