Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Mixed Forms, Prose Extract
Related content:
Middle English. Readings from Ormulum, Ayenbite of Inwyt, and The Canterbury Tales.
We cannot be 100% sure of how English was spoken in the past, ...but scholars can make an educated guess that will give us at least some idea. To get a more detailed understanding, I recommend listening to some of the recordings mentioned at the end of this video.
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0:00 Intro
0:10 Preamble
0:27 Ormulum: Comment
0:39 Ormulum: Reading
1:05 Ayenbite of Inwyt: Comment
1:17 Ayenbite of Inwyt: Reading
1:37 Canterbury Tales: Comment
2:08 Canterbury Tales: Reading
3:12 Further recordings
The opening lines of three texts of the later Middle Ages (the Ormulum of Orm, Ayenbite of Inwyt (Aȝenbite of Inwit), and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, showing the pronunciation of some of the dialects of English at that time.Show More
6 Comments
an important detail about the Ormulum is that the author was using doubled consonants not to represent geminates like you seem to have them as, but rather long vowels (edit: it’s short vowels they indicate, not long vowels. Brain misfired there. Examples will make more sense with that in mind).
So for example boc is pronounced with a long vowel, as is Crist in ‘cristess’
while in ‘crisstenndom’ the double S represents the shortening of that vowel, which is a great example of trisyllabic laxing at play. This is why we pronounce ‘christ’ and ‘christendom’ differently today.
Thank you for this. I listened to several other recordings before making my own, but it was a while ago, so I forget the details! I’m a little confused by your explanation, though. You say “the author was using doubled consonants not to represent geminates like you seem to have them as, but rather long vowels”, but your examples seem to indicate the opposite – that doubled consonants represent shortened preceding vowels (much as they often do today).
So “boc” would be something like “bouc” and “Cristes” would approximate to “Creistes”. Have I got it right?
@anosensei ooh you are actually correct with that, I mistyped.
Yes it is rather short vowels they indicate, so boc has a long vowel as does crist, which can then be seen to shorten in words such as crisstenndom due to the trisyllabic laxing.
Back then due to being before the vowel shift it’d be a bit like bowk and kreest, there isn’t really a good way to indicate they’re long mid high and high vowels respectively without ipa. (/bo:k/ and /kɾiːst/ vs /kɾɪstɛndoːm/, I’m assuming the E wouldn’t be a schwa here)
@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 Thank you for that! OK. It’s a while since I made this recording, and the sound quality is rather poor. Perhaps it’s time I made an updated version, taking your comments into account!
Wow!
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