This is what Shakespeare's English sounded like.

[BWL]

I found this link recently about the interesting concept of performing Shakespeare's works in his original accent! Apparently a couple of Shakespeare's plays were staged in a replica of the grand old Glove Theatre, with actors trained by linguists to say their lines in Shakespearean / Elizabethan English, complete with a 400-year-old accent!

It is just amazing!

[pcgamer]

So, that's what he used to like. It sounds fascinating and phony at the same time.

[SpiralArchitect]

A product of its time, it sounds pretty close to what I thought it would sound like. I mean the English language of the time can be pretty indecipherable to someone only exposed to its modern usage. Little wonder that the accents of the time were even more esoteric than the language itself.

Now if somebody can do a narration of the Cantebury Tales with that accent and I'll be interested.

[limon]

That is incredibly cool, it's interesting to think that accents exist in time as well as space.

I mean, it makes sense when you think about it, but I hadn't really thought about it much and the way it affects theatre and poetry is astounding.

Thanks for linking.

[LauraM]

Thanks so much for sharing this video.  That's amazing how they were able to gather up evidence from so many sources to discern what the original pronunciations were like. 

They are so right; we miss some of the subtle puns and other word play when the actors use the contemporary pronunciation.  I did find those lines that they recited side by side --  comparing the original accent with the contemporary -- really showcased how much more engaging the dialogue really is in its original pronunciation. 

We are used to a more upper class sounding accent when we hear Shakespeare performed.  But this was so much more down to earth and naturalistic, much the way that we hear contemporary dialogue spoken in contemporary plays. 

[sayitwell]

Thanks for posting that video.  I wonder how accurate that really is.  Probably fairly accurate.  It does sound sort of like I imagined it would.  I wonder if Shakespeare will even be read in classrooms across the world beyond the next decade.  That old english does not appeal to young people in my opinion.

[BWL]

Accents evolve and change all the time. The BBC English that most people are familiar with only really became identified with the upper classes between the early nineteenth century and the 1960's.

English is not the only language to change accents. In French, most Parisians pronounce "brun" (brown) and "brin" (twig) in the exact same way but we know that they were pronounced differently in the South and even in many parts of the North of France right up to a couple of generations ago.

My friend's father, an elderly English officer in the British army who was stationed in India (actually what is now the Northwest Frontier in Pakistan - this was in the 1930's before the Partition) was taught Urdu in order to communicate with his staff. He was trained to pronounce Urdu in a very old-fashioned way  (this was during the 1930's). He often said things like: Aapka naam kyaa hai? (What is your name?) with the "hai" pronounced like "high" in English!