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Shakespeare died over 400 years ago and, as you point out, he’s still mostly comprehensible. And Chaucer wrote in Middle English so I don’t know what you mean b

Shakespeare died over 400 years ago and, as you point out, he’s still mostly comprehensible. And Chaucer wrote in Middle English so I don’t know what you mean by that. If you want to focus on spoken language, as per the claims about sound recording, Simon Roper and Dr. Geoff Lindsay both have videos on YouTube about dialectical changes over time. My impression is that the difference between 1924 and 2024 seems about as big as the difference between 1824 and 1924, despite the invention of sound recording. And this is exactly what I would expect. I don’t think you could name ten pre-1940 films that most Americans have seen, for instance.

ajross 3y ago
> I don’t think you could name ten pre-1940 films that most Americans have seen Conversely, I don't think I know any Americans who haven't seen The Wizard of Oz (1939). And again with the sole exceptions of superficial idiom and vocabulary (and some really minor pronunciation changes that are as much theater affectation as they are language) there's absolutely no change at all from the stuff you hear from a 15 year old member of the High School class of 2027 (I live with one). Again, I really don't think that's normal historically.
- philwelch 3y ago
  If you're going to dismiss dialectical features of old films as "theater affectation", that's also going to work against your thesis that old films and speech recording in general exerts a conservative influence on dialect change, isn't it? And I mean...actually listen closely to these people's accents. You're really going to claim that there's "absolutely no change at all" between them and your teenager? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c
- simonh 3y ago
  They may have seen it, but how much does it influence their day to day language? I think there's an argument audio-visual recordings will promote comprehension of older spoken language forms. I'm sure a lot of modern English speakers have a much better ability to comprehend dialogue in English Circa 1700 due to familiarity with Shakespeare than they would otherwise, but influencing modern usage is a very different thing.
boxed 3y ago
Shakespeare is only comprehensible because English spelling has fossilized to not resemble the spoken language. There's a ton of rhymes and puns in Shakespeare's writing that are just not there anymore in modern pronunciation. https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronunciation-Ben-Elizabethan-English-British https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronun... for how it would (probably) actually have sounded like. Pretty hard to understand!

ajross 3y ago

> I don’t think you could name ten pre-1940 films that most Americans have seen Conversely, I don't think I know any Americans who haven't seen The Wizard of Oz (1939). And again with the sole exceptions of superficial idiom and vocabulary (and some really minor pronunciation changes that are as much theater affectation as they are language) there's absolutely no change at all from the stuff you hear from a 15 year old member of the High School class of 2027 (I live with one). Again, I really don't think that's normal historically.

philwelch 3y ago
If you're going to dismiss dialectical features of old films as "theater affectation", that's also going to work against your thesis that old films and speech recording in general exerts a conservative influence on dialect change, isn't it? And I mean...actually listen closely to these people's accents. You're really going to claim that there's "absolutely no change at all" between them and your teenager? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c
simonh 3y ago
They may have seen it, but how much does it influence their day to day language? I think there's an argument audio-visual recordings will promote comprehension of older spoken language forms. I'm sure a lot of modern English speakers have a much better ability to comprehend dialogue in English Circa 1700 due to familiarity with Shakespeare than they would otherwise, but influencing modern usage is a very different thing.

boxed 3y ago

Shakespeare is only comprehensible because English spelling has fossilized to not resemble the spoken language. There's a ton of rhymes and puns in Shakespeare's writing that are just not there anymore in modern pronunciation. https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronunciation-Ben-Elizabethan-English-British https://www.britannica.com/video/187707/David-Crystal-pronun... for how it would (probably) actually have sounded like. Pretty hard to understand!