On Monday, September 29, 2003, at 09:54 PM, Jon Murphy wrote: > Forget pronounciation...
I agree. "Putting on" an accent is one thing, but reproducing someone else's speech perfectly is very difficult. It can only be accomplished successfully by skilled, highly trained professional performers. The rest of us mere mortals just sound fake when we do it. And the very last thing you want to do in a HIP performance is sound fake, right? For the purposes of performing, I believe it's far better to use our own speaking/singing voices as effectively as we know how. That way, we don't lose any of the subtlety of our own use of our native language. > The pronounciation of standard English words two hundred years ago > (among > the people) probably better resembled the Cockney of London today that > what > you hear on stage or screen (either BBC TV or the silver one). There is a declamatory kind of stagey English that seems to be the province of some stage acting, and I'm sure that that was the same in Shakespeare's day too. I'm sure Elizabethan actors spoke with many voices, depending on whom they were portraying: kings, gravediggers, soldiers etc. But as far as a "standard" pronunciation from any period of English history, bearing in mind regional accents and dialects and the fact that English people of various backgrounds speak very differently from one another, I should think it would be impossible to come up with a single speech pattern as "standard" English. Where that leaves us with regard to singing Elizabethan lute songs I have no idea!! > The > pronounciation of Elizabethan English might best be found (in the > absence of > a time machine) by hearing the sounds of isolated enclaves in the > colonies > (i.e, the Appalachians, some of the distinctive sounds of the East > coast of > the U.S. and Canada). I don't know: that's the theory, but I've never heard it put into practice. Regards, David Rastall
