Learn a novel by means of Charles Dickens, and also you’ll nonetheless as of late really feel transported again to the London of the eighteen-twenties. A few of that experience owes to his lavishly reportorial descriptive talents, however much more to his means with dialogue. Dickens religionfully captured the vocabulary of the days and puts wherein he set his stories, and for some particularly colorful characters, went so far as to render their distinctive accents phowebically: that of The Selectwick Papers’ loved valet Sam Weller, for example, with its changeping of “v” and “w” sounds that in short overtook the East Finish. However it’s something to learn the voice of a Londoner of that point, and slightly another to listen to it.
No audio fileings exist of Dickensian London, after all, however we now have the next-best factor in the video above from Youtuber Simon Roper — and specifically the section that starts at about 11:30, when he according topaperwork the accessory of a Londoner within the yr 1826. Maximum eachfactor he says must sound slightly intelligible to any English-speaker as of late, even though few, if any, will ever have encountered someone that speaks in slightly the similar means in actual lifestyles.
On this generation, Roper provides within the onscreen notes, “you’ll listen the beginning of glottal reindrivement, the place a glottal prevent is inserted between a vowel and a plosive consonant on the finish of a phrase.” What’s extra, “non-rhoticity (r‑loss in maximum positions) has led to vowels that had been originally followed by means of ‘r’ to change into centering diphthongs.”
Serious stuff, for a person who describes himself as “no longer a linguist.” Neverthemuch less, Roper has on this video assembled an impressive excursion of London accents over 660 years, with “twelve fileings, all of fellows with suspiciously similar voices, and every one is about 60 years after the closing one, and every one is the grandson of the previous one.” (When the video went viral, the New Statesguy professionalfiled him for his reachment.) The earliest, set in 1346, will sound extra familiar in cadence than in content, a minimum of to those that haven’t studied Middle English. Comprechickension doesn’t change into a far simpler matter for many folks moderns till about 1586, however Roper’s accessory involves sound veritably transatlantic by means of 1766. In keeping withhaps no longer coincidentally, that used to be simply earlier than the Americans broke off decisively from the motherland to do issues their very own means — but in addition to preserve among the outdated techniques, including techniques of speech.
Related content:
A Temporary Excursion of British & Irish Accents: 14 Tactics to Talk English in 84 Seconds
One Girl, 17 British Accents
Peter Promoteers Items The Complete Information To Accents of The British Isles
A Excursion of U.S. Accents: Bostonian, Philadelphese, Gullah Creole & Other Intriguing Dialects
Meet the Americans Who Talk with Elizabethan English Accents: An Introduction to the “Hoi Toiders” from Ocracoke, North Automotiveolina
Based totally in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and widecasts on towns, language, and culture. His initiatives come with the Substack newsletter Books on Towns and the e-book The Statemuch less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facee-book.
