# How Hard is it to Speak/Understand Elizabethan English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 14, 2003, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829 "2003-06-14T13:56:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/1 "2003-06-14T13:56:55Z")
OK, recent threads about Wm Shakespeare have piqued my interest. Suppose I get a time machine, and travle back to London in 1580 or so…how hard would it be to understnd and speak to the locals? A possible conversation: (me): Sir, how do I get to the Globe Theatre? )man in street): Zounds, sir, thee must think me a fool? I have no use for villians and playwrights!" (me) I’m sorry sir, perhaps you can direct me to a tavern? I am hungry! (MIS): Dost thou trifle with me sir? Unsheath thy sword, or prepare to die! Anyway, how hard wouldit be for me (a 21st century American) to learn to speak Elizabethan? ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/2 "2003-06-14T14:09:25Z")
Here is a smaple from an English book written in 1582 (iin the linguistics book I’m copying from it’s actually there to illustrate different spelling, but it should suffice): Richard Mulcaster, _Elementarie_, 1582 > [@](#): > > It were a thing verie praiseworthie in my opinion and no lesse profitable then praise worthie, if som one well learned and as laborious a man, wold gather all the words which we vse in our English tung, whether naturall or incorporate, out all professions, as well learned as not, into one dictionarie, and besides the right writing, which is incident to the alphabete, wold open vnto vs therin, both their naturall force, and their proper vse: that by his honest trauell we might be as able to iudge of our own tung, which we haue by rote, as we ar of otherswhich we learn by rule. The want wherof, is the onlie cause why, that verie manie men, being excellentlie well in foren speche, can hardlie discern what they haue at home, still shooting fair, but oft missing far, hard censors ouer other, ill executors themselues. For easie obtaining is enimie to iudgement, not onlie in words, and naturall speche, but in greater matters and verie important. What this illustrates is that it isn’t too difficult to understand and despite the difference in spelling not greatly removed from English today. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/3 "2003-06-14T14:11:24Z")
sorry, in the passge “otherswhich” is a typo that should read “others, which”. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/4 "2003-06-14T14:29:13Z")
May I recommend _A Dead Man in Deptford_ by the late Anthony Burgess? This was written in 1993, entirely in Elizabethan English, though with largely modern spelling. It’s very scurrilous and entertaining, and because of this gives you a handle on the language patterns. Here’s an allusion to Schroedinger’s Cat: > [@](#): > > There was a philosopher who spoke of he cat that mews to be let out and then mews to be let in again. In the interim, does it exist? There is in us all the solipsist tendency which is a simulacrum of the sustentive power of the Almighty, namely what we hold in the eye exists, remove the eye or let it be removed thereforom and there is disintegration total if temporary. But of the time of the cat’s absence a man may also rightly suppose that it is fully and corporeally in the world down to its last whisker. Of course, it might not be very accurate, and wouldn’t necessarily help with the accent, which could possibly be utterly different even for recognisable words. I did read somewhere that there’s a small village in Maine where the inhabitants speak with what is believed to be the closest approximation to the English Elizabethan accent - no cite unfortunately. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/5 "2003-06-14T14:36:03Z")
hmmm I’m rather duboius that a village in Maine has the closest accent to Elizabethan English as there were quite a few accents and Iwould expect the maine accent to be a composite of these ( though perhaps closer to the East Anglia accent than other American accents). You’d probably find that the English regional accent is closer to the Elizabethan accent of that region. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/6 "2003-06-14T14:58:49Z")
Don’t believe anything you read about anywhere in the States having Elizabethan accents (this is the fourth place I’ve heard that alleged about, btw). There were no surviving Elizabethan English colonies in America, remember. ---
**Author:** ![raygirvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ac91a4/32.png) [@raygirvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raygirvan)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/7 "2003-06-14T15:01:43Z")
_hmmm I’m rather dubious_ You’re right to be. A Google search for “pure Elizabethan English” finds plenty of linguistics sources, such as the [sci.lang FAQ](http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/html/faqs/ai/nlp/sci_lang/faq.html), denying this. The story varies; usually it’s alleged to be somewhere in the Appalachians. The Summer 2000 _Now & Then_, aka the Appalachian Magazine, had a debunking article - unfortunately not online - that blamed the whole notion on “a hunger for roots”. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/8 "2003-06-14T15:06:12Z")
The reason why Iw as doubtful is that I’m sure this claim appeared in a Bill Bryson book and it isn’t even indicated at in my small but broad collection of linguistics books. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/9 "2003-06-14T15:13:52Z")
Certain patterns of 16th or 17th century Devonshire speech have been traced in the Chesapeake Bay islands like Tangier Island. Sir Walter Ralegh was a Devonshireman who organized the colonization of the Chesapeake region. The islands, being more isolated, preserved certain features of old Devonshire speech after these had been lost on the mainland. This does not, of course, mean that people there, or in the Appalachians, or anywhere else in the present day, speak “pure Elizabethan English,” a myth that has often been perpetuated but is a great big crock. It got a chapter in the book _Language Myths_ to debunk it. The folk song “Froggy Went A-Courtin’” existed in Elizabethan England and ethnomusicologists actually found some Kentucky hillbillies still singing it circa 1900. Or something like that. Which goes to show that verse and song preserve older forms much better than does prose. Martin Lings, in his essay “Symbolism of the Luminaries in Old Lithuanian Songs,” proposes that the cosmic symbolism found in the oldest Lithuanian folk songs has preserved some religious ideas from prehistoric times. The Lithuanian language being the most archaic of all Indo-European languages, having changed relatively little from Proto-Indo-European 5000 years ago, allowed the survival of prehistoric texts in verse. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/10 "2003-06-14T15:22:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MC Master of Ceremonies \* > \*\*The reason why Iw as doubtful is that I’m sure this claim appeared in a Bill Bryson book and it isn’t even indicated at in my small but broad collection of linguistics books. \*\* I’m now thinking I read it in _The Story of English_, which I gather is rather inaccurate. A google search on Elizabethan English Virginia gives a few claims about Chesapeake bay, but none of them backed up with evidence. I’ll shut up now. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/11 "2003-06-14T15:22:06Z")
To answer the OP: Elizabethan English is from the period known as “Early Modern English” which IIRC dates from circa 1450 to circa 1750. The label “Early Modern English” says it all. It _is_ Modern English, the same language we speak today. That means it is mutually intelligible with contemporary Modern English. However, the qualifying label “Early” means that there is some difference between the two varieties. So while an Elizabethan could understand your speech, you would sound like you talk funny. They might think thee an uneducated varlet, a veritable codswallop, a mewling flap-mouthed miscreant. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/12 "2003-06-14T18:29:04Z")
Or a cream-faced loon. ---
**Author:** ![YWalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/6f9a4e/32.png) [@YWalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YWalker)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/13 "2003-06-14T19:25:55Z")
If you go to the Outer Banks of NC you will hear people speaking with a British accent and they were born and raised on the OB. I’ve heard them myself. It mostly on Ocracoke Island. There are not many of them left now. Sometimes they are called the “hoy toiders” because that’s how they say high tide. ---
**Author:** ![Freyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freyr/32/5763_2.png) [@Freyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freyr)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/14 "2003-06-14T19:50:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ralph124c \* > \*\*Anyway, how hard wouldit be for me (a 21st century American) to learn to speak Elizabethan? \*\* Try watching a Shakespearian play done in the original language, like Brannaugh’s _Henry V_. I found that language difficult to understand, at first, but then you learn the cadance and catch on, easy enough. ---
**Author:** ![FranticMad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c68b51/32.png) [@FranticMad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FranticMad)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/15 "2003-06-14T20:33:11Z")
I’ve heard a professor of English recite poems in what some scholars believe is the Lizzy accent. It sounded like a cross between Manchester (think Ozzy) and Irish. It had somewhat rolled 'r’s, and a lilt. The following lines from a sonnet would rhyme. “Love” and ‘prove’ rhymed somewhat with our modern ‘drove’. “If this be error and upon me proved Then I never writ nor no man ever loved”. Otherwise, I really have to study the Shakespeare’s text to fully understand a play even when spoken in modern accents. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/16 "2003-06-14T20:40:46Z")
Shakespeares accent would of been an east midlands accent. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/17 "2003-06-14T21:03:43Z")
[nitpick] **FranticMad** , Ozzy Osbourne isn’t Mancunian (Manchester), he’s a Brummy (Birmingham), which has a decidedly different accent. Shakespeare was from Stratford upon Avon, which is relatively near Birmingham, so the allusion may be correct. [/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/18 "2003-06-14T21:19:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by YWalker \* > **If you go to the Outer Banks of NC you will hear people speaking with a British accent and they were born and raised on the OB.** Well, first of all the term “British accent” is so overbroad as to not be very useful at all. An Aberdeen accent is as much a “British accent” as a London accent, and the two have almost nothing in common with each other. So you would really have to specify what part of Britain the accent seems to derive from. > [@](#): > > Sometimes they are called the “hoy toiders” because that’s how they say high tide. FWIW that doesn’t sound British to me at all. That sounds like a working class Dublin accent. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/19 "2003-06-14T21:54:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ruadh \* > \*\*FWIW that doesn’t sound British to me at all. That sounds like a working class Dublin accent. \*\* The few people left who have the indigenous accent of where I’m from (rural Oxfordshire) would say “hoy toiders”. This proclivity would extend from around there west and south as far as the West Country. Having said that, I agree utterly with the rest of your post. ---
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829/20 "2003-06-14T22:05:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jjimm \* > \*\*The few people left who have the indigenous accent of where I’m from (rural Oxfordshire) would say “hoy toiders”. This proclivity would extend from around there west and south as far as the West Country. Having said that, I agree utterly with the rest of your post. \*\* What **jjimm** points out here is what I recall from the PBS production of _The Story of English_, which is a great watch by the way. I didn’t relize there was a companion book to the series, though. I find Shakespearean plays to be perfectly lucid when performed. I think that fact points out how much meaning we glean from gesture and situation. For a fun comparison read a transcript of an unrehearsed everyday, modern conversation; say the Nixon tapes. Only about 80% of the conversation makes sense because the remainder is being communicated with looks and body English. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-is-it-to-speak-understand-elizabethan-english/181829.md?page=2)