# What would Tudor-era spoken English actually sound like? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 27, 2010, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700 "2010-01-27T23:52:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![alneal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@alneal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alneal)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/41 "2010-01-29T01:59:31Z")
> [@liberty3701](#): > > No, they don’t. They have a particular accent that may sound kinda British, more so than other American accents, but Ocracoke English is as American as apple pie. Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes (along with lots of other people in the North Carolina Language and Life project at NC State) have studied this dialect thoroughly. It’s super interesting. [Here’s the NCLLP website on Ocracoke.](http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/ncllp/sites/ocracokeisland.php) It seems to be under construction and thus missing the “Papers” section. And [here’s there YouTube channel](http://www.youtube.com/user/NCLLP) where you can see/hear the accent. They were making apple pies in England long before the American Revolution! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/42 "2010-01-29T02:30:11Z")
The Tudor period would be from Henry 7 through Elizabeth 1, quite some time. During this time the “great vowel shift” occurred. By the time we get to Elizabeth 1 the vowel shift is mostly over. So you go from Chaucer read phonetically roughly to Shakespeare’s plays at the very end, which are almost modern English. If this subject interests you, The Learning Company has a course on the history of the English language that covers this very subject. I listened to it and loved it. But prior to the vowel shift, English pronounced words like “knight” as kahnicht and “enough”, enou gufh. In short, like it is spelled. More German sounding. Modern English is a combination of Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin. ---
**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/43 "2010-01-29T03:33:59Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > I guess I’ll just have to tell everyone I know around here that people on a website said it’s not British sounding at all! And that they have been wrong all these years! I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that, say, Tudor English sounds English to Americans and sounds American to English people. ---
**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/44 "2010-01-29T03:38:38Z")
> [@liberty3701](#): > > These are all very isolated dialects, and isolation has two contradictory effects on language. In some ways, it makes the language more conservative in that they conserve features that less isolated dialects have lost. So, in Appalachian, you get stuff like a-prefixing (“I’m a-buildin’ a bridge”), and on Ocracoke you get a backed pronunciation of /aI/ so that it sounds more like “oy,” among other features that were common in older forms of English. But isolation also promotes rapid change and innovation, like the monophthongization of /aI/ before voiceless obstruents in Appalachian English. Could it be that isolation has no effect on conservation or innovation? The things that change in the isolate we call “innovation”, and the things that change outside of the isolate we call “conservation” (in the isolate). ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/45 "2010-01-29T10:26:00Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Why, we can’t even be sure people had the ability to speak… And without video cameras, it’s unclear whether these creatures of the past even resembled our modern human form. They were all _black!_ ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/46 "2010-01-29T14:25:35Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Modern English is a combination of Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin. And Old Norse and Greek and Italian and… ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/47 "2010-01-29T14:54:58Z")
I’m an fan of old time radio. Perhaps moreso than film, OTR recordings give a window on how people “used to talk.” Here, I mean the locally produced shows moreso than the nationally broadcast shows (e.g. Jack Benny). Unlike many of you in this thread, I’m not knowledgeable enough to describe in technical terms how they sound different. In general, they seem to speak more quickly and “higher in the throat” than I am accustomed to hearing from people today. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/48 "2010-01-29T16:00:08Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > The people who live on Ocracoke Island do have a British accent but I don’t know if it’s Tudor or not. I’ve heard it there myself. Sometimes they are called Hoy Toiders since that is how they say high tide. > > Ocracoke accent link > > [UGA](http://www.uga.edu/lsava/Topics/LanguageVariation/LanguageVariation.html) Sounds Southern American to lil’ ol’ Australian me. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/49 "2010-01-29T16:00:37Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > It doesn’t even “sound British” to me, for what it’s worth, though I suppose that’s necessarily a subjective judgement. Actually it ‘does’ sound British in parts to me (I’m British, by the way). Specifically, it sounds a bit like my relatives in East Anglia (South Eastern England), they would definately say ‘hoi toide’. Other bits of it sounds completely American - like you’ve put a southern American an an English country bumpkin in a mangle. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700/50 "2010-01-29T16:02:20Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > And Old Norse and Greek and Italian and… …and Celtic… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-tudor-era-spoken-english-actually-sound-like/526700.md?page=2)