Just finished a great book about the era, it had a lot of snippets from comtemporaneous letters, books, speeches. I could plow through the text pretty well
( one writer, bless him, spelled “fight” five different ways in just three paragraphs).
Would a modern American transported to an English village in 1575 be able to converse with Edward and Anne Ploughman?
I can’t see how. Some English (as in British, Scottish or Irish) dialects are hard to catch now. If the writings of the time and the odd usage of some phrases and words tell you anything, It would probably be very incomprehensible to us. Imo.
I suspect it wouldn’t take long to pick it up. You’d have to make an attempt, but with a decent understanding of the language, I suspect you’d catch on. Now, at first, you would be rather confused, but you would learn how to ask for clarification soon enough.
Several years ago, I was part of an international group that met quarterly, generally for a week at a time. The facilitator was French, but the group conversed in English. At my first meeting, I was lucky to pick up on half of what the facilitator said. After a few meetings, I understood him quite well, even his Britishisms (being French, he spoke British English; I’m American (raised in The South).
I agree. I mean, it depends on your ear for accents (I’m pretty good with those Northern English and various Scottish accents, having lived up there, I suppose.) Here’s an example of actors reproducing the original pronunciation of Shakespearean lines, which would qualify as Elizabethan English. I have no problem following along (granted, the RP English example is presented first, so my mind is primed with the words to expect, but I think even without that, it’s a lot easier to follow than some varieties of English I have encountered.)
Elizabethan English is considered early Modern English, by people who study this sort of thing. The grammar would be largely familiar, although the sentence construction was much more arcane and ornate. People of the time favored a slower, more elaborate, style, rather than our current speed and conciseness.
Understanding the vocabulary would be more of a mixed bag. They have words for items and concepts we don’t use any more, and vice versa, but the fundamental Latin & French loan words were already in the language. The Anglo-Saxon that makes up the frame of our language - all the little helper words like prepositions - would have been as obscure to them as it is to us. But they would have understood all the words in this sentence, here, for example. OTOH, every local idiom would have confounded people from the next town over, just as it would for us. But on the whole, we’d do ok here.
The pronunciation … now there might trip modern people up. I mean, modern English accents still cause problems for modern English speakers, right? Watch a show like Time Team and it’s a whole zoo of people you wouldn’t believe were all from the same small island. There probably were even more accents in the Elizabethan error, because there was nothing like Received Pronunciation. Still, we could probably get by if we’re patient. Undoubtedly, one’s ear would pick it up before long.
In short - if we found ourselves dropped in 1570 England, we could undoubtedly communicate well enough, provided we were patient and listened closely.
You know - we have a huge body of literature from that time period, including court document, personal accounts, poetry, songs, various bureaucratic matters, religious works. It’s not hard to read today. Here, chosen at random is a passage from the forward to a poem, translated into four languages by George Gascoine as a gift to Queen Elizabeth (reproduced in the modern work,The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature. by Catherine Bates)
fyndyng my youth myspent, my substaüce ympayred, my credytt accrased,
my tallent hydden, my follyes laughed att, my rewyne unpytted, and my
trewth unemployed/ all wch extremyties as they have of long tyme astonyed
myne understanding, So have they of late openly called me to gods gates
and yor matye being of God, godly, and (on earth) owr god (by god)
appoynted, I presume lykewyse to knock att the gates of yor gracyous
goodnes/ hopyng that yor highnes will sett me on worke though yt were
noone and past before I soughte service.’
Which, if I normalize the spelling for our own time periods, becomes,
Finding my youth misspent, my substance impaired, my credit accursed, my talent hidden, my follies laughed at, my revenue unpitted, and my truth unemployed/ all which extremities as they hav of long time astonished my understanding, So have they of late openly called me to God’s gates, your master being of God, godly, and (on earth) our god, (by God) appointed, I presume likewise to knock at the gates of your gracious goodness/ hoping that your highness will set me on work though it were noon and past before I sought service.
Which, frankly, you undoubtedly already recognized from the Elizabethan English version. You might wonder at some of the constructions - unpitted for unpaid, “substance” he’s refering to his state of being - or you might get lost in his cutenesses about masters and God, but no one needs me to translate what he’s saying, right?
Don’t try to match his ornateness, just be concise and plain spoken, and your next trip with The Doctor will go just fine.
Boy, those people couldn’t spell for shit. A dyslectic, barefooted Appalachian 10 year old child could do better than that. It is no wonder they died out.
In all seriousness, I do think it is interesting how they were so inconsistent even within the same block of text from the same person. It is like they were just freeforming it with whatever letters popped into their mind with no care for consistency.
I love Shakespeare done in authentic accents and don’t have trouble understanding these productions.
Something I was quite struck by was how many words/terms/sayings from the era are used by my family (ex: the evening meal is called supper, not dinner; we eat dishes the yeoman and peasants ate. There are many more examples, but my thinker is tired).
My people hitched a ride on the Mayflower, it’s cool we’ve preserved a bit of our Elizabethan roots.
I have a tough time understanding Shakespeare done in modern accents. I’ve oddly gotten used to Mancunian, a form of English gibberish, but I have a tough time with many English accents.
Is that true, or a biased sample based on those who could write? I’ve always assumed the previous ornateness of English had more to do with only the highly educated writing things, and that there was a huge divide between than and how a normal person spoke.
Well, in as much as we don’t have any recordings of Elizabethans speaking, we can only extrapolate.
Generalizing here, though, the ornate sentence structure of Elizabethan English is evident in personal letters as well as in official documents. It’s not just for showing off.
Here, for example is the letter that was sent on November 5, 1605 to Lord Monteagle, warning him about the Gunpowder plot (they have a photo of the actual letter here, along with the text and some discussion) -
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29777/29777-h/29777-h.htm
So that’s the kind of everyday language one would use in a secret note when warning a person not to attend a government bombing. Clearly, whoever wrote it (no one knows), did his best to convey his sincere feeling about the danger that Lord Monteagle was in. Also clearly, he was comfortable with elaborate sentence structure.
The elaborate sentences are also in evident in private journals. Here is an example from the journal of the Chaplain who accompanied Francis Drake around the world -
I’ve hesitated to refer to Shakespeare, because I don’t want to draw too much on theatrical speeches. But it’s useful to remember that he includes many examples of both highborn and lowborn characters in his plays. His audience found both to be well executed.
Here, from Act 4, Henry is walking, incognito, amongst his troops before the battle of Agincourt -
A brief scene between King Henry and on his erstwhile drinking buddies, back when he was living it up as Prince Hal. First he runs into a villain, Pistol -
Pistol and the King have a pretty simple exchange. While it’s true that Pistol doesn’t routinely use courtly language, it’s also true that he had a saucy vocabulary and wasn’t afraid to let if off the chain.
The King wanders on, meeting several others of his acquaintances, including Fluellen, who is much better born than Pistol (although not of King Henry’s class)
This scene portrays two middle class men, one of whom employs decidedly ornate periods and one who is more tongue tied.
Finally, the King runs into some common soldiers:
William, like Pistol, goes on to pick a fight with Henry. Unlike Pistol, William and Henry exchange gloves and promise to look each other up in the battle. They leave and Henry, picking up William’s argument, goes into his great soliloqy about how everything in battle, even the sins of his common soldiers, rests on his head.
William is a common soldier but he’s portrayed as being as eloquent as the King, himself.
The important thing about all this is that Shakespeare shows the common soldiers as possessing the varied eloquence that one would expect from a variety of men. Some are wordy, some are practical, some are philosophical.
The other important point is - Shakespeare’s audience understood what his players were saying. And they loved it! Shakespeare’s work was hugely popular and not just with his royal audience. If that wasn’t true, people wouldn’t have shown up at the Globe. If Shakespeare had been writing unnatural or unbelievable characters, nobody would have sat through a whole afternoon’s performance.
Shakespeare’s work was beloved by his audiences because of the strength of his characterizations. Even allowing for the demands of theatrical artifice and poetic license, his characters wouldn’t have been as believable if their dialogue sounded weird and unnatural to his intended audience.
I need a nap.
cough Look at the link in the post she responded to. cough
Meant to answer this earlier. That’s exactly what they were doing. Spelling wasn’t standardized until the dictionary boys got working two hundred years after the period we’re discussing. It just wasn’t important to the writers, compared to word play, elaborate sentence construction and elegant metaphors.
Printing had an effect on regularizing the spelling, however. Composing the plates for the printing press required the printers to be able to read in mirror writing. This (don’t ask for cites) lead to people thinking more specifically about how to spell a word and do it so that it fit the line length. As printed material became more common, and more people were reading printed to material, the words gradually coalesced into agreed upon spelling rules.
One of the side benefits of the Protestant Reformation (which was ongoing in the Elizabethan era) was that it increased literacy among the general population. Previously, your salvation depended on talking to a learned priest who would sort things out for you. When salvation depends on understanding God and reading the bible for oneself, then literacy becomes a must have life skill. The Elizabethan era was a riot of printed material and an increasingly literate populace enjoyed a vibrant array of language arts - which, to get back to the OP, are readily understandable to a modern reader, with a little patience.
Also incidentally - the first book printed in England, in English, was* The Canterbury Tales*, originally written around 1385. This was printed by William Caxton in 1476. Caxton was also the original publisher for Le Morte d’Arthur, which he published in 1485.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22120/22120-h/22120-h.htm#prologue
Not too bad, for a modern reader, but much harder to slip into than Modern English. Incidentally, there were many dialects of Middle English. That’s one of the things that separates Middle & Modern English. Modern is more standardized.
As I said, Chaucer is writing in a London dialect. Compare that to the contemporary Gawain Poet (whose name we don’t know), writing in a North-Midlands dialect:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14568/14568-h/14568-h.htm
Le Morte d’Arthur, from 1485, on the other hand is one of the earliest examples of Modern English, a full year before the OP’s target date of 1575. Here’s a shot of Thomas Mallory:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1251/1251-h/1251-h.htm#link2HCH0006
As you can see, even at an earlier date than the OP’s target, Modern English would be quite familiar to a person of the 21 millenium.
Bonus:
A short clip of the opening of Sir Gawain, read in Middle English -
And here's some Canturbury Tales, also in Middle English
Is it for certain that “my rewyne unpytted,” translates to “my revenue unpitted,”? Because I read it as “my ruin unpitied,” and darned if it doesn’t sound better following “my follies laughed at”.
Many Americans, possibly most, would have trouble understanding some Americans speaking English today. Many African Americans in the rural South, and even some whites, speak a dialect that is difficult for northern whites to understand. Same goes for many urban blacks, who speak English incomprehensible to outsiders not familiar with it.
When I lived in South Texas, I literally could not underestimated anything my next door neighbor said, nor could some of my other friends. When my mother in law moved to Florida and lived in a predominantly black housing community, she could not understand anybody.
Z’wounds, Merneith, thou hast mad skillz. I had a class in grad school with a prominent Shakespearean scholar, you’d give him a run for his money!
I really, really suck at memorization, but for some reason this cheerful passage by Marlowe is embedded in my brain from this class taken 18-years ago:
All beasts are happy,
For, when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolv’d in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagu’d in hell.
Curs’d be the parents that engender’d me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
That hath depriv’d thee of the joys of heaven.
When I first took my Boston area girlfriend to my tiny Louisiana hometown, I wanted to show her what a real BBQ shack run by old black men are like so I took her to one on the edges of an exclusively black area. They could understand her mostly but she couldn’t understand a damned thing they said and she is good with languages. I ended up having to translate because I grew up around it and understood it just fine. The BBQ was excellent BTW.
pulykamell’s link seems to disagree with that - the actor in it says that when they performed Romeo and Juliet using Elizabethan pronunciations, it shortened the run time by ten minutes.
They’re talking about the speed at which Elizabethan English was spoken, i.e., how many words you can say in a minute when you’ve already got a script. Merneith is talking about writing: how many words a writer might use to express a given idea.