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ancientsounds

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Audio modelling of sound change; computer simulations of speech from old languages. Account of Prof. John Coleman. Also wildlife, personal opinions etc.
#phonetics #speech #etymology #ProtoIndoEuropean #wildflowers #justified #ancient

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ronsboy67, to bookstodon
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A question prompted by "Crime Wave at Blandings", the first story in "Lord Emsworth and Others, which I currently . PGW has Lord Emsworth saying "dooce" a lot. In my quasi-literate ignorance, that seems like an Americanism, the sort of thing PGW might have picked from living there. Would a very English Earl of the era have said "deuce" as "dooce" , or would he have been more like to say /djuːs/ ? @bookstodon

ancientsounds,
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@ronsboy67 @bookstodon
Thackeray, in “Vanity Fair” and other works, has “dooce”, so it appears to reflect an older upper-class English pronunciation.

ancientsounds,
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@ronsboy67 @bookstodon
Before the introduction of “the wireless”, aristocrats had a far wider range of accents than just RP (which was associated only with certain public schools). Broad Devon, Norfolk or Yorkshire, for example, could be heard in the House of Lords or at the Royal Court. The BBC really created the idea of a uniform “good pronunciation”.

(But don't ask me for a citation though ... Too much homework.)

ancientsounds,
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@ronsboy67 @bookstodon

Today's Beeb accent policy is far more enlightened. They positively aim for more diversity now. (Though RP is still very prominent.)

ancientsounds,
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@ronsboy67 @Grizzlysgrowls @bookstodon

Nah, not really. For an accent (or language) with vowels that pre-date the Great Vowel Shift, you need to look to Northumbrian English or Scots (e.g. "hoose", "nicht" etc.) That's where I get my "Middle English" audio data from.

ancientsounds,
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@Grizzlysgrowls @ronsboy67 @bookstodon
Similar in the UK in that a lot of people with RP accents say or think that they have "no accent". (It isn't strictly a regional accent, tbf.)

ancientsounds,
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@Grizzlysgrowls @ronsboy67 @bookstodon
Strictly speaking Sanskrit is not really "in the roots of" European languages. Rather, Sanskrit and most European languages have a shared ancestry in the same root language (Proto-Indo-European). In consequence, there are a lot of similarities - sometimes very close - between Sanskrit and e.g. Slavic languages, Lithuanian, etc.

(A bit-nitpicky, but I feel a professional duty to dispel any misunderstanding that European languages evolved from Sanskrit.)

DrLinguo, to linguisticsmemes German
@DrLinguo@mastodon.social avatar

I asked people which one was their favourite vowel phoneme (from the list of 5 basic vowel phonemes). The ranking was: a > e > i > o > u. Do with that information what you want 💁‍♂️
@linguistics @linguisticsmemes

ancientsounds,
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@DrLinguo @linguistics @linguisticsmemes

(Alphabetic) order effect? I.e. first is best

ancientsounds,
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@DrLinguo @linguistics @linguisticsmemes

It's likely not an orthographic frequency effect because “a” and “I”, being words, way outrank “e”, “o” and “u” (as “words”), and “e” outranks the others in letter frequency

GeorgeWalkden, to linguistics
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This map, from Jackson (1953) “Language and history in early Britain”, is beautifully evocative. @linguistics

ancientsounds,
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@GeorgeWalkden @linguistics
A super book. I got a copy a few months ago at a very good price and when it arrived I could understand why it's normally £££ because it's quite a tome, isn't it?

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