Hear the Evolution of the London Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006
Learn a novel by Charles Dickens, and also you’ll nonetheless in the present day really feel transported again to the London of the eighteen-twenties. A few of that experience owes to his lavishly reportorial descriptive expertise, however much more to his method with dialogue. Dickens religionfully captured the vocabulary of the instances and locations wherein he set his stories, and for some particularly colorful characters, went so far as to render their distinctive accents phowebically: that of The Decidewick Papers’ beloved valet Sam Weller, for example, with its swapping of “v” and “w” sounds that briefly overtook the East Finish. However it’s one factor to learn the voice of a Londoner of that point, and fairly another to listen to it.
No audio reportings 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 begins at about 11:30, when he pertypes the accent of a Londoner within the 12 months 1826. Most eachfactor he says ought to sound fairly intelligible to any English-speaker in the present day, although few, if any, will ever have encountered someone who speaks in fairly the identical method in actual life.
On this period, Roper provides within the onscreen notes, “you possibly can hear the beginning of glottal reinpressurement, the place a glottal cease is inserted between a vowel and a plosive consonant on the finish of a phrase.” What’s extra, “non-rhoticity (r‑loss in most positions) has triggered vowels that have been originally followed by ‘r’ to turn into centering diphthongs.”
Serious stuff, for a person who describes himself as “not a linguist.” Neverthemuch less, Roper has on this video assembled an impressive tour of London accents over 660 years, with “twelve reportings, all of males with suspiciously similar voices, and every one is ready 60 years after the final one, and every one is the grandson of the previous one.” (When the video went viral, the New Statesman professionalfiled him for his obtainment.) 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. Comprehension doesn’t turn into a a lot simpler matter for many of us moderns till about 1586, however Roper’s accent involves sound veritably transatlantic by 1766. Perhaps not coincidentally, that was simply earlier than the Americans broke off decisively from the motherland to do issues their very own method — but in addition to preserve just a few of the previous methods, including methods of speech.
Related content:
A Transient Tour of British & Irish Accents: 14 Methods to Converse English in 84 Seconds
Peter Promoteers Presents The Complete Information To Accents of The British Isles
A Tour of U.S. Accents: Bostonian, Philadelphese, Gullah Creole & Other Intriguing Dialects
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facee book.
