[HN Gopher] Simon Roper: the 23-year-old reconstructing the past...
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Simon Roper: the 23-year-old reconstructing the past for millions
of viewers
Author : ZeljkoS
Score : 170 points
Date : 2021-10-16 08:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newstatesman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newstatesman.com)
| _ph_ wrote:
| Faszinatingly and not surprisingly, to me as a German the anglo-
| saxon was almost understandable, English with a lot of German
| words. Add in some dialect, some parts sounded rather nordic,
| others rather like Swiss-German pronounciation.
| aasasd wrote:
| See also: about Shakespeare in the Early Modern English
| pronunciation: https://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s
|
| Specifically how some puns don't work with the pronunciation of
| today, like the 'hour'.
| DrBazza wrote:
| This is really interesting. My grandparents were born in near
| London Bridge around the turn of the 20th century, and their
| accents were nothing like London/SE accents are now, even my
| parents (if you consider current London accents to be Thames
| Estuary / Eastenders / Danny Dyer).
|
| Just typing this and watching that, makes me think, who would be
| the 60 year mid point for that (1900-2020), and the most obvious
| London actor I can think of is Bob Hoskins, and his accent was
| different to what we have now. Recognisable as a London accent,
| because we're familiar with it, and that generation is still
| around.
| resting123 wrote:
| Is anyone else surprised by the fact that he is 23? He looks at
| least 30 if not 40
| tekkk wrote:
| Good to see Simon is getting promotion. It's interesting to watch
| someone have an authentic and deep passion for something which
| they enjoy sharing in a down-to-earth manner. For example the
| vocal shift video was quite revealing. Maybe one day he'll have
| his own BBC documentary series.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| > For example the vocal shift video was quite revealing.
|
| Did you mean vowel shift?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| That's interesting. _Vowels_ in English are _vokaler_ in
| Norwegian.
| vidarh wrote:
| Comes from latin vocalis in most European languages and
| many non-European languages.
|
| English got it via French, which is where the c
| disappeared.
| Someone wrote:
| I expect the w appeared only in English, as the w is rare
| in French (that's why it's a special case in braille. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille#Derivation).
|
| And indeed, Google gives me 'voyelle' as the French for
| vowel.
| vidarh wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware. Both modern French and English got it
| from Old French "vouel" and "voyeul", which if you speak
| it - especially the first form - makes it clear how it
| became "vowel" in English. Hence my point that the "c"
| disappeared when it was borrowed from latin into (Old)
| French.
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| Wow, exciting to see Simon on the front page. My background is in
| linguistics so I've known this guy for a while on Youtube. He
| adamantly claims his background isn't in linguistics but he's
| legit. Go Simon!
| e1g wrote:
| This is refreshing to hear. So many similar infotainment
| channels _seem_ enlightening, but as soon as they cover topics
| or regions of the world I 'm deeply familiar with, I get
| disillusioned by misrepresentations. So often, it's not due to
| compression but to cherry-picking examples to heighten the
| drama or their conclusions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > He watches TV footage from the 1970s and focuses in on the
| people strolling about in the background. The pandemic enhanced
| his sense that the most mundane parts of life are what will make
| the past come alive in the future.
|
| I lived through the 70s. Some movies from them are curiously
| nostalgic to me, as the way people dress, talk, and behave has
| significantly changed.
| Accacin wrote:
| I recently discovered this guy too. I'd highly recommend any of
| his videos with Jackson Crawford who is a Norse language expert.
| mongol wrote:
| In my ears many of the early examples sound like English with
| strong Swedish accent ("Swenglish"). As if a Swedish AI-voice
| tried to read out English text. Now, it is more likely influenced
| by the norse ancestors, and they were not from Sweden as much as
| Norway and Denmark, but still...
| sillyquiet wrote:
| You'd probably be interested in seeing the collaboration he did
| with Old Norse linguist Dr. Jackson Crawford in which he and
| Dr. Crawford had a scripted but mutually intelligible
| conversation in Old English and Old Norse.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzJEIUSWtc
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Being from Lithuania I noticed that too. These old English
| words sound just as if some Lithuanian student would be reading
| English text for the very first time and uttered each letter
| just how it was meant to sound in Lithuanian.
|
| I suspect that over-time English, for some reason, lost the
| correspondence between the pronunciation and writing of their
| language. For example in Lithuanian I cannot think of a world
| where someone would have trouble reading the word after seeing
| how its spelled. Also, interestingly, we don't have "spelling
| bee" type competitions here.
| sigg3 wrote:
| Tbh, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish languages are all bastard
| editions of each other. It's like the weird Northern offshoot
| of Germanic.
|
| Source: am Norwegian. Not an expert by any means.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's not just "like" the Northern offshoot of Germanic, they
| _are_ North Germanic languages, like English is a West
| Germanic language.
|
| The similarity is even stronger if you compare with Low
| German (most common in the North), which didn't go through
| the consonant shift of the now dominant High German (e.g.
| day: Norwegian dag vs. Low German Dag vs. High German Tag)
| vidarh wrote:
| While there's probably (I'm not a linguist) direct Norse
| influence too, English is a West Germanic language, and so the
| further back you go the less Norman and French influence has
| diluted the Germanic foundation of the language shared with
| e.g. the Scandinavian languages, Dutch and German (the
| relationship with German is more obvious if you include the now
| relatively uncommon older Low German dialects that used to
| dominate Northern Germany - you get a continuous map with much
| more gradual changes).
| Bayart wrote:
| The phonological history of English doesn't have much to do
| with French. English could have had its entire vocabulary
| replaced by French while still being grammatically and
| phonologically the same.
|
| Internal linguistic processes are much stronger than outside
| influences.
| vidarh wrote:
| You're probably right it was less significant, but both
| Norse and French have certainly contributed sounds to
| English.
|
| Scandinavian speakers tend to struggle with the w/v
| distinction at the start of words for example, because most
| of our dialects do not have a distinction like that and so
| many of us learn one of them and use it all over the place.
| English appear to have imported the sound as in vacation
| when it imported most of the words (including valley)
| starting with it.
|
| Another example is how when I first learned English in
| Norway the teacher spent a whole lesson early on drilling
| the pronunciation of the ch in chair (from Old French;
| compare "stol", Norwegian for chair vs. English "stool")
| because the sound was completely foreign to us but
| confusingly similar to e.g. the skj in skjorte (shirt; the
| skj is pronounced almost the same as the sh in shirt,
| depending on dialect)
|
| So it may have had less impact on changing the phonology of
| Germanic words in particular (though I'm curious about some
| as Norman French changed the orthography of many words that
| used to be pronounced in the Germanic way but that now
| match the Norman orthography - e.g. hus to house - did the
| pronunciation change first?), but the sheer volume of
| French words that in at least some cases brought with them
| different sounds means it certainly contributed to the
| overall English phonology appearing more foreign to us.
| xcambar wrote:
| > Did the Nineties really feel like a period of stability? Or
| does it just feel like chaos now because I'm an adult?
|
| I was born a good decade before him but still wonders this very
| question. I asked my older friends and family, and it appears
| (empirically) that... there's no clear answer.
|
| There's actually something specific about our times (information
| technology, ecology, western world mostly at peace for 70+
| years...) but it very much relates to how much you look and feel
| about the world surrounding you.
|
| The true difference is that much more people are aware and
| worried about the state of the world in our times than before. In
| that sense, the chaos seems much more apparent than it used to
| be.
|
| Of course, this is anecdotal, not an evidence in any way :)
| vidarh wrote:
| A lot of the chaos just wasn't apparent before because the
| information flow was slower more than because people didn't
| care.
|
| E.g. look at any news event, and consider how differently it
| looks if you only look at print news and one daily news
| broadcast vs. if you look at the same event online, with
| conflicting narratives, easy access to how foreign news media
| describes something, speculation, and far more granular
| reporting.
|
| Everything looks a lot more coherent and certain with just a
| few viewpoints and a couple of updates a day because you miss a
| lot of the mistakes and changing opinions and differences in
| bias.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Did the Nineties really feel like a period of stability? Or
| does it just feel like chaos now because I'm an adult?_
|
| Yes, the nineties did feel like a period of stability.
|
| In some countries this went well into 2005 or so.
|
| In others, like the US, I guess 2001 (9/11) was a major turning
| point.
|
| And after the 2008 crisis, things went downhill faster.
| datameta wrote:
| In countries of the former USSR, the 90s were a period or rapid
| decline, with the 2000s being a slow return.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| It really depends on where you're at and who you're with.
|
| In the US, I remember the insurrections following the trials
| related to Rodney King, the Branch Dividans being burned to
| death, and the milita movement blowing up an FBI building
| (among many other kinds of things).
|
| That doesn't touch the reworking of former areas of the USSR,
| the first gulf war, and the various issues with asian
| economies.
|
| I was in high school; it's much easier for me to think that the
| feelings of stability I felt at the time came from my parent's
| professional success and the various booms in markets that they
| were able to capitalize on rather than some more systematic
| stability...
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| This guy appeared in my YouTube recommendations a few months
| before the pandemic. They were there for weeks before I actually
| clicked on one, strangely persistent given the titles and
| screencaps on the videos: "What did middle English sound like?"
| next to this grubby college kid's face. What about my viewing
| habits to date triggered this recommendation?
|
| When I finally relented and clicked on one, it was kind of
| hypnotic. It's hard to put to words: the content is really
| interesting for all the reasons laid out in the article, but
| there's something else, too, an atmospheric thing. The guy's
| voice is almost a whisper, the ambient sounds from the garden or
| the forest or the road are oddly pleasant, and he's speaking
| pretty slowly, with none of these glitchy quick cuts you see in a
| lot of YT content. It's also unusually personal-feeling, like
| he's just talking to you.
|
| It's all pretty dreamlike, I guess. Especially when I stand back
| and realize I've been watching videos about Cumbrian accents for
| like two hours. I'm not even interested in this stuff.
|
| Kudos to this guy, he's clearly hit upon something, even if he is
| some kind of witch.
| vmception wrote:
| Praise the algo!
| Azaks wrote:
| He hasnt hit upon anything. Other than for himself.
|
| Youtube etc is like throwing sugar around a gigantic ant hill
| and watching ants reacts. The ants dont change into anything
| sophisticated consuming all that sugar.
|
| Learning takes time. Its requires the right environment and
| experienced guides.
|
| There are no shortcuts. And the chimp troupe learns that lesson
| again and again every single time they think they have
| discovered one.
| celticninja wrote:
| I think you do people a disservice. I'm not sure the video
| are supposed to do anything other than pass on information to
| viewers. Some of those viewers my use the information, some
| may pass it on to others, some may act on it to research
| further and many will do nothing but absorb the content and
| move on. Is there a problem with any of that? Is there a
| difference between this guy and a non-fiction author of a
| specific subject? We don't expect non-fiction author to
| revolutionise the lives of everyone that reads their book do
| we?
| jmcgough wrote:
| > The guy's voice is almost a whisper, the ambient sounds from
| the garden or the forest or the road are oddly pleasant, and
| he's speaking pretty slowly, with none of these glitchy quick
| cuts you see in a lot of YT content. It's also unusually
| personal-feeling, like he's just talking to you.
|
| This is how I feel about TheReportOfTheWeek, aka Reviewbrah. He
| reviews fast food items in his house or backyard in a single
| take and averages 100k-200k views per video (with some
| outliers). No fancy editing, no team of video assistants, just
| a genuinely charming guy reviewing cheap food in a nice suit in
| front of a fixed camera.
| cableshaft wrote:
| As someone who records videos without editing, that one take
| video could still be 19th or 30th take :) Although he's
| probably practiced enough he can do it in less than that. For
| me though, I have to restart a bunch of times. Usually that
| final take still has flubs, but it had the least glaring
| ones.
|
| The ones I do are usually rules explanations or brief
| overviews of my game designs that are intended to enter into
| contests or pitch the game to publishers, often finished
| right before the deadline (sometimes just an hour before) so
| I don't have time to video edit even if I wanted to.
|
| Like here's the most recent one I did, for a dice puzzle coop
| zombie themed game (I know zombies are an overused theme, I
| wasn't even trying to design a zombie themed game at first,
| it just fit the mechanisms best). Still screwed up a few
| things:
|
| https://youtu.be/uEBKKW7I8RM
| g3e0 wrote:
| > The guy's voice is almost a whisper, the ambient sounds from
| the garden or the forest or the road are oddly pleasant, and
| he's speaking pretty slowly, with none of these glitchy quick
| cuts you see in a lot of YT content. It's also unusually
| personal-feeling, like he's just talking to you.
|
| This sounds very much like ASMR. I find the most
| relaxing/entrancing videos are the ones that are
| unintentional/not forced, although obviously personal
| preferences do vary.
| verytrivial wrote:
| I watched a video of a friend of mine who's become a semi-
| prominent Zen teacher. After a few moments of listening to
| one of his (rather lovely) pandemic/Zoom group meditations,
| it struck me that this was weirdly close to ASMR too --
| intimacy, calm, human "touch". Philosophy too, yes, but the
| interpersonal dynamic is a mother cooing into your ear. I
| wonder if this resets you into some calm, receptive mood
| because that's an evolutionarily advantageous state to be in,
| and the cooing is a shortcut to it.
| phreeza wrote:
| I had almost exactly the same experience. For all it's
| downsides, sometimes the YouTube algorithm does do some pretty
| marvelous things.
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