[HN Gopher] What the Queen's English revealed about a changing w...
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What the Queen's English revealed about a changing world
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 66 points
Date : 2022-09-20 05:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| edm0nd wrote:
| pessimizer wrote:
| Recently outdated joke.
| Angostura wrote:
| For a similar evolution in vowel sounds, see also David
| Attenborough's early programmes.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Check out the accents in this video: https://youtu.be/Xv8Rb-
| E_Gw4?t=1516
| Panoramix wrote:
| That was fascinating, I had to watch almost the whole thing
| dundarious wrote:
| Being from nearby, and born in the 80s, I can say that these
| accents are still common nowadays. However, they were far
| less common on TV than they were in the population then, and
| the same is true now. I suppose Eddie Dempsey and Mick Lynch
| are the most prominent people on TV nowadays who have non-"TV
| accents".
| Biologist123 wrote:
| Both Dempsey and Lynch are second generation Irish
| immigrants. There's no criticism, but I've recently started
| to notice the outsized and extraordinary impact of Irish
| immigrants on mainland Britain. We're lucky to have them.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Not to mention the haircuts.
| kmote00 wrote:
| I kept expecting a Monty Python and skit to break out...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The t-glottalization mentioned in the article is now picking up
| speed in the USA too, most notably (I think) among female
| speakers. I'm still shocked (as someone who grew up with a
| cockney-leaning accent) to hear presenters on NPR do
| t-glottalization, and on the occasions when I'm around
| millenials, especially millenial women, it's an every-fifth-
| sentence phenomenon. Given its role as a class status/marker in
| the UK during my youth, it feels very surprising, but also a
| great living reminder of how language changes in real time.
| Tagbert wrote:
| historically, linguists have noted that language changes tend
| to arise among young women. They are more flexible due to age
| and more socialized than their male peers.
| troad wrote:
| The studies show that women tend to copy high status features
| ("prestige"), and men tend to copy low status features
| ("covert prestige"). That is to say, women want to sound like
| they're class above where they really are (richer, fancier,
| etc), while men want to sound like they're a class below
| (rougher, manlier, etc). In fact, upper middle class women
| have in certain studies been measured to more consistently
| use prestige features than actual upper class people.
| satellite2 wrote:
| This sounds like a very categorical claim. It seems hard to
| measure, quantize and produce rigorous and replicable
| results.
| seydor wrote:
| Is this why i find that british accents have worsened in past
| decade? I can watch a speech from Thatcher pretty well, she
| speaks quite clearly . But in recent movies and TV series i
| almost always turn subtitles on
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| umeshunni wrote:
| What I like the most about this article is that all of the
| studies referenced in the article are linked directly as PDFs.
| dString wrote:
| And UK visitors to the site don't even get any ads.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| I've always found old audio recordings fascinating because of
| just how differently people seemed to speak. It's a shame
| recording technology came so late, but future generations will
| have a lot of fun with this, I guess!
| ljiljana wrote:
| I also enjoyed learning about accents in Shakespeare's time:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QYGEwM1Sk
| delecti wrote:
| What's fascinating to me is that it's a bit foreign (in the
| unfamiliar sense, rather than "of another country") but also
| totally comprehensible, despite being 400 years old.
| mhh__ wrote:
| https://www.dialectsarchive.com/
| retrac wrote:
| It is still a bit hard to believe that a language changes so
| much, even during a single person's lifetime. It seems so
| static when we use it. And yet the proof's right there. I've
| been noticing it more often, in older films and shows. Even as
| recent as the 1980s sometimes. They are, in effect, speaking a
| different dialect. It's not just the groovy phrases they used
| to use. Intonation patterns have shifted. Some of the vowels
| are a bit different. What's funny is I don't remember noticing
| this with some of the same material just 20 years ago; I
| suppose their accents weren't quite as pronounced yet.
| noneeeed wrote:
| This reminds me of reading The Hobbit to my son last year, I
| actually found the language quite hard to work with in
| places. The rhythm is just different to modern English and
| there were turns of phrase that are rarely used now.
|
| It's amazing the difference a century can make.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Accents change due to status and changing fashions. One such
| is the "Mid Atlantic" or "Transatlantic" accent. This accent
| was an attempt to be a neutral midpoint between English &
| American accents. You'll hear it in older movies from the 30s
| & 40s (it was dying out in the 50s).
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
|
| 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL2MJ8rQ12E
| michael1999 wrote:
| I'm baffled. Are there any links to audio from her earlier
| speeches? All I find are transcripts (besides the last
| Christmas), and links to scholarly texts. It seems bizarre that
| the BBC doesn't link to their own content archives here.
| ellm wrote:
| BBC's video archive, unless it is extremely popular, is almost
| certainly not going to be avaliable after a few years. Shows
| published on their streaming platform iPlayer are typically
| only avaliable for a few months.
|
| The BBC archives tend to only be used for creating new or
| remastering old content rather than for republication in their
| original form. I agree, it's bizarre.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if there were some arcane 'crown
| copyright' rules involved. But given that several episodes of
| Doctor Who have been lost by the BBC, it also wouldn't surprise
| me if such recordings of The Queen have likewise been lost.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| You will have to hunt through YouTube.
|
| > _Over the past few days, millions around the world have
| watched and listened to the late Queen 's broadcast on her 21st
| birthday in 1947. At the time, she was still a princess, but
| already determined to make a pledge to her people: "I declare
| before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short
| shall be devoted to your service."_
|
| Video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yDDqO4dH3c
|
| Transcript:
|
| https://www.royal.uk/21st-birthday-speech-21-april-1947
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