Simon Roper
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2021–2024
18:10 · 7.2M views · Dec 24, 2020
Linguist Simon Roper reconstructs how a London accent would have sounded from the 14th to the 21st centuries, reading passages in period pronunciation. It draws on the Cambridge History of the English Language.
HN recommends it as a captivating, accessible tour of how English pronunciation changed, including the rise and fall of the rhotic r.
4 comments from Hacker News
If you have an interest in English and the evolution of the language you must check out the YouTuber Simon Roper. There's no finer student of the subject than him and I appreciate that he starts every video with "I am not [a] formally qualified linguist," yet he has a deeper understanding than most. Some of my favorite videos: - Celtic Influence on English [0] - Progressing Some Words from Proto-Germanic to English [1] - A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Centuries [2] - A Northern US Accent from the 18th to the 21st Centuries [3] - Old English and Middle English; why are they so different? [4] --- [0] [LINK] [1] [LINK] [2] this video [3] [LINK] [4] [LINK]
I thought this might be a Simon Roper video! I really enjoy his deep, humble and creative views on these topics, even though he still describes himself as only an enthusiast. Speaking of creative, check out his "A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Century"[1] for frankly enchanting 18 minutes of viewing. [1] this video
Very interesting! Many poor people in Ireland emigrated or were sent to the new world too. The rhotic "r" is prevalent in the Irish language, and it is a distinct characteristic of the sound of Hiberno-English (and other accents with a Celtic influence of course). There's a cool video on YT called "A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Centuries"[1] — I'm sure it's not meant to be definitive, but it's very interesting to note the presence or absence of the rhotic "r" during different periods. -- Speaking of the New World — this is something of a side topic, but I think it's fascinating that "caulk" is commonly used in the U.S. and Canada; e.g: bathroom tiling. In my experience at least, you wouldn't really hear someone use the word in that context in the U.K. or Ireland. Most people I've asked associate it exclusively with boats. I have a speculative pet theory on this — originally, caulk specifically referred to the materials used to fill the gaps between boards in a wooden ship. Since practically everyone who originally came to the New World came on old wooden ships, it's not hard to imagine that "caulk" — once specific to ship building and maintenance — became well known to emigrant populations and took on a broader meaning over time. In contrast, it's likely very few people who remained in the Old World at that time were ever in a wooden ship, and "caulk" remained less well known and retained its specific meaning. [1]: this video
I suppose accents are changing rapidly everywhere. We recently found a recording of my parents talking to me as a baby in the late 1970s. They both sounded like the actors from "The Good Life". The question is - is it happening more quickly than before. Almost certainly, I'd say, if you listen to examples of London accents across the centuries like these: this video