Posted by John Nichols on May 16, 2005 at 16:22:07 from 165.91.196.105 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Norwich/Harwich? Which wich? posted by Alan Hakim on May 15, 2005 at 22:41:07:
I can not understand a native Boston who speaks English - the accent reminds me of the deep Middle English accent. I had a colleague who was from the Manchester, he called me everyday on the phone to talk about a job - a large sewage treatment works. The secretary would call out - the German guy is on the phone again. After a year of constant - 2 to 3 hour per day chatter I started to pick up his accent. Drove everyone in the office mad.
I am not sure why but I have a lot of problems hearing different accents. I suppose because we moved about so much I listen for the words not the differences. The big difference I notice is the change in vowels from England and Australia to the USA. The e sound swaps to an i sound in the USA. And o and u swap. Hence Mom and Mum both sound the same in USA and England respectively.
I was always intruiged by the Dr Foster poem,
Dr Foster went to Glouster
In a shower of rain
He stepped into a puddle
Right up to his middle
and never went there again.
I have always pronounced puddle and middle with the same sound for the u and i when I read the rhyme to my daughters, using the English u sound (Ed that would be an o-ish sound to you). So I say muddle.
The other interesting issue - I once created a story for my daughters and used the word huggle, Eliza was excited to find it in the dictionary as a cross between a hug and a cuddle. I had never heard the word before - everything old is new again.
Origin of the Rhyme,
Supposedly, in this rhyme Dr. Foster is King Edward I of England. He travelled to Gloucester in the middle of a rainstorm. When he entered Gloucester his horse fell and both he and the horse ended up in the middle of a huge mud puddle. The town's people had to use planks of wood to remove both King Edward and his horse from the mud. King Edward was enraged by this misfortune and refused to return to Gloucester.
Edward I, b. June 17, 1239, d. July 7, 1307, king of England (1272-1307) completed the conquest of Wales and temporarily subdued Scotland. He was the eldest son of HENRY III. In 1254 he was made duke of Gascony and married Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290). In contrast to his father, Edward showed masterfulness in the disputes with the English barons following the governmental reforms instituted by the Provisions of Oxford (1258). He supported Simon de MONTFORT in 1259 but later changed sides. He fought for the king at the Battle of Lewes (1264) and himself defeated Montfort decisively at Evesham (1265), restoring royal power. In 1271-72 he was on crusade at Acre. During the years from 1272, when Edward succeeded his father, to 1290 striking achievements occurred. Edward conquered the Welsh principality of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in devastating campaigns in 1277 and 1282-83 and built massive castles to keep it secure. In England he held regular parliaments. A program of legislation strengthened royal control over the court system and reformed the tangled feudal land law.
After 1294 wars in Scotland and France dominated Edward's reign. The death (1290) of Margaret, Maid of Norway, heiress to the Scottish crown, allowed Edward as suzerain to choose a successor, John de BALIOL, and then to claim direct rule over Scotland, which he subdued in 1296. In France the conflict concerned the French king's overlordship over Edward's duchy of Gascony. In 1297, Edward attacked France to assert his rights, but the expedition was cut short by the rebellion in Scotland of Sir William WALLACE. At the same time the English nobles rebelled, forcing Edward to grant Parliament control over taxes. By a treaty (1303) with PHILIP IV of France, Edward retained Gascony. He failed, however, to quell the risings of Wallace and Robert the Bruce (later ROBERT I), and Scotland remained only half- conquered at his death. He was succeeded by his son Edward II.
maybe this helps explain the difference and also why the USA that was settled in this period has different vowel sounds.
The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other things, orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language text written before or during the Shift. Any standard history of the English language textbook (see our sources) will have a discussion of the GVS. This page gives just a quick overview; our interactive See and Hear page adds sound and animation to give you a better sense of how this all works.
Otto Jespersen
"Discoverer" of the GVS
Picture by courtesy of
Det Kongelige Bibliotek,
Copenhagen When we talk about the GVS, we usually talk about it happening in eight steps. It is very important to remember, however, that each step did not happen overnight. At any given time, people of different ages and from different regions would have different pronunciations of the same word. Older, more conservative speakers would retain one pronunciation while younger, more advanced speakers were moving to a new one; some people would be able to pronounce the same word two or more different ways. The same thing happens today, of course: I can pronounce the word "route" to rhyme with "boot" or with "out" and may switch from one pronunciation to another in the midst of a conversation. Please see our Dialogue: Conservative and Advanced section for an illustration of this phenomenon.
That's all folks.