Last year, during the refurbishment of the Garden Museum, which is housed in a deconsecrated medieval parish church next to Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official London residence, builders made the discovery of a lifetime: a cache of 30 lead coffins that had lain undisturbed for centuries.
Closer inspection revealed metal plates bearing the names of five former Archbishops of Canterbury, going back to the early 1600s.
Closer inspection revealed metal plates bearing the names of five former Archbishops of Canterbury, going back to the early 1600s.
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5 comments:
Watch the Moslems try to deface them.
1600!
That's when they were talking that Early Modern English. Shakespeare's time.
A time of great upheaval in the sounds of the English language, here, have a video that proves it. I meant to say 'break it all down' not prove. This was the period that England went nonrhotic in patches. And I wonder, "how did something that odd come about?"
Come on. It's the stupidest thing.
When Shakespeare was alive Londoners enunciated their R's just fine and right at this point they decided collectively in patches across the land to drop R's in instances and not in others. And not only that, but to intrude R's in instances where R's are uninvited. Its the weirdest damn thing. This requires finely tuned national agreement.
How does it happen?
How does that evolve?
Huh?
How?
Someone in the court sounded charming speaking this way and it spread?
I listened to video of a British girl show her pop-up book and her speech impediment is perfectly charming. "This is my favorite pop-up book." And it occurred to me all that childish charm in impeded speech was taught her. This is an intergenerational thing. That's what's annoying about listening to serious subjects being discussed in baby-talk.
I check out all the videos available on the subject of Egypt, pharaohs, Ramses, etc. on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix. 90% in British accent and now thousands of videos in shit English patiently tolerated. No brag. No exaggeration. No hyperbole. Literally thousands.
Okay fine, a hundred.
FINE! Ten.
Amazon Prime offers a video that I tried to watch. It skipped to a woman talking and I realized I already tried to watch it before and gave up. I recalled exactly why. She's talking about something interesting to me, but she using that accent that amounts to a baby-talk impediment that turns guards into "gods" and party into "potty" and dynasties into "dinasties", territories into "terror-trees" and that combined with her studiously carefree dress and her outrageously unkept windblown red afro blowing all over the place whipping around her oh so very serious head and I'm all,
GODDAMNIT, I QUIT AGAIN !
There's only so much absurdity a guy can take.
I like the concept of "coffin liquor"--the black, liquified remains of bishops contained in lead coffins. I think if the ancients had known of coffin liquor many interesting uses could have been made of the substance. Perhaps if you baptize a zombie with coffin liquor on Easter, the poor chap goes to his rest. On the other hand,a mummy who imbibes such material becomes unbelievably quick and strong. There's much we don't know about coffin liquor. Perhaps Roger Corman could establish a trust to further examine this intriguing new substance.
Yah, the snobs decided to change the pronunciation rules so they didn't sound like yobs (maybe they thought it sounded more French; they're super uptight about Frenchies looking down on them) and then the yobs reacted by going in the exact opposite direction because they didn't see the point in sounding like a bunch of nobs.
I saw a video of actors doing Shakespeare in the original accent. Way cool. Off to try and find so I can post it here. Or did I see it here first? No, I think it got sent to me.
Original Accent Shakespeare video
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