Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation

A poem about the deception of love, masquerading as a love poem. Clever Will.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

[@Dontletthepigeon]

Why aren’t we preforming Shakespeare like this? It’s sounds so cool!

[@Dontletthepigeon]

Thanks, I will look into him!

[@Kateiswriting]

I'm so used to hearing Shakespeare in RP (i.e. upper class English accent), hearing it in this kind of soft vaguely West country burr is is a complete revelation. It sounds so much more personal, informal, intimate. Btw, if you want more just search for OP/original pronunciation Shakespeare. I think they've done whole plays in it and there's certainly plenty of recording of sonnets online.

[@Dontletthepigeon]

Kate thanks! I should research more into this original pronunciation, it’s very interesting

[@Kateiswriting]

@@Dontletthepigeon They've used rhyme in a similar way to "prove" (as far as you can anyway) that Wordsworth had a Northern accent. He rhymes "waters" with "chatters" so it'd be like "watters", which is very common in the area where he grew up. I found it weirdly moving to hear an echo of his voice centuries later, preserved by an "off" rhyme. (I guess he could have been using a half rhyme but *shrug*)

[@Dontletthepigeon]

@Kate, is this something that you study? You seem to be very knowledgeable in the subject.

[@hex1lexi88]

What I love about these videos is that you can actually hear the rhymes as they were meant to sound. A line like "If this be error and vpon me proued, I neuer writ, nor no man euer loued" just sounds awkward in Mordern English pronunciation, but it's so satisfying to hear it rhyme in Early Modern English.

[@absurdum-the-artist]

That sound like Irish, Northern English and Scottish accents mixed

[@Rolando_Cueva]

Don’t forget Welsh!

[@taylorjones82]

It sounds more West Country to me.

[@lepauvrehomme]

Is this actor from Cork?

[@kpopandotherplaylists2518]

Yes it does... That's what I was thinking ( almost ) exactly. Especially the Irish seeming accent. ..

[@pocossamsamopoco6873]

Is this the new form of porn? Please do more old texts in original pronunciation

[@masicbemester]

I guess you could say... pornunciation

[@pocossamsamopoco6873]

@@masicbemester badumtusssss

[@mhdfrb9971]

@@seaweedworkers425 stfu

[@avab4035]

I understand this better than the modern version 🙂

[@SavannahPhillipss]

I’m from Birmingham, not far from where Shakespeare was born in Stratford, and I can hear twinges of the Brummie accent there but it mostly sounds very West Country lol

[@kllxenq]

same

[@carrot708]

There's Brummie, West Country, Norfolk, Cornish, Yorkshire and sometimes I can even hear a little Geordie. This is definitely close to the accent all the other accents came from

[@marlonbryanmunoznunez3179]

I find it so peculiar that English pronunciation has changed so much between that time and now that some rhymes just don't work. That time is relatively recent. Just for comparison, poetry from this same period in Spanish, by say Lope de Vega or Cervantes, can be read by modern people without issues: is only some of the vocabulary that sounds obsolete and gives a tell about when the poem was originally written. By the way this sounds really cool, and for us non native English speakers, it would help us to appreciate Shakespeare more if his theater and prose were read in this pronunciation. With the text in front of course like in this case or with subtitles.

[@marcusaurelius4941]

Check out A.Z. Foreman's reconstructions! They sound even more old-timey and "alien", and in my opinion, better, with the rolled R's and all

[@lassebirkhenriksen]

So this is how elizabeth I would have spoken

[@adrenalinevan]

Shakespeare was from Devon confirmed

[@Dunkle0steus]

Devonians are from shakespeare

[@JediSimpson]

West Country

[@clarysse6059]

J' a d o r e

[@ashwinnmyburgh9364]

I absolutely LOVE reconstructed Shakespearean English! I just wish I could find a good source to learn how to pronounce it properly.

[@glittie4939]

what happened to your discord server?

[@absalondebarvac3715]

I'm a fan of that ſ letter. Why would it ever be removed?

[@hotwheelsearl]

probably because it look too close to F, and the uneducated kept mistaking the two letters.

[@ABAlphaBeta]

@@hotwheelsearl It's more to do with print

[@rodrigoadrianrodriguezaedo4477]

@@hotwheelsearl That explains how fneeze became sneeze

[@ABAlphaBeta]

@@denizmetint.462 Which no one uses anymore. Eszett died a while ago

[@marlonbryanmunoznunez3179]

I think that letter is the base for Integration symbol in Calculus. Because an integral is a sum.

[@sushinorthu2918]

I love your videos

[@midkhatsatdanov8421]

Wow, very cool

[@cuentaestudios9241]

Look at thath scene of Ricard III interpretated by Laurence Olivier "now is the winter of our discontent"

[@kpopandotherplaylists2518]

I remember reading this the first time, n thinking wtf. But soon understood it mostly. Except the barke part. I had to look that up. If you don't know this poem, a barke is a ship/ boat. Ie a fixed star to navigate by for a traveler. Just saying...

[@avab4035]

thank you, this one puzzled me greatly

[@rodrigoadrianrodriguezaedo4477]

Interesting

[@ImperatorGrausam]

So the "e" in "fixed" is pronounced, but not the "e" in "mindes"? I thought in Early Modern English all of those e's were pronounced.

[@ABAlphaBeta]

They weren't

[@ImperatorGrausam]

@@ABAlphaBeta Ah. Didn't know.. thanks.

[@ABAlphaBeta]

@@ImperatorGrausam You're thinking of Middle English, the stage before (and even then for most of the period last e was dropped)

[@ImperatorGrausam]

@@ABAlphaBeta Ah yes, you're right. That was ME.

[@samusordicus]

Moistened

[@bonkozvogdan777]

Sounds better than modern English

[@christopherharvey1777]

It can’t be ma-ree-arge on the first line. It adds an extra syllable, which break the iambic pentameter.

[@pariahremover3560]

Por qué mentís?

[@tsukun16]

So the R's were really retroflex

[@ABAlphaBeta]

Rhotic, as in modern GA - and in a lot of accents r's acting as consonants were trilled, up to the late 18th century

[@kekeke8988]

It somehow sounds Irish to me.

[@RevolutionaryLoser]

Why is the U and V switched and who is to blame?

[@cool-person1161]

they aren't switched, V was used at the beginning of words and U was used in the middle of words. you can see a U in the word "houres"

[@michaelyuan3382]

Is an IPA transcription available? Just to make sure I did not mishear. Remove does not rhyme with love? Time has a short vowel, not a diphthong? Height has the same final consonant as worth? etc. Also, whose voice was this? Are there more recordings by the same person?

[@marcusaurelius4941]

The recordings are from the author of the channel lmao. And I think 'time' is something along the lines of /tɪim/ so it's in the process of breaking the i: into a diphthongəi and so on