For the Shakespeare Geeks: Sonnet 116 in RP & OP

[neadods]

YouTube link of a man reciting Sonnet 116 in Received Pronunciation followed by original pronunciation.

The weirdest part of all this is that OP sounds like someone who spent 20 years in rural Ireland and followed them up with 20 years in rural West Virginia... something that sounds like hillbilly and yet it's some of the most enduring and erudite English in the world.

Comments

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Doesn't sound Irish at all to me. More Mummerset (Somerset, Devon, East Dorset) with a dash of Northern flat vowel/word clipping.

Which is odd, considering Shakespear was a Warwickshire boy writing in London and our regional accent differences are still marked today and would have been even stronger back then.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be about right though - aren't there various dying dialects in the eastern US that still speak Shakespearian English?

BTW, I think it was Terry Jones did a bit about how the Bible in English actually helped standardise the language - I can believe that fully, having suffered through various dialects of Irish as a child.