Thread by @azforeman

1 — Latest in my "Voices of Earlier English" series. John Donne's "Will" w/ an audio reconstruction of English as Donne may have pronounced it, along with glosses.

blogicarian.blogspot.com/2018/10/voices…

Thread explaining phonological choices follows. (@PhDniX @Safaitic may enjoy this)

2 — You'll notice I pronounce "Roman" and "Gold" as "Rooman" and "Goold". These are old-fashioned pronunciations, but they develop regularly from Old English Rōm and Gold (with Anglian lengthening to Gōld)

3 — Here is a page from the Dec. 1866 issue of "Notes & Queries". Within living memory of the when educated English pronunciation allowed both /ru:m/ and /roʊm/.

4 — While there is ample evidence that Rome was once pronounced Room, there is less evidence for the adjective "Roman". Rhymes are not very helpful here, as words of this type were prone to approximate rhyming, (rhymed with Woman, Human or Omen).

5 - You'll also hear that in words like "taught" I preserve a velar fricative /taʊxt/.

6- This is the conservative pronunciation. The early phoneticist Robert Robinson (1617) describes this sound as diphthong with an "aspirate". He could be describing either [aʍ] or [aʊx]. Others like the spelling-reformer Alexander Gil (d. 1635) imply a velar fricative.

7 - But many of Donne's contemporaries already had merged this with the vowel of "cause".

8 - Note the trilled /r/. This pronunciation is reported by Isaac Newton (yes THAt Isaac Newton) for his speech, whose R is made by "the quavering or jarring of the toungs end against the fore parte of palate." Attached images show 2 other 17th cent. descriptions of English R.

9 - You'll hear a rounded vowel words like "love" and "such" which may make people think of Irish or "Northern" accents. This was still the normal educated London pronunciation ca. 1600 when this poem was composed.

10 - John Florio's Italian-English dictionary of 1611, for example, equates the vowel of Dug, Stun with that of Italian "amore". Unrounded realizations existed to be sure. But before ca. 1630, the they were probably avoided in "good" speech.

11 - You'll also hear "schismatic" pronounced "sísmatic" with initial stress and no /k/ in onset. Our modern pronunciation of "schismatic" — like that of "Rome" and "Gold" — is a spelling pronunciation that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

12 - The 18th-19th centuries were a period of great social change, mobility and thus insecurity in urban areas. The obsession with propriety and gentility led to obsession with propriety in language.

13 - At the same time, mass-literacy was spreading on a scale unprecedented in English history. Such a situation would encourage language change, and this one in particular was a breeding-ground for new pronunciations derived from spelling.

14 - This is when the now-current pronunciations of a many English words emerged, including the pronunciations of words like Sonata, Chorister, Phlegm, Schism, Verdict, Conduit, Chastity, Housewife. (Formerly /sǝne:tǝ, kwɪrɪstǝr, fli:m, sɪzm, vɛrdɪt, kɔndɪt, tʃe:stɪti, hʌzwɪf/.)

15 - You'll also hear the vowel of "faith" and "make" rendered /æ:/. This is a conservative pronunciation, attested mostly by early phoneticists and orthoepists. The most common London pronunciation was already the /ɛ:/ described by handbooks of "Early Modern English".

16 - I went ahead and supposed that the upwardly-mobile Donne, particularly given that his eventual job as a Vicar was essentially a career in public speaking, might have adjusted his speech with this target pronunciation in mind over the course of his life.