Good morrow, and
welcome to the schoolyard. The King has asked me, Percy McFie,
to instruct you on the language of our time. You have a mighty
strange accent and you won't fit in unless you learn to speak
like us.
Pronunciation
Before we teach you any words, you'll have to know how to pronounce
them. For example, in want, the a sounds like the
a in fa r. It's very long and drawn
out. The word make is pronounced so it could be
written mek.. I is pronounce uh-ee.
the word head is pronounced haid..
The word mercy is pronounced maircy with
a hard r. Neither is pronouced nayther.
Lord has a drawn out oo sound.
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Vocabulary
Since I don't recognize o'er half the words you're saying, I'd
better give you a lesson in vocabulary. I've been able to figure
out that your never is our ne'r. I've
also noticed a few other changes: Until later, or
see ya' is anon.. Fare-thee-well
is another common closing to a conversation, literally translated
into bye or goodbye. Day
is morrow. Good morrow is a common
greeting in place of your 'hi' or 'hello'.
As you would find in your courts, nay s used as
a negative, most commonly instead of no . Aye
or yea are used to answer positively, translated as
yes .
There are other ways to answer a question. When the answer is
unclear mayhap, perchance, or belike
, are used as maybe or sure, whatever
. To ask "why?", wherefore is
used. Oft is often, and enow
translates into enough. As you can see,
these words are shorter now, than in your future times. Aroint
means away . Verily can be translated
to very or truly. Prithee or
pray translates to please and should
be used when talking to any elder, and is recommended for polite
conversation. Grammarcy is also a good idea to use
when speaking to elders, because it means thank you.
. Definitely not to be used when talking to a respectable person,
or a polite, formal conversation is the word fie ,
which translates to some very bad curses. In other words, please
don't use this.
Well, as long as we are on the subject of naughty words, we have
quite a bundle of insulting phrases. They are started with thou
and are followed by an adverb, a hyphenated adjective, and finished
off with a noun. For more information on those dirty words, contact
my assistant, Morley. You can find him at Elizabethan
Insults. There you will find insults such as "Thou
gleeking pox-marked jolthead" and other such nonsense!
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Thou, thee, and
you
Thou and you are
the informal and formal (respectively) way to address people.
Thou is like the 'tu' in French or
Spanish, 'du' in German, or 'ty' in
Russian. You can be used as plural, or 'vous' in
French or 'usted' in Spanish. Thou should be used
when speaking to a family member, a friend, some menial nobody
you want to look down on, or anyone you to whom you'd say "Hey,
man, how's it going?" On the other hand, you should use you
if you are talking to your boss, an elder, royalty, members of
the clergy, perfect strangers, anyone to whom you'd address as
'Sir' or 'Ma'am", or those who are superior to you, such
as the creators of this page!
Thee and thou are a little harder
to learn than you and thou. You,
or shall I say thou, would use thou
in the nominative case, and thee in a subjective
case. (The nominative case is used when the pronoun is the direct
object or indirect object, when the verb directs its action to
the person. The subjective case is used when the pronoun is the
subject for the sentence.)
As an implied rule, superiors are addressed by their title and
surname, inferiors by their Christian name. If you do not practice
the Christian religion, then you are, mostly likely, looked down
upon by your whole community and are probably not addressed by
superiors at all. If, however ,you are, you might be called man,
fellow, or woman, or another inferior
name. Sirrah, however, is the worst, because it
is sometimes an insult.
General terms of respect include master and mistress.
These can simply be a polite form of address, but they are particularly
used by servants speaking to their employers, or by anyone speaking
to a gentleman or gentlewoman. They were also referred to as titles,
when using master and then a last name, it is considered a form
of gentleman; when master is before a first name,
it is a polite way for addressing a commoner. Commoners are also
called Goodman or Goodwoman , especially
if they are the head of a yeomanly household. When speaking with
a close friend, common titles were friend, cousin,
or coz. Do you understand friend?
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To be and to have
Like your future English language,
there are different forms of both to be, and to have
. Depending on who is the subject of the sentence, different
forms of to be and to have are used. With the infinitive,
to be, you would say or see written:
- I am
- thou art
-he/she/it is
- we/you/they are
With the infinitive to have, there are also different forms.
Here they are:
- I have
- thou hast
- he/she/it hath
- we/you/they have
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Color names
In order for you to sound like you are from our time, you might
also want to familiarize yourself with these color names, commonly
used in day-to-day language:
Bristol red - a tasteful and beautiful red
Carnation - a color that resembles human flesh
Dead Spaniard - a pale, grayish, tan
Gingerline - a pretty reddish violet
Hair - This is a bright tan, because that is the most common color
of hair.
Incarnate - a plain red
Lincoln Green - a bright, clear green
Lustie-gallant - A pleasant, nice, light red
Madienhair - Bright tan, the color of a true maiden's hair
Milk and Water - a bluish white
Murrey - A purplish red, the color of a ripe, red plum
Plunket - a light blue
Popinjay - an aquamarine color, or bluish green for the simple
types
Primrose - a pale, washed-out yellow
Sad - any dark, dismal color
Sheep - natural color
Strammel - extremely similar to Incarnate
Wachet - A washed-out greenish blue
Whey - A pale whitish-blue
Willow - A light green, similar to those of a willow tree leaves
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Pronunciation Drills
Now that I've taught you enough to
get around, let's see if you've learned anything.
Please recite the following:
Father, I want to wash i' the water with Margaret Gardener. Art
thou walkin' and talkin' with Arthur and Martha Martin?
Mother, brother doth want another brother verily much; but with
such a brother, heaven above, give us not another.
Surely (surely, not shurely) William (william) Drake's father
shall ne'er (drop the v as learned before) have the patience (pa-c-ience)
or affection (a-ffect-c-ion) to take pleasure in bein' married
(marr-i-ed) now. Sin' he doth be perfection (per-fect-c-ion),
I assure (a-ssure, not a-shure) that his wife wants thy pity.
A vile association (a-ssoc-i-a-c-ion) without gratification (grat-if-i-ca-c-ion)
for either.
In the first drill, you should have noticed the emphasis on the
nasal a. In the second drill, you should have noticed
the o sound being stressed. The third drill contained
special words.
Use these pronunciation drills to help you in your study of the
Elizabethan English dialect. To make yourself sound even more
authentic, add words such as: "right","well",
and "most" to your speech.
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References:
Vinopal, John M. "Proper Elizabethan Accents". http://www.resort.com/~banshee/Faire/Language/language.html
(25 June 1996)
Georgetown University "Old English Pages". http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/oe/old_english.html
(22 June 1996)
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