John Alexander Blyth wrote:
> There are also attempts to do Shakespeare as he might
> have pronounced his verse, but in general people can't accept anything less
> than 'refined' and 'elevated' for the great poet who, like Blake, would
> have been perfectly happy to rhyme 'eye' with 'symmetry', which would both
> have ended with a sound rather like the German 'ei' in 'mein'
Can you provide anything to back this up? I'm not refuting, honestly,
I'm just curious: I would have guessed if they really did rhyme that it
would have been the "eye" which was pronounced "ee". And why should he
not have been "perfectly happy" to rhyme them if they both ended in the
same vowel?
> There may be an element of English influence. Oddly
> enough there are English speakers who pronounce their English 'v' as
> English "w", which has been associated with a portion of the upper class
> (the legendary 'upper class twit' of Monty Python fame);
John, I've never come across this in Britain - and I've met a fair
number of upper class twits in my time :o) I know it's a common
Dickensian affectation, but I've never encountered it in anyone born in
the 20th century - not in a native English speaker anyway. We were all
taught to do it when pronouncing Latin at school (the old saying, in
weeno weritas, or Julius Caesar on conquering Britain, weeny weedy
weaky[1]) and then I had to re-align my pronunciation when I learnt to
sing "Church Latin", but I'm not aware of anyone adopting it to speak
their own lingo.
[1]Sellar & Yeatman: 1066 And All That, still a seriously funny book
after all this time.
cheers,
Linda
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