Linguistics: Recent Episodes
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I make podcasts mainly about topics in linguistics, but occasionally about anthropology in general.
Hopefully this link works - this article discusses two separate theories of tonogenesis in the North Germanic languages that have lexical pitch accent.
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.602.9844&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Keàty Cūrbison’ cat hed a whudderin’ waow, A waow like a yowl, fit to freeten a man; An’ t’ leet iv it’ e’e was a green glentin’ lowe— Iv it’ _e’e_, we may say, for it no’but hed yan. T’ ya lūg hed been rovven an’ hung like a cloot, While t’ tudder stack ūp like t’ cockad’ iv a hat; Lang whiskers like brūssles spread o’ roond it’ snoot— It wosn’t a beauty—Keàte Cūrbison’ cat! Keàty Cūrbison’ cat was a terror to t’ toon— Till butt’ry an’ pantry it may’d hed a kay. Intil ivery hoose, ayder up t’ geàt or doon, By air-wole or chimla it wūmmelt it’ way. For thievin’ an’ reàvin’ ’twas war’ nor a fox, Ther’ wasn’t a hen-hoose it hedn’t been at; Young chickens, an’ geslins, an’ pigeons, an’ ducks Wer’ “ghem, gā ’way tul’t” to Keàte Cūrbison’ cat. Keàty Cūrbison’ cat like a tiger wad feight;— When it’ back was weel up an’ o’ ruddy for war It wad lick a cur dog mair nor ten times it’ weight, An’ mongrels an’ messans they dursn’t cū nār. It hed leet of a trap, an’ ya feùt was teàn off, An’ it’ tail bed been dock’t—but it dūdn’t mind that, It wad flee at owte whick ’at wad give it a lofe— A hero, i’ hair, was Keàte Cūrbison’ cat. Keàty Cūrbison’ cat hed of lives a lang lot— Yè ma’ toak aboot nine—it hed ninety an’ mair; It was preùf ageàn puzzen or pooder an’ shot— They hed buriet it yance, but it still dudn’t care. It was tiet iv a meal-bag an’ flung into t’ beck, But t’ bag it brong heàm for it’ mistress a brat, Limpin’, trailin’ ’t ahint it wi’ t’ string round it’ neck— T’ beck cūdn’t droon Keàty Cūrbison’ cat. Keàty Cūrbison’ cat browte oald Keàty to grief— Pooar body! she nowder was cūmly nor rich— An’ t’ neybors aboot settlet doon to t’ belief ’At her cat was a divil an’ she was a witch. An’ they said, “Let us swum her i’ t’ tarn,” an’ they dud; She swom a lāl bit, an’ than droon’t like a rat, An’ t’ cat aboot t’ spot swom as lang as it cūd; An’ finish’t at last was Keàte Cūrbison’ cat.
NOTES ON PRONUNCIATION In the first passage read, the fact that the word 'man' is spelled 'mon' represents a common feature of Old English involving the rounding (and possibly nasalisation) of short /ɑ/ before nasal consonants. For a lot of speakers/writers, this was probably allophonic (shown by alternations in spelling between 'mon' and 'man,' 'lond' and 'land' within a single text). If I were to re-record this, I would probably make more of an effort to differentiate this rounded vowel (something like [ɒ]) from phonological /o/, although you could argue that some speakers might have had an advanced version of this where that allophonic [ɒ] actually became /o/. I don't know if there's any evidence for that, I'm mostly just writing it for the sake of peoples' immersion if they noticed that idiosyncracy. The word 'cold' (with inflection) is variously spelled 'cealdne' and 'caldne'. Plenty of OE writers alternated their spelling, apparently sometimes just for the sake of variety - I doubt the writer intended for these two spellings to be pronounced differently, but I forgot about the first one while reading the second. The word 'medodrince' is one of several examples in this poem where we find 'o' where an OE textbook might suggest 'u'. I have interpreted this as a reflection of the writer's own regional accent. I pronounce the 'c' as [k] because the last substantial bit of OE reading I did was in a Northumbrian-influenced dialect where [k] had not palatalised. The alternation between 'feþera' and 'feþra' might not reflect a difference in speech, even though I've mistakenly differentiated them here; I think the syncopated form 'feþra' is more likely to be the way the author intended this word to be said.
Here's one with some examples of how the language (in the south-east) would have sounded, century-by-century. A big improvement on the last time I tried to do something like this, accuracy-wise.