Geordie and Northeastern Phonology

The Cambridge History of the English Language, particularly the chapters on phonology, are an excellent resource for learning about the reconstruction of earlier sound systems (Volume III in particular), and I think at least a couple of them are available for free somewhere online. To summarise, though, evidence comes from a number of angles:

- Our understanding of common patterns in the phonologies of modern languages. Vowel inventories tend to be relatively symmetrical, and changes often happen as a response to asymmetry, or to other vowels changing quality. Vowels are more likely to be quite peripheral. Front vowels are more likely to be unrounded, back vowels are more likely to be rounded. Vowel qualities naturally maintain a certain amount of distance from each other to avoid mergers (or occasionally fail to keep this distance, and merge). These rules really restrict what is realistic in a historical reconstruction.

- Of all of the possible sound developments that might have happened, spelling evidence helps us to pin down exactly what has occurred, especially during time periods where spelling wasn't standardised (or nonstandard spelling was widespread). People mixing up two letters might indicate a merger of vowels. People beginning to spell replace 'a' with 'e' might indicate a raising of an /a/-like vowel to an /e/-like vowel.

- The comparative method has given us a good idea of the phonology of the common ancestor of the Germanic languages, Proto-Germanic. This gives us a reasonable framework in which reconstructions of past stages of English have to sit comfortably and make sense.

- After about 1600, we have direct descriptive evidence by authors who deliberately tell us how they pronounce things on a mechanical level, telling us exactly what they do with their tongue and lips when producing certain sounds. Robert Robinson's 'The Art of Pronunciation' (1617) is the earliest example I know of, but plenty more have followed. This serves to show how reliable the other methods are. I have personal experience with this; over the last two years, I have tried to use spelling evidence and backward triangulations of modern phonologies to work out how speech around the Scottish border might have sounded in the early modern period (which I talk about a bit in this video). An email directed me to a text that I had no idea about; 'The Britan Tongue' by Alexander Hume (no relation), written around 1617 in Scotland. He lays out what he considers to be a representative orthography of contemporary Scottish pronunciation, and it closely matches what I had expected from spelling and comparative evidence from modern dialects.

I'd be more than happy to answer any questions and take any corrections in the comments :)

Видео Geordie and Northeastern Phonology канала Simon Roper