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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Anounsing a nu Ingglish spelling
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References: <32CC4567.BC7@online.no> <32CBA700.6170@online.no> <E3GGpF.KwB@midway.uchicago.edu> <E3IC3E.8Mz@scn.org>
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 18:14:04 GMT
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In article <E3IC3E.8Mz@scn.org>, Leland Bryant Ross <lilandbr@scn.org> wrote:
>
>How many urban-myths-of-language can one amateur orthographic surgery beget?
>
>In a previous article, ablehr@online.no (Anders Blehr) says:
>
>>Daniel von Brighoff wrote:
>>
>>> [I wrote:]
>>> 
>>> >I suggest we go for the Newfoundland brand of English, since it
>>> >presumably is closer to Old English than any other dialect.
>>> 
>>>         Is this part of some Newfie joke I'm just not familiar with?  Or
>>> are you actually serious?
>>
>>I am actually serious.  The English spoken in Newfoundland today is
>>supposedly as close as you get to 17th century (rural) English anywhere
>>in the world.  
>
>My personal supposition would be that you'd get a lot closer on any 
>decent-but-not-innovative Shakespearean stage--but you still wouldn't 
>get very close.  (In Newfoundland, too, you need to be constantly on the 
>lookout for Beothuk loanwords and the occasional outcropping of Old Norse.)

	Maybe if you restrict yourself to a) passages in prose where the
speech of a lower class individual is being reproduced and b) American
casts who resist imitating RSC models.  I seriously doubt that 
Shakespeare's poetic and highly innovative speech is all that close to
the natural rural English or any era.
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
