I tend to go overboard when I try to talk "ye olde." If I'm speaking in-character I don't want to sound like a modern American suburbanite, but I also don't want to try and fail spectacularly at being a Shakespearean actor. Any tips or tricks for sounding natural rather than, "By morning you will again sup the sweet air of freedom?"
More so than accents (which I am bad at) I think the thing that works best for me is when a character is high-born or at least aspires to be high class, they are going to speak in a way that is noticeably more formal and indirect than more common folk. Since people who have (or want) status have more to lose from misspeaking, they are much more careful about it. My model for how this goes is less Shakespeare and more Jane Austen.
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Usually a very little goes a long way.
GMs and Players that can effectively do a convincing accent or dialect are quite rare, and doing it badly and a lot is distracting and the opposite of immersive. A phrase or two, now and then can give the others the idea without constantly jarring them with over the top caricatures and malapropisms.
My advice would be develop a signature curse, oath or battle cry and let that be enough. "By Grabthar’s Hammer" "All For One" "May the Force be with you."
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The original pronunciation of "Ye" was "The". "Y" was sometimes used in Old and Middle English as a substitute for "TH". "Olde" would very likely be pronounced as "Ol-deh".
The original pronunciation of "Ye" was "The". "Y" was sometimes used in Old and Middle English as a substitute for "TH". "Olde" would very likely be pronounced as "Ol-deh".
That' not correct - the letter in question (called "thorn") is completely seperate from "y". They just simplified the original letter (Þ/þ) to look like more and more like a Y/y.
I also think that you don't pronounce the "e" at the end, it was only a writing-thing because there weren't any proper guidelines on writing english. Wiktionary gives the same pronounciation as "old".
So, "ye olde" would be pronounced just like "the old".
There are actually quite a few youtube videos you can find which have recordings of people speaking (as accurately as linguists can determine anyway) in an "Old English" accent. Most of the time it's almost entirely unintelligible.
Any links? It sounds like an amusing listen if nothing else.
There are actually quite a few youtube videos you can find which have recordings of people speaking (as accurately as linguists can determine anyway) in an "Old English" accent. Most of the time it's almost entirely unintelligible.
Probably because Old English is an almost entirely different language. For what you would normally think of as an older English sound, that's closer to Middle English.
Looking at the excellent examples provided by Bjørn Røyrvik- I think you might be safe if you throw some Scottish accents for the general populous. This is a vast oversimplification... but it is readily recognizable accent for layman players, and it at least has somewhat connected linguistic roots.
I might be tempted to give nobility (and wannabe nobility) accents that lean toward the French- due to the Norman invasion, the upper classes were closely related to that ethnic group, and there was a distinct linguistic divide between classes for a long time as a result.
And remember- all examples of writing are influenced by a multitude of factors that can skew it from the way people actually spoke. Medieval education was... not best, and you have to rely upon the skills of barely literate merchants, monks, and noble brats. Also, the examples that get preserved are often the kind of writing that would appeal to the people with the money to preserve the texts (ie- flowery language for nobility). Unless this is for a linguistics class, I'd just go with simple and functional for the purpose at hand. You shouldn't try to force something unfamiliar to you.