In the mountains they talk like Shakespeare...

So, in my last post, I talked about mountain stereotypes and gave a little background to where they came from. However, there are other stereotypes about the mountains that come from the inside, that is, natives to the region. One of the big ones is that the speech of the mountains is like that of Shakespeare. Or Chaucer. Or some other literary giant from some unspecified point in the past. It's almost a reflex, as people will bring this up usually as a retort to some slight about culture or speech. It usually goes like this: Person A (from the mountains) says something that reflects mountain heritage; Person B says that it's wrong/weird/incorrect etc. Person A replies with the Literary Giant from the Past idea.

But, Shakespeare and Chaucer were not contemporaries. In fact, Chaucer lived from 1343-1400, whereas Shakespeare lived from 1564-1616, roughly two hundred years later. The English that each spoke was not the same (just google 'Romeo and Juliet' and read a few lines in the original. Then google 'The Canterbury Tales' and read a few lines in the original. Not the same!). Shakespeare would've spoken and did write in Early Modern English, and it's fairly comprehensible to most of us modern speakers. We can read it decently well. But, it would've sounded a little strange, and to understand it would have been more difficult. Below is a fascinating video showing how it might've sounded (plus it's a cool video in general).

Here's a link in case it won't play...

Chaucer wrote in and would've spoken Middle English, and it would not have been very comprehensible to us at all, below is a video.

here's a link just in case.

Now, I've heard lots and lots of mountain voices in my life, but none sound like either one of these!

This idea also has a fundamental misunderstanding of language and language change. Language is constantly changing, from word meanings (tweet...) to new words (blog...) to word order/syntax (want to go with?) to pronunciation as in the videos above. Language never stands still. It is constantly in flux. You can listen to your grandparents or great-grandparents and hear the difference (or listen to your grandchildren or great-grandchildren!), notice new usages that are slightly unfamiliar, etc. Then just imagine 400 or 600 years of little changes (which become slightly bigger changes, and even bigger changes, you get the idea!). Hard to see how we can speak like either one!

But, getting back to my main point. Why do we feel we have to invoke this Literary Giant of the Past idea? Let's reflect just a minute about this. Why would we (and I include myself because I've said it too) say this? What are we actually doing? At its core, what we're doing is saying that whatever Person B reacted to is worthy because it has a fine literary tradition and is associated with the great English of the past. We feel as if the way we speak is not worthy in and of itself; we must borrow prestige from the past. It's high time we started to recognize that our way of speaking is just as worthwhile as any other variety. All ways of speaking have worth. There is no need to rely on some other sense of worth (from the past, literary, or any). The way we speak reflects where we are from, who raised us, who we associate with, basically who we are. Some may not like that and want to change. Others will want to embrace it. It's time to stop the stigma without relying on a false idea of sounding like Shakespeare or Chaucer. No one needs to rely on outside sources of prestige to justify how they sound. If someone doesn't like the way we sound, that reflects them and their prejudices and not the way we speak.