The Gamester Tieth Hith Tongue in Knoths

[jducoeur]

Last night's interesting project was teaching some easy games to the Elizabethan English group, at the request of madamebuttery. The teaching was easy (I was deliberately teaching just straightforward gambling games); the language less so. It was a little disconcerting, since I have *written* a fair amount of period English in The Ace's Boke. But coming up with the right words at speaking speed proves much harder for me. I didn't even attempt an appropriate accent -- I think my head would have exploded. Something to play with and practice a bit.

Dance practice was more straightforward. I finally got around to reintroducing Alta Regina: as ladysprite had pointed out to me, that's really one of the easier dances in the 16th c. Italian repertoire, and pretty much all of dance practice seemed to be more or less getting it. I should work that one a bit over the next few weeks: it's a good combination of bouncy, fun and not too hard, so it might stick...

Comments

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

Do you think you might want Alta Regina on the fourth? The Waytes have not played it recently but there is certainly enough time between now and then to find our copies and run through it again.

[jducoeur]

Probably, but I'm not sure what you mean by "on the fourth"...

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

June 4? Also (by my count) the last official practice before summer break.

The difficulty with Alta Regina for me was the spinny factor. Definitely not safe for those prone to dizziness.

[jducoeur]

Ah, right -- I've been thinking of it so much as the last of the season, it hadn't even occurred to me that it was a first week. Yeah, if you can do it, that would be great.

And yeah, the spinniness is significant. It's definitely a non-Davey dance...

[matildalucet.livejournal.com]

Isn't June 4th the next live music night?

[jducoeur]

Oh, right -- entirely forgot about that. Yes, it would be great to have...

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

I didn't even attempt an appropriate accent -- I think my head would have exploded.

An interesting resonance there with a project I've been planning, which I've been thinking of as "Comparative Phonetics for Heralds" (altho' it probably won't exactly be that).

For one thing, it's yet another dilemma of the best as the enemy of the good. If I can get folks to pronounce [French | German | Welsh | Italian | Flemish | Latin | Mongolian ] names and placenames correctly, is that good enough? Or do I have to get them to pronounce medieval [ all of the above ] correctly?

If I were to speak correctly for my persona it would be Middle English with a Welsh accent. Think Terry Jones reading Chaucer. Eww. So here's another question. Given that last, how would I pronounce, say, a Flemish or a Swedish or a Provencal name? In fact, I'd do it with a Middle-Anglo-Welsh accent. Hyper-eww. But the point is, the most authentic thing I could do is screw it up!

Case in point: our late queen of happy memory, Aikaterina. No way I would have referred to her as Aikaterina FitzWilliam. To me, she was Queen Katherine III, thank you very much. (And to my Byzantine Khazar alternate persona, she was Aikaterine Lukanina Drakonteiocheles.)

Look up "Jean Chauvin" and "Giovanni Caboto". (Thank you, Larry Gonick...)

And yet, it still gets worse

[etherial.livejournal.com]

My Glee Club director in college was working on his Doctorate in Music History. We were working on one Mass, and he was telling us "Oh, this is how the Germans were pronouncing their latin in this Century."

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

(catching up on LJ)
In real life: It is undoubtedly period to pronounce names of persons not from your court the way that *you* want to - after all, this is *your* court (or your sovereign's, and you speak for him/her). The King's Way of Speaking Is Correct, which is why "Thames" is pronounced "Temmes," and an entire Spanish court lisped, and . . . (I'm sure there are other examples)

In SCA life: As a Court Herald, I felt it was my duty to make the experience of being called into Royal Court as memorable as possible for the callee - in a *good* way. As such, I always talked to people who knew them to find out how *they* pronounce their name (or asked them, if the calling wasn't a surprise) and did my absolute best to pronounce it their way.

This may be the difference you wrote about once between Steffan the medieval person and Baron Steffan in the SCA.