all those sonnets that don't ryhme...

[rayheinrich]

How to Talk Like Shakespeare
(So THAT's where those Aussies get it from.)

[just mercedes]

Thank you - I loved that! Even muted 'Antique Road Show' to listen.

I attended a lecture by David Vann - well more a reading, really, and I wrote this later. But listening to Beowulf read aloud fluently by someone who'd studied the language it was written in - was really mind-blowing for me. He believes technology has influenced language hugely, always, but more so lately, and soon the only vowel will be a schwa.

On listening to David Vann


The writer reads
from Beowulf; words
take up their sounds and fly
off the page; first time, for me.

A thousand-year-ago invasion
heard in the long Germanic vowels,
language as war spoil, class marker.

Fascination with this text
begins to make sense

interrupted by vibration
from my neighbour’s mobile phone’s
silent tone pulsation;
as his thumbs button-dance
‘wuv u’ appears as text.

Will this be seen, next millenium,
as an indication of one way
technology refreshed language?
Or one way it destroyed? Will all
vowels come to the schwa, eventually?

I məst stədy ləngəstəcs nəxt.

[RiverNotch]

John Donne in OP? I can't find any prods in the tube though....but I do wonder if they have any plays in full OP uploaded.

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oooh