[Ansteorra] High Persona

Stefan li Rous StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Tue Jan 22 21:15:18 PST 2008


"High" Personas?

See this Florilegium file. :-)
smoking-msg       (15K)  1/10/02    Period smoking of tobacco and  
other plants.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/PERSONAL/smoking-msg.html

On Jan 22, 2008, at 3:44 PM, Quill wrote:
>
> But seriously, Robin is right, and particularly in regards to how  
> people
> "speak", there's really no way to tell what anyone sounded like  
> more than a
> hundred years ago. The most we might have to go on is description  
> by one
> person of another person's mode of speech, and usually this would be
> delivered with a serious slant. ("YOU, plebian, speak Latin like a  
> pig. You
> must be from Scotland!")

That's a pretty big blanket statement, there. There are ways to know.  
We know that medieval Latin varied from Classical Latin. I've not  
studied this enough to know how the scholars know, but I've seen this  
mentioned numerous times.

Also songs and poetry can often be used to get an idea of how some  
folks of a particular time spoke, since changing the way something is  
pronounced may make it not rhyme and because poetry follows a  
structure, even Shakespeare if I remember correctly, you can have an  
idea about how things were pronounced.  Is it worthwhile in the  
babbel of languages across the time periods and wide geography that  
the Known World represents, I doubt it. Even if I could speak in 12th  
century Old French, (of my Anglo-Norman persona) how many other  
people anywhere in the Known World could understand me?

> My whole point being (and as a linguist it feels weird to put it  
> like this)
> the /way/ you talk is just one part of your persona, and ultimately  
> not a
> huge part of it unless you want it to be. If that's what's keeping  
> anyone
> from joining in the persona play, don't let it!

Agreed. Of course nothing prevents you from knowing a few words of  
your persona's language and throwing them in occasionally in  
conversation. Much like you would if you had grown up in the land and  
time of your persona and then, suddenly, for whatever unknown reason,  
you got displaced into the place we know of as the "Known World".

> Cuillioc /|\ "Quill"
> Amateur Babbler

Stefan

PS: Those who might like to learn more about medieval languages,  
including websites where you can learn Latin and few of the others,  
see the EDUCATION section of the Florilegium, such as:
Ital-Phrases-art   (8K) 11/ 2/02    "Useful Italian phrases from Florio"
                                        by Lord Anton de Stoc.
Latin-online-art  (15K)  6/10/99    "Learning Latin On-Line" by Gunnora
                                        Hallakarva.
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****





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