What the English of Shakespeare, Beowulf, and King Arthur actually sounded like

Shakespeare in Love it ain't

Jousting
(Image credit: (Heritage Images/Corbis))

Let's hop into a time machine and go back to the England of yore!

If this were a movie, no matter when we got out of the machine, we could walk up to people and start talking. It could be medieval times or the age of King Arthur's round table, and they'd just say, "Who art thou, varlet?" and we'd reply with something like, "We, uh, would-eth like-eth some beer-eth," and we'd all party. Yeah, no.

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James Harbeck

James Harbeck is a professional word taster and sentence sommelier (an editor trained in linguistics). He is the author of the blog Sesquiotica and the book Songs of Love and Grammar.