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Words > Pronunciation Guide
In many ways, Shakespeare's English was much more American than modern BBC "Received Pronunciation." The vowels were flatter, and r sounds were stronger. People who attended the recent Shakespeare's Globe productions of Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida found that they could understand the speech easily, but no one could agree which modern accent it was most similar to. They all felt that it was similar to their own accents, but each person had a different reason for saying so. David Crystal, who trained the actors to speak early modern English, says that there is a simple explanation for this: "All [accents] share some features [with Original Pronunciation] for the simple reason that we are talking about an accent (more precisely, a group of accents) which is the ancestor of the accents we hear in English today. And not just British English, but English all over the world." This page contains an overview of the sounds you would have heard in Shakespeare's England. Try saying them aloud-how much does early modern English have in common with the language you hear in your every day life?
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