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  • William Shakespeare. Born 1564 in

  • You know what?

  • I am tired of filming against an amateur-hour lockdown green-screen

  • in a tiny, boxy, echoey room.

  • So for the first time,

  • let's take the Language Files on the road.

  • "Go on location, Tom, it'll look spectacular."

  • Yeah, maybe it will, but it's also about two degrees above freezing,

  • and I'm being pestered occasionally by some surprisingly aggressive swans.

  • Anyway! Shakespeare.

  • Born in 1564 here in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

  • Shakespeare's plays and poetry have a certain rhythm and feeling to them.

  • A French-speaking poet could not have written something that sounds like Shakespeare.

  • Because the language you speak

  • affects the poetry and verse that it's possible for you to write.

  • Let's start with English.

  • English has what's calledlexical stress”.

  • There's a difference in how we say the noun “a CON-test

  • versus the verb, “to con-TEST”.

  • Stressed syllables are part of speech and poetic writing in English,

  • and if you put the stress on the wrong syl-LAB-le, it sounds ridi-CU-lous.

  • ...this is not going to be one continuous take.

  • There's a lot of really difficult things for me to perform in the script.

  • So there's going to be jump cuts.

  • Anyway. English also hasprosodic stress”, which is the difference between:

  • _I_ want that

  • I _want_ that

  • and I want _that_,

  • which are all different interpretations of the same three words.

  • I'm not talking about that kind of stress here:

  • I'm talking about lexical stress,

  • the stress that's built into the words that we use.

  • Stress isn't normally something you have to consider too much while writing,

  • but in English poetry where meter and timing matter,

  • you have to be very careful with it.

  • But I figured Shakespeare would be quite a dull demonstration to start with,

  • so instead, how about a less highbrow bit of poetry, like a limerick.

  • Not that Shakespeare was originally just highbrow, but that's a whole separate issue.

  • Limericks.

  • "There once was a man from…"

  • Well, from where? In increasing order of rudeness,

  • he might be from Leeds,

  • or Madras,

  • or Nantucket.

  • But the number of syllables in those names doesn't matter:

  • you just make sure that the one stressed syllable

  • is in the right place and they all sound fine.

  • But you can't have: “there once was a man from Washington”.

  • It doesn't quite sound right.

  • The lexical stress is a little bit early.

  • And you can't move that stress later, because it sounds worse to say

  • There once was a man from Wa-SHING-ton”.

  • No, the lexical stress is wrong.

  • For a limerick, the LEXical STRESS has to LAND on the BEAT.

  • Now, there is a solution:

  • There once was a manfrom Washington”,

  • but it's a little bit clunky.

  • There's a pause in there.

  • Compare that to French, which doesn't have lexical stress.

  • Just to be clear, French speakers do still stress words to emphasise them,

  • they use prosodic stress, but that's it.

  • In French, by default, stress lands on the last syllable of an utterance.

  • So, and this is going to be really difficult to perform,

  • I'm not going to attempt a ridiculous comedy French accent here,

  • but, if you experi-MENT,

  • you'll find you sound much more FRENCH

  • when you empha-SISE only the last sylla-BLE.

  • I think I got that.

  • Anyway, that means you cannot have a limerick in French.

  • The FEEling and SOUND of a LIMerick reLIES on the LEXical STRESS,

  • and that doesn't exist in French.

  • So why does Shakespeare sound like Shakespeare?

  • Well, because: “iAMbicANDpentameter”.

  • Two words that make a fancy way to say:

  • Stress every other syllable, in pairs,

  • with five such pairs in every line you write.

  • And that was Shakespeare's style. Well, usually.

  • He didn't stick to that for every line.

  • And if you want to sound like him, that's how.

  • If MU-sic BE the FOOD of LOVE, play ON.”

  • The reason Shakespeare sounds like Shakespeare is:

  • he wrote in rhythm, mostly.

  • Which is nice.

  • But if you're translating that to French, well,

  • French can't do that.

  • Yes, there are all sorts of exceptions for poetic reasons,

  • the same as English can break its own rules sometimes, but in gener-AL:

  • French stress SITS at the end of the utter-ANCE.

  • You can translate Romeo and Juliet's words and sentences and meanings into French, sure...

  • but it won't sound like Shakespeare.

  • It can't sound like Shakespeare.

  • So instead, some translators use an equivalent French form: the alexandrine.

  • Twelve syllables per line, broken into two parts.

  • And it should also rhyme. Stress the end of each half.

  • This is why poetry in translation often doesn't sound right, or even poetic:

  • because you need to translate not just the words,

  • but the style and the stress patterns as well.

  • Yes, you can adapt the style, play with it a bit,

  • English does have an alexandrine form,

  • but it doesn't work in quite the same way as the original French.

  • And French does not work in iambic pentameter.

  • Are there French poets with the same skills of wordplay and drama that Shakespeare had?

  • Of course. But they could NE-ver sound like Will.

  • There's more about translating texts, including Old English becoming very modern English,

  • in my co-author Gretchen McCulloch's podcast Lingthusiasm.

  • There's a link on screen or in the description.

William Shakespeare. Born 1564 in

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