Susie Dent

It wasn't a wife.

We're still speaking.

So how do we know?

Spelling and sound evolved centuries ago.

Well, we know because we can interpret from rhymes quite a lot.

Right.

And we literally are just sort of sifting through evidence to try and work out how they were pronounced at the time because, as you say, we didn't have audio.

But even then, they didn't have the International Phonetic Alphabet or anything.

So even then, we wouldn't have been able to interpret.

They could have said, you know, cat as in cart or something.

Yeah.

But we wouldn't know how cart was pronounced at this time.

So a phonetic glossary wouldn't know.

Well, one theory is that the Black Death was just shuffling everyone around, and people were migrating more towards London, and Londoners were more fashionable and more elite, or that the French were more elite, so we copied them.

Yeah.

The printing press kind of came along mid-shift.

So the printing press did more than anything to sort of solidify spelling, or not solidify it, but to standardize spelling, thanks to Caxton, because before that was completely chaotic.

But the sound changes kept happening.

So we are still typing as they were in the 15th century, but we sound much later.

Well, we might do.