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Language Study
chlorosis
These files are very short .wav files which demonstrate the similarities between the spoken forms of the names Offa and Arthur and between Cynethryth and Guinevere, especially if small modifications are made. Throughout southern England a slight lengthening of the "O" sound of Offa makes the name easily mistaken for "Arthur" and when I tell people I have written about Offa and Cynethryth people sometimes think I have said "Arthur and Guinevere", perhaps because people need a couple of sentences to be able to tell someone's accent.
Offa.wav OffaPlus30ms.wav Arfa.wav Arthur.wav
"OffaPlus30ms" means that I have lengthened the "O" sound by 30 milliseconds using a SoundBlaster wave studio. "Offa" then sounds like "Arthur" spoken by someone from the London area and elsewhere.
The name, Guinevere, reached that form in Norman times and in the French speech of the Normans it would have been almost impossible to say the English name Cynethryth. I have recorded "Cynethryth" with the sound, "Kvinnefrith" and in view of the correspondence of "th" and "f" in the names, Offa and Arthur, that seems reasonable. Also Winnifred and Jennifer are more modern variants. I modified the sound by cutting off the beginning and the end. The resultant sound is very like Guinevere.
These speech considerations made it clearer to me how Offa and Arthur and Cynethryth and Guinevere have been confused over the centuries. "Beowulf" shows that Offa and Cynethryth left an important tradition among the English peoples – and among the Welsh because they all lived side by side in England and in much of what is now Wales.
Please email me with your views:andrew_burbidge@hotmail.com
