[gchucky]

The vowel shift is one of the major reasons why Shakespeare's poetry doesn't rhyme when spoken with modern English. There was a rather fascinating video that went around awhile back of a father and son demonstrating the changes.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

[Mediterraneo10]

Shakespeare's plays post-date the bulk of the Great Vowel Shift. The reason they don’t rhyme is only partly because of the very last phases of the Great Vowel Shift, and partly due to the changing English dialectal landscape.

The classic English author for whom the Great Vowel Shift is most relevant, in terms of audiences today not pronouncing the text anywhere near as society then would have, is Chaucer.

[coolreader18]

It's funny, for at least the first example, original pronunciation just sounds like Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies, which is especially interesting considering that's intended to be a less formal/"lower class" accent. Reminds me of something I heard once that the modern american accent is actually closer to the british accent at the time of the revolutionary war, and it's the british accent that's changed more since then. No idea if that's actually true, but it was really interesting when I heard it.

[Tagbert]

What Americans think of as “the” British accent is known as “Received Pronunciation”. An accent that arose in London in the latter 19th century.

[Cthulhu_]

There's an accents guy on Wired's youtube channel that has a really interesting slew of videos on accents. His latest ones are a bird's eye view of American accents: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wired+accent+ex...

[naniwaduni]

The British (well, everywhere really) have a lot of accents and dialects! Most of them never come to your awareness.

[ascorbic]

Hagrid has a West Country accent. The character is supposed to come from the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, and the accent is approximately from that area. The most obvious difference from RP English is that it has the rhotic "R", which is how it's closer to standard American and to historical English accents. The non-rhotic R is also found in the Boston accect ("hahvahd yahd").

[TylerE]

I seem to remember that the closest thing to an old school English is a costal Maryland/Virginia accent. Which sorta makes sense historically speaking.

[pablodavila]

Another slightly related video by Tom Scott https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnGvH8fUUc

[ljm]

It's fascinating how much of this holds out in various accents across the UK, most particularly outside of London and going up north. My mother and grandparents on her side have similar-ish pronunciation of some words with their thick Lancs accents. Not quite farmers accents but still quite archaic in sound sometimes.

(Imagine other examples, like pronouncing 'couch' a bit more like 'cooch')

[zabzonk]

Poetry does not have to rhyme.