michael adams writes

"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

As nobody got around to tape recording that at the time, nobody living
today knows how that was pronounced. As I posted, we DO know which
vowels were long and which short (from poetry), but we don't know if
long A was pronounced as in Kate or cart - or even Kurt or kite,

Er...

If the long A formed the last syllable of a rhyming couplet
in which the last word of the other line was "cart" or "dart",
then it would be reasonable to suppose it too was pronounced
"ah".

If on the other hand the long A formed the last syllable of a rhyming
couplet in which the last word of the other line was "bite" or "sight",
then it would be reasonable to suppose it too was pronounced
"aye".

If on the other hand the long A formed the last syllable of a rhyming
couplet in which the last word of the other line was "gate" or "bait",
then it would be reasonable to suppose it tooo was pronounced
"ay".

Would it not?


...

though
there are some educated guesses (and a lot of dogmatic claims).


...


Presumably all such pronounciations can be deduced, by cross
referencing the endings of rhyming couplets.

Given that both rhyme and metre were especialy important
in oral cultures, as aids to memorisation.


And also - languages apparently mutate in a fairly consistent pattern
(ie the sounds drift in the same direction, rather than an 'a' drifting
one way and an 'e' in another) ... and so, it is possible to work
backwards ad deduce what the older language sounded like. Apparently.

--
Kay