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Audiobooks Narrated by Ben Crystal
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Paradoxes of Defence was first published in London in1599. It was written by George Silver, an English gentleman, who was appalled at the influx of Italian rapier fencing into England, and set out his arguments in favour of the traditional English weapons: the short sword, the short staff, the forrest bill, the morris pike, and all manner of additional arms such as daggers, bucklers, and targes. He rails against the fashionable new style on the grounds that it is both dangerous to the practitioners, and of no use in warfare.
Whether he was right or wrong, history was against him and the fashionable Italian rapier took over. But his work offers a vital window into the theory and practice of martial arts in England in Tudor times, and ironically provides much of what we know about several Italian rapier masters: Rocco Bonetti, Vincentio Saviolo, and Jeronimo Saviolo.
In this edition, the text has narrated by Ben Crystal in Original Pronunciation. The original text includes marginalia, which have been incorporated into the audio files.
We have also produced a version that has been modernised and edited by Guy Windsor, and narrated in modern pronunciation by Jonathan Hartman. For more information please see guywindsor.net/silver
Some people say sconn, while others say schown.
He says bath, while she says bahth.
You say potayto. I say potahto
And-
-wait a second, no one says potahto. No one's ever said potahto.
Have they?
From reconstructing Shakespeare's accent to the rise and fall of Received Pronunciation, actor Ben Crystal and his linguist father David travel the world in search of the stories of spoken English.
Everyone has an accent, though many of us think we don't. We all have our likes and dislikes about the way other people speak, and everyone has something to say about 'correct' pronunciation. But how did all these accents come about, and why do people feel so strongly about them? Are regional accents dying out as English becomes a global language? And most importantly of all: what went wrong in Birmingham?
Witty, authoritative and jam-packed full of fascinating facts, You Say Potato is a celebration of the myriad ways in which the English language is spoken - and how our accents, in so many ways, speak louder than words.