The Renaissance is not “some homogeneous past”, it’s a pretty specific time period: the 15th and 16th centuries.

Definitely this, until apparently the one you’ve just linked, they didn’t exist in the American sense here. The closest you would get here before was out of work actors adding a bit of flavour to some otherwise-a-bit-dull landmarks or historically important places. And even then that wasn’t super common.

I always saw the American style as basically a medieval themed Butlins experience. Pure entertainment rather than something ostensibly intended to be educational.

Renaissance Faires are a more casual event versus LARPs. It’s usually for families. Some people do dress up but it’s not expected. Usually you just go for a few hours, watch a joust, do some shopping, and eat a turkey leg.

In Minnesota US they’ve been around since September 11, 1971

I think larps are slightly different I would say https://loxwoodjoust.co.uk/immersive-festival/ where the visitors see the reenactors, and while some cosplay, the renenactment is a performance by a cast.

Where as LARP (e.g. Empire) is all the “visitors” are in the cast

All Renaissance fairs are really medieval fairs.

They ended up called Renaissance Fairs because a radio ad exec in California thought it was a more broadly appealing name when the first one was held, and it stuck.

“Rwy’n hoffi chi. Dych chi eisiau mynd i’r caffi gyda mi am baned o goffi?”

=

“I like you. Do you want to go to the café with me to have a cup of coffee?”

I’m still learning Welsh, so this might contain mistakes, but it’s better than saying you don’t understand her… For future reference, you know.

Edit: Meant to reply to the comment below me.

Arguable but the last time I was at the RenFest in Larkspur, there were Jedi and Star Fleet officers there.

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• Hello = Shwmae / S’mae
• Good morning - Bore da
• Day - Dydd
• Yes - ydw, ydy (and other words, it’s a bit complicated)
• Correct - iawn
• Goodbye - hwyl
• Boy = Bachgen / Hogyn (South Wales / North Wales)
• Girl = Merch / Hogan (South Wales / North Wales)
• Motorway - Traffordd
• Shop - Siop
• Phone - Ffôn, mobile phone - ffôn symudol
• Banana - Banana
• The - y, yr
• A - (no article)
• You - chi / ti
• We - ni
• Us - ni
• Him - o
• Her - hi
• Them - nhw
• Up - i’r lan
• Down - i lawr
• This - hon / hwn / hyn
• that - hyna
• those - hwnnw

I can’t be arsed to write the pronunciation in IPA. Just go on Google Translate to hear how it’s pronounced or learn Welsh on Duolingo.

Da iawn, rwyt ti’n gallu siarad / ysgrifennu Cymraeg nawr / rŵan! :)

I’ve never heard of anything like this in Australia, and I live next to a castle lol

Realistically when you think about it it makes no sense, why would American English be closer to old English than British English?

Standardization of RP only ocurred in the last 200 years.

Although a form of Standard English had been established in the City of London by the end of the 15th century, it did not begin to resemble RP until the late 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

As for the “why,” though, one big factor in the divergence of the accents is rhotacism. The General American accent is rhotic and speakers pronounce the r in words such as hard. The BBC-type British accent is non-rhotic, and speakers don’t pronounce the r, leaving hard sounding more like hahd. Before and during the American Revolution, English people, both in England and in the colonies, mostly spoke with a rhotic accent.

Around the turn of the 18th to 19th century, not long after the Revolution, non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper and upper-middle classes. It was a signifier of class and status. This posh accent was standardized as Received Pronunciation and taught widely by pronunciation tutors to people who wanted to learn to speak fashionably. Because the Received Pronunciation accent was regionally “neutral” and easy to understand, it spread across England and the empire through the armed forces, the civil service, and, later, the BBC.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29761/when-did-americans-lose-their-british-accents

Yo you should read this article by the Boston Broadcasting Company. Kinda disagrees with ya.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english

No evidence? Are you sure?

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190623-the-us-island-that-speaks-elizabethan-english

You would think the BBC, of all outlets, would agree with you if you were right.

The study was from a college student in Canada. I’d wait to hear from peer reviews before taking one side or the other. Her findings were that Americans pronounce some words more closely to 17th century England vs. Common day England due to a movement to change the accent around that time.

It’s not unheard of, Icelandic is much closer to Old Norse than Norwegian is.

There are many reasons why this could be the case: pure chance, less outside influence of other languages, a smaller group of people, …

Not all of these apply to the US and I have no idea whether English in the US has less changed than in the UK.

Americans often also claim they invented Pizza

Their source is linguistic history. The English decided that the letter R only exists if it’s surrounded by vowels in the late 18th/ early 19th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

You are lying!

People must have been so confused when the languages switched after the Battle of Hastings.

The epic of Gilgamesh was written in Akkadian like 2000bc. Old English would be more like Beowulf.

I can’t tell if you’re joking, but Gilgamesh predates Old English by like 2,500 years.

Guys, I think this comment is probably just confusing Gilgamesh with Beowulf. Mistakes happen

A frogge biþ a smale beaste wiþ foure leggys, whiche liueþ boþe in water and on londe. Hit biþ ofte tyme broune or grene or yelowe; or be hit tropyckal, hit may hauen dyuers coloures lyk reed, blewe, and blak. Tropyckalle frogges liuyn in trewes. Hit haþ longys and guilles boþe. Þe frogges skyn lokeþ glossi bi cause of his secrecioun, whiche may been poisounous. Moste frogges nauen nought a tayl, an þeire lymes ben yfolden under þeire likame. His frounte two feet hauen foure tos and his bak two feet hauen fif tos. Þes tos stiken wele to wode, rocke and glas. Froggen moste ben in þe watere to spawnen. Þe frogge haccheþ from an ey and hit þanne becomeþ a tadpolle. Hit groweþ to þanne a frogge, yef hit ne be nought eten. Some male frogges maken loude souns wiþ þeire mouþys for to maken þeim selven knowen to femmelles. Some þe femmelles refusen.

I doubt it would quite be Chaucer style middle English, though if you try that’s quite readable and understandable to modern English speakers.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

About the only hard parts are soote for sweet, and the last line pretty much saying the rain’s power begets flowers.

I particularly like

And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,

Pueblo villages are the other side of the country afaik. I’d like to see one, but I’m not driving two or three days straight for it.

I haven’t heard of effigy mounds before, though, that’s really cool.

You really hate those 3 houses huh

That’s neat! It’s definitely a handy word to have I think, I’m jealous. I hate the United States tendency toward “you guys,” or something instead like that so awkward. The south figured out the issue by using y’all.

If you hear ye in the United States, it’s probably just someone misunderstanding that y was sometimes used to represent the thorn ‘th’ sound as in “Ye Olde Shoppe” which should still just be pronounced, with a th.

Thou was the singular second second person subject word, but thee was the singular second person object. So usage would be like “thou are talking to me” or “I am talking to thee.”

Ye was the plural second person subject, and you was the plural second person object. So instead of like “y’all are talking to me” now, you could say “ye are talking to me”. Or “I am talking to you” which would be referring to me talking to more than one person (not just one person like you’d think with modern usage of the word).

Doubly confusing because for singular the word ending in the “e” sound is the object pronoun, and for plural is the subject pronoun.

The word “you” eventually took over all these usages and is used for both subject and object now, and it’s mostly just used to mean singular now. We don’t really have a word for plural second person outside of using multiple words to clarify like “y’all” or “you guys.” We still have many other pronouns with the subject object divide though like “I” vs “me,” “he” vs “him,” or “who” vs “whom.”