How the Edwardians Spoke
A (slightly ponderous) documentary on a set of rare sound recordings of British and Irish POWs from World War I. First recordings are just after 10 minutes in. I liked the way the speed of the shellac recording is calibrated by matching an A note on the last groove to the A from a tuning fork. At 23" or so there’s a recording of a man telling the parable of the Prodigal Son, where the difference between the ‘a’ in father and the ‘a’ in man is quite striking. At about 35" there’s an nice example of the problems associated with interpreting material like this: another recording of the Prodigal Son story (a set text for the German academics who were interested in English accents) is played to a woman who knew the solider speaking, with interesting results.