The Wife of Bath Is A Playa, Yo!

Sensei George of Bookninja links to a story about a hip-hop version of The Canterbury Tales.

I have to say, I'm a bit skeptical. I'm no rap hater, but I'm always a bit leary of these "let's take a classic and make it hip for the kids!" kind of thing. It's often ill-advised and a little condescending to the "youth" who would be just fine with the original, if you given the chance. Remember that "Hip-Hopera" version of Carmen MTV did with Beyonce? No? Good, I blocked it out, too.

It'd be really cool, though, if the artist used Middle English for the rapping. A Middle English rap would be cool! It'd open up a whole new treasure of rhymes, because, though recognizably a form of what we think of as English (unlike the weird-to-us-today Old English), Middle English was pronounced quite differently than Modern English. It all has to do with "The Great Vowel Shift" that took place right before Shakespeare's time.

This shift in pronunciation, BTW, is the reason for English's weird spelling/speaking split; a lot of the words today that are spelled nothing like they're pronounced were perfectly phonetic in Middle English. Unfortunately, spelling began to settle down and be codified just as the pronunciations they were based on totally changed. If spelling codification had waited a few decades, we'd probably have a much more phonetic language.