Jack,

Great points and very interesting. I read somewhere that there was a great shift in how English was pronounced starting around 1,000 AD but accelerating into the 13th and 14 centuries where the sounds were created in the throat in Old English, and the transition to the front incisors in forming the sounds was complete before Shakespeare's time. So the English focus on "Enunciation" did not come into being until just before the Elizabethan Renaissance. It is also believed, based on Shakespeare's rhyming schemes, that Elizabethan English probably sounded more like Irish than present day English, where Tea was probably pronounced as Tay. Elizabethan English died out but is probably still alive in Appalachia and some of those islands off the coast of North Carolina, with Reckon and such. I could go on but I truly love this subject, the history of English. You chose an "honorable" profession, good Sir!