| View previous topic :: View next topic |
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
 |
|
| But when it comes to short vowels... it uses one vowel. |
But that's now. That's precisely the sort of thing the process of standardisation should settle first. Which it didn't entirely do.
Da, fa, ha, ma, na, pa, ta, be, de-, he, me, ne, re-, we, ye, bi-, di-, hi, pi, co-, do, go, ho, lo, no, po, so, to, yo, mu, nu... all happily pronounced with a long vowel sound.
| This is so clear a rule that when we come across a word that is pronounced short but spelled long -- as with head -- then we should treat it as axiomatic (for the moment) that it was pronounced long ('heed') when English was first written down but that it has changed to a short vowel ('hed') in the centuries since. |
If the 'one letter for short vowel sounds' rule is so clear, why would the pronunciation change, especially in literate times?
Let's treat it as axiomatic that English words were pronounced just as they are now -- and equally variously -- until we come across a case whose spelling or context is really irreconcilable.
Even when we find one, frinstance where a rhyme really doesn't work with the modern pronunciation, how will we know it wasn't just poetic licence?
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| I would expect this rule to be borne out by a textural examination of Chaucerian vowel rhymes. |
Well, the glossary in my copy of Canterbury Tales includes...
...single vowels pronounced long:
cas case;
he he;
mo more/"maw";
natheless nay the less;
parde "par dee" (By God);
pas pace;
sterven starving;
ther there;
tho though;
wis, wisly, ywis wise, wisely, a-wise.
...double or modified vowels pronounced short:
drede dread/"dred";
elles else;
sikerly "sickerly" (suchly);
wood wood (not wooed);
yvele evil.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Dan, you're not at all addressing the critical question "What is is what was (unless it wasn't)" which means that
1. People who create writing systems use simple rules and
2. Vowel sounds change over the centuries from short to long, from long to drawl and all vice versa
But when it comes to short vowels... it uses one vowel.
But that's now. That's precisely the sort of thing the process of standardisation should settle first. Which it didn't entirely do. |
But, Dan, the people responsible for devisising the scheme were speaking (as far as they were concerned) completely standardised English. Yes, since that time, we might be speaking some other variant; yes, since that time we might have made variations to standard; but no, the scheme itself should be based on simple rules. I know of no simpler one than the one I have put forward. Your "shall-we/shan't-we" notion of just chucking in vowels higgledy-piggledy seems ridiculous. Why would they? Why would they write "hed" as "head" unless it was "heed" when they could quite simply write "hed"?
| Da, fa, ha, ma, na, pa, ta, be, de-, he, me, ne, re-, we, ye, bi-, di-, hi, pi, co-, do, go, ho, lo, no, po, so, to, yo, mu, nu... all happily pronounced with a long vowel sound. |
There's nothing happy about this sorry bunch. I bet you a zillion pounds that you had to really stretch to find these examples. One that jumps out is two-letter words (do, go, so, to); another is foreign usage (bi-, di-)...if you want to make this case I demand you try some kind of statistical analysis. After all, ninety-three point seven per cent of all English words follow my rules.
| If the 'one letter for short vowel sounds' rule is so clear, why would the pronunciation change, especially in literate times? |
Come on, Dan, you're not really putting forward the proposition that in seven hundred years (?) Standard English has stuck fast to the vowel sounds of a small elite. Going from "heed" to "head" (or even hey-ad, so I'm told) is the work of...well, decades I should say. That's the way the vowel crumbles.
| Let's treat it as axiomatic that English words were pronounced just as they are now -- and equally variously -- until we come across a case whose spelling or context is really irreconcilable. |
No, let's treat it as axiomatic that some vowel changes are bound to have taken place in that time and look for supporting evidence for which have. For instance, did you know that some Scotch still pronounce "hed" as "heed". And moreover it's entirely spoken by users of the Glasgow kiss, ie people who haven't changed their thinking since the fourteenth century. We might rather ask, if head was always pronounced 'hed', where did these knuckle-draggers acquire their pronunciation?
| Even when we find one, frinstance where a rhyme really doesn't work with the modern pronunciation, how will we know it wasn't just poetic licence? |
Or as eye-rhyme or as incompetence or...or..or...doesn't make the statistical analysis invalid.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Well, the glossary in my copy of Canterbury Tales includes... |
Good, let's have a look at them.
cas case; presumptively a vowel-change or one for you depending ACCEPTED
he he; two-letter word, different rule REJECTED
mo more/"maw"; definite vowel change, still extant in Negro Spirituals REJECTED
natheless nay the less; wrong; pronounced short as a corruption of nevertheless REJECTED
parde "par dee" (By God); French, not accepted since we don't know how French was spoken or corrupted in English, also oath -- always corrupted to avoid blaspheming) REJECTED
pas pace; vowel change or one for you depending ACCEPTED
sterven starving; wrong; no short form here REJECTED
ther there; definite vowel change, still extant in lots of dialects REJECTED
tho though; two-letter rule REJECTED
wis, wisly, ywis wise, wisely, a-wise. (probably vowel change since the word wisdom preserves the early form) REJECTED
drede dread/"dred"; definite vowel change, still pronounced long in various forms that I can't think of offhand ACCEPTED
elles else; interesting exception -- clearly an attempt to convey that the 's' is to be pronounce as in pence not in eels REJECTED
sikerly "sickerly" (suchly); can't follow your reasoning.
wood wood (not wooed); (monstrous! this is a long vowel...how would you pronounce wod? REJECTED WITH CONTUMELY
yvele evil. Don't follow. This is a long vowel and a short vowel.
A clear victory for the logicians.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| 1. People who create writing systems use simple rules |
What is is not what was. Early in the days of transforming demotics to written languages, there are no such things as simples rules. The established alphabet is part of an established system, but it only goes so far. Apart from the overlaps between the consonants that we have elucidated at length, the vowel sounds have a lot of room for the scribe's personal discretion.
That's why "Middle English" is identified as a period of rapid change: we only have a handful of snapshots of disparate decisions on how to render what we say. Standardisation then becomes a necessity as more and more people get in on the act. And standardisation only means the alternatives fall into disuse, whether by agreement, the force of someone's will, quiet adoption and copying of preferred forms...
Conventions harden into rules, shall we say?
Rationalisation is a different thing, that we haven't had much of. 'One letter for a short vowel sound' is a pretty firm rule, but it doesn't have the monopoly.
Anyone writing a hitherto unwritten language now starts off from a different place: literacy is so widespread, so standardised, so rationalised, so Westernised... It is still a challenge. Lakota was only recently written: they had to design an alphabet first and then create and promote a dictionary, in an "official programme" that is not necessarily complete and not necessarily unanimously supported.
| 2. Vowel sounds change over the centuries from short to long, from long to drawl and all vice versa |
We have no idea whether what is is what was or not. What evidence do we have?
Do we care about the pronunciation when we know about the words?
And literacy has such a profound rectifying effect that it may be impossible to judge very much at all about natural language from the written record. Received Pronunciation is not even a regional dialect that we know of: it may be entirely institutional, a product of the education system. We know how the sounds of our speech are represented in our writing, but this is all in an important sense unnatural language.
| But, Dan, the people responsible for devising the scheme were speaking (as far as they were concerned) completely standardised English. |
Of course not! They were just speaking English. There is no standard until one is set; and it's written English that was standardised. (I suspect the effect of this on spoken English is far greater than any schooler imagines.)
Each word is pronounced by the reader as he has been taught to read it. The writing is not meant to prescribe the pronunciation.
Don't forget: before alphabets, there were abjads, with no vowels at all. You can still recognise "PLS ATTD MTG" as "please attend meeting" and pronounce it in your own accent.
| the scheme itself should be based on simple rules. |
We have educed a zillion rules and everyone of them is simple. But few, if any, are universal.
| Why would they write "hed" as "head" unless it was "heed" when they could quite simply write "hed"? |
For instance, because an E on its own is long, as in he!
| I bet you a zillion pounds that you had to really stretch to find these examples. |
Make cheques payable to Mr D P Crisp.
I went into the NSOED, typed ?a then ?e, etc., got a total of 297 results, ignored the abbreviations, glossed over the foreign words (although they are perfectly valid: "what's the obvious way to write 'kung fu' in English...?) and left you with a list of single-letter vowels that ordinary English speakers would not hesitate to pronounce long.
Do, go, so, to, he, me, we... are so common they go under the radar, coz when they actually look at them, people tend to say they break the rules of English spelling, instead of simply recognising the rules that they do exemplify.
| foreign usage (bi-, di-)... |
I seem to recall reading a book that claims that no modern languages descend from Latin and Greek and therefore "most of the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary are wrong."
Actually, another reason foreign words can be valid examples is that our regular mispronunciation betrays an ingrained impulse to use a long sound for a single letter: pi pronounced "pie" (instead of "pee"); kendo pronounced "ken-doo" (instead of "ken-doe"). (There are also plenty of cases where we use short sounds instead of long: "Ibitsa" for "Ee-bee-tha" and so on.)
| We might rather ask, if head was always pronounced 'hed', where did these knuckle-draggers acquire their pronunciation? |
Either: that's the way the vowel crumbles.
Or: some knuckle-heads assume that since there are two letters, it must be a long vowel sound.
| Or as eye-rhyme or as incompetence or...or..or...doesn't make the statistical analysis invalid. |
But the notion of statistical analysis may well be unsound here.
The oldest evidence is the scarcest, not least because literacy (in English) was least widespread then. The sample size is unlikely to be statistically valid. Then there's the nature of the material...
When literacy is in widespread use for day-to-day affairs, it is important that it be standardised. So a statistically valid sample of reasonably representative material is most likely to already be standardised and therefore show little or no variation.
The cause of what small variation may be seen is not suggested by statistical analysis itself. Genuine changes in pronunciation? Or further progress in standardising spellings? Unless there is an independent means of judging which is more likely, statistical analysis will not yield any useful results.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Pulp History
In: Wales
|
|
|
|
So why would 'heart' be spelled as it is?? It has been 'hearte' and 'harte', which would imply that the pronunciation was always 'hart', wouldn't it?? Or are you suggesting it was once 'heeartee' or perhaps 'heeyart'?
_________________
Question everything!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
Listen to your ancestral Scotch voices, Pulp. Ya Welsh tart. They actually do pronounce it he-eart. In the bonny, bonny braes of Loch Lubin. I'll deal with the Sassenach Crisp later.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
Lest you should have forgotten what we're arguing about: I'm not saying head was pronounced "hed", nor "heed" nor anything else. I'm saying the spellings can not decide the matter; that spellings were never meant to so accurately represent pronunciation; and that retrospective application of our spelling rules is misleading and unsound.
Spelling does not fully determine pronunciation now (except under RP?) and there is no reason to act like it did back then.
he he; two-letter word, different rule
tho though; two-letter rule |
I'm the one who accepts that we can have different and conflicting rules operating at once. But if you're so sure of the one letter = short vowel rule, why is it OK for two-letter words to break it? Mee, hee, wee, doo, whoo... would have been simple. Strict adherence to your rule ought to mean there are no two-letter words (unless the vowel is genuinely short).
But we can't presume to say what they should have done.
But it is also clear that we are happy to give long sounds to single vowels; and that might have been enough to influence head and bread and the rest. We can't tell.
Of course, the more basic sound having the more basic spelling makes sense, but what makes a short sound more basic than a long one?
(Notice that doubling or modifying the letter does not give the elongated version of the sound: "e" is the beginning of long-A, "i" elongates into long-E and so on.)
What makes for a basic word is another matter and it may well be that when the one letter = short vowel rule was adopted, the rule-breaking little words were left alone because they were already so ingrained.
mo more/"maw"; definite vowel change, still extant in Negro Spirituals
ther there; definite vowel change, still extant in lots of dialects
drede dread/"dred"; definite vowel change, still pronounced long in various forms that I can't think of offhand |
Definite vowel change?
Definite vowel change where?
All words are pronounced variously in various places. If there does not represent the dialect of anyone in particular now, how can it be argued that ther represented a dialect, or even all dialects, in the past?
If there can be pronounced "th-air" or "th-er", how can the spellings of mo {"Ore" is a vowel sound in English English.}, ther and drede tell us for sure how they were to be pronounced?
I can't tell for sure. All I know is, mo, ther and drede are ordinary English words that might well be pronounced just as they are today and no exotic explanations of rapid language change are required. I got this idea from some book I read...
By the way, doesn't the mo' of Negro Spirituals have a long-O?
| natheless nay the less; wrong; pronounced short as a corruption of nevertheless |
Where did you get the crystal ball that told you for sure that it's not a variation closer to nonetheless?
| parde "par dee" (By God); French, not accepted since we don't know how French was spoken or corrupted in English, also oath -- always corrupted to avoid blaspheming) |
The dictionary spelling is pardi and the pronunciation they have in common is "-dee". I accept that the form parde could have been "par-day" or something else, but a) if the French was corrupted into an English form, it would have an English spelling; b) "dee" is surely far enough from dieu for your blasphemy-dodging purposes; c) when different spellings can represent the same sounds, a change to a compatible spelling does not count as evidence of a change in sound; and d) without evidence, we should not be suggesting any changes.
| sterven starving; wrong; no short form here |
Exactly. 'Are' and 'starving' have a long vowel sound; but the single E ought, on your account, to be short, like 'stir', 'sterling', 'hamster'.
| wis, wisly, ywis wise, wisely, a-wise. (probably vowel change since the word wisdom preserves the early form) |
Why did the others have to be the same? If "wisedom" is harder to say, isn't it just as likely to have taken the shorter form, perhaps ever since it was coined?
I agree, it may have been "wiss" or "wizz", but what is the justification for saying it must have been? And what can we say about how uniformly it was pronounced in all dialects?
| elles else; interesting exception -- clearly an attempt to convey that the 's' is to be pronounce as in pence not in eels |
If the second E can modify the first, across a double consonant, then this short-E should be long.
If the two Es are isolated, then the second should be pronounced, but short.
Either way, your rule is violated. Unless you want to plead that this interesting exception, attempting to convey that the S is to be pronounced as in pence not as in eels, reinforces your assertion that the one letter = short vowel rule is (otherwise) hard and fast.
| sikerly "sickerly" (suchly); can't follow your reasoning. |
Ordinarily, I'd be quick to point out that K can make CH sounds, but I've heard sic in Yorkshire dialect; and it has a short-I, so that is not an I_E modification to a long-I. Unless you want to plead, just as the linguists do, that we can work out which rules were used where, without any independent evidence.
| yvele evil. Don't follow. This is a long vowel and a short vowel. |
Again, if the E_E rule applies, it should be "e-veal". {I believe meat can be e-mailed to you these days, to print out at home: I've seen it on telly.}
If not, it should "e-vuh-luh" or something. But how do we argue that it was?
| wood wood (not wooed); (monstrous! this is a long vowel...how would you pronounce wod? |
Wood has the same short vowel as put (not putt). {What? Two short vowels for the same letter: what are we to do?} One O by itself can be long, as in do and Domesday.
I won't speak of victory: I shall let good sense speak for itself.
| They actually do pronounce it he-eart. |
If it's that simple, that precise, why was it sometimes harte?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| If it's that simple, that precise, why was it sometimes harte? |
Just a quick point because I am feeling sullen at the amount of work here. What about this:
The Founding Fathers had lots of vowel sounds to make provision for (as we all agree, the number in English today has been greatly denuded because of the dominance of literacy itself). So what about this procedure:
1. Putting the vowel by itself makes 'hat' (goes on head)
2. Adding an r to the vowel makes hart (a male red-deer)
3. Adding an e after the consonant makes 'hate' (as in I hate AJ)
4. Adding an r and an e to the vowel makes harte pronounced heayart (the thing in your chest)
5. But someone else suggested an e and an a and an r to make heart pronounced heeyart (the thing in your chest)
6. All the various spelling conventions were cleaned up in the...er...seventeenth century (Check that, Marissa) and heart was adopted.
7. All these ee-yuck vowels got cleaned up eg heeyart into hart when the 'clipped' English accent of the upper classes conquered the drawling and mewling of the lower orders.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
AJMorton
|
|
|
|
WOW! Some excellent arguments. It's damn complicated too. Feel totally out of my depth on this one.
Cheers DP for the explanation to my post waaayyy back. I missed it in the fray. You were right too.
And I am right about being out of my depth. I will keep reading. Learning quite a bit on this thread.
Cheers folks. Keep at it!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| as we all agree, the number [ of vowel sounds ] in English today has been greatly denuded because of the dominance of literacy itself |
Only insofar as the regional dialects demonstrate a greater diversity than RP and RP is steadily becoming more widespread at the expense of the dialects. (Whether literacy or mass media is the greater cause, I can not say.) We can only presume that the diversity of vowels N centuries ago was the same as it is now.
| So what about this procedure: |
'Procedure' is too mechanistic for my taste. It's precision that leads linguists up the yarden pad.
When matching vowel sounds to letters -- and it's fair enough to use appropriate regional accents for illumination -- bear in mind that head is the same as hood.
| 7. All these ee-yuck vowels got cleaned up eg heeyart into hart when the 'clipped' English accent of the upper classes conquered the drawling and mewling of the lower orders. |
Sounds altogether too much like an orthodox "explanation" to me. ("Soft R is an affectation adopted from the French by the upper classes..." Bollox.) Regardless, it's a hysteron proteron, methinks.
The upper class accent is not a regional accent, now is it? {The Fucking Fulfords drove this home to me.} Nor is the slightly less clipped RP. It's the language of book-learnin and must follow or be coeval with the cleaning up of the mess into Standardised English.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| It's damn complicated too. |
It's no more complicated than this:
Imagine a man who says "I know how tall I am" and puts his hand on top of his head to prove it.
Now compare this with two phases in the history of linguistic analysis:
1. Armed with the 'knowledge' that English evolved from Anglo-Saxon, they plotted a course from Anglo-Saxon written records to modern written records, giving a special name to Middle English as a particularly 'turbulent' period that included the Great Vowel Shift.
The words on the page are the only evidence of the words that were on English lips. The rules of pronunciation were established and university courses were set up to teach how Middle English sounded and how, for no known reason, we started pushing our tongues towards the front and English accents changed in a rather regular way...
We know what it sounded like because it's written down. We know how to read what's written because... um... it's written down. There were rules of pronunciation... although, as they are happy to explain, there were no rules of pronunciation.
The same circular argument is applied throughout linguistics and they are forever appealing to their own results and standards to corroborate their work... and forever dismissing anyone not schooled in it.
2. Mick noticed (I don't know how, why or when) that Chaucer's English ("Middle English") is just as plain as modern English and entirely different from Anglo-Saxon; and said so in The History of Britain Revealed: all you need is to use familiar spelling to see it lying before you.
"Other spelling rules were used and we can see what they were" would be equally circular were it not for the independent argument, presented in THOBR, that English should not be expected to have changed radically since Chaucer's day. We know two things: the words and their spellings. Therefore, we can equate the two and explore the differences/changes. (Like measuring height against a ruler, rather than against the notion of height.)
The Great Vowel Shift dissolves into a Great Vowel Movement: nothing but the process of standardising some spelling conventions for the very same words. I wouldn't say the entire corpus* of historical linguistics has been undermined (in practical terms), but we can see it has no foundations.
* Shoulda left the typo in: "coprus" should mean something like a pile of shit.}
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| 'Procedure' is too mechanistic for my taste. It's precision that leads linguists up the yarden pad. |
This is quite ridiculous. How do you go about deciding how to transcribe a spoken language except by procedure? You clearly can't be arbitrary or arty or even laxish, otherwise people won't be able to use the damned system. You use as few rules as possible and the simplest forms to cover the most common cases and then you add more complex rules and tripthongs and stuff to cover the weird stuff.
The system I have begun to lay out seems to
a) obey the above desiderata and
b) be evidenced by the actual spelling of English.
The two complications would appear to be the following:
a) changes in the intervening centuries have left a hiatus twixt spelling and modern pronunication (it is interesting that spelling never changes....presumably because it is learned, or rather taught, which means generation-to-generation stasis much as we know to be the bane of academic subjects generally).
b) when standard spelling came in it is clear (because there was a need to standardise!) that there were at least two and perhaps many spelling systems extant. It would appear that one was not adopted (which I would have expected) but rather a mix'n'match approach. This suggests that the standardisation was done via market forces ie and eg decisions by London printers, rather than by some more august body.
Anybody who agrees with this analysis should tell DP Crisp to go suck eggs.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| You clearly can't be arbitrary or arty or even laxish, otherwise people won't be able to use the damned system. |
Yeahbut... we're not talking about a system presented as a fait accompli, a tool for a specific sort of use. We're talking about the well-regimented use of artificial languages breaking out into vernacular use. If it were as directed a project as you imply, it might go as you said: but that is more applicable to Latin, Greek, Norse, Sanskrit...
We know that it was a 'relatively controlled' process only to the extent that there were very few people actually doing it at first. Nevertheless, we can see the plethora of spelling conventions with Latinisms and Anglo-Saxonisms thrown in. That is why standardisation became necessary and duly occurred.
It was in an evolutionary phase, more like the first drawings and evolution into writing. There must have been a lot of "what the fuck is that?" going on... and the worst of it torn up to start again.
Irish was the first one, right? And the pronunciation guide is a significant proportion of an Irish dictionary because lots of different conventions have been established for the same sounds -- because, being pioneers, they were crap at it; whereas the Welsh pronunciation guide is very concise.
| a) changes in the intervening centuries have left a hiatus twixt spelling and modern pronunciation |
Apples and oranges, mate. There is one correct spelling for each word (alternatives are tolerated occasionally); there is one correct pronunciation: the RP one; but there are loads of modern, dialectical pronunciations to every word.
| b) when standard spelling came in it is clear (because there was a need to standardise!) that there were at least two and perhaps many spelling systems extant. It would appear that one was not adopted (which I would have expected) but rather a mix'n'match approach. |
Standard spellings are the favoured extant spellings, of course: it's not as though new spellings were introduced to replace the preceding ones.
You are welcome to analyse all the texts by source and see whether there really were any coherent systems: one using A_E rather than AI, together with E for long and EA for short...; and another vice versa... (or whatever). My presumption is that it was mix'n'match from start to finish.
| This suggests that the standardisation was done via market forces ie and eg decisions by London printers, rather than by some more august body. |
The sheer lack of rationalisation suggests market forces, yes; although I understand the more powerful of those included Henry VIII (it's always him)'s administration.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Yeahbut... we're not talking about a system presented as a fait accompli, a tool for a specific sort of use. |
This is getting reminiscent of our 'organic road' contretemps. I just don't know why you keep making this point. It is a fait accompli, it is a tool for a specific sort of use. It's like inventing the telephone...not much point in having only one. Not much point in writing a letter in a system nobody else uses. Someone, somewhere sat down and thought up the system as a whole. Other people, other places did the same thing, it's true -- leading to the need for standardisation -- but it didn't just grow like Topsy. Or perhaps nowadays we should say like Linux. Actually, come to think of it, perhaps it was rather like Linux: one bloke did the hard work, everybody else filled in the gaps.
| We know that it was a 'relatively controlled' process only to the extent that there were very few people actually doing it at first. |
Actually I rather disagree with this. If there were a few people they would certainly have thrashed out the rules in no time flat. Similarly, if it had been the Church (or the universities or the court) one system would have been there from the off. On the whole I think it was probably regionally-based or even maybe trades-based....but we certainly need to think more on this.
| Nevertheless, we can see the plethora of spelling conventions with Latinisms and Anglo-Saxonisms thrown in. That is why standardisation became necessary and duly occurred. |
Is this really true? Yes, you can see the problems really early on where there appears to have been no English system and people were actually using Anglo-Saxon conventions but my impression is that quite quickly it settled down to two, perhaps three systems.
| It was in an evolutionary phase, more like the first drawings and evolution into writing. There must have been a lot of "what the fuck is that?" going on... and the worst of it torn up to start again. |
Look, think about this. The "what the fuck" tearing-up paper part of the exercise comes when the system is being devised. The end-users are not going to want to have their efforts torn up by the recipients.
| Irish was the first one, right? And the pronunciation guide is a significant proportion of an Irish dictionary because lots of different conventions have been established for the same sounds -- because, being pioneers, they were crap at it; whereas the Welsh pronunciation guide is very concise. |
We can discount Welsh because (it now seems) written Welsh came later. But the fact that the Irish were around with a written demotic and did not use the same conventions we use proves they weren't involved in the process. Which leaves the French as almost certainly one of the 'schools'.
) changes in the intervening centuries have left a hiatus twixt spelling and modern pronunciation
Apples and oranges, mate. There is one correct spelling for each word (alternatives are tolerated occasionally); there is one correct pronunciation: the RP one; but there are loads of modern, dialectical pronunciations to every word. |
You miss my point. I am just saying that the fact that pronunciation changes differentially from spelling means that the spelling is a fossil form of the pronunciation.
| The sheer lack of rationalisation suggests market forces, yes; although I understand the more powerful of those included Henry VIII (it's always him)'s administration. |
No, I don't think so. Leastways he didn't seem to have made a very good job if that was on his agenda. The Official English Bible(s) that appeared in his reign would have been pretty powerful spellcheckers though.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
