Re: English questions

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 3:50 PM
Subject: Re: English questions


> Interestingly, I got Thomas's message, and Tristan's reply to John's
> reply to Thomas's message, but I never received John's actual reply.
> So I apologize if I'm repeating anything he said.
>
> On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 08:09:40AM -0400, Thomas Leigh wrote:
> > (And while I'm at it, I know that the slashes / / are supposed
> > to enclose phonetic representation, not phonemic representation,
>
> As I understand it, it's actually the other way around.  The slashes /.../
> are used for phonemic representation, while square brackets [...] are used
> for a given phonetic realization of those phonemes.
>
> > Also, does anyone know why Modern English ended up with /x/>/f/
> > in a few words (e.g. laugh, enough) rather than /x/ just dropping as
> > it did in most words?
>
> I'm showing my ignorance of the topic here, but the "gh" in those words
> was originally /x/?  It seems like an especially odd spelling; I would
> have expected "gh" to be voiced, perhaps representing /G/, but not /x/.
It was (in old English), |h|, but the french, using that silently, changed
it to |gh|, |ch| being taken.

> -Mark
>