OT: English and front rounded vowels
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, December 6, 2007, 0:45 |
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How did English come to be without front rounded vowels, when the
majority of Germanic languages have them? Did English lose them at
some point, or was it a parallel development in the others?
I'm being a bit lazy by asking on here, but it's the sort of question
that takes a few searches and scans to find the answer to.
It came up because I have a Swedish coworker named Skold, and I just
found out that it's really Sköld /j\2ld/ (not sure about the CXS for
the sje-sound) - the Swedish word for "shield". Phonetically, the
connection between sköld and shield is much closer than the written
forms suggest; the midpoint between the pronunciations is probably
[Seld] which differs from the Swedish in little more than
lip-rounding.
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
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