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Re: USAGE: Shavian: was Re: USAGE: Con-graphies

From:R A Brown <ray@...>
Date:Sunday, June 11, 2006, 19:22
Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:
[snip]
> I think it a fair conclusion, from the examples of > English, Greek and Latin, that any language that > achieves wide usage across a number of different > cultures will find its phonemes, eventually, bent so > far out of shape as to be unrecognisable.
Hardly so with Latin - the medieval & modern ecclesiastical pronunciations are not so far removed from Classical. And altho Byzantine & modern Greek have departed far from the ancient norms, you can still tell how a Greek word will be pronounced in the modern language from its spelling. You so often cannot do that in English. [snip]
> classical Arabic. I also seem to remember an > argument that the widespread use of printing has > helped to fossilise and stabilise many languages.
It has when combined with universal education. Indeed, as I showed in an email a week or so back, there has in my lifetime been a distinct move towards _spelling pronunciations_ in words such as 'often', 'pestle', 'porpoise', 'tortoise' inter_alia. -- Ray ================================== ray@carolandray.plus.com http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760