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

Hi Ray,

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006, R A Brown wrote:
>
> 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.
I think perhaps you missed my point, which was
that the language itself changes so much *in
different regions or cultures* that it splits
into (possibly many) daughter languages.  Your
examples of medieval ecclesiastical Latin and
modern ecclesiastical Latin both reinforce
instead the rôle of conservatism in stabilising
language usage.


> 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.
I stand corrected.


> [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.
Yes, I read that.  FWIW, I've never yet heard an
Australian, New Zealander or South African give
a spelling pronunciation to either 'porpoise' or
'tortoise' - except in jest.  You know the story
about "To all in tents and porpoises"?

BTW, my wife and her family all say "fore-head";
even her parents used to (both died at over 90),
whereas I and my family all say "forrid", rhyming
perfectly with "horrid" and "torrid".  And my
English teacher looked with *abhorrence* on the
way we all said "to-wards"; she insisted it rhymed
with "swords", neither having any trace of a "w"
in them.

Regards,
Yahya

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