Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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

From:Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...>
Date:Monday, June 12, 2006, 14:38
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 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.3/360 - Release Date: 9/6/06

Replies

Mark Reed <markjreed@...>
R A Brown <ray@...>