Re: Part 2 Why my con langs SUCK!!!

Staving John Cowan:
>Roger Mills scripsit:
>
> > Which is exactly what written English does.  I've suggested in that past
> > that the _underlying_ phonology of _all_ Engl. dialects (the standard-ish
> > one, at any rate) does have /r/ in all the positions where it is written.
>
>I think you are right, but there are difficulties.  What about ARSE, for
>example?  The universal North American pronunciation is [&:s]; does this have
>underlying /r/ or not?  Surely you don't want to claim that BASS, the fish,
>is underlyingly /bars/ or /b&rs/ (OE "baers").
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" provides evidence that [&s] was used in England
in Shakespeare's time, which was roughly contemporary with the early
colonisation of America. (The character Bottom is transformed into an ass)
I would imagine that both pronunciations existed in the 16th century
(possibly in different dialects), and one was lost in America, the other
lost in England. If any Shakespeare (or contemporary) play makes suggestive
allusion to the letter R (cf Twelfth Night, "These be her very Cs, her Us,
her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps").

Pete