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Re: USAGE: maneuver was THEORY: lexical shift [was Re: Time machine]

From:Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Date:Monday, July 15, 2002, 22:27
[I don't remember if I sent a message like this earlier.  It's so inconvenient
to post to conlang that half the time I look over a message and decide it's
not really worth posting it anyway.]

From: "Tristan McLeay" <kesuari@...>
> Yes, I know, that was the point of my post. I was wondering if the loss > of the <o> from <manoeuvre> suggested that the /j/ had already been lost > from /nju/; I say /m@n}:v@/ too, but /nj}:tri:n8u/, /nj}:tr@l/, /dZ}:s/.
No, the American thing is that original <ae>, <oe> digraphs[1] get respelled as <e>. Encyclopedia, estrogen. (With rare exceptions: coelacanth.) Nothing to do with the loss of /j/, which still is in some American words with <neu> (e.g. <aneurysm>.)
> The triagraph <oeu> doesn't suggest any sound at all, it's used in oh so > many words (can anyone think of another?) that it's okay.
Well, there's <oeuvre>, but that probably doesn't count because it's the root of <manoeuvre>. *Muke! [1] Except from classical <aë> (aero-) and <oë> (poet), which weren't the same sound as <e> at the proper time -- http://www.frath.net/