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Re: Thou/You

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Thursday, June 22, 2000, 5:58
At 2:58 pm -0400 21/6/00, John Cowan wrote:
>callanish wrote: > >> My vowel lengths may be wrong here, but I was under the impression that >> during the Great Vowel Shift, /u:/ became /au/, thus Anglo-Saxon /Tu:/ >>turned >> into /Dau/, but that /o:/ turned into /u:/ or /U/ (as /go:d/ became >>/gUd/ and >> /do:m/ became /du:m/, which means that /ju:/ for "you" fits the pattern >> regularly, since in Anglo-Saxon it was "eow" with a long /o/ vowel. > >No doubt, but "you" is already spelled "you" or "yow" in ME, suggesting >that /ju:/ was already the pronunciation then.
Merely a suggestion! Pronunciations like /jOw/ /jAw/ persist till the present day in the west Midlands of Old England which IMO are rather stronger indications that the diphthongal pronunciation still persisted in Middle English. Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================