Re: Thou/You

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.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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