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Re: English: Thou

From:Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...>
Date:Thursday, June 22, 2000, 20:03
Nik Taylor wrote:

> Robert Hailman wrote: > > That's what I thought originally, but then wouldn't "you" become /jau/ > > at the same time? Unless originally it was pronounced /jo/ > > It was /jo:/, I think. Originally, English tended to avoid written > vowels (except e) at the end of words, so a lot of final -o's were > re-written as -ow (like "know").
In a lot of words, that's because morphophonemic variants required the extra consonant. If you add the infinitive ending -en, still present in MidE, you have to add the glide /w/ to get <knowen>. Only in later periods, when most of the morphology had been sloughed off, did the method you describe become used generally.
> Also, "you" is derived from OE "eow", > so it would make sense to suppose a /jo/ or /jo:/ pronunciation from > that. "Thou" is derived from "Thû"
I'm not expert on Old and Middle English dialects, but I'd think that would be a problem for supposing MidE [DU] rather than [Du:]. ====================================== Tom Wier <artabanos@...> ICQ#: 4315704 AIM: trwier "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero." ======================================