Re: YAEPT:Re: Phonological musings (was: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton")

On Wednesday, October 6, 2004, at 08:24 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> I am certain the problem is a typo in Andreas' original message. It is
>> surely "where", not "were" that JJRT wrote.
>
> No, the text actually reads:
> # VOWELS
> # For vowels the letters i, e, a, o, u are used, and (in
> # Sindarin only) y. As far as can be determined the sounds
> # represented by these letters (other than y) were of
> # normal kind, though doubtless many local varieties
> # escape detection.0 That is, the sounds were
> # approximately those represented by i, e, a, o, h in
> # English machine, were, father, for, brute, irrespective
> # of quantity. In Sindarin long e, a, o had the same
> # quality as the short vowels, being derived in
> # comparatively recent times from them (older é, á, ó had
> # been changed). In Quenya long ê and ó were, when
> # correctly pronounced, as by the Eldar, tenser and
> # 'closer' than the short vowels.
>
> Maybe Tolkien or his typesetter made a typo that was
> never caught,
One is certainly tempted to think so.

> but see John's earlier post.
I've commented on that.

> (Still it's strange if JRRT didn't know his pronunciation
> was a minority one!)
That is indeed what I find strange. Even if JRRT retained a regional
pronunciation of 'were' as I have suggested in another mail, it is strange
that he didn't recognize it as such or that he was not aware of more
prevalent pronunciations.
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On Wednesday, October 6, 2004, at 10:19 , Michael Poxon wrote:
>
> It's true that "were" in most varieities of Modern English rhymes with
> "fur"
> but you only have to listen to some of those old
> BBC recordings from the fifties and before to hear how posh folks spoke. I
> have a video with some of the "Watch with Mother" episodes
> on, and in The Flowerpot Men the narrator says, in every episode "There
> they
> all were, lying quietly in the warm sunshine" with a definite
> ultra-RP /e/ as above!
Maybe - RP has become marked 'less clipped' over the past 50 years. But I
can assure you - I think I was in my late teens when these appeared - most
speakers of RP English did not make 'were', did not make it rhyme with
'fair' but with the way they pronounced 'fur'. I wonder who the narrator
of the Flower Pot Men was?

> Bear in mind that the originals of LOTR appeared
> round about that time and bob's your uncle.
There are still problems. Even if we assume JRRT didn't meant [@] for |e|,
it is not clear whether he means [e] or [E], tho listing "for" as the
example for |o| does strongly suggest that he meant [E] and the poem John
quoted seems to confirm this. But even when LoTR appeared, rhyming 'were'
and 'fair' was not the prevalent pronunciation.

It all emphasizes how unsatisfactory it is to use the "...like in..."
description, especially in for a language like English.

Ray
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http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]