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

On Wednesday, October 6, 2004, at 12:39 , John Cowan wrote:
[snip]
> In any case, there is direct evidence in the form of Bilbo's poem:
>
> 		I sit beside the fire and think
> 		of all that I have seen,
> 		of meadow-flowers and butterflies
> 		in summers that have been;
>
> 		Of yellow leaves and gossamer
> 		in autumns that there were,
> 		with morning mist and silver sun
> 		and wind upon my hair.
>
> The rhyme seen/been ([sin]/[bin]), as well as the other rhymes in
> the poem, shows that were/hair was also a rhyme for Tolkien, and
> since "hair" is [he@], presumably "were" was [we@] for him.
Interesting - maybe I was wrong in jumping to the conclusion that Andreas'
  "were" should be "where".

> IIRC there is also a recording of JRRT reading this poem, which
> should be definiitive.
But not necessarily. Bilbo was a hobbit from the Shire and JRRT may well
have had him say this poem with a countrified accent. We would also need
to hear JRRT speaking just normally.

But seeing the poem reminded me immediately of our Head of Classics when I
was at school in the 1950s. We used to mimic his "spare chairs" as "spur
chers". He came from the west Midlands, but had acquired a more or less RP
accent, I guess from his days at Cambridge University. But he was subject
to the odd hypercorrection like using [V] in some words we we southerners
still say [U], and having learnt that we pronounce 'bath' as [bAT] and
'after' as [Aft@], he extended this to words like 'maths', 'Africa' and
'Catholic' which e pronounced with [&]. I think his "spur chers" was a
hypercorrection.

I remember a silly joke from many years ago:
"Why is the Birmingham fire-brigade like a biscuit tin?"
"Because the'ye both 'a square tin'"

In (some?) west Midlands dialects the southern Brit [3] (south western [3`
]) is more fronted and closer to [E] or [E`]. I think even [e@] and [e`]
may well be found.

JRRT & his brother were brought up in a Midland village (I can't remember
which) and probably had a rural Midland accent when young. It may be that
the RP of the later JRRT retained some Midlandisms - we need to hear
recordings of him - but it still seems a little odd to me that he would be
so unaware of the general RP pronunciation of "were" as to give it as an
example of [E}, if indeed that is what he intended.

Ray
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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" ]