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Re: CHAT: "Nik"names :) (was Re: Middle Initials)

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Sunday, February 25, 2001, 11:53
Eric Christopherson wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 19, 2001 at 10:30:53AM -0600, Andrew D Chaney wrote: > > On Monday, February 19, 2001, at 07:20 AM, Andreas Johansson wrote: > > > > > Of course, English takes a sort of middle ground in that it happily > > > uses both "k" and "c" alot - do this have anything to do with the >heavy > > > Romance influence on it in medieval times? > > > > > > I'm no expert on Old English but flipping through my Old English Grammar > > and Reader leads me to believe that "c" was the standard notation in Old > > English. So I wonder where we picked up the "k". From differences >between > > dialects, perhaps??? > >Just a conjecture here, but maybe it was from Norse influence?
I find that hard to believe - I can't see there being much Norse influence after 1066, and at that time the Norse themselves were only in transisition from Runic to Roman writing. There can't've been many Norse spelling conventions in function at that time. After 1066, French of course became in primary written language, and French of coure relies on "c" and "qu" for /k/. So presumeably we have to blame the late-medieval british writers and printers for the electic mix of c's and k's in modern English. If they had some specific inspiration, I'd still be happy to know. Andreas _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>