Re: Middle English question

On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Patrick Dunn wrote:

> On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
>
> > I tend to pronounce Middle (and Early) English as if it were
> > dialect Dutch, and that works pretty well along the lines given
> > here. But what I was wondering about was, how are the diphtongues
> > pronounces, _ou_ especially? I guess /au/, but it might be /o/
> > or even /u/...
>
> According my little paperback Chaucer which I would copy in directly
> except I lost the wrestling match for it with my cat and am fond of the
> skin on my hands, ou is pronounced as in ME "thought" but longer.  (The
> book said "slower."  Bah.)
>
Fortunately Fremen my Best Beloved cat does not sit on my copy of the The
Riverside Chaucer which is beside me.  This is what it has in its sound
chart:

/u:/    oo as in _boot_ ou, ow, ogh     flour, fowles, droghte
        (but with a pure
        vowel)

/Ou/    o + u           ou, ow          growen, soule

/Ou/    o + u           o, ou           thoght, foughte
                        (before -gh)

"The spelling ou/ow could represent, in addition to [u:], the diphthong ou
composed of o and u, as in _grow_.  Scribes varied in writing words in
which o precedes the back fricative consonant usually written gh.  The
commonest spelling is probably ou, but simple o iss favoured by some, os
that modern thought may be written thought(e), thowght(e) or thoght(e)."
p.xxix a

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

        Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;
        Light dies before thy uncreating word:
        Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
        And Universal Darkness buries All.
                        - Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Book IV.