Re: Middle English question

At 10:36 -0500 29.7.1999, Patrick Dunn wrote:
>On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:
>
>> Could anyone tell me how my sig was pronounced?  The final -e's are
>> pronounced as /@/, yes?
>> --
>> "[H]e axed after eggys: And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude not
>> speke no Frenshe ... And then at last a nother sayd that he woulde haue
>> hadde eyren: then the goode wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel." --
>> William Caxton
>
>OE is more my field, but the general rules are:
>
>final e's pronounced as /@/
>a vowel before a final e is long, unless followed by double consonants (so
>"hadde" is a short a, but the e in speke is long
>doubled vowels are long
>y pronounced like /i/.
>Most vowels have their eupropean equivelents.
>
>And much of that might be wrong, but it'll get you close.
According to my "Kortfattad Engelsk Spraakhistoria" -- which title I'll
leave as a Swedish translation exercice! -- things go more or less like
said above, with due caveats for multiple correspondences, as already
mentioned by others, but further it says:

"ee"  was /e:/.
"ea" and "eCe" were /E:/.
"oo" was /o:/.
"oa" and "oCe" were /O:/.
"a" was /&/ and "aCe" /&:/, and both sometimes /a:/.
"u" was /u/ or /y/.
"o" was sometimes /u/ "loue" /luv@/, but mostly /O/.
   The spelling underdifferentiated WRT /u/ vs. /y/, but /y/ was rare.
"ui" and "uCe" were /y:/.
"au/aw" was /au/ or (especially before nasals and "s") /a:/.
    The /a:/ words have variant spellings: "da(u)nce" /da:ns/.
"ou/ow" was /u:/, also /ou/ and /Ou/.  Before "gh" seldom /u:/.
    It is not clear if /ou/ and /Ou/ were distinct.
"eu" was /eu/ or /Eu/.
"ei/ey" was /Ei/.
"ai/ay" was /ai/.
"oi/oy" was usually /ui/, "in English words" /ai/, never /Oi/!
"th" was /D/ in "VthV" and "rthV", else /T/.
"s" was /z/ in "VsV", and after voiced consonants, but not finally after
vowels!
"gh" was actually /x/, sometimes written "h" "tohte" or "3" "to3te".

So Boudewijn's "Dutch dialect principle" mostly holds very good! :-)

Acc. to my "Nederlaendsk Grammatik" _Boudewijn_ should be [bOud@VEin] with
[V]=labiodental glide (script-v/upsilon).  Is it antiquated, or what?  To
distinguish [V] and a fricative [v] seems nightmarish to me, since Swedish
"v" is mostly [V].  My native dialect has a bilabial/labiovelar glide
distinct from the labiodental one in some words (from historical /hv/ and
/v/ before sonorants, for the curious), so that feels easy to me(!), but a
labiodental fricative/glide distinction doesnt...

hAn 'spW:.d@ 'C&:ra frW:n @m hW: 'hadd@ 'n8:rA pu'tA:tisar, o: hW: sA: Att@
hW: ent@ 'k8nn@ bE'gri:ba W:d'ri:geska   dA: va: de:r en a:n s8m sA: Att@
di 'vell@ ha: 'n8:@rA 'pu:tEd@r, o: hW: sA: Att@ hW: bE'gre:b prEksis
'waff@n8:t,n sA:

I suppose most Danes and Norwegians would find this easier than most
Swedes, yet it is a "Swedish" dialect!

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)