Re: Middle English question

At 18:44 -0500 30.7.1999, Nik Taylor wrote:
>BP Jonsson wrote:
>> "u" was /u/ or /y/.
>
>/y/ existed in Middle English?  I thought it was lost in Late Old
>English.
It existed as a loan-phoneme from Frenshe. OE /y/ had merged with /i/.  I
wouldn't claim that all speakers used /y/, and in the correct places...

>
>> "3" "to3te".
>
>Does "3" represent the "yogh"?
Yup.  Forgot to note that...

>So, is this correct?:
>
>he: &:ks@d &ftEr Eg@s &nd D@ go:d@ wi:f &nswErd@ D&t Se: cu:d@ nOt spE:k
>nO frEnS@ &nd DEn &t l&st a: nODEr said D&t he: wu:ld@ h&:v h&d Eir@n
>DEn De: go:d@ wi:f said D&t Se: u:ndErsto:d hi:m wel
At least one way to render it by the stated rules...

"We call the spirit of William Caxton..." ;-)

>--
>"[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
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  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

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