Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

On 2003.02.03 07:01 Jake X wrote:
> Joe scrub:
> > What is odd, is that I spell 'spelled' as 'spelt', more commonly.
> Is this the
> > beginning of the reform?
I wouldn't say so, because you don't spell e.g. <fixed> as <fixt>, do
you?

> It may be a difference between U.S. and UK style spelling, but I'm
> not sure.
> I have always pronounced it [lr=nd], so I spell it that way.  I also
> prounounce
> "spelled" [spEld], so that's how I spell it.  Maybe in places where it
> is prounounced -[t] for those words, that is how it is spelled.
> Personally,
> even when I do use -[t], I always spell it -|ed|.  Not sure why.
> Can't
> trhink of an example of that at the moment.
The English decided to go off and change the past tense/participle of a
few words whose roots end in -/l/ (spell --> spelt) -/n/ (learn -->
learnt).* Because the rules of English orthography would required that
<spelled> as a past tense/past participle be pronounced /speld/, the
spellings was changed to <spelt>.

*There's also the word <dreamt> /drem(p)t/, which I think, but couldn't
say for certain, that spelt-sayers say more than spelled-sayers, but
based on the change of vowel I would imagine it was an earlier change.
And I also thing Americans actually use it, unlike 'spelt' and 'learnt'
and kin.

Nevertheless, there are occasions when, at least orthographically,
<spelled> etc. are preferred. Last I heard the times weren't
well-defined (because they aren't prescriptivist rules---it comes from
the speech of Englishfolk, moved into spelling, than died in the speach
of Aussies). I find /speld/ and such hard to say; I tend to get caught
up trying to leave the /l/, which is strange, when you consider I have
no trouble with /kIld/ (killed). (Actually, now that I come to think of
it, I think it's because I try to use a clear (alveolar) [l] in
[sp&l:d] but a dark (velarised or sometimes even velar) [5] in [kIM5d].
(Not totally random: /spelt/ is [sp&lt], not [sp&5t]. Whether that's
dialectal, ideolectal, or somewhere in between, I don't know.))

Also, for the record, you see Australians *spelling*, under the
influence of America, <spelled> etc., but as far as I can tell, they
always mean /spelt/, so they're merely interested in increasing the
maggelity of English spelling. Either that or they want to pretend that
<-ed> is a logographic past tense/participle former, and they hate
<crooked> as much as I do, which looks like /krukt/; /kruk@d/ should be
spelt <crookered> (even if rhotics wouldn't know what it meant any
longer, and if anyone pronounces it /krukId/, they might have some
trouble, too).

Tristan.

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