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Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, January 30, 2003, 5:15
And Rosta scripsit:

> > Wunce upon a time thare livd a poor boy named Dick Whittington, hoose > > hooze
Wijk does write "hooze", and I overcorrected it.
> > she wos angry and told him to begon. At that moment the oener ov the > > <oener> because mergers that affect both RP & GenAm are carried over > into RI?
"ow" in RI represents the sound of "how now brown cow". I don't understand how "own" got to be spelled that way (< OE a:gen) anyhow. Perhaps to avoid collision with "one" which was formerly a homophone. Anyway, "ow" in "show" etc. > "oe", as in "hoe". This means occasional chain reforms: "shoe" > "shoo", "show" > "shoe". The main exceptions to the one-spelling one-pronunciation rule (as applied to digraphs, trigraphs, tetragraphs) are the long and short simple vowels, the fact that unstressed vowels are mostly left alone (except -ain > -en when unstressed, "capten bargen forren"), and "ie", which = long "i" when morpheme final ("die lie") but = long "e" otherwise ("brief chief fiend").
> > aulmoste every day. She treated him so badly that the merchant's > > or <evri>?
I think "evry" would be plausible. In general, RI leaves these zero ~ schwa vowels alone, as in "general", "literal", "corporal". I don't think anyone says [Ev@ri] any more, though.
> **** > > Like you, I am one of the few nonloonies who takes English spelling > reform seriously & thinks it would be a good thing. My preferences > for a reformed system are a little different, though:
Say rather a revolutionized system! But as a scheme I like it. -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." --Isaac Newton

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And Rosta <a.rosta@...>