Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

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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