Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

In a message dated 2/2/2003 11:57:19 AM Pacific Standard Time,
starvingpoet@RCN.COM writes:


> > > It's spelled obsolete.  I usually wouldn't correct like that, but this
> > > time, it's in the spirit of the thread.  hehe
> > >
> Joe scrub:
> > What is odd, is that I spell 'spelled' as 'spelt', more commonly. Is this
> the
> > beginning of the reform?
> 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.
>
> Jake
 What the difference seems to be is that "spelled" is simply the past tense
of the verb: The teacher spelled his name out for us on the chalkboard;
whereas "spelt" is used in the passive voice to talk about how people are
spelling a word: In Britain, "skil(l)ful" is spelt with one L while in
America it's spelt with two. And yet this other verb form, "spelled", seems
to be used in the active voice. My own useage is certainly consistent with
this; after all, if you have verb parts that break up into two forms
depending on contexts like these, such as "hang" and "hung", why can't this
be the logical explanation for the existence of both "spelled" and "spelt"?