Re: Orthography help needed

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: Orthography help needed


> From:    Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
> > On Friday, April 9, 2004, at 01:25 AM, Tim May wrote:
> > > A final /D/ after a short vowel is extremely unusual in English and
> > > the natural pronunciation of |eth| is surely /ET/.
> >
> > Eh? 'with' /wID/ seems _very_ common and usual to me. /wIT/ I've
> > encountered only in Scots English. Certainly in southern England & Wales
> > it's /wiD/ and IME this pronunciation is pretty common in other
anglophone
> > areas.
>
> It's not clear to me which of the two is more common in
> North America. I naturally use [wID], but I know I have
> not infrequently heard [wIT] before.  But I know I pronounce
> "eth" as [ED], and have never heard it pronounced otherwise
> by anyone else, either, linguist or not.
>

That is, of course, how it is used in Icelandic.  In OE, however, it would
ahve been prnounce [eT], and that is one of the reasons I prefer 'eth' -
it's more true to my native language, both pronounciation-wise and for
consistancy.