Re: CHAT: Digest [various]

Muke Tever
> > It is possible that this simply an irregular spelling, and indeed an
> > irregular pronunciation, which does happen with vocab borrowed into ModE,
> > tho not normally. But I was hoping that one of our many pedants and
> > omniscients would know whether the spelling or pronunciation is irregular;
> > it wouldn't be if the word were from Greek (which I believe it not to be,
> > but can't check right now). If the spelling merely followed the
> > pronunciation, then it ought to be spelt <sk>.
>
> My dictionary has schism < ME _(s)cisme_ < OF < LL _schisma_ < Gr _skhisma_,
> from _skhizein_...
I was talking about _schedule_, Muke, not _schism_. As for _schism_, your
dictionary, like others, is misleading. /sIzm/ is < ME (s)cisme, while both
/skIzm/ and <schism> are directly from the Latin, where "from Latin" needn't
mean "from historical Latin as it was actually ever spoken". I am making an
essentially synchronic statement, in the sense that a word's having been
borrowed into English from Latin and Greek is a synchronic property of the
borrowed word (like its spelling, pronunciation, sense, grammatical category,
etc.), rather than merely a fact about how they first entered an ancestral
form of English.

Enough of this thread; I can think of no sufficient apropos and uncontrived
ObConlangry. (But if anyone does know the full explanation and story of
_schedule_, do let me know, privately if appropriate. Ray's message on the
topic is about as much as I can glean from sources available to me.)

--And.