Re: orthography and pronunciation

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001 04:22:09 -0400, Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...> wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:00:27 -0400, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
>
>>But that would be a fun, tho implausible, conlang ... English is
>>rediscovered after many ages, and is pronounced as spelt, with c = /ts/,
>>j = /dZ/, q = /q/, x = /x/, y = /y/, ' = /?/, and epenthetic schwas
>>added as needed.  Vowels pronounced as in IPA.  :-)
>
>Nope! j = /j/, 'cause English is demonstrably related to German, and they
>digged out a copy of Deutsche Bünenaussprache previously ;)
>
>A lot of controversy about {gh} in _thought_. The most popular view being
>that it's a uvular approximant.
>
>:D
:) :)

In a 1000 years, 20th century English will probably be referred to as
"Classical English", and will be studied by a few nutballs. There will be
diverse speculations about its sound inventory; it will seem totally
unpronounceable to most (there being a lot of weird vowel sounds, syllabic
consonants, extreme consonant clusters, stress rules from hell, and an
ill-understood system of vowel weakening (resulting in the legendary
"schwa") and strengthening). Scholars will disagree on the values of the
various orthographical quirks, such as {gh} and magic {e}. They might say:
"{gh} was most probably pronounced as [G] or [x] (or some say a uvular
approximant)... certainly in Classical English, and perhaps for some time in
the post-classical period (until the collapse of the American Empire); {gh}
had surely become silent sometime before the Great Spelling Reform of
2665..."

Óskar's 5c :D

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