Re: CHAT: Dwarfs/dwarves (was Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin)

From: "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
>> On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Anton Sherwood wrote:
>>
>> > "Y.Penzev" wrote:
>> > > And surely NO GVS !!! I HATE the Great Vowel Shift !!!
>> >
>> > I'm not wild about it myself.
>>
>> Horrible people. Where would English be without it?
>
>Presumably, with a less screwed up vowel orthography.
>(Although Nik's point is good too:  you wouldn't have the
>fun of 'divine' [dIvaI(n] ~ 'divinity' [dIvInir=i] without
>it!)
Well, we could have had the GVS late enough to be incorporated into the
orthography.... like the Spanish o/ue, e/ie shifts.

We probably wouldn't think much of it since we'd be used to it, and then we'd be
questioning our speech and not our writing when we did "divijn" <> "divinity"

    *Muke!

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