Re: Just a Little Taste of Judean (Part 2)

On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Tom Wier wrote:

> Kenji Schwarz wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Tom Wier wrote:
> >
> > > Well, I wouldn't be surprised, but still the literacy levels would (a)
> > > still be far below what would probably be required for spelling
> > > pronunciations to start being introduced, and (b) they would be in
> > > the wrong language ;-) .  Only the extraordinarily educated individuals
> > > of society would have had been literate in multiple languages (and, as so
> > > many languages had no literary histories to begin with, the unliklihood
> > > is all the greater)
> >
> > FWIW, in many different local Chinese dialects there are (or were) largish
> > numbers of 'spelling pronunciations', although the literacy rates in the
> > speech communities in question were probably not much more than 5%, and
> > possibly often much lower.  'Literary' phrases and pronunciations
> > penetrated way way down the social ladder in premodern China.
>
> Well... I'm not sure that is applicable here.  I mean, yes, it's
> similar in that it's hypercorrection of sorts, but spelling
> pronunciation is specifically and inherently tied to the
> hypercorrecter being able to read materials with which he's
> unfamiliar, and then extrapolate pronunciations that have no currency
> then.  When you take away the written element, how is this any
> different than trying (and failing) to imitate a more prestigious
> dialect or sociolect?
But many or most of the 'hypercorrections', though, are justified by
literate speakers by referring to the phonetic elements in the written
form of the word.  Whether that's actually the source of the pronunciation
shift, or whether they're imitating literati, is probably not something
that can be figured out now.  The point is that the pronunciations are
perceived of as being closer or truer to the written form.

Kenji