Re: Sidestepping Spelling Reform - Monosyllabic Characters

Steve Cooney scripsit:

> > Indeed, we might (as Mark Rosenfelder suggests at
> > http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm) use the same character
> > for the -cuit in both circuit and biscuit (perhaps a derivative of
> > "kit"), though there's of course no real connection between them.
>
> I took a look. I like the direction that is going in,
> but disagree that phonetics play any role whatsoever
> in a yingzi-type experiment.
[snip]

> > But what a weird word, "icicle"!  "Ice" + OE _gicel_
> > 'icicle'.  "Ice icicle."
>
> Not weird at all: Ici(Icy="of ice")-cle (Barnacle, Monacle)
ROTFLMAO!

This is a brilliant illustration of exactly the same kind of thinking
that Mark is parodying in his biscuit/circuit example.  There is no
connection, zilch, none, between these three words.

"Icicle", as I said, redundantly adds "ice" to the Old English word
"gicel" (pron. [jIkEl]), already meaning "icicle".  "Barnacle" is from the
Mediaeval Latin word "bernaca", of unknown origin, meaning a species of
goose (usually called the barnacle goose nowadays), plus the diminutive
ending "-ula".  "Monocle", as it is correctly spelled, is from Greek
"mono", one, plus Latin "oculus", eye.

Abstracting a common suffix "-cle" from these is as absurd as abstracting
"-cuit" from "biscuit" and "circuit".

> Yes. They are local (colloquial) idioms,
Hudie, boli (glass), and meigui (rose) certainly aren't.

--
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