Re: Gaol and all

At 1:03 am -0500 12/12/99, Nik Taylor wrote:
>abrigon wrote:
>>
>> I thought Gaol and like was an old name for Jail. Could be the Theatre
>> and Gaol comes from the same root or likely cause of a possible place
>> Theatres used to be held at or ...
Not quite sure what Mike is getting at, but...

>Gaol is just another spelling of "jail", coming from a period before the
>invention of the letter "j".
Yep - except our forebears were quite happy to write /dZ/ as {i} in those
days  :)

'gaol' is the traditional Brit spelling of 'jail', and derives from Old
=46rench 'gaole' /dZa'ol@/ (--> modern French 'ge=F4le') <-- low Latin: gabi=
ola
"cage", ultimately derived from Latin 'cauea' /'kawea/ "cage".

>Theatre is the British spelling of
>American Theater, the common -er/-re alternation.
>
Yep - and we Brits were beginning to change, e.g. older 'entre' (<-- French
'entrer' <-- Latin 'intrare') had become 'enter', just as we were changing
-our to -or, e.g. 'terrour' had become 'terror'.  But the Americans decided
- sensibly IMHO - to carry the changes through consistently & so
conservatives Brits were able to establish unnecessary shibboleths and thus
halt the process here.

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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