On 7/2/07, Ralph Shumaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ralph Shumaker wrote:
> James G. Sack (jim) wrote:
>>
>> Ya want more?
>>
>
> When I was looking lightly into middle english and olde english, I found
> that the reason for our attrocious spelling in today's english came
> mostly as a result of the printing press.
Oops, s/mostly/in no small part/
> When typesetters from other
> language backgrounds came to try to print english, they had only the
> letters from their own language. So they used approximations to try to
> get close to the actual pronunciation in accordance with the limits of
> the sounds of *their* letters. The bottom line here (for me) is that
> they didn't let the customary spelling get in the way of trying to
> approximate the actual pronunciation with what they had available.
Without any further investigation into this, it seems to me that the
"other language backgrounds" would mostly have used letters based on
the Roman alphabet.
carl
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carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
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