Re: [lace-chat] Re: Language Evolution

[Martha Krieg]

The Latin alphabet had characters that fit very, very well with Latin 
phonology. The Greek alphabet matched Greek phonology too. The 
problem came when the Latin alphabet began to be used for languages 
like Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and others which had sounds that Latin 
didn't have - like th (both varieties) and gh (still pronounced) or 
ich (used to be in English, still is in German). Most sounds worked 
fine - you'll notice the consonants are relatively stable - not 
completely, but they do better than the vowels - for those sounds 
that were the same in Latin and English. And when Old English was 
being spoken, the Latin and the English vowels were very similar. The 
a sound in "ash" had its own letter in runes, but the Latin digraph 
ae was the same, so no problem. Then the Great Vowel shift happened, 
and things that were a like father became a like ash, etc. In fact 
it's still going on - Anne can sound the same as Ian here in Michigan!
In England, not everyone talked alike back then (in fact, see 
previous posts, they still don't) - but the dialects were really, 
really different in some respects. So scribes would write what they 
heard...then the book would migrate and be copied in a different 
area, and sometimes the scribe would correct everything to his 
dialect and sometimes he tried to leave it as it was, but slipped 
occasionally. During the Middle English period there were a huge 
number of ways to spell "our" (as in the possessive) ... I counted 
them one time when I was working at the Middle English Dictionary, 
but I can't remember the number now. So it wasn't until the printing 
press, and some would say that first huge dictionary, that people 
began to try to normalize spelling. If the book was going to stay 
usually pretty local, it didn't matter - everyone talked alike, and 
everyone pretty much read aloud, so it worked. But if the "same" book 
was going to be sold from Scotland to Cornwall and Kent, it really 
helped if the word was spelled one way, even if you pronounced it the 
way you usually did.
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Martha Krieg   [EMAIL PROTECTED]  in Michigan
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