Howard
You could well be right on the Shakespeare rhymes, although there
are clear cases where the "author" uses lexical, grammatical and
phonetic variation with enormous freedom and obvious pleasure; so I
would still think it the most likely interpretation.
However, even if you are right, this still implies the existence of
fluctuation at the time of the loss of "gh", since we have ended up
with a different standard pronunciation at present from the possible
"slafter", "dafter", "lafter", "after" rhymes; and various dialects
have solved the gh issue differently duff/dough, for example.
Yes, I must admit to a weakness for the "historical-phonetical-type
stuff", I hope you will excuse my "Pickled Herring" indulgence. I
realise it is a bit of a red herring, and not quite on topic, except,
possibly, for the conclusion about Pickeringe, and even, then, this
is hardly the field of music.
Regards
Anthony
Le 21 juin 07 à 16:16, Howard Posner a écrit :
> On Thursday, Jun 21, 2007, at 02:21 America/Los_Angeles, Anthony Hind
> wrote:
>
> [Rather a lot of interesting historical-phonetical-type stuff]
>
> In addition to looking to regional or temporal changes in
> pronunciation, or just plain "instability," to explain why Shakespeare
> rhymed "daughter" with "after" and "slaughter," there's also the
> possibility that the three words were consistently pronounced alike,
> like "love" and "move."
>
> Of course, these days (at least in the U.S.) "daughter" rhymes with
> "slaughter" and "after" rhymes with "laughter." Go figure. English
> spelling hasn't made sense since 1066.
>
> Shakespeare, of course, spelled his own name several different ways.
> This fact is Exhibit A cited by the
> somebody-other-than-Shakespeare-wrote-Shakespeare school, which must
> amuse Anthony to no end.
>
>
>
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