Hi,
actually the real reason is the Great Vowel Shift (GVS)
(http://www.icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html) and the failure
of spelling to keep up with the spoken language.
It's obvious that a standardised spelling can never accurately reflect
pronunciation, since pronunciation changes over time and in space. This
seems particularly true of English. The Great Vowel Shift took place over
several hundred years, during which time English was also subject to all
the other 'normal' changes that take place in any language. But also
during that time Britain was expanding the Empire, and establishing
colonies all over the world. So a colony populated by people mainly
from the South-West of England will start as a snapshot of the
pronunciation of that area, during that particular period of the GVS.
Since small isolated populations such as colonies tend to be quite conservative
linguistically the pronunciation will change less than, and usually in a different
direction to, the pronunciation of the mother population. So, many
colonies all over the world each start with a different geographical
accent and from a different point in the GVS, and their modern
descendants' pronunciation reflects this.
A standardised spelling system could not reflect this diversity, which
is why attempts such as 'nu speling' are doomed to fail. So we get apparent
absurdities like 'cough' and 'plough'. The 'gh' in these sorts of word betray
their Germanic origins. It's easy to demonstrate with English/OE/German cognates:
daughter / dohtor / tochter (Greek thygater)
thought / gethoht / gedacht
eight / aehta / acht
fight / fehtan / fechten
usw.
Early in the history of English the 'gh' was pronounced similarly to
the German 'ch', and in some British accents (esp. Scots, which also didn't
undergo the GVC for some reason) there is still a trace of it in some words.
Globalisation (particularly the dominance of US films and TV) means
that accents will probably converge. Already in Britain TV, and other
social changes, have led to a flattening of English accents, in particular
to the rise of so-called 'Estuary English', which is the dialect and
accent spoken around the region of the Thames Estuary and causes much
wailing and gnashing of teeth among people who think it is a 'lazy' or
somehow degraded dialect. Wrt globalisation I remember talking to one of
my nephews when he was little about 'Sesame Street' and he corrected my
English pronunciation of Oliver ('Olivuh') to the American 'Ah-luhver' :o).
As internationalisation continues, I predict a kind of rolling back of
the GVS so that the diphthongised vowels will become, once again, like
their continental equivalents, and that the UN (or some such body) will
standardise and 'simplify' English spelling again. I put simplify in
quotes because once you understand the history, the British English spelling
becomes fairly rational, predictable and understandable, whereas Webster's
standardisation seems distinctly arbitrary in many cases - for instance, why
change 'plough' and leave 'though' and so many others?
A little bit of knowledge of linguistic history makes spelling tests
so much easier! Apparent absurdities are usually interesting indicators
of history, and rarely as absurd as they seem at face value.
---
Bob
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Saturday, April 07, 2001, 9:11:06 AM, you wrote:
> Hi,
> I would have thuft that was obvious. It rhymes with 'cough' and
> 'through' and 'although'.
> ---
> Bob
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Friday, April 06, 2001, 11:51:09 PM, you wrote:
>> Colour and azma I can live with, but why don't you pronounce "plough" pluff?
>> Ed
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