On Sat, 17 Nov 2018 18:32:58 -0800 Denis Heidtmann <[email protected]> dijo:
>Yes, Mr. R, spelling is a dying art, or at least attention to it. Your >name is not the only victim. This has been caused by the ubiquitous spelling checkers that come with all kinds of technological devices these days. People no longer need to learn to spell, so schools have massively cut down on the amount of time they devote to it. Unfortunately, most spelling checkers do a poor job with proper names. Better we should just regularize English orthography, a system that is currently over 400 years out of date. Maybe an open source orthography? >But imagine having a name with one "n" commonly spelled with two "n"s, >and a last name with the opposite. I have even been called Denise. >Take heart that Russell does not have a feminine form. There are feminine forms (e.g., Rossina), it's just that they are not commonly encountered in the English speaking world. More interesting to me is the history of Indo-European reudh 'red' and what it evolved into. In Greek it became ερυθρος [eruθros], known to medical people as the root for erythrocyte (red blood cell). In Latin the word survived in the form rufus 'red-headed,' but also became rubor 'red.' In the Germanic languages it thrived, giving us modern German 'rot,' Anglo-Saxon 'read' (-> ModE 'red'). The modern Latin languages, lost the Latin forms except in low-frequency compounds, but then they borrowed the Germanic form from the Visigoths during their various invasions of the Roman empire. The 't' of the Visgoth form lenited to 's' (t -> ts -> s is a common phonological change over time), which resulted in Italian 'rosso.' In the western Romance languages (those spoken between the English Channel and Gibraltar) the 's' became voiced to [z], then moved back to [ʒ], where it stayed - e.g., French 'rouge.' That is, except for Spanish where it did not become voiced, and moved back to [ʃ], and later to [x], resulting in 'rojo.' So now Russell knows more about his name than even he wanted to know. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
