Re: [tied] -ves plurals in English

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001 11:26:47 +0200, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>The contrast between -f- and -v- is reflected in the modern orthography, but many speakers still distinguish voiceless and voiced fricatives in the following pairs without any difference in the spelling:
>
>house : houses
>path : paths
>bath : baths
>wreath : wreaths
>mouth : mouths

Indeed. Another effect of Norman French spelling, which never
introduced a distinction between /T/ and /D/, both spelt <th>, and was
never very partial to <z>, preferring to spell intervocalic /z/ as <s>
(as in French).