--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>
wrote:
>
> May I make mention of
English "mood" "food", "hood", "good", "blood", "flood", with three
different vowels, all from words which originally rhymed. What
reason is there for that, and what other language has undergone a
similar threefold change? Or "weak" and "steak" with originally
rhyming vowels, or "break" and "leak" with originally rhyming vowels,
or "great" and "threat" with originally rhyming vowels - and the list
goes on. What other language has similar phenomena? Plus spellings
like "ough" with its myriad pronunciations. And I think English "r"
is highly atypical, as I have mentioned already, and English is also
atypical among Indo-European languages in preserving /w/ in initial
position. What other Indo-European language has these
characteristics? Moreover the fact that it's called "English" though
at least 60% of its vocabulary is French or Latin, if not more,
though I am aware that languages such as Albanian and Farsi also have
a high foreign content. As well its
> currency as the prevalent international language. I think the
combination of these characteristics makes English quite unusual
among modern languages.
>
Here's something about the pronounciation of written -ag- in Danish:
There are two prnunciations
1) /äI/ (or /ä?I/)
2) /aU/ (or /aU?/)
1) is default
2) is mandatory in compounds ('combining form', ie as first member of
in a compound),
also dia-/sociolectal,
but consider this
'et slag /slä?I/ in ansigtet' "a slap in the face"
'et slag /slaW/ på tasken' lit. "a slap on the bag", ie "ballpark
figure"
and
'slag' "battle", always /slä?I/
further
''dag' (< 'goddag') either
/dä?I/ "hello" (formal) or
/daU?/ "hello" (informal)
In other words the /aU/ pronunciation is reduced to being dialectal,
but has held its own in fixed expressions of colloquial character,
producing a confusion of dialectal, sociolectal and lexical criteria
that is a linguist's nightmare (except of course the historical
process is known). It think this matches the confusion in English.
Also note
'bøg' /bø?G/ "beech", 'løg' /loI?/ "onion"
'eg' /e?G/ "oak", 'steg' /staI?/ "steak"
Torsten