From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 59186
Date: 2008-06-10
>Piotr, can you resolve this?
>
> --- Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> > <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > English lost /y/ twice --once in Old English for
> > > native words and once in Middle English for French
> > > words, so it did pick up French <u> as /y/.
> >
> > That's not what I have understood from the books I
> > have read (I can't
> > give a citation because I have only a portion
> > photocopied of the book
> > on hand), which say that only those dialects which
> > already had /y/(
> > either, as in the west midlands, from preserved OE
> > /y/, or, in the
> > north, a new /y:/ which developed out of OE /o:/)
> > were the ones which
> > adopted OF /y/ and /y:/ as such. All the dialects
> > which no longer had
> > the /y/ sounds borrowed OF /y:/ as the diphthong
> > /eu/ which they had
> > in words like <trew>, "true"; OF /y/ was mostly
> > borrowed as /u/ but
> > occasionally as /i/.
>
> I've read that Middle English did adopt French /y/ but
> the source didn't go into details, just that within
> 200 years or so, it unpacked the sound or mutated it
> to /u/.
> > >