Hi Diego,

Yes, I believe you're right. My understanding is that the spelling was
"rationalised" by a committee and these are amongst the rationalisations
they came up with.

This reminds me of the language situation in the Faroe Islands when
linguists were trying to establish Faroese as a language in its own right in
the late 19th, early 20th centuries. Hammerschaimb and another linguist
(whose name escapes me) both came up with alternative orthographies.
Hammerschaimb's orthography displayed the language's heritage and roots in
Old Norse, whereas the other linguist's orthography was much more phonetic.
Hammerschaimb's is the one that became accepted and as a result written
Faroese is about as difficult to pronounce properly as English is!!
[However, with a knowledge of Old Norse the written word is relatively easy
to understand.]

If it weren't going totally off-topic, I would love it if someone would give
me a brief summary of how Italian developed into its current form from
Latin. Maybe I need to find another group for that :-)

Kveðja,
Sarah.

----- Original Message -----
From: "diego ferioli" <diego.ferioli@...>
To: <norse_course@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 4:14 PM
Subject: Re: [norse_course] Re: A dialect with army and navy...


>
> hi Sarah,
> yes you're definitely right about all the differences you listed... but I
was
> actually referring to a period (after 1776) when the first only graphical
> modifications were introduced for political reasons into the official
language
> of the newly born US. but obviously every immigrant spoke his English
variety
> according to the region of provenience (Wales, Yorkshire, Ireland,
Scotland,
> Cornwall...): this differences then contributed to the following
evolution, also
> in terms of vocabulary and structure, of American English.
> I was certainly wrong about the spelling -ize (but I still believe it's
more
> used in US than in Europe, though it's not a rule), but, as someone who's
> mother-tongue can confirm (since I'm Italian), I think the spelling -or
instead
> of -our (or also "theater" instead of "theatre") is actually a national
> peculiarity.
>
> Cheers,
> Diego
>
>
>
>
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