--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
>
> Are there any rules to account for the shortening of Modern
English -
> ood and -ead?
>
Danish has
steg /staI?/ "steak", løg /loI?/ "onion", but
eg /e?G/, "oak", bøg /bø?G/ "beech"
The explanation is that Romantic anthems extolling the botanical
virtues of the fatherland used the latter two, but showed no
interested in the former pair (which is somehow a significant fact,
if I only knew what it meant). That same movement was interlocked
wiith Scandinavianism, therefore cf Swedish stek /ste:k/,
lök /lö:k/; ek /e:k/, bök /bö:k/. Some of your pairs look
like they might have ended up in opposing social categories,
which would influence the choice made between the optional dia-
/sociolectal variants that might once have been at hand.
Torsten