--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>
wrote (in various posts):
>But Latin changed its name to French in France, to Spanish in Spain,
etc. after the changes it underwent in the Middle Ages; yet English
still remains "English" despite being much more unlike "Englisc" than
Spanish is unlike Latin or Italian is unlike Latin.
Doesn't that have more to do with what they were contrasting with?
French and Spanish were both varieties of Latin, so they could not be
distinguished by calling both of them Latin! Furthermore, there was
the purified and conservative language of the church, which succeeding
in reserving the word 'Latin' for itself. However, Ladin and Ladino
do survive as language names for two Romance languages.
> Further examples: "hot", "goat", and "boat", from Old English ha:t,
ga:t, ba:t -- why does "hot" have a different vowel? And I'm quite
sure that "hot" is the only word in which Old English a: becomes this
vowel!
The account in Onions attributes the shortening to the comparative
form, ME _hatter_ or _hotter_ (with short vowels) from OE _ha(:)ttra_.
> But look at "one" from Old English a:n vs. "alone" originally "all
one", Old English eall a:n. Why does "one" sound like "wun"? It is
not its initial position, since "oats" comes from Old English a:te and
"oar" from Old English a:r.
An aborted change or dialect form. Onions cites dialect forms of
_oak_ and _oats_ with the same development as _one_. The 'w' in
<whole> and <whore> may actually reflect this sound change (a
suggestion of Piotr's).
> What world are you living in? Who in today's world does not learn
the written form of a language when he is learning it, especially if
it is written with an alphabet? Come on, nobody nowadays learns an
alphabetical language solely in its spoken form - unless you mean only
to learn a few phrases here and there.
Actually, if the alphabet is not the one one already knows, quite a
few people. There are a surprising number of Westerners who have
learnt to speak Thai without learning to read it, and not a few Thais
who have learnt spoken English without learning to read it. I've
actually encountered a Thai book claiming to teach English and French
together entirely through the medium of transliteration.
On retention of PIE *w:
Although Welsh has undergone the sound change *w > /gw/, should the
soft mutation /gw/ > /w/ allow us to claim that it does retain PIE *w?
I don't think it is reasonable to claim that Persian (> Farsi under
Arab influence) has (a) changed its name or (b) retains grammatical
grammar. What is claimed in the latter case? Common v. neuter? I
thought the details were no more significant than animacy marking in
English ('who' v. 'which' etc.).
The low vowels of English _great_, _break_ and _broad_ are generally
attributing to the influence of /r/ in preventing raising. The
pronunciation of '-ear' is quite inconsistent. In some words, of
course, /r/ has actually lowered the vowel - _Derby_, _clerk_,
_Hertford_, _heart_, all with /a:/ in RP.
I believe that the London dialect had at one time merged the vowels
typically written 'ai' and 'ea', though the fashion clearly swung the
other way with 'ea' merging with the vowel typically written 'ee'.
Richard.