From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 41243
Date: 2005-10-11
--- 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.-- Yes, you're right, French and Spanish could not both continue to be called "Latin". Fortunately English and German were never both called "Germanic" but from their earliest recorded histories had their own names. But I am still surprised that you and all the others who vehemently and pointedly disagree with everything I am saying cannot give me an inch in what seems to me so inescapably obvious: that English has changed so thoroughly, so completely, so far-reachingly, that I find that it is a wonder that only one letter has changed between "Englisc" and "English". I really think that most people will find that modern French is more similar on paper to modern English than is Old English, and I doubt that modern English and Old English sound at all similar to the ear also. Of course, children's books and other highly simplified or basic forms of communication have lower frequencies of French and Latin words, but when I compare English to Italian or to German or to Dutch or to Russian or to Swedish or to Spanish or to French, I find that English is very noticeably more changed, more transformed, from its early form, than any of these languages are from their early forms, especially in the written forms (but also spoken in terms of vowel pronunciations). I admit that French has changed extremely phonologically, but I think it still retains a much higher percentage of inherited vocabulary.
> 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_.
-- Then why hasn't "great" become "gret"? (ME grettre, OE griet(t)ra) Or "white" become "whit"?
> 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).
-- But strange that it is unique to "one" in the modern language, I find.
> 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.
-- Okay, you've got me there. But I still think the written form of a language can be counted a characteristic of that language. A parallel might be how a person's handwriting can be counted a characteristic of that person, even though his handwriting does not define him as a person.
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?
-- But not as "purely" as has English. /w/ regularly becomes /gw/ in initial position in Welsh, only in certain circumstances does it mutate to /w/. In English initial /w/ is always /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.).
-- I don't know enough about Farsi, I must confess. I don't know if it has retained grammatical gender, as has for example Hindi. I also don't know how much of its vocabulary is foreign. So perhaps you're right, Farsi is an example of a language similar to English in its degree of transformation. (But does it preserve initial /w/, or have approximant /r/, I have to remark.)
The low vowels of English _great_, _break_ and _broad_ are generally
attributing to the influence of /r/ in preventing raising.
-- Then what is it that raised *weik to /wi:k/ but kept *steik at /steyk/?
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.
-- Actually, I don't think it's just "some" words, I think it is almost all ME /e/ before /r/ plus consonant: "dark", "far", "carve" -- but "earth" is a notable exception, while "work" has the influence of /w/.
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.
-- Thanks for the enlightening information. In specifics, my point has been successfully challenged by you and the others, but I still don't think that I am unjustified in regarding English as noticeably dissimilar from other IE languages in the characteristics in which other IE languages show recurring similarities - as a general impression, not from meticulous analysis of every fine point of every language.