From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 50738
Date: 2007-12-07
> ok
> I agree with your statements.
> So the issue is :
> what is the convention that leads to Umbrian como-h-ota ?
> I cannot see by myself.
> Arnaud
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Brian M. Scott
> To: fournet.arnaud
> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 9:03 PM
> Subject: Re[2]: [SPAM]Re: [SPAM][tied] comohota
> At 1:27:03 PM on Thursday, December 6, 2007, fournet.arnaud
> wrote:
> > Modern languages like English or French have traditions :
> > that is to say a lot of useless letters inherited from
> > previous languages or previous habits about how to write
> > previous languages. Hence de-b-t, et caetera....
> Actually, the <b> in English <debt> is not historical: the
> word is a borrowing of OFr <det(t)e> and is typically found
> in ME as <det> and <dette>. In the 13th-16th centuries
> French <dette> was sometimes artificially spelled <debte> by
> etymologizing scribes; the English began to imitate this in
> the 15th century, and it became the normal usage in the 16th
> century.
> I'm not sure what your point is with <et caetera>: nowadays
> it's usually <etcetera>, which is a perfectly reasonable
> English spelling of the word.
> In any case it isn't only modern languages that have or make
> use of orthographic traditions. Late Ogam Irish spelling
> was orthographically conservative. Early British
> inscriptions in Roman letters used Roman sound values as
> much as possible. When a writing system is borrowed, its
> conventions are likely to be borrowed with it.
> Brian
>