At 11:32:04 AM on Wednesday, June 11, 2008, tgpedersen
wrote:
[...]
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quince
> http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch51.html
> Chaucer's coing/coines
That page attributes only the form <coines> to Chaucer;
<coing> is the modern French form. In fact ME <coin>,
plural <coines>, is from OFr <cooin>, <coin(g)>; the plural
was already being used as a singular in ME.
> would have been pronounced *kWæn, I believe (judging from
> French 17th cent pronunciation of -oi- as /wæ/).
17th c. French is hardly the best guide to 14th c. English.
The lines (with added punctuation) are:
And many homly trees ther were,
that peches, coynes, & apples beere,
The default interpretation of <coynes> is something like
['kOIn&s], though in this case the metre suggests that the
[&] may have been pretty weak (and indeed <coins> is also
found in the late 14th c.).
Brian