Hi Oskar,

I stand corrected regarding the Latin value of "æ". As you and others have
pointed out, I was thinking of the classical Latin value of "æ" as in
"ice", and the late Latin value would be much closer to the value of "æ" as
in ON and OE. The grammar that I'm looking at (E.V. Gordon, 1957) says
that in ON "æ" was a long version of the vowel in Modern English "ash", but
you and Haukur and everyone else seem to be telling me that it's actually a
long version of the vowel in Modern English "bet". Perhaps this is one of
those cases where there isn't agreement on which vowel it is, but
everyone's sure that it's one of those two options?

Selvarv, about doing reconstruction: the book that they use to teach
historical linguistics here is _Historical Linguistics: An Introduction_ by
Lyle Campbell (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998). The explanations are
clear and there are a lot of examples and exercises, but it doesn't really
cover the phonetics stuff in detail. If you don't need to know too much
about phonetics, you can just consult
http://web.uvic.ca/ling/coursework/phonlab/ipatut/index.html when you want
to hear an IPA symbol. If you do want to learn phonetics, maybe Oskar can
recommend an affordable book. I was going to say _Vowels and Consonants:
An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages_ by Peter Ladefoged (Blackwell,
2000) until I realised it was $74! Quick disclaimer: I'm just a student
who's taken some linguistics courses, so I have no idea if these are the
best ones on the market - and I also don't really know whether these are
the right ones for your background.

> >We know some "c"s became "ch" because we say the words that way now,
>and as soon as the Normans invaded England the Norman scribes spelled
>the "ch" words differently from the "c" words,
>
>Just a thought (this is your expertise, not mine):
>
>Might the Normans have pronounced some c's as s's, e.g. in "centre",
>and wanted to separate those from the English "ch" [tS] sound? The
>Normans may have had [tS] themselves, spelled "ch", as in "champion";
>but they'd have wanted to continue spelling that "ch" (and thus
>respelled the native English words accordingly), and retain the "c"
>for etymological purposes, as it is today.

Yes, basically you're right, although a better example of a Norman French
loanword is "city". As you point out, the French were used to the
convention that "c" spelled [s] before "i" or "e". So when confronted with
the Old English convention that "c" spelled [tS] before "i" or "e", they
decided to keep their own convention and invent the digraph "ch" for Middle
English. (But I have a feeling this isn't consistently used till a few
centuries after the conquest.)

By the way, I'm not sure Norman French necessarily had the [tS] sound,
although Central French of the same period did. The word "candle" is a
Norman French loanword that came into Middle English before the Normans
started getting ashamed of their bad French :p, the word "chandler" is a
French word that came into Middle English after Central French became more
prestigious and influential. As you've informed me before, the Normans
were transplanted Vikings who were speaking their own version of French -
they felt no need to soften those Latin [k] initials to [tS], though the
other French were doing so.

This is my area of expertise, but I'm just an apprentice, so don't take me
as The Authority, okay? :-)

> > Old English teachers will make you learn to pronounce the two "c"s
>differently so that you know there can be a difference; luckily Old
>Norse doesn't seem to have this kind of exception built into the
>system.
>
>I beg to differ :) The difference between the "k" in "kalt", [k],
>and "kært" or "kelda", [c], may not seem great to you, but it's still
>there. It comes automatically to most Germanic-speakers, but not to,
>say, Spanish-speakers; Spanish has "calor", [kAlor], and "queso",
>[keso], not [ceso].

Wow, that elusive sound [c]. Does it come naturally to English speakers,
too? In Phonetics class our teacher said the /k/ in English "kit" tends to
be more forward than in "cot", but I don't know if it actually qualifies as
a fully-fledged [c]. When I listen to IPA charts (as in the one at
http://web.uvic.ca/ling/coursework/phonlab/ipatut/index.html ), [c] sounds
almost more like an approximant than a plosive.

E-Ching
(not doing her homework)