Hi Selv!

> well-travelled in the U.S., I've heard the vowel-sound in the
> same words
> consistently pronounced with at least three distincly
> different phonetic
> values, simply by travelling far enough - and this is within
> a society with
> mass-communication which supposedly "normalises" many
> differences such as
> this. From this and similar experiences, I just don't follow
> how we have
> any idea what phonetic values were used a thousand years ago.

Here in germany we have actually the phenomenon that we have different
pronounciation of the same words in villages right next to each other! I can
hear the german word "Hammer" as "Ho:ma", "Hu:ma" or "Hammer" (I am really
sorry, but I guess this is not really SAMPA. Óskar might forgive me, I hope
that you get the point).

Of course the situation is different in Germany because of so many dialects,
but those pronounciations of a single word ("Hammer") differs in a distance
less than 10km! We can actually hear from what village one is coming from
when he is starting to speak (within a given range of course).

So much to the sentence: "We know, how romans pronounced this and that!" (we
have been roman territory for quit a long time. Trier has been a the
second-important residence for the roman emperor and we have LOTS of
archaeologic sites here concerning roman history).

Greetings,
Meldric

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