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Great Vowel Shift

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Re: Great Vowel Shift

#211

Post by huachimingo »

fbellag wrote: post #60
ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English…

I've half-jokingly, proposed a similar change to Spanish, basically: z, c (as in "ce", "ci"): use "s" (non european spanish speakers do not distinguish these sounds anyway) v: always use "b" c (as in "ca", "co", "cu"), q(u) (as in "que", "quiso"): replaced with "k" w: why do we have this letter?! use "u" y (as vowel): use "i" (basically only used as "and" in Spanish) y (as consonant): stays like it is now (important…

Jaja, I see that you like Andrés Bello, dont you?

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#212

Post by Koshkin »

GlennS wrote: post #209
Koshkin wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I still wish it were Spanish, which is easier to learn/read and pronunciation of which is somehow easier for most people (except for native English speakers, as I've noticed).

Surely it will be a Romance/Germanic split? So Spanish is easier for speakers of French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, and English for speakers of Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish?

Not sure about those others but the Germans that I know struggle with English just like everybody else. (Despite common roots German and English are very different, and, in fact, I find the written Spanish and even French to be quite close to English, and rather easy to understand if you know English and learn a few words that are different or spelled differently; not so with German.)

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#213

Post by jacobolus »

westoncb wrote: post #204
chc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Term of art" means that it has a technical meaning in a specific field, while "idiom" just means that a phrase has a meaning. For example, "a dime a dozen" is an idiom but not a term of art. If you wanted to avoid the phrase "term of art" for some reason, "idiom" would be a reasonable alternative.

"a technical meaning in a specific field" is one of the definitions of idiom (as given above)—they literally list 'jargon' as a synonym ("The specialized language of a trade, profession, or similar group, especially when viewed as difficult to understand by outsiders."). That entry was from: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. Since idiom has both the structural denotation of a phr…

To start, “idiomatic” is an adjective while “term of art” is a noun. The word “idiom” in the sense you are quoting refers to the whole language/dialect/way of speaking, not one word. The sense of “idiom” meaning one phrase (maybe shortened from “idiomatic expression” or something?) does not mean the same thing as “term of art”, but is more like a common expression in a particular language / dialect. It does not have the sense of a specific technical meaning for a word, distinct from the ordinary definition.

These words are not synonyms, and should not be substituted.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#214

Post by Tagbert »

coolreader18 wrote: post #162
gchucky wrote: post #3

The vowel shift is one of the major reasons why Shakespeare's poetry doesn't rhyme when spoken with modern English. There was a rather fascinating video that went around awhile back of a father and son demonstrating the changes.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

It's funny, for at least the first example, original pronunciation just sounds like Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies, which is especially interesting considering that's intended to be a less formal/"lower class" accent. Reminds me of something I heard once that the modern american accent is actually closer to the british accent at the time of the revolutionary war, and it's the british accent that's changed more s…

What Americans think of as “the” British accent is known as “Received Pronunciation”. An accent that arose in London in the latter 19th century.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#215

Post by Tagbert »

khy wrote: post #2

If anyone finds this subject interesting, I recommend The History of English Podcast: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com .

That is one of my favorite podcasts! I often go back and listen to older episodes.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#216

Post by westoncb »

jacobolus wrote: post #213
westoncb wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a technical meaning in a specific field" is one of the definitions of idiom (as given above)—they literally list 'jargon' as a synonym ("The specialized language of a trade, profession, or similar group, especially when viewed as difficult to understand by outsiders."). That entry was from: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. Since idiom has both the structural denotation of a phr…

To start, “idiomatic” is an adjective while “term of art” is a noun. The word “idiom” in the sense you are quoting refers to the whole language/dialect/way of speaking, not one word. The sense of “idiom” meaning one phrase (maybe shortened from “idiomatic expression” or something?) does not mean the same thing as “term of art”, but is more like a common expression in a particular language / dialect. It does not have…

And there’s what I was looking for :) I did overlook that ‘idiom’ applies to a full language/dialect.

I think you’re overstating your case though when you say “It does not have the sense of a specific technical meaning for a word, distinct from the ordinary definition”—since jargon is a synonym for one sense of idiom and idiomatic is less specific in the group/individual distinction (and yes it’s an adjective but you can trivially employ it to construct an equivalent noun phrase so this matters little). That said my own case is clearly a stretch here lol.

Maybe more relevant is the fact one could just say “technical term” and they’d be understood perfectly—I’m pretty sure that phrase is the reason I’ve also never come across “term of art”.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#217

Post by jgwil2 »

bradrn wrote: post #194
jgwil2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these examples are unambiguous in context. For example, C is always pronounced /k/ when preceding A, O, U, and always pronounced /s/ or /θ/ depending on the dialect when preceding E and I. The function from written Spanish to spoken Spanish (provided we are talking about a single dialect) is surjective, but darn close to bijective, especially if we exclude words of recent foreign origin.

From Mark Rosenfelder ( https://www.zompist.com/spell.html ): > Many people expect … to predict the spelling from the pronunciations-- not realizing that few orthographies meet this goal. It's far from true of Spanish, for instance, which is often held up as an example of a good orthography. I stopped fervently admiring Spanish orthography when I saw a sign in a Mexican bakery with about one spelling mistake every th…

Well, rules can be simple and there can be few exceptions and people will still screw up, so I don't think that anecdote proves anything. In any case, my claim is that there is exactly one possible pronunciation per correctly spelled Spanish word. The opposite direction is not quite 1:1, but again, it's very close, and anyway it's far closer than English.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#218

Post by beervirus »

ineedasername wrote: post #183

This what frustrates me about grammar fanatics. Clearly language changes and evolves, and grammar is defined as standard usage, not some rule formed 50 years ago that no one follows in common speech. In short, grammar is fundamentally descriptive, not proscriptive.

It's both. Language changes, but at any particular time, there's some consensus about what's correct and incorrect. You can ignore it if you want, but people will think you're ignorant.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#219

Post by tmccrary55 »

adamrezich wrote: post #134
asveikau wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to associate this with Brits. I have definitely noticed a rise in young Americans doing this in the last year or two though. The typical American "nearly silent" one you are describing tends to be more of a flapped /ɾ/, by the way. is often the same.

> The typical American "nearly silent" one you are describing tends to be more of a flapped /ɾ/, by the way. is often the same. yes, exactly! also out here in South Dakota we specifically pronounce the "t" in "Dakota" as a "d," I've noticed.

Midwesterner here but if I try to say Dakota with a t sound, I feel like I'm doing a British accent or something.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#220

Post by brigandish »

tabtab wrote: post #112
kindall wrote: post #93

They really missed an opportunity by not calling it the Great Vowel Movement

Maybe because "V" and "B" used to be pronounced the same ;-)

It certainly reinforces what I know about techies that I just had to scroll all the way down to here to get past a group of them not only missing the point of a joke, but then arguing with each other pendantically over the meaning of words that add nothing to the discussion.

Is bikeshedding a habit or a temperament?

Glad to see someone managed to get the joke, anyway.

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