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Great Vowel Shift

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Re: Great Vowel Shift

#251

Post by ggm »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #249
ggm wrote: post #229

Interesting how in "micro" sense we know people knew it was happening ("young people today.." nothing changes) Yet, its a 300 year process. One of those "I was there" -no, you weren't things. Like sea level rise. You see a bit of it. The totality is a story which spans generations. Nobody owns all of it.

And yet, people experience changes in accents during their own life; they hear recordings from themselves from the 70's and think "did I really talk like that?". One thing though, take older movies with a grain of salt; in old movies, actors were taught a specific accent (called the Mid-Atlantic accent, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent ).

It's a sequence of shifts. I guess, significant numbers of people get to experience maybe one shift in a chain.

Modern example. Router. Two forms, the British one rooter is being deprecated strongly for rowter.

Etc is etcetera. Now, its etsy.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#252

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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.

Use of "whom" is a great example of this. If you use it correctly (proscriptively) then people thing you sound strange.

There's not just descriptive and proscriptive approaches: utilitarian and apathetically approaches seem distinct (perhaps they're a different axis).

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#253

Post by bambax »

seanvk wrote: post #233

One interesting side effect of the Great Vowel Shift occurred when the word Uisce Beatha (Whisk(e)y) was anglicized twice. It was first brought in during the Elizabethan period from Ireland as "Whiskey" and later re-brought in as "Whisky" in Scotland. I've often wondered if that is the same reason behind surname anglicization of Ceallaigh to "Kelley" and later "Kelly".

Wikipedia tells me that

> Uisce beatha, literally "water of life", is the name for whiskey in Irish. It is derived from the Old Irish uisce ("water") and bethu ("life").

In France, many liquors used to be simply called "eau de vie". They now tend to each have their own name (origin and/or brand), but most people would still understand that you're not looking for water if you ask for some eau de vie.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#254

Post by bradrn »

jgwil2 wrote: post #217
bradrn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, that I can agree with.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#255

Post by starfallg »

mywittyname wrote: post #36
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…

This is cute, up until the point where it starts reaching and makes changes which are important for the sound of the language. The e in many words isn't silent, it's a modifier. Kit and kite are different words. "th", "z", "w", and "v" are all really different sounds. While certain accents (or children) do occasionally conflate them, in basically every case, it's technically incorrect. Zebra, Webra, Vebra, and Thebra…

Because 'Kite' should be spelt 'Kait'. The English I/E/AI vowel sounds are a massive mess. I realised this only after starting lessons in Japanese, where the vowel sounds are almost entirely regular. Ke always sounds like Kelp, and Ki always sounds like Kit and Ka will always sound like Kart.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#256

Post by Veen »

cleansingfire wrote: post #170
Veen wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is (or was) considered "lower-class" to drop your Ts in the UK. But these days, it's not fashionable to talk like Boris Johnson, even if you went to Eton, so many upper-middle class people emulate aspects of "lower-class" speech, including the glottalization of "t" when it's followed by an unstressed syllable (like water). Even someone as indisputably posh as Prince Harry will T-glottalize on occasion.

Not being posh has been fashionable before. A fashion for dropping terminal g existed the upper classes in the 1920's UK. Dorothy L. Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey did this, and it was fascinating to hear this affectation in the 1970's BBC adaptations with Ian Carmichael. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/no-g-men-frank-mcnally-on... Also, there is a backlash against Received Pronunciation as inauthentic. Now I enjoy BBC…

Famously in "huntin', shootin', and fishin'." But I'm not sure it's the upper classes emulating the lower. It seems to be parallel evolution from different forms of Old English [0]. Which makes sense; it's unlikely an upper-class English person of the 1920s would be motivated to copy lower-class speech patterns. Bertie Wooster wouldn't want to sound like his scullery maid.

[0]: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YMS3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&lpg...

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#257

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

beermonster wrote: post #84
khy wrote: post #2

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

And ‘Mother Tongue’ by Bill Bryson.

Please don’t recommend that book. Bill Bryson has no training in linguistics and that book is so bad, that there is a factual error on virtually every page.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#258

Post by anoncake »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #189
forbiddenvoid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why not just say 'domain-specific meaning?' Term of art doesn't really have a clear meaning in general (native English speaker, and this is the first time I've heard this), and it's unclear/ambiguous as to what it actually indicates.

"Jargon" is a good word for this case.

Does that imply that the meaning is well-defined like "term of art" does?

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#260

Post by gxqoz »

tialaramex wrote: post #96
ajuc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially its very large vocabulary Vocabulary isn't a problem IMHO. The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is. I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see. I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I stil…

So, the good news is that lots of native English speakers don't know how to pronounce things either. Of course I know how to say all the words I speak frequently and hear others using - but if I use a word I haven't heard there's a risk I'll say it wrong. You just learn not to worry about it (the biggest problem really is when you unconsciously try to correct somebody else and realise you've got not basis for your as…

Yeah it's amazing how bad people are at this without practice (including myself). Reading complicated / unfamiliar words aloud is a key skill in reading quizbowl questions (a type of trivia). Often these questions will have pronunciation guides to help but even then it can be a slog for some people. I've actually found TTS better than all but the most experienced readers for this task.
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