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Why English doesn't use accents

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Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#111

Post by MLR »

o11c wrote: post #99
duskwuff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, a grave accent is sometimes used in poetry to indicate that a single vowel is voiced - e.g. in "cursèd" to indicate that the word should be pronounced as two syllables "curse-ed", rather than a single syllable "curst". Loanwords often retain their accents as well: cliché, façade, doppelgänger, jalapeño.

The adjective "learnèd" (meaning "well-educated") is a native English word that should take the grave accent even outside of poetry. Also "unlearnèd".

Winged and legged are still pronounced like that too, at least by some.

Interestingly, as an addition to the parent comment, there's a certain point in time where a lot of -ed words are often spelt -'d, which presumably is from the transitionary period between the expectation that the -ed was pronounced and today's general pronunciation.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#112

Post by grey413 »

jcranmer wrote: post #92
woleium wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as i understand it, english is actually 3-5 other languages in a trench coat.

This often gets trotted out, but it's not really true. English is a solidly Germanic language, which merely happened to lose the core attribute of Indo-European languages (extensive verb inflection), and in more recent centuries, there's been a tendency to adopt Latin and Greek words for new word formation rather than (as German did) using native words. So 'technology' instead of 'craftlearn' or 'television' instead…

As I understand it, English at it's core is a Germanic language that underwent significant creolization with scandinavian sources. That core then acquired a significant amount of Old French and latin vocabulary, particularly in upper class terminology.

The creolization is why English has a relatively simple grammar, and all the word sources is why we have like 16-20 vowel sounds trying to cram into latin characters.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#113

Post by eesmith »

eahm wrote: post #31

French.. you people have no idea how Italy is. I speak differently than my brothers because I grew up at my grandparents 3 MILES! away and if I go to my family restaurant 2 MILES the other direction there is a different accent again, and I mean different words too not just the sound. Where I used to go to school 10 miles away they don't understand if I speak my dialect because it's a different region. The whole Italy…

In 6th grade, so back in 1982, I read the French SF novel "Malevil".

I was astounded (speaking as a US kid here), to learn that French people born and raised in France didn't natively speak French, but instead learned their regional language.

Here is an example, from https://archive.org/details/malevilmerl00merl/page/150/mode/... :

> And besides, Thomas was already quite isolated enough as it was: by his youth, by his city origins, by his cast of thought, by his character, and by his ignorance of our patois. I had to ask La Menou and Peyssou not to overdo the use of their first language — since neither of them had learned much French till they went to school — because at mealtimes, if they began a conversation in patois, then everyone else, little by little, would begin to drop into patois too, and after a while Thomas was made to feel a stranger in our life.

Two minutes ago I learned that "patois" has a distinct meaning in France: "patois refers to any sociolect associated with uneducated rural classes, in contrast with the dominant prestige language (Standard French)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patois

I am very ill-informed on the history of the topic, including the national language policies of France and Italy. I do know that Sardinian is not a dialect of Italian, but my knowledge isn't much deeper than that. ;)

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#114

Post by eesmith »

amelius wrote: post #12

English doesn't use accents because the speakers don't give a __ about the correspondence between the written form and the pronunciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

I thought the article did a good job of explaining how English uses additional letters where French use accents, like the "h" in "ship" to indicate how the s is pronounced.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#115

Post by eesmith »

mousethatroared wrote: post #57
mikequinlan wrote: post #2

Clearly the early scribes were looking forward to the 7-bit ASCII code and needed to reduce the number of characters that were represented.

You're not wrong, except the technological reason. As I understand it, English lost a lot of characters when the movable type printing press was created.

Only þ (thorn) died with the printing of Caxton's Bible using y-, for cost reasons.

The other letters -- ƿ (wynn), æ (ash), and ð (eth) -- went out of use long before movable type printing. https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/the-lost-letters-of-th...

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#116

Post by lrasinen »

dijit wrote: post #13
Affric wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what it depends on is the language then thats trivial.

Why is it trivial? The ä and a sounds in Swedish and Finnish are swapped; and they're direct neighbours (with compulsory education for Swedish in Finland, no less).

Do you have any examples? As a Finnish speaker the Swedish "a" sounds the same. "Pappa", "framtiden" etc.

It's "ä" and "e" which have swapped uses, but it's not exactly consistent (e.g. "Järnvägstorget" where first ä is close to the Finnish ä, second ä is closer to e but so is the e at the end)

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#117

Post by trchek »

jcranmer wrote: post #92
woleium wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as i understand it, english is actually 3-5 other languages in a trench coat.

This often gets trotted out, but it's not really true. English is a solidly Germanic language, which merely happened to lose the core attribute of Indo-European languages (extensive verb inflection), and in more recent centuries, there's been a tendency to adopt Latin and Greek words for new word formation rather than (as German did) using native words. So 'technology' instead of 'craftlearn' or 'television' instead…

Solidly Germanic with an absurd amount of French, down to nearly identical spelling for many common words. I’m not talking about cognates but actually 100% the same spelling and meaning and they’re often not from some recent century but from old French.

I’m sure you have a solid basis for saying this but it’s basically impossible to write many sentences without by accident using French down to the original spelling.

I was going to highlight all the examples I used by accident myself in this post but I gave up because the links were making it too long.

This is why something like Anglish even exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#118

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

porphyra wrote: post #8

The Economist magazine uses a diæresis (two dots) in words like “coöperate” and “reëlect” to indicate that both vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong. This is considered old-school and uncommon though.

Oh interesting, I've never seen those cases. I'd say it's more common (although maybe still a little old-school?) to use it in words like Noël or Chloë.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#119

Post by dijit »

lrasinen wrote: post #116
dijit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it trivial? The ä and a sounds in Swedish and Finnish are swapped; and they're direct neighbours (with compulsory education for Swedish in Finland, no less).

Do you have any examples? As a Finnish speaker the Swedish "a" sounds the same. "Pappa", "framtiden" etc. It's "ä" and "e" which have swapped uses, but it's not exactly consistent (e.g. "Järnvägstorget" where first ä is close to the Finnish ä, second ä is closer to e but so is the e at the end)

Ä in Swedish is an æ sound.

Ä in Finnish is a pitched A sound, like the A in “cat”.

The pitched “a” in Swedish is the default one.

Re: Why English doesn't use accents

#120

Post by yread »

toast0 wrote: post #84
efilife wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> wind, rewind Wind and rewind are fine. It's just wind and wind are a problem, like read and read. For example, wind and rewind sound the same in: Rewind that, so I can see him wind up.

also wound and wound
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