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Great Vowel Shift

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Re: Great Vowel Shift

#101

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

ajuc wrote: post #61
gxqoz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McWhorter is a linguist (as well as a political commentator). His argument isn't that English is easier because people already speak it natively. Instead, English lost a lot of its complexity (especially around suffixes) during the Viking invasions when it was taken up by adult speakers. This doesn't mean that learning the language is easy--no language really is. And English has some things that make it harder to mas…

> 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…

It poses problem for native speakers as well. After all, there are no Spelling Bee competitions in France, or Germany ... or anywhere.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#102

Post by kube-system »

soldehierro wrote: post #49
keiferski wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is a great lingua franca IMO because of its inherent decentralization and willingness to accept new words. There is no academy regulating its use, as is the case with French and Spanish.

In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spani…

I'd say it's more accurate to describe Webster and Oxford as documenting established usage, rather than being informal regulators. They generally view their role as being purely observers and not as active influencers of the language.

Some other language authorities do not take a usage-evidence-based approach to defining their dictionaries, and take into account cultural or historical concerns.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#103

Post by HideousKojima »

yongjik wrote: post #54
anticristi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont vant tu teik saids, but German haz diklention und konjugation, vich maiks it a suboptimal lingua franka. Not tu mention meni iregular verbs. Mai vot gos tu som nordik languag like Svedish.

Unpopular opinion: Declension and conjugation are nice! It means different forms for the act of watching X (watching birds), X that is watching (watching eyes), or X that is used for the act of watching (watching post). So you immediately know which one is which, instead of trying to figure that out from context (you have 200 milliseconds before the next sentence starts, good luck).

In English it's not based on context, it's based on word order. Declension is a cool concept but it's far more confusing to foreigners because word order basically doesn't matter.

For example in Czech:

Jan zabil Petra

Jan Petra zabil

Petra Jan zabil

Petra zabil Jan

Zabil Petra Jan

and

Zabil Jan Petra

are all equivalent to the English "John killed Peter." Change Jan to Jana and Petra to Petr and all 6 of those become "Peter killed John." Even more confusing to a foreigner learning it is that Petra and Jana are the feminine forms of those names in the nominative case.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#104

Post by kebman »

I'm amazed! Late Middle English ‘boat’ sounds just like modern Norwegian ‘båt.’ :p I heard the stories that Scandinavians could go to Britain and it would only take a short while to get used to the language. Kind of like Norwegians going to Denmark today. In writing Danish and Norwegian is almost the same, but it takes some getting used to the pronounciation.

There's a fantastic dialogue illustrating the similarity of Old Danish / Norse vs Old English by Jackson Crawford and Simon Roper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzJEIUSWtc

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#105

Post by jadinvt »

mason55 wrote: post #73
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…

> I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce. Do you mind sharing some examples? As a native English speaker, I'm so curious! Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was? Or might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?

epitome. I knew what the word meant written and spoken, but didn't realize it was the same word until well into adulthood.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#106

Post by perardi »

smnrchrds wrote: post #14

Canadian English is going through a vowel shift right now. The shift is much smaller than the great vowel shift, but still notable. https://www.macleans.ca/society/life/in-the-midst-of-the-can...

Huh, glad that is real, and not just my ears.

I’m an American, recently back from 2 years in Toronto, and the Toronto accent is just not the stereotypical Canadian accent that I imagined I’d hear. Far less Minnesota, a bit more New Jersey.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#107

Post by ajuc »

mason55 wrote: post #73
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…

> I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce. Do you mind sharing some examples? As a native English speaker, I'm so curious! Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was? Or might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?

"Vocabulary" is one. I just checked it and I almost guessed right. I thought the u was more of an oo and the second a was ah not eh.

Parallel - for some reason the second a is eh not ah. Can't remember that, have to check it every time.

I play a lot of D&D over the internet in English and even as common word as "sword" is for some reason hard to remember. Every time I have to guess if the "w" is pronounced or not.

been == bin ? - the rules for that are just evil

> Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was?

Sure, from the context if not instantly. I listen to a lot of English media with different accents (I watched the whole Big Bang and IT Crowd and I listen to Critical Role when I'm commuting).

> might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?

Leicester and queue. But these are famous enough that I remember them now. I obviously won't be able to give you examples that I still haven't realized ;)

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#108

Post by lottin »

User23 wrote: post #57

In German e is a, and i is e. It really is striking.

It isn't striking for speakers of German nor for speakers of Romance languages. These are the vowels that these letters originally stood for in the Latin alphabet, and they still do in many languages. But English obviously isn't one of them.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#109

Post by Aromasin »

adamrezich wrote: post #98

related, but has anyone noticed younger Americans pronouncing a few specific types of words differently as of late? I'm 29 and grew up in the Midwest, so in my accent, when I say "button," the "tt" is nearly silent. however, at my last job doing remote web development, one guy who was a bit younger than me (and also American) would pronounce it "BUH 'in," with noticeable "stop" between the two syllables. I have since…

Funny enough, this has almost become the common British pronunciation of most "hard t" words. It's quite common for people to say "a bottle of water" like "a boh-ell of wah-er", or "butter" like "buh-ah. The sound comes from the back of the throat instead of the tip of the tongue.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#110

Post by BitwiseFool »

inglor_cz wrote: post #90
gxqoz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McWhorter is a linguist (as well as a political commentator). His argument isn't that English is easier because people already speak it natively. Instead, English lost a lot of its complexity (especially around suffixes) during the Viking invasions when it was taken up by adult speakers. This doesn't mean that learning the language is easy--no language really is. And English has some things that make it harder to mas…

From a Slavic perspective, the really complex thing about English grammar is the sequence of tenses. Having spoken English for almost 30 years by now, I am still not sure if "X has died" or "X died" is correct, or in which context. But the other direction would be worse. Languages like Czech, with its 20+ classes of declension, must be a true nightmare for any English native speaker to learn.

Even we don't know sometimes.
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