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Great Vowel Shift

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Re: Great Vowel Shift

#271

Post by ajuc »

matkoniecz wrote: post #154
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are in Poland. I suspect that they are also elsewhere, any language will have at least some tricky words. See https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Og%C3%B3lnopolskie_Dyktando

In Polish the mapping letters->sounds is pretty simple, and nobody asks kids to pronounce a word (because anybody can do it after learning the general rules for a few weeks).

But the mapping sounds->letters isn't as obvious, because there's some tech debt there (ch == h, ó == u, rz == ż or sz depending on the preceding letter).

So if you know how the word sounds you're not always sure how it's spelled, but if you know how it's spelled you always know how it sounds.

In English the mapping is non-obvious both ways.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#272

Post by fbellag »

huachimingo wrote: post #211
fbellag wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Haven't read him, actually! I will now!

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#273

Post by tabtab »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #247
tabtab wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the impression such is considered "lower class" talk, for lack of a PC way to describe it. Please hear me out before giving me negative points. If you are "educated", then you are "supposed to" pronounce the middle constantans, as skipping them is considered "lazy". I'm not making a value judgement, but reporting that this is what parents often tell their kids in private . All things being equal, parents want t…

>but reporting that this is what parents often tell their kids in private // I correct my childrens' pronunciations. I've honestly never thought of it as a class thing. In part it's "inherited", so it could have consciously been a class thing for one of my ancestors. But really to me it just seems necessary for preliterate speakers to understand the proper way to say a word based on its spelling, which they don't kno…

Re: My wife is what I call a 'sympathetic speaker', she very quickly adopts the accent of those she's speaking with.

Politicians are often known to do the same. It's usually painted as "pandering", but I'm not making a value judgement here. There's arguments both for and against.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#274

Post by aesh2Xa1 »

anoncake wrote: post #258
aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jargon" is a good word for this case.

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

Yes, it requires that the idea is defined in a concise way that is professionally/contextually restricted.

Use "term of art" if you'd like. I think "jargon" is a commonplace alternative and I like it.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#275

Post by kebman »

brabel wrote: post #245
kebman wrote: post #104

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 o…

Wow, so English sounded just like a Scandinavian language! I knew old English words are often similar to the equivalent modern Scandinavian languages in writing (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) but I was not sure if they sounded similar.

Well, to be fair, Danish doesn't really sound so similar to Norwegian, but since most of the words are written the exact same way, it's usually not hard to decipher the pronunciation, especially after a day or two among them (I'm Norwegian). We've got some pretty special old mountain dialects in Norway too. Technically they are Norwegian, but it's nigh impossible to understand a word they say lol.
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