Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift
Posted Jul 4, 2014 0:01 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)In reply to: Great Vowel Shift by marcH
Parent article: Software patents take a beating at the US Supreme Court
> 2. Great Vowel Shift
> 3. American-like spelling simplification
> 4. *Back* to French spellings because of some "further influence"?
What do you mean by "original French spelling"?
Modern English is a fusion of AngloSaxon, and Norman French. Probably pretty much achieved by 14 or 1500. I think by the time of King John, England had gone from being a province of the Normans to being their last remaining stronghold.
Never heard of the Great Vowel Shift.
Don't know anything about the American spelling simplification.
But the major English dictionary writers were heavily influenced by the French affectation current at the time, hence the codification of French spellings into official English. And the reason the Americans didn't follow suit is why should they? I believe it was about the time of the War of Independence or a bit later, and it was very much a London thing. But London being the centre of English Culture, it stuck.
> British English is using not just more French spellings but even French words and sounds[*] than American English
And what is "British English", pray? British (the language) is probably approximately modern Welsh, ie absolutely nothing to do with English. Actually, English isn't even the language of all of England if you want to be pedantic - as I like to put it, "the Saxons speak English, the Angles speak Scots, and the Scots speak Gaelic". Okay, English is now the dominant language in Britain, but it's actually the native language only from about the Tyne south down the East Coast. On the west coast they speak Breton/Cornish/Welsh, and in the north the sassenachs speak Scots.
Cheers,
Wol
Posted Jul 4, 2014 7:01 UTC (Fri)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (9 responses)
It's just the spelling you find in a French dictionary.
> Never heard of the Great Vowel Shift.
Ever heard about Google? :-) Like many other languages and unlike English, French has (usually) just one sound per vowel (and diphtong). Practically this means you can (almost) read French ALOUD correctly without understanding it. Unlike this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography#.22Ough....
Conversely, this explains why a significant number of people have such a hard time spelling English.
As non native speakers we frequently correct the spelling of native speakers. This is because we learned the words in books whereas native speakers learnt it while speaking. Conversely, native speaker don't understand us the first time we try to read a "book" word aloud :-)
Reading French alound is not as simple and straight forward as German but much easier than English
> Don't know anything about the American spelling simplification.
It's "simplified" compared to British English because "center" for instance is written like it sounds in English and not like it sounds in French ("centre")
> And what is "British English", pray?
In the context of this discussion it's merely the variant of English vocabulary in use on the British Isles, including Ireland (where Irish is struggling), and more specifically the words and spelling which are different from American English. No need to over-interpret me.
Posted Jul 4, 2014 8:58 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
From my experience - reading Italian or German aloud is easy, Russian is a little bit more complicated (you might sound over-correct but still perfectly understandable), Ukrainian is the simplest (you can actually transcribe unknown words correctly - try that in English). English is impossible, a couple more centuries and it risks to become as hieroglyphic as Chinese...
Posted Jul 4, 2014 15:37 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jul 4, 2014 20:40 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Jul 6, 2014 0:44 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (5 responses)
>It's just the spelling you find in a French dictionary.
So you're telling me that you'll find English words like "cow" and "pig" in a French dictionary from about 1200AD?
Sorry, I know I'm being facetious, but the great majority of English words came from German roots, not French, so "original French spelling" is a weird one to me.
> > Never heard of the Great Vowel Shift.
> Ever heard about Google? :-) Like many other languages and unlike English, French has (usually) just one sound per vowel (and diphtong). Practically this means you can (almost) read French ALOUD correctly without understanding it.
Maybe I should have Googled it. But this *could* well be the era in which Norman French and Anglo-Saxon really gelled into what we now think of as English. I notice the wikipedia article says that Vowel Shifts are peculiar to *Germanic* languages ...
Oh - and while I'm unable to cite my sources, unfortunately, I have heard of a text-to-speech program that reads English text. When given TRUE ENGLISH words, it only needs about 30 rules to handle a vocabulary of 50- to 70-thousand words. (In contrast, the average well-spoken person uses a typical vocabulary of about 25,000 words.) The problems that most foreigners have with English words is that those words are NOT ENGLISH! Would you like a cup o' char? That last word is Asian, and there are an awful lot of words in regular English that are poorly assimilated foreign immigrants.
> As non native speakers we frequently correct the spelling of native speakers. This is because we learned the words in books whereas native speakers learnt it while speaking.
What a marvellous comment on the excellent status of our education system. NOT! I have to admit that I learnt pretty much ALL my English grammar and spelling from studying foreign languages, in particular Latin. So I'm forced to agree with you. Most English people can't spell ...
> > Don't know anything about the American spelling simplification.
> It's "simplified" compared to British English because "center" for instance is written like it sounds in English and not like it sounds in French ("centre")
Except that "simplification" implies that something was done to make American spelling simpler. It wasn't. In the 1700s (when America and Britain parted company) we spelt it "center" in Britain too. It was only in the 1800s that Britain changed to French spellings. The Americans (sensibly) never followed our lead. It was the London-based dictionary writers who pushed English to use French spellings.
> it's merely the variant of English vocabulary in use on the British Isles ... No need to over-interpret me.
Except that "the variant" implies that "British English" is a homogenous whole. Try telling that to a Sassenach, Scouser or Geordie! Even going to visit my daughter in Yorkshire we sometimes have trouble understanding the people there because they have a *different* *vocabulary* to us southerners.
And while I'm almost certainly more easily offended than most, as someone who speaks English I object strongly to being labelled "British", just like you get a fair few Canadians and Mexicans who object to being lumped in with USAians just because they are "Americans".
Cheers,
Posted Jul 6, 2014 7:57 UTC (Sun)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (1 responses)
Glad you realize that different English words may have different origins.
> When given TRUE ENGLISH words,
... or maybe not?
> it only needs about 30 rules to handle a vocabulary of 50- to 70-thousand words.
What's even more impressive, it has 10 rules for just this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography#.22Ough....
... which leaves only 20 rules for all the rest of the language! Sorry I'm being facetious :-)
> and while I'm unable to cite my sources, unfortunately,
It is very unfortunate because these 30 rules would literally save the lives of hundreds of millions of non-native English speakers. Search harder please?
> What a marvellous comment on the excellent status of our education system. NOT!
I'm sure you can fix any problem with more education, including world hunger, but my comment was only about the above average complexity of spelling English. Again you are over-interpreting me.
> Except that "simplification" implies that something was done to make American spelling simpler. It wasn't. In the 1700s (when America and Britain parted company) we spelt it "center" in Britain too. It was only in the 1800s that Britain changed to French spellings. The Americans (sensibly) never followed our lead. It was the London-based dictionary writers who pushed English to use French spellings.
Thanks: this was my main question from the start a couple of posts ago, i.e., "back to original French spellings". Even when the "we" carries an "homogeneous whole" implication which risks to offend some English speakers, it's interesting. Any references on the timeline?
> Except that "the variant" implies that "British English" is a homogenous whole.
Over-interpretation again.
> Try telling that to a Sassenach, Scouser or Geordie!
Since this is (or... "was", *sigh*) a discussion about spellings, how many of these people use different spellings for the same word?
Posted Jul 6, 2014 14:56 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Is it a Loch, a Lake, or a Lough?
(Scots, English and Irish)
:-)
Cheers,
Posted Jul 6, 2014 16:55 UTC (Sun)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (2 responses)
It's not as if "American English" is all that homogeneous either (though it might be *more*, it certainly isn't perfectly uniform). I definitely have "isms" I use that catch people up every now and then. For example, I've met people who didn't know what "quarter of 3" meant in response to "what time is it?" and I thought that one was pretty universal…
Posted Jul 6, 2014 22:46 UTC (Sun)
by ncm (guest, #165)
[Link] (1 responses)
Prepositions in all languages are delightfully fluid.
I challenge Wol's assertion that most words in English come from German. The Germanic words just get repeated a lot more than the others. Really, though, German and French both have tenuous claims. Practically all trace to Proto-Indo-european, with French, German, Latin, and Greek only squatting for a short time.
Posted Jul 6, 2014 22:56 UTC (Sun)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
[1]Basically act as if everyone is punning all the time and react accordingly.
Posted Jul 4, 2014 7:36 UTC (Fri)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
Sorry can't resist mentioning this too... British English is one variant of English where the XX/YY/ZZZZ date format makes some kind of sense :-)
Posted Jul 4, 2014 11:21 UTC (Fri)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link] (1 responses)
Well, that tells how much of an authority on language matters you are :)
Posted Jul 10, 2014 17:13 UTC (Thu)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
(As for the nonsense about 'TRUE ENGLISH' words having simple pronunciation, that's only true if you define 'TRUE ENGLISH' as 'those words that can be pronounced according to arbitrary rules I devise'.)
Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift
Hear, hear! I still have this problem after living in the US for more than 4 years.
Are there spelling contests (as in the US) in Ukraine? Russia? Italy?
Great Vowel Shift
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Wol
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Wol
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