MSGID: 1:153/716.0 71d41401
REPLY: 2:221/6.0 6716083e
CHRS: IBMPC 2
Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AK>  Usually in English e, i, y tell us about specific pronunciation
AK>  of the syllable behind. For instance, "bit"/"bite", "kit"/"kite".

          The final "e" tells us how to pronounce the "i" in your examples...
during medieval times, however, both letters may have been spoken aloud.


AK>  However in astrology

          Or numerology, methinks....  :-)


AK>  every letter is important and they say can change the person's
AK>  destiny. ;)

          Uh-huh.  In English, you can spell a family name "Smythe" & require
others to pronounce it "Smith".  Years ago I knew somebody who did that.  And
names like "Brown" & "Clark" may be spelled with or without a final "e".  The
spelling of one's name may or may not influence the audience's reaction.  :-Q


 AH>  Pronunciations in English often vary from one time & place to
 AH>  another... and I don't know where this name originated.  But
 AH>  IMHO it's most likely the pronunciation changed & we never got
 AH>  around to changing the spelling.  I'm told that's what happened
 AH>  with e.g. "gnash" and "knife"....  :-)

 AK>  It would be interesting for me to learn who threw "k" first and
 AK>  why others started follow him. ;-)

          I don't know who did it or when... the OED might tell us more about
that... but for native speakers of English, the initial consonants are rather
difficult to pronounce without adding a vowel when one follows immediately on
the other.  I'm reminded here of the Danish King "Canute" (as I was taught to
spell his name).  During the 11th century he was king of England.  But he was
king of Denmark & Norway too... and many historians nowadays spell it "Cnut".
While that may be more authentic from their POV I don't speak Danish....  :-)


 AH>  I get the impression the upper classes in Russia preferred
 AH>  French (which may have worked for them when they didn't want
 AH>  the servants to get the drift) until they became disenchanted
 AH>  with Napoleon, then carefully reconstructed what's now your
 AH>  native language. The net result from my POV is that it's a
 AH>  lot younger than my native language & doesn't include
 AH>  complications like "silent letters"....

 AK>  Yes, the French got a great impact on the Russian language,
 AK>  but Russians did not accept those crazy silent letters. So
 AK>  Bordeaux in Russia is just Bordo, and nobody suffers from it.

          To my ears, however, the second "o" is elongated.  If your language
makes no such distinction I understand.  I have to keep reminding myself that
e.g. the word "venue" is pronounced differently in English & French....  :-))


AK>  in the USA they simplified English they could do the same. What
AK>  a lot of ink they could save! ;)

          When the USA was established there were alternative spellings for a
large number of words.  They tended to choose the shorter & simpler ones, but
this theory doesn't necessarily work as advertised in practice... [wry grin].




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