And lo on Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:34:50 +0100, Mike Raiford  
<mra### [at] hotmailcom> did spake, saying:

> According to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciation
>
>> However, ae and oe generally became monophthongs, /ɛː/ and /eː/
>> respectively, already at the start of the imperial period.
>
> I'm a bit confused by this. From what I've read the ɛ character is  
> pronounced as the e 'bed' in American English, and the e character is  
> pronounced as the ay in 'play' in Canadian English or as e in 'bebe' in  
> Spanish. It would seem as though those two pronunciations are reversed.

So they went from /ai/ (w*i*se) to /ɛɪ/ (*ei*nd) and /oi/ (*oi*l) to /eɪ/  
(pl*ay*). Certainly the latter is a bit of a shift, but English has  
similiar.

It's interesting to think that pronunciations are best found in the  
phonetic renderings of foreigners or people who just couldn't spell... so  
everyone be kind to Andy he's helping future research :-P

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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