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On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:44:41 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Yeah, but I would imagine that the pronounciation rules for German are
>>> radically different to English anyway.
>>>
>>>
>> Why?
>
> Because it's an entirely different language?
That doesn't make the word unpronounceable.
Go watch Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail and listen to the faux
"French" where they talk about the "daffy English k'niggts" for another
example.
Jim
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And lo On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:45:02 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> did
spake thusly:
> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>
>> To put it another way how do you know they were silent letters, how
>> many voice recordings were there in the 17th century? Words such as
>> knife might have entered as the standard spelling because the k was
>> still pronounced at the time.
>
> Except that it's impossible to pronounce that.
>
> The only thing I can think of is if there used to be another vowel in
> there which has slowly vanished or something.
As discussed such sounds are voiced in other languages we just 'lost' the
ability while retaining the spelling.
>> Or it may well have been that 'everyone knows knife is spelt with a k'
>> even if it wasn't voiced.
>
> As I say, I got the impression that this whole idea of words having a
> fixed spelling didn't exist until printing came along. Like, ask five
> different people and they'd spell the word five different ways. (And
> probably pronounce it differently too, come to think of it.)
Printing just allowed mass distribution and set a standardised spelling
system that way. It was copied from the hand-written/carved examples that
already existed. Tradition is a powerful force - if the German texts wrote
knife and the English texts copied that, then the print texts used that as
their cue; that becomes the way it is spelt regardless of how it is now
voiced.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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"Phil Cook v2" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote in message
news:op.vfqbd2vrmn4jds@phils...
> And lo On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:27:07 +0100, John VanSickle
> <evi### [at] hotmailcom> did spake thusly:
> >> Where the heck do silent letters come from?
> >
> > They represent sounds that existed in the spoken language at some point
> > in the past, but which have since been lost. I blame the French.
>
> or the Germans, or the Romans, or the... anybody else who's had an
> influence on the current version of English. For example "ghost" was
> originally spelt as "gost" but possinly under the influence of the Dutch
> their version "gheest" was used in a printing and it stuck.
And then there's "ghoti"...
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>> Why?
>
> Because it's an entirely different language?
If it's an entirely different language then why are half of English words
almost the same as German?
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> To put it another way how do you know they were silent letters,
Because the same person often wrote down the same word using different
spellings, and if you assume he pronounced them the same way, that seems to
indicate there could have been silent letters in use long before the
printing press. How do you know there weren't any silent letters? :-)
> Words such as knife might have entered as the standard spelling because
> the k was still pronounced at the time.
Or probably in one region it was spoken "nife" and in another "k-nife". If
the printer was from the "k-nife" region he would choose to write it
"knife", but then the "nife" pronunciation spread and we have the situation
today.
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scott wrote:
>>> Why?
>>
>> Because it's an entirely different language?
>
> If it's an entirely different language then why are half of English
> words almost the same as German?
Well, for example, according to my school French teacher, the French
word for "general" is... "general".
The thing is, the English pronounce it as /gɛnrəl/, but the French
pronounce it as /ʒɛnɛrɑːl/. Which is quite different, in spite of the
identical spelling.
I say again: the pronounciation rules are entirely different. (For
French, it seems that the rule is, approximately, "ignore all consonants
and just emit a series of slightly varying vowels".)
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On 13/07/2010 10:06 AM, scott wrote:
>>> Why?
>>
>> Because it's an entirely different language?
>
> If it's an entirely different language then why are half of English
> words almost the same as German?
>
>
Because the English language has West German roots.
(I know, you know) :-)
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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>> If it's an entirely different language then why are half of English
>> words almost the same as German?
>
> Because the English language has West German roots.
> (I know, you know) :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
"English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms of England and ..."
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>>> Because it's an entirely different language?
>>
>> If it's an entirely different language then why are half of English
>> words almost the same as German?
>
> Well, for example, according to my school French teacher, the French
> word for "general" is... "general".
...and the other half are French :-)
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scott wrote:
>>> If it's an entirely different language then why are half of English
>>> words almost the same as German?
>
> ...and the other half are French :-)
I'm sure at least three quarters are Latin. :-P
I wonder which was bigger - the Roman empire or the British empire?
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