Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rochelle Altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>]

> At 02:43 PM 2/9/2006, Peter Kirk wrote:
On 09/02/2006 11:22, Rochelle Altman wrote:

>>No, Peter is right in his examples; "colour" and "color" do not indicate 
a sound change. What you are looking at is the ideas of a school of 
19th-century grammarians who wanted to standardize spelling and decided 
that loans from French should be spelled as in French to show their 
etymological origins. They added "u" and doubled "m" and added an 'e', for 
instance. Hence, "programme" for "program," "honour" for "honor," and so 
on. There was no change in pronunciation.<<

>This may be correct for "program(me)", but not for "colo(u)r" and 
"hono(u)r". Both of these words are spelled with -our in KJV. Early 
editions of Shakespeare used both "honour" and "honor", "colour" and 
"color" (see http://ise.uvic.ca/Foyer/search.html, the site which Yitzhak 
pointed me to which has original and modernised (American) spelling 
versions). According to 
http://www.spellingsociety.org/aboutsss/johnson1.php (last item, in odd 
spelling!) Johnson, writing in 1755, preferred "honour". See also the 
following from http://www.wordsources.info/words-mod-dictionariesPt2.html, 
concerning Webster:He dropped the silent "u" in the English spelling of 
*honour* and *favour* and wrote *honor* and *favor*,<

Dear Peter,

Are you stating that your knowledge of the History of the English language 
is culled from non dot edu websites? Condensation of material for a post to 
a list is not an error.

I know what's in the APPOINTED Version published in 1611 and known as the 
KJV. (The AUTHORIZED version is Coverdale's -- authorized by Henry VIII). I 
also know how "honor/honour" was spelled in the 13th century: honure 
(Layaman). Hardly a ModFr. loan word. Then, "color" (the preferred spelling 
in the eighteenth-century) started as "colur" in the late 14th.)

I also know how "honor/honour/honore" was spelled in original, hand-written 
docs of the 16th-century. (Or did you miss that point, Peter? Don't point 
me to editions I don't use them) Good old Sam Johnson was pure 18th-century 
-- and a self-appointed expert.of the Augustan school. His preference for 
"honour" was based on Latin, but not on knowledge of Old French..

For simplicity my foot. The Webster story is as much a white-washing as 
Tischendorf's report on how he acquired the Siniaticus.

What Webster was trying to do in the early 19th century is the same thing 
folks on the other side of the pond were doing in the early 19th century; 
it's called "nationalism" What is not mentioned on those web sites is that 
nationalism drives many a pretension. It was words like 
"honour/honor/honore/honoure" that led to the change of the preferred 
spelling of "color" to "colour" -- and so on.

Webster chose to drop the "u" _because_ the English had gone the "our" 
route. Ditto -mme, etc. Remember, you can give a prettified rationalization 
as a reason/excuse for anything.
.
The whole orthographic mess finally led to the compilation of _A New 
English Dictionary on Historical Principles_ -- The NED is popularly known 
as the OED. Are there errors in the OED? Sure; I've found several -- so 
what. The genius of the OED is its cites of usage in context.
This also happens to be the genius of Evan-Shoshan.

You seem to have a genius for missing the main points in posts:

There were many attempts in many languages down the centuries to 
standardize a language. In every case, the would-be standardizers had a 
presumed ideal of how the ancient language actually was spelled. (English 
has undergone the ministrations of "reformers" in the 7th, 10th, 12th, 
14th. 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries -- with plenty of attempts at 
simplifying American English in the 20th. Latin got hit in the 1st 
BCE,  the 2nd CE, the 6th and 7th and the 16th and 20th centuries.) Talk 
about archaization! Actually, the correct term is "classicization."

So, that backs Yitzhak's suspicion that there were such folks around in the 
post-exilic period. "Biblical" Hebrew has plenty of signs of just this "we 
know best" disease. (May I suggest that a check of the Paleo-Lev against 
the same portion in "Biblical" Hebrew may hold some clues?)

However, the other side of the same coin backs your position that the 
spelling changes, addition of matres lectionis, that do not appear in 
earlier inscriptions, do not necessarily indicate a change in 
pronunciation. Point blank: the whole thing has the smell of grammarians 
pontificating that the language had been vulgarized and they were going to 
correct it to what they assumed it was originally back when....

BTW, I was going to send a post, but you have saved me from sending a 
separate post to correct a very slight error: While there certainly was 
Jacobite literature at the end of the Jacobean period and during the 
Parliamentarian period, that should have been Elizabethan and Jacobean 
literature.

When I do make a mistake, Peter, I admit it and correct it as soon as I 
spot it.

Regads,

> > --
> > Peter Kirk
> > peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> > peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> > http://www.qaya.org/

Rochelle
--
Dr. R. I. Altman, PhD Medieval English