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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew

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  • From: Rochelle Altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew
  • Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:48:04 +0200


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






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