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  • From: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
  • To: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] What has all this to do with b- Hebrew?
  • Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 16:14:44 -0800 (PST)


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
--



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>From peter AT qaya.org Thu Feb 9 19:26:38 2006
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From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
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Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew
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On 09/02/2006 22:04, Rochelle Altman wrote:
> When dealing with people who do not have training in a subject (which
> has been made painfully clear from the choice of "-our"; there are,
> after all, far better examples in Old and Medieval English as well as
> in ancient languages that are more to the point, too), ...

I make no claim to be an expert in old or mediaeval English. I mentioned
the difference between "colour" and "color" (or I could have chosen
"medieval" and "mediaeval") simply as an example of how in the very
latest modern English words can be spelled differently while being
pronounced almost exactly the same. You then made statements about the
history of these different spellings, which I questioned because the
contradicted the sources I had to hand, as a non-expert - which, as you
pointed out, are not the most scholarly sources. Unless these sources,
including Shakespeare texts from the "non dot edu website" of the
University of Victoria in Canada, are entirely incorrect and misleading,
your statement that the "u" in "colour" was added by "a school of
19th-century grammarians" is factually incorrect. I pointed out this
error. You replied "Condensation of material for a post to a list is not
an error." And I agreed that what I had written was also an
oversimplification of a complex picture.

> ... it is wise to condense and to simplify. If someone is interested,
> one can always expand upon a particular point..It does not take a
> genius to scrounge around websites for an exception to a condensed and
> simplified statement. It does take hostility and a marked
> unwillingness to learn by asking questions or for further data..

I attempted to learn by looking for websites with appropriate
information. I am sorry that I transgressed by looking at universities
other than US ones, and so having "non dot edu websites" and also
perhaps not taking the standard US line on relative merits of US and
other spellings of English. I am very aware that I cannot trust
everything I read on the Internet. But I found enough to demonstrate
that what you had claimed, that the spellings "colour" and "honour" were
a 19th century innovation, was very far from the whole story - because
Shakespeare's first edition printers and Samuel Johnson had used them.
(I don't care what was written in a manuscript by the relatively
uneducated Shakespeare, who couldn't even spell his own name
consistently; I am more interested in the spelling conventions used by
the printing houses of his time.)
>
> Do note how a parenthetical aside on the KJV was turned into a
> defensive statement on your part. Nobody claimed that you made the
> assertion; it was a parenthetical comment on a generally held
> misconception, that's all. Your reaction was hostile and you have been
> hostile from the moment I had the effrontery to bring up the evidence
> that Adonai is metrically three syllables in Hebrew songs.

My attitude towards you at that time was not hostile. I was simply
asking for clarification of what looked like a weakness in your theory.
And my attitude now only became hostile when you started throwing
accusations at me, of having "a genius for missing the main points in
posts" and implicitly of poor scholarship because I was quoting
unreliable websites - and now that I "do not know the History of the
English Language". Well, I make no claim to be an expert. But I don't
think you should make any such claim if you can state that the spellings
"colour" and "honour" are a 19th century innovation. And, by the way,
despite your claim "When I do make a mistake, Peter, I admit it and
correct it as soon as I spot it.", you have not admitted and corrected
this mistake, which really cannot be put down to "Condensation of
material for a post".
>
> You do not know the History of the English Language, yet you send
> posts with arguments depending upon that history. You also seem to
> want me to shut up; so I will.
>
I do not want you to shut up. But I do want you to stop posting
statements about the history of the English language which are
oversimplified to the point of inaccuracy. And I also want you to stop
making ad hominem comments about me.

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




  • [b-hebrew] What has all this to do with b- Hebrew?, Uri Hurwitz, 02/09/2006

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