Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

  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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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/