Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

At 02:26 AM 2/10/2006, Peter Kirk wrote:
> [snip]
> 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.

No; it is not "factually incorrect." The u in coulour was chosen by a 
school of 19th-century grammarians....who added it to words that had 
preferentially been -or. The "factually incorrect" part is the condensation 
of "who added it to words that had preferentially been -or" for the sake of 
brevity and to get to the kernel rather than wandering all over the map on 
a subject that is quite peripheral to B-Hebrew.

>  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.

The comment about dot edu is a synecdoche. It does not claim precedence for 
US university sites.

>  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 -

As I said, if someone is interested, they ask.  It is a long story that 
only tangentially has anything to do with this list; hence, condensation 
and simplification.

> 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;

You're doing it again. And while I realize it was Sapir who brought up 
Shakespeare... and as there is only one folio that may have S's holograph.. 
but a number of documents that have his signature... And that documents 
signed in London have a different phonetic spelling from documents signed 
in Stratford.... Isn't that your point re: dialectic differences??? .

>I am more interested in the spelling conventions used by the printing 
houses of his time.)

The evidence of what you have been postulating is in the hand-written 
texts...it can be found in the inconsistency in orthography, among other 
things,  -- it is in precisely the documents and people that you condemn as 
"relatively uneducated" because he "couldn't even spell his own name 
consistently."

Phonetic spelling means that people write what they hear. You should see 
the way theatre owner Henslow (or Henslowe) spelled his authors' 
names  Then there was Reformation printer John Day (or Daye)... and this is 
also relevant to ancient and Biblical Hebrew.

Learn to recognize what standardization means and how it forms audience 
expectations. Modern education  teaches standardized orthography. It 
wasn't. To enforcce standardized orthography on ancient documents is 
destructive of evidence.

Nobody is forcing you to abandon editions, but this concentration on 
editions certainly explains a lot.

[snip]

ciao,

.Risa