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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] OK Uri, it does have somiething to do with Hebrew, but...[was: CV......... and so on]

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Rochelle Altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] OK Uri, it does have somiething to do with Hebrew, but...[was: CV......... and so on]
  • Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:20:48 +0000

On 10/02/2006 08:19, Rochelle Altman wrote:
...
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.

Well, I still don't see how this is consistent with the fact, which you admitted, that the spellings in -our were preferred by the 18th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson, whose work was considered a standard at least here in the UK at the beginning of the 19th century. If this was the standard spelling at the start of the 19th century (even if perhaps not a century or two earlier), how can it have been added by 19th century grammarians? But this list is not the place to discuss such issues.
...
The comment about dot edu is a synecdoche. It does not claim precedence for US university sites.

Well, fair enough, but why then did you reject my evidence from a Canadian university site?
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??? .

Well, if you want to do what you objected to me doing, raise an aside to a main point: The variation in Shakespeare's signature may be an indicator of dialect differences, but it may also indicate that in those days ordinary people did not bother about consistency of spelling, and perhaps that different spelling conventions were in use in London from those in Stratford-on-Avon (not to be confused with the London suburb of Stratford which will be the site of the 2012 Olympics).

>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.

So, are you suggesting that Henslow(e), Day(e) and Shakespear(e) sometimes pronounced a final "e" on their name and sometimes didn't? That seems somewhat improbable. I suspect that at least by Shakespeare's time the final -e's were the kind of silent flourish which some people still like to add to their names to make them look more distinguished, perhaps pseudo-French and aristocratic. I very much doubt if they reflect pronunciation change, which makes them reasonable parallels to my original point on Hebrew. But then I admit that I don't know but am speculating here.
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.

If I want to examine the spelling conventions used by London publishers in the 16th-17th century, I need to concentrate on the editions which they prepared rather than on handwritten matter. But to be honest, as a non-expert I am reliant on what I can get easy access to, which in this case is the early printed editions of Shakespeare with their original spelling (as well as modernised spelling versions which I am not relying on).

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





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