Hi Paige and Ewout
There is a strong tendency for English words to lose sounds over time.
That is one of the reasons that there are a lot of silent letters in
English.
Maybe in time, the word, English, will lose the g sound and be
pronounced iNliS. Right now it is the less preferred pronunciation.
After I said it to myself about 10 times, it seemed more acceptable,
but I think it is just the Learning effect.
I prefer to believe that orginally word the sing and singer were
consistently pronounced as siN and siNgD and simplification over time
resulted in our modern pronunciation of siND.
ring -> ringer
fing -> finger
lots of variation/
It is impossible to determine what is the rule for the pronunciation
of ng and what is the exception in T.O. That is why it should be
replaced!
I was not suggesting a spelling rule for T.O in my previous post,
I just commented that "ngg" looks funny and was avoided, even tho it
might be the best phonetic representation for certain words.
T.O. doesn't confirm with our modern understanding of phonetics, and
it is just too big a phenomena to rationalize.
It is too late to go the Dutch route, and develop a standard
pronounciation and orthograpy. We are so homogenous.
And not that even the practical Dutch use the standard pronunciation
most of the time.
Time to get going.
Regards, Paul V.
--- In shavian@..., Paige Gabhart <pgabhart@c...> wrote:
>
> Subject:
> Re: [shavian] Re: The accent spectrum
> From:
> Paige Gabhart <pgabhart@c...>
> Date:
> Fri, 26 Sep 2003 09:57:38 -0400
>
> To:
> shavian@...
>
>
>
>
> Ewout Stam wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 19:18:43 -0000, paul vandenbrink
> > <pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Carl & Ethan
> >> Thanks for responding, bye the way.
> >> You bring up a number of new issues but I don't know if they all
> >> pertain to accent variation. Let me address them point by point.
> >>
> >> 1. Doubling in the words "English" and "Kangaroo".
> >> The problem is not accent variation doubling. It is just that
the
> >> diagraph "ng" for the Nasal sound "ng" doesn't work well if it
is
> >> followed by another g sound in T.O. Original English Spelling
seems
> >> to have refrained from representing 2 different sounds, by the
same
> >> letter back to back. (i.e. kang-garoo, Ing-glish) Even tho it is
more
> >> phonetic. Does any accent group say kAN-arM or iN-liS?
> >>
> >
> Ewout:
>
> My accent group says iN-liS, and that pronunciation is listed in my
> Merriam-Webster collegiate dictionary (9th ed.) along with iN-gliS,
with
> neither pronunciation considered preferred over the other. I find
it
> interesting that I do not ever remember being aware that some
people say
> "iN-gliS." I don't know if that is lack of attention on my part,
or
> that most people where I live pronounce the word as I do.
Apparently,
> the same effect is in place with Paul since he wondered whether
anyone
> pronounces the word without the extra "g." I would view a word
such as
> "finger" as the exception to the standard TO rule that "N"
represents
> one phoneme rather than "Ng"
>
> Do we know the earliest pronunciation of this word? Paul writes as
if
> the "g" is doing double duty for two separate phonemes, but,
perhaps,
> the "N" alone was the original pronunciation, and the pronunciation
with
> a "g" sound following "N" was added by people who didn't realize
that
> "g" in TO was part of the "N" phoneme.
>
> Paige Gabhart
>
> > I recall myself saying iN-liS, but that is probably because of my
> > Dutch background. In the Dutch language this pronunciation is the
only
> > correct way (in Dutch words that is). But I was pointed out by my
> > English teachers that this was wrong. Dutch words such as Engels
> > (eNals) and vinger (viNar) look and sound very similar to their
> > English equivalents, so we make this mistake often.
> >
> > I know the word 'singer' is pronounced siN-x. Is this an
exception?
> >
> > Ewout
> > http://quickscript.teraiten.vze.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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