09-10-2004 22:09									#271
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Btw, Elephant is a great movie. I recommend it highly.

	09-10-2004 22:21									#272
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker Well, Boorstin says so, and he's a leading scholar of colonial history, and this book (well, a few chapters of it, but I read the whole thing) is part of my high school US history curriculum, so...

Ah, you misunderstood.

I'm not doubting the veracity of the claim, I just want to know how they figured it out.

	09-10-2004 22:29									#273
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That's an interesting question. I assume it's possible to trace the evolution of the pronunciation of a language, and one way to have done it in this case would be to look at how American English (which started off as just London and Midlands English, since that's where most of the colonists came from) had evolved, and trace that back to the colonial times.

	09-10-2004 23:52									#274
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Southern Americans certainly sound out all their syllables, y'all.

	09-10-2004 23:53									#275
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They do so far more than the Englishmen of the time did (or even now, in many cases).

	09-10-2004 23:56									#276
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Matter of opinion.

	10-10-2004 00:02									#277
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The history of pronunciation can, to a certain degree of certainty, be infered by the traces it leaves in writing - misspellings, rhymes, meter. And then there's internal reconstruction, older loans in other languages, the occasional explicit statement by old authors, and the odd help from good ol'-fashioned comparative linguistics.

	10-10-2004 00:21									#278
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quote: Originally posted by Sandman Matter of opinion.

Not at all. For instance, due mostly to the manner in which reading is taugh (sounding out all syllables) in America, we pronounce every syllable in something like secretary, whereas the English almost always omit it - secret'ry, explanat'ry, laborat'ry - and they have continued to drop syllables in pronunciation, whereas American pronunciation is relatively conservative. (btw, "ain't" comes from the upper circles of seventeenth century England, it is not a Souther invention). Then look at names like Gloucester and Worcester - no one in America would think of spelling things that way.

	10-10-2004 00:30									#279
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Do you consider the way a word is spelt as being the correct way to pronounce them?

S'pose suppose was spelt spose? Or say Gloucester was spelt Gloster?

Sounding out syllables, to me, seems more of an invention of the way words are defined as spelt, which often has no relation to the way they are pronounced in the vernacular.

	10-10-2004 00:33									#280
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That is to say for example, is the American way of saying 'Lie-sest-er' better than the English way of saying 'Lesster', when discussing Leicester?

	10-10-2004 00:42									#281
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quote: Originally posted by Dauphin Do you consider the way a word is spelt as being the correct way to pronounce them?

Generally, yes.

quote: S'pose suppose was spelt spose?

People are taught to say suppose (here); it's just most get the bad habit of saying spose

quote: Or say Gloucester was spelt Gloster?

It used to be, actually, and that would make more sense.

quote: Sounding out syllables, to me, seems more of an invention of the way words are defined as spelt, which often has no relation to the way they are pronounced in the vernacular.

That's exactly what it is. Learning to read by sounding out syllables was an American invention which ended up changing pronunciation so that it actually followed the syllables.

	10-10-2004 00:43									#282
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quote: Originally posted by Dauphin That is to say for example, is the American way of saying 'Lie-sest-er' better than the English way of saying 'Lesster', when discussing Leicester?

Personally, yes, though there obviously isn't any real objective standard. However, remember, I'm referring a lot to what the people then thought.

	10-10-2004 00:51									#283
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I don't really care what the aristocratics then thought. They thought white people were better than blacks or yellows etc...

	10-10-2004 00:59									#284
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You don't think they are?

	10-10-2004 00:59									#285
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker That's exactly what it is. Learning to read by sounding out syllables was an American invention which ended up changing pronunciation so that it actually followed the syllables.

Nitpick: Syllables refer to pronunciation. What happened was extra syllables being inserted to match spelling.

All due to bizarre anglophone conservativism wrt spelling, BTW.

	10-10-2004 00:59									#286
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker quote: Or say Gloucester was spelt Gloster? It used to be, actually, and that would make more sense.

It was? When?

	10-10-2004 01:00									#287
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Anyway, the whole discussion is a response to this post:

quote: Originally posted by DAVOUT I have heard some saying that the English language has not survived in the US a well.

And I was pointing out that America has preserved the English language better (as in, more precisely) than England has and that it certainly isn't degenerate in any way.

	10-10-2004 01:04									#288
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quote: Originally posted by Dauphin It was? When?

The seventeenth century

The only reason I know this is because there's a picture of a page from a copy of King Lear (one of the Folios, IIRC - i.e., one of the copies printed about a decade after the play was written) in my copy, and it's the first page, and I, interested, read it. It was spelled "Gloster" there.

	10-10-2004 01:04									#289
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quote: And I was pointing out that America has preserved the English language better (as in, more precisely) than England has and that it certainly isn't degenerate in any way.

I wouldn't doubt that, but I'm just saying that I don't see how saying what you see written is a preservation of the language if by doing that you are changing the phonetics of the language.

	10-10-2004 01:06									#290
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker The seventeenth century The only reason I know this is because there's a picture of a page from a copy of King Lear (one of the Folios, IIRC - i.e., one of the copies printed about a decade after the play was written) in my copy, and it's the first page, and I, interested, read it. It was spelled "Gloster" there.

Gloster, Northumberland or Gloucester, Gloucestershire?

It may have been, but it may also have been a different Gloster to Gloucester.

	10-10-2004 01:07									#291
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How come another great quote of Chirac is getting a 10 page thread?
Apolyton

	10-10-2004 01:09									#292
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By the way, the Quebec French accent is also supposed to be like what the 17th century French sounded.

	10-10-2004 01:13									#293
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quote: Originally posted by Dauphin Gloster, Northumberland or Gloucester, Gloucestershire? It may have been, but it may also have been a different Gloster to Gloucester.

One of the main characters is the Duke of Gloucester. I think they're talking about the important one.

Moreover, in my copy (I have the New Folgers Library edition) they changed the spelling to Gloster.

Here's the picture:

	10-10-2004 01:15									#294
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quote: Originally posted by LDiCesare By the way, the Quebec French accent is also supposed to be like what the 17th century French sounded.

Which is not surprising at all.

	10-10-2004 01:25									#295
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quote: Originally posted by Dauphin That is to say for example, is the American way of saying 'Lie-sest-er' better than the English way of saying 'Lesster', when discussing Leicester?

Dauphin, you keep making the mistake of grossly generalizing American pronounciations.

In fact, there is a town leicester in Massachusetts, and we pronounce it "Lesster", the same way you do.

Just like we pronounce Worcester like "Woost(er/ah)" ('oo' as in "good", not like 'oooooo' zoom).

Stop generalizing, we don't all live in Ohio or California.

Great site that shows how to pronounce New England place names:

http://www.worcestermass.com/pronounce/

Edit: Oh yeah, we have a Glouster too, and we say "Gloster".

	10-10-2004 01:35									#296
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quote: Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn Dauphin, you keep making the mistake of grossly generalizing American pronounciations.

Sorry to offend, I did not realise I needed to provide the assumed caveat - namely that I was drawing the widest distinctions to avoid misunderstanding of the pronunciation in question.

And I gladly point out that whilst Lie-sest-er is an American way of pronunciation, it does not, therefore, mean its the only way of pronunciation in America.

Edit - I'm also interested in where this 'keep making' accusation comes from?

	10-10-2004 01:35									#297
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The concept of a common neutral language to pickup as a second language for global commerce is fine but the concept that it would be better to have just one single native language is appalling. We need only to look at the wide spectrum of posters here who express themselves perfectly clearly in English as a second language and then look at the millions who have been savagely oppressed in twisted efforts to root out their native language as a result of just this sort of thinking to understand what a nasty influence this idea has been.


If we must choose a single language that everybody must learn and use as their first language lets avoid one that has been used to justify stomping out the linguistic freedom of others and lets use Anishinabe instead.

	10-10-2004 01:37									#298
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I didn't say people should be FORCED to use one language; I said it'd be better if they just did use one language. Best of all if we had never spoken different languages in the first place.

	10-10-2004 04:14									#299
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quote: The seventeenth century

Molly!!!!!!


I'd rather have a language that stays the same instead of changing every generation like duth does.
My granmother learned a different dutch than my mother did than I did than the next generation did, bloody ******** annoying. Now no-one is able to write one sentence correctly.

	10-10-2004 04:24									#300
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btw, do I receive the "most obscure, convoluted way of knowing a useless, obscure fact ever" award?