GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Tante Shvester on June 20, 2007, 03:02:44 PM
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I mean, they're not even close. How did that happen?
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There are probably plenty of good reasons for them not to rhyme and probably no good reasons for them to be spelled alike. I'm not sure why the spellings are similar when their phonology (as far as I can tell) never has been. I'll have to look into it.
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While you're at it, find out for me why "colonel" is spelled not at all like it sounds.
Thanks!
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Link (http://www.galacticcactus.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1297&st=300&#entry55641)
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Ah, I guess I wondered about that before, but forgot your answer. How embarrassing!
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Why do the English pronounce "Lieutenant" with an 'f' sound?
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'Cause they talk funny.
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Why?
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Because otherwise the only thing about 'em we could make fun of is their obsession with tea.
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Why do the English pronounce "Lieutenant" with an 'f' sound?
Both the OED and Etymonline.com say that it's a mystery. It dates back six or seven hundred years, but apparently its origins are lost in the depths of time. It's true that it doesn't match the French pronunciation, though. The lieu part is also found in the phrase "in lieu of" and is generally pronounced "lyoo" or "loo" in English today.
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I mean, they're not even close. How did that happen?
As best I can tell, the problem is that the spellings and pronunciations come from separate dialects. (The same sort of problem is present in words like bury and business, where the pronunciation of the u is anomalous.) Unfortunately the OED is not very helpful when it comes to pronunciations across different dialects across time.
I think the spellings both come from the south of England, and they presumably had the same vowel sound. At the end of a word following a low vowel, the gh combination (which was pronounced like a German ch) typically became /f/. So laugh has a non-silent gh, and when it's expanded to laughter, the pronunciation stays the same. In daughter, however, the gh comes in the middle of the word and thus was lost.
And as for the first vowel of laughter, our pronunciation of that word comes from Anglia, where the vowel was fronted. The spelling was probably already established by the time that pronunciation became common, and you know how impossible it is to get any spelling reform done in this language.
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I mean, they're not even close.
Actually, if you say it with the right English accent, they are close.
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In British English they wouldn't be any closer than they are for me—the vowels would just be shifted back and up in both words.
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Maybe it's because no one wants to be called something that rhymes with loo. Particularly the word "tenant".