Saxonisms

Instead of retaining the old Saxon alphabet, the English speaking world has retained an inconsistent mix or archaic spellings. By doing so, the relationship between spelling and pronunciation has been all but lost. English went from being over 90% phonemic in the 10th century to being less than 40% phonemic today.version without graphics

Spanglish 

Span
 

The West Saxon Standard - Englisc   a æ e i-y o u 'r èr long ah * eh-ey eel awe-oh hoop her short ago æsh ej-edge ill awe* hook othèr accents à a-lig è  ì ò ó ù à è

Why make such big changes as A=ah, I=eel, O=awe, U=ooze?  The main reason is that this set of correspondences allows learners to use spelling pronunciation.  Pronouncing all A's as ah produces understandable results.  Pronouncing Ha as Hay doesn't quite work.  Pronouncing all o's as awe unless in the terminal position also works better than other alternatives.

o as in cough, o: as in saw [Ger so], u=pull, u:-pool, y=i with lips in whistle position [Fr-tu], y=i: [Fr-rou]

Indo European Number Words - At one time they were all pronounced the same...

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
English	onne-one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	eight
Spanglish	wan	twu	thri	for-fowr	faiv	six	seven	eit
Anglo Sax	an	tweene	thri	foewer	fif	sehs	sibun	ocht
Gothic		twa		fidwer	fimf	sehs	sibun ?
German	en-ein	zwei	drei	vier	funf	sechs	sieben	acht
Latin	uno	duo		quatro	quinque	sex	septem	octo
Greek	hen		tri?	tettares?	pente	hex	hepta	okto

vyule@labyrinth
 

Saxon Spelling	Saxon and Middle English Pronunciation	ME & Modern English Spelling	Change in vowel spelling during 13c
fæt fæt bisi    [s=z & s] lang raeden	faet vaet bizy [beezee] laang riid	fat vat busy long reed	ae-a ae-a i-u? a-o ae-i
dæd ac ecg halig   [g, 3=y&g] dom	dah-ehd, dayd aak-awk ej haaly dawm	deed oak edge holy doom	ae-i a-aw-oa cg - dge a-o  o:-oo
ham  [hamlet] hus hlaf ecy deman freosan cild	haam haus haf ej?, eij deym... freyawz chi:ld	home house half each? deem freeze child	a-o u-ou la-al e:-ee eo-ee c-ch
might scip lif yielian giefan ?	mait ship laif yi:el.. gi:'v... dumm, dam	might ship life yell give dumb	-- c-sh i:-i.e ie-e ie-i.e --
has hu hwa fewe synn hal	howm hu, haw? hwaa, hwaw? fiu, fyu sinn helth	home how who few sin health	aa-o.e u:-ow hw-wh, a-o y-i a:-ea

Could there have been any sound change prompting some of these spelling changes?
Mitchell, Bruce... A Guide to Old English, Blackwell
give is from giefa.. /gi:ev'n/   nu saxon- giv,   synn-syn, 
 

Indo European Number Words - At one time they were all pronounced the same...

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
English	onne-one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	eight
Spanglish	wan	twu	thri	for-fowr	faiv	six	seven	eit
Anglo Sax	an	tweene	thri	foewer	fif	sehs	sibun	ocht
Gothic		twa		fidwer	fimf	sehs	sibun ?
German	en-ein	zwei	drei	vier	funf	sechs	sieben	acht
Latin	uno	duo		quatro	quinque	sex	septem	octo
Greek	hen		tri?	tettares?	pente	hex	hepta	okto

 

What

Unigraf is a little strange with har kqr = her car 

image of the NY Times page spellsite.htm
 

english-1700.htm englisc.htm nu-saxn.htm old-english.htm	pv7-1.html sitemap-l sweet-nomic  short chaucer worldorthography	pv7-1.html sitemap-l sweet-nomic sweet-abstract	chaucer saxon-alphabet saxonisms world-eng-chards

Notes
 
 

http//onlinecourse.nsula.edu  select LSMSA then SPANISH  ID Perez  PW Pere

http://members.fortunecity.com/rapidrytr/sitemap-l.htm

http://members.aol.com/alvareze/spanish/frame.html  Spanish pronunciation

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.htm

 background: bg-red-yelo12.gif  Sitemap-LLatin-1   æ  à  ì  è  é  ò  ô  ó  ù ò 

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