Re: Orthography supporting sound changes?

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Helmut Richter wrote:
> >
> > In article <dpl987$gin$01$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Joachim Pense wrote:
> >
> > > In principle, It appears not to be impossible to me that reversals of lossy
> > > sound changes could happen if the old pronounciation is preserved by
> > > writing. I'm thinking of a reversal of a sound merger, or re-appearance of
> > > a lost sound.
> > >
> > > Are there any reported examples of such sound change reversals having
> > > happened, where it can be demonstrated (or at least is strongly believed by
> > > many) that the orthography was the only preserver of the old situation (so
> > > it was not also preserved by maybe regional or social variants of spoken
> > > language)?
> > >
> > > Or are there strong arguments that this is impossible?
> >
> > Why should it not happen? Yet I consider it improbable. You need four
> > ingredients:
> >
> > 1) a language that has been written for enough time that sound changes
> > could be visible in spelling habits
> >
> > 2) a conservative and irregular orthography where sound changes do not
> > yield spelling changes shortly after
> >
> > 3) an influence of the spelling on the language
> >
> > 4) the absence of conservative dialects
> >
> > For point (2), conservative spelling is not enough. French and German
> > spelling are fairly conservative but also fairly regular. There is no
> > reason that a silent letter is ressurrected in the pronunciation when
> > *all* letters in that position are silent. This reduces the possible
> > languages significantly: for instance English and Danish are left. For
> > point (3), I know a number of German examples, but they are due to the
> > fact that German needed standardisation which contradicts point (4);
> > English would be similar in this respect.
>
> You left out the most relevant point: children would have to learn to
> spell before they learned to talk.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx

Well of course, it is usual to learn to talk first but once you have
learnt to read, you will frequently encounter new vocabulary in writing
before speech. There may easily be a very long time between first
reading a word and first hearing it. If the reader is unable or
unwilling to use a dictionary to check the spelling, he is liable to
use a spelling pronunciation. He may even encounter others doing the
same before he meets someone using the traditional pronunciation. In
an extreme case, he may fail to under this pronunciation. I think that
I have encountered this but I cannot think of an example at the moment.


--
Seán O'Leathlóbhair

.

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