Re: The "u" and "v" in older written English is confvsing
- From: "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0602@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 03:00:08 +0100
"LEE Sau Dan" <danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:87iqxf86el.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
How do you know how to pronounce the "o" in "woman", "women", "won"?
The first step for "woman" and "won" is to recognise that the vowel is short. The word "woman" is one of a large, irregular group where for no apparent reason the shortness is not indicated by consonant doubling. Then you apply 'magic w' (as some schools call it) to effectively convert <o> to <u>. The next step is relevant only if, like most English-speakers, you speak a dialect that distinguished the vowel sounds of "put" and "putt". The vowel in "woman" is surrounded by rounding-friendly consonants, and so you get /U/ (as in "wolf"), while "won" gets the more regular /V"/.
A great many English speakers do not know how to pronounce "won" - they pronounce it with a short 'o'. (I was going to write '/wA.n/ or equivalent', but that is probably less clear a statement.)
In most varieties of English, the spelling "women" is morphophonemic - it indicates the vowel-mutation plural of "woman". (Why the plural should retain the more original vowel - the Old English is _wifman(n)_, with late OE spellings in -mm-, and spellings wum-, wom- appear in the 13th century - is another question.)
Richard.
.
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