Re: The "u" and "v" in older written English is confvsing

On Mon, 26 May 2008 18:15:30 +0100, Richard Wordingham
<jrw0602@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:6fC_j.24370$cZ3.1860@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

"Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:17qr6v8fst0c0.gg7a9c7vuv1$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Sun, 25 May 2008 12:04:48 GMT, John Atkinson
<johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:ABc_j.4457$IK1.1171@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
sci.lang:

"Richard Wordingham" <jrw0602@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...

While /wV"/ > /wA./ seems plausible, I note that words
like <worth> are *not* pronounced */wO:T/.

It's <worth> that's exceptional: ME /O/ before /r/ normally
remains in monosyllables (with lengthening in non-rhotic
varieties). In the U.S. it is sometimes unrounded in longer
words like <sorrow>.

I now see that OE had <weorþ>, <worþ>, and <wurþ>, and that
<ur> spellings are found throughout the ME period, so this
may just be a case of dialect mismatch between modern
pronunciation and spelling.

We seem to have had a change /wOr/ > /wur/ that has made
the 'wor' spelling unambiguous - for those who know the
subtle details of English spelling. It didn't stop me
thinking that <wort> was pronounced /wO:t/ when I was a
child.

It is, in some varieties.

So, what mismatch?

The modern pronunciation appears to descend from the ME <u>
variant; the modern spelling clearly continues the <o> form.
It's not clear to what extent this represents an /O/
pronunciation (from <worþ>), to what extent it represents
the common graphic replacement of <u> with <o>, and to what
extent it represents a late standardization of <wor-> as
representing /wUr-/; to the extent that it represents the
first of these, it's a mismatch.

The sequence 'wu' is the mark of a loanword.

Not in OE it isn't!

No, only <war-> > /wO:/. Maybe the /r/ at the end of <water >
influenced it to join the other <war-> words?

It's a general 17th c. development: ME /A/ became [O] after
[w]. Other examples are <warm> and <wash>.

What's Middle English /A/? I would have said the other
two started out as Middle English /a/.

There is no ME /a/ in the system that I'm using.

Are you saying the development of the first syllable of
<water> was /wA/ > /wO/ > /wO:/?

The source that I was paraphrasing doesn't recognize a PDE
/O:/, taking it to be /O/, and it seems to take the view
that open-syllable lengthening didn't affect this word.
According to the OED, Orrmulum has <waterr> but plural
<wattress>, and there are 14th and 15th century <wattre>
spellings, so /wA/ > /wO/ > /wO:/ may actually be a
possibility. I suspect, though, that practically any
combination of lengthening (or not) and rounding (or not) is
possible, depending on variety, so it would be just one
possibility of several.

[...]

Brian
.

Relevant Pages

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