Sal vay cee on or salvayshun

[Flosshilde]

In Morningside (a posh bit of Edinburgh, m'Lud) sex is reputedly what coal is delivered in.

[decantor]

In Morningside (a posh bit of Edinburgh, m'Lud) sex is reputedly what coal is delivered in.

Coal? That nice Mr Selmond seems to think the Scottish economy will run just fine on its own North Sea oil and guess.

[Vox Humana]

But mostly, when it's four syllables, it's sal-vay-cee-on. Indeed I don't think I've ever heard sal-vay-tee-on.

Which is odd, because groups attempting authentic Elizabethan pronunciation of Latin (as Stile Antico did last week) tend to sing eg. tri-bu-la-Ti-on-is.

Which is odd in itself, because Elizabethan manuscripts are just as likely to spell the word tribulacionis. I know one Elizabethan source of Latin music that has orthographical variants such as sussipe, dessendit, seli [et terra], etc.

"Salva-tee-on" seems positively perverse to me. But now that has got me wondering how they pronounced "righ-tee-ousness".

[jean]

They did sing sussipe, dessendit, seli, as you'd expect. When I heard tribulationis I was surprised, and couldn't think that I'd ever heard it in that sort of phonological environment.

Salva-tee-on I have never heard at all.

.

[Magnificat]

Vowel sounds have changed amazingly over the years (it's known as the Great Vowel Shift, spanning roughly 1300-1800). It accounts for the confusion over the 'er' sound, for instance. Chaucer would have pronounced it 'ar' (as in the word 'ers' in the Miller's tale). Anyone with the name Marchant preserves the old pronunciation of 'merchant' but with the new spelling, whereas we retain the old spelling for 'merchant' with its new pronunciation.

Maybe 'thet' is simply an older pronunciation (I don't know).

[Takes off anorak.]

Pabmuisic,

You may well have solved the mystery (to me anyway) of why my home county of Hertfordshire is so spelt but not pronounced although I believe it was spelt with an 'a' once?

VCC

[egg counter]

Whenever I listen to a conversation regarding pronunciation of the past I am reminded of Red Byrds recording of This is the record of John (Layclerks = Jack's Disc) which may be found here http://www.allmusic.com/album/elizab...s-mw0001383312

Ec

[Vox Humana]

I wondered how long it would be before someone brought that up! I seem to recall quite a few people expressing reservations about Red Byrd's "Mummerset" (as one critic called it). Whatever Elizabethan English sounded like, I think it's fair to assume that it must have sounded completely natural and unselfconscious. I doubt they would have sounded as if they were sending themselves up. If the cast of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" could make Aramaic and Latin sound perfectly second nature (which they did to me) surely singers can do the same for old English?

[vinteuil]

a very strong American twang (and they don't know how to spell "centre" )

from OED :

"The prevalent spelling from the 16th to the 18th century was center, in Shakspere, Milton, Boyle, Pope, Addison, etc; so the early Dictionaries, Cotgrave ('centre. French: a center'), Cockeram, Philips, Kersey, and all the thirty editions of Bailey 1721-1802...

1600 Shakspere sonnet cxlvi Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth
1602 Shakspere Hamlet II ii 159 I will finde
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeede
Within the center.
1631 Donne Poems This bed thy center is, these wals thy spheare
1651 Hobbes Leviathan IV xlvi 375 The center of the Earth is the place of Rest.
1653 Walton Angler ii 63 Viewing the Silver streams glide silently towards their center.
1667 Milton Paradise Lost I 74 As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n
As from Center thrice to utmost Pole.
1712 Steele Spectator no 474 The Center of Business and Pleasure.
1791 Bentham Panopticon I postscr. 99 The center one of the 5 uppermost cells
1812 Sir Humphry Davy Chem. Philos. 195 The light proceeds in right lines or rays from the luminous body as a center.

[Triforium]

Then there is fall vs. autumn. Here again the French influence prevailed - automne. Fall was in common usage during the 17th century. By the 18th c. autumn was widely used and fall considered archaic.

http://grammarist.com/usage/autumn-fall/

[Pabmusic]

Pabmuisic,

You may well have solved the mystery (to me anyway) of why my home county of Hertfordshire is so spelt but not pronounced although I believe it was spelt with an 'a' once?

VCC

Hertfordshire is definitely the older spelling, and the present pronunciation the older one, too. This is common with place names because their spellings often settled down rather earlier than general spellings did, meaning that the old spellings were often preserved. (The newer town of Hartford, Connectcut, uses the newer spelling.) Usually the old pronunciation was preserved with it (Derby, Berkshire, Berkley) though not always (Berkhamstead); sometimes the new spelling took over (Barking). A few general words preserve the old spelling - clerk, sergeant, for instance. Often there are both versions (Berkley/Barclay; merchant/Marchant; sergeant/Sargent; Kerr/Carr; clerk/Clark; university/varsity).

Also, many old pronunciations were preserved at the fringes (particularly the American frontier) - varmin(t) (vermin), larn (learn), sart'n (certain), pars'n (person), along with critter (creature) and many others that give us clues as to old pronunciations.

[Pabmusic]

Then there is fall vs. autumn. Here again the French influence prevailed - automne. Fall was in common usage during the 17th century. By the 18th c. autumn was widely used and fall considered archaic.

http://grammarist.com/usage/autumn-fall/

Absolutely. And there are dozens of examples. Remember, too, that British English split from other versions a long time ago, so there has been a long time for differences to bed in. We switched from fall to autumn out of fashion (a little later that the article suggests - by about the third quarter of the 19th Century - you can find 'fall' in Dickens) but American English didn't. We added 'u' to words like 'colour' out of fashion, and it stuck. So did Americans (the Declaration of Independence uses both spellings of 'honour') until Noah Webster's grip on the language took hold. Really it was Webster's dictionary (1838) and the OED (1850-ish) that embedded these spellings and words into the language in the ways they are now.

[jean]

We added 'u' to words like 'colour' out of fashion, and it stuck.

We only 'added' the u in the sense that the word came into English through French, and not directly from Latin. The OED explains:

The form colour has been the most common spelling in British English since the 14th cent.; but color has also been in use continually, chiefly under Latin influence, since the 15th cent., and is now the prevalent spelling in the United States.

[Pabmusic]

We only 'added' the u in the sense that the word came into English through French, and not directly from Latin. The OED explains:

The form colour has been the most common spelling in British English since the 14th cent.; but color has also been in use continually, chiefly under Latin influence, since the 15th cent., and is now the prevalent spelling in the United States.

Useful. Perhaps I should have said we standardised the spelling as 'colour' at a time when all things French were fashionable (except revolutions, that is).

[jean]

You could have said that, but I don't think I'd agree - we standardised the more usual spelling, which dated from a time when we absorbed a great many Latin words through the medium of French.

[Pabmusic]

You could have said that, but I don't think I'd agree - we standardised the more usual spelling, which dated from a time when we absorbed a great many Latin words through the medium of French.

Don't be tiresome. We standardised the spelling on 'colour' as I suggested; that may indeed have been the earlier form - I bow to you on that - but even the OED entry you quote says that "color has also [they must mean 'had also'] been in use continually...since the 15th cent". We are not far apart.

Are you by any chance a taxonomist?