Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.classics
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!cornellcs!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!newstand.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom16!alderson
From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: English pronunciation of Latin
In-Reply-To: ew65@cityscape.co.uk's message of Sun, 09 Feb 1997 09:06:49 GMT
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.97Feb11161436@netcom16.netcom.com>
Sender: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
References: <587ugn$o0u@nimble.mta.ca> <5892mm$hst@pheidippides.axion.bt.co.uk>
	<58a4be$sk9@nimble.mta.ca> <58fsns$emr@news.enterprise.net>
	<58lblq$5tt@news1.io.org> <32EDD073.5691@anteo.it>
	<E4q6H7.HAw@nonexistent.com> <32EF84CC.56ED@netvision.net.il>
	<854698087.29617.0@cisew65.demon.co.uk> <32F1B330.2C32@sn.nono>
	<854784441.23579.1@cisew65.demon.co.uk>
	<COMES-0702971712360001@japonica.ucdavis.edu>
	<855479373.16089.0@cisew65.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 00:14:36 GMT
Lines: 26
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:70181 sci.classics:17096

In article <855479373.16089.0@cisew65.demon.co.uk> ew65@cityscape.co.uk
(Robert Stonehouse) writes:

>"AMICVS CONSTANTINI" <COMES@NOVAROMA.GOV> wrote:

>>But perhaps this was written before the Great Vowel shift changed the English
>>pronunciationof Mary to /Meir-ri/.  and Eliza to /I-lai-z@/.

>I gather the vowel shift belongs to the end of the Middle English period,
>around 1450. Sir Henry Lee retired on 17th November 1590.

The GVS is more an Early Modern English phenomenon, rather than Middle English.
The English of the late Elizabethan/early Jacobean poet and playwright Shake-
speare would have sounded to modern British or American ears much like a heavy
Irish accent, so far as vowel qualities are concerned.

The changes in rhyme pattern over the 16th and 17th centuries provide a great
deal of evidence for standard pronunciations.

The two names in question, c. 1590, would have been pronounced roughly [m& ri]
and [E l@j za].
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
