updated calendar

Greg Rose greg at bronze.lcs.mit.edu
Fri May 3 10:44:11 PDT 1996


Stefan,
	I mean that strict orthography (a codified "right" way to spell
words) is an 18th century development.  In medieval manuscripts one
sees spelling variants which not only reflect regional dialect differences
but also the absence of a strict orthography.  Orthographic variance is
different from scribal error, but some things which are analyzed as
scribal errror are frequently (in my view) orthographic variation.  For
example, I doubt that either sribal error or dialect variation accounts
for the fact that in the Nowell Codex the first scribe usually spells
"Beowulf" as _beowulf_, while the second scribe usually uses the
_biowulf_ spelling.  That's probably just orthographic variation.

Hossein/Greg



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