ANST - Humorous SCA versions of hell...[long]

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, j'lynn yeates <jyeates at bga.com> wrote:
> > For picky spellers:  A lifetime subscription to the Ansteorra list! 
> 
> we're just trying to improve our persona's by devolving our spelling
> back to something closer to normal medieval practice ... 

That's probably meant as a joke, but I'll take it seriously and go off
on a tangent.

It's true that they spelled differently back then.  As I understand
it, a lot of it was phonetic, and letters had a few possible
pronunciations (and it looks like mostly Latin-based to me: usually
ah, eh, ee, oh, oo for the vowels).

However, there's an attitude in the SCA today that "they didn't know
how to spell and did it any old way, so we can spell any way we want
and be period".  They weren't random spellings and pronunciations.
There *were* variations, but they were within limits set by
pronunciation, grammar, etymology, and ranges of pronunciation for
each letter.  "y" might substitute for "i", say, but doubling a letter
at random may not have been used, as it would change the pronunciation
(e.g., Welsh "l" versus "ll").  Extra "e"s on the end, as in Ye Olde
Englysshe Spellynge, may have been pronounced in various times and
periods, and thus may not be a valid variation.  As another example, I
don't know of any time or place where "persona's" was used as a plural
noun.  Not to point any fingers, mind you.

Danielis "into variations, but *period* ones" Lindecolina
-- 
Tim McDaniel (home); Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com; 
if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com is my work address.
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