[Sca-cooks] Reptilian Pronunciation (was Drive up ATM's OT, OOP (was Languages)

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 11:23 AM 5/23/02 -0400, you wrote:

>>Though there must be *some* useful consistencies left to us. I find when re=
>>ading a cookery book (ye gods, back on topic!) in Middle English, it makes =
>>more sense if I read it aloud. Their pronounciation must have been at least=
>>  vaguely similar to mine?
>
>Probably. Actually even the spelling in Middle English is a lot more
>consistent than a lot of people make it out to be, at least within
>individual documents, so obviously the writers of the documents felt
>that spelling counted.

*koff*
Only sometimes, Master A. IMHO, the spelling is a great deal more, uh,
variegated than we know... and a lot of it has to do with dialectical
differences. They honestly didn't have that much of an ideal of spelling-
what they were doing more often that not was fonetik, and wee no hough meni
vareeayshuns ther ar in that...

However, Jane's comment about reading aloud is quite true- that reading
aloud usually helps quite a bit in deciphering the text. I don't think that
it is _that_ likely your pronunciation is that near ours, though that also
depends on where in England you live, Jane, and how standardized your own
English is. You see, there was this thing called the Great Vowel Shift,
that truly did change vowel tones considerably. At any rate though,
pieceing it out syllable by syllable is the best way to sort through
possibilities, especially when you are working from a facsimilie that does
not allow for interesting typescript- substitutions (especially for the
thorn and yogh), then to confuse matters.

'Lainie
veteran of weird texts
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