Why we don't eat "pirrodge" for breakfast

[John Gray]

Chris: are you going to give us a quick 10k-word account of the Great Vowel Shift rather more intelligible than the Wikipedia article?!

[ChrisGreaves]

Chris: are you going to give us a quick 10k-word account of the Great Vowel Shift rather more intelligible than the Wikipedia article?!

To quote Lucia, "How you do work me!".
John I wasn't going to give you a quick 10K-word account of the Great Vowel Shift, but since I am already at 58 words I may as well continue. The screen shots are taken from Wikipedia articles.
As I understand it today:- (attached)
Cheers
Chris
CORRECTION: I wrote "I recommend Steven Pinker's works for a better understanding ..." but I meant to say "Steven Pinker's 'Words and Rules'"

[jonwallace]

Problems with shifting, my granny had lots of remedies...oh,VOWELS...disregard this post...

[HansV]

The Great Bowel Movement of the late Middle Ages?

[GeoffW]

One would have to be very careful not to make a typo when typing "the great bowel shift".

[ChrisGreaves]

One would have to be very careful not to make a typo when typing "the great bowel shift".

Not a problem!
One could have centered one's butt over the scuttle while maintaining a silent "f".
For a reference to the origins of the name of this greatly revered forum, skip to the 7m08s mark of Episode 145.

You're welcome!

Chris

[GeoffW]

One could have centered one's butt over the scuttle while maintaining a silent "f".
For a reference to the origins of the name of this greatly revered forum, skip to the 7m08s mark of Episode 145.

So you've caught up with all the available episodes.

145 episodes, and he's only reached the 1400s.

[ChrisGreaves]

So you've caught up with all the available episodes. 145 episodes, and he's only reached the 1400s.

***I*** reached and completed Ep140 some three months ago, but at that time the third of three vowel-shift episodes was not complete, so I returned to Ep001 and began making a log of all Kevin' external references and his logic rules, by which I mean those tricks of the trade he gives to determine if a word is a "borrowed word". "(017) Begin with silent H (Soundex?) - Loan words - Hotel Honorary but not Motel or ...") I re-completed Ep062 last night, and when I get back to Ep141 I shall just keep on pushing.

***Kevin***, I believe, reached beyond Ep250 at some time during his production of Ep062. The man is prodigious "(020)JE sound (Soundex?) - Loan words- -badGE adJourn bridGE)" and when he turns this into a multi-volume hard-back book I shall have to borrow David's side-by-side and chop down a mid-sized pine tree to build a bookshelf big enough ...

Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

How dyslexia changes in other languages
I found this an interesting read, especially how/why English (and Danish) children take longer to learn to read than do children in other languages. background on Chinese and Japanese; Welsh. Much more.
Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

Interesting - I had never thought about those differences. It explains why dyslexia is a problem in The Netherlands too - Dutch has lots of words whose pronunciation/spelling you have to learn by heart.

[ChrisGreaves]

Interesting - I had never thought about those differences. It explains why dyslexia is a problem in The Netherlands too - Dutch has lots of words whose pronunciation/spelling you have to learn by heart.

Hi Hans. I hope you waded in as far as the bit about learning-language-while-you-sleep.
I recall wondering about this when it was all the rage 30-40 years ago. You went to sleep listening to a cassette tape in Spanish, woke refreshed, hopped on the plane and amazed everyone in Madrid!
I thought about this and wondered why so many of us were still unilingual!
(later)
The brain is a most unusual device. I just caught sight of this headline and image of Prince Edward King Charles grants Prince Edward Duke of Edinburgh title and my immediate reaction was "That's ridiculous. He doesn't look like the Duke of Edinburgh at all!" My brain has, all its life, held a different image of The Duke Of Edinburgh, and that is NOT his image ...
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Is English just badly pronounced French?
A YouTube video from RobWords, regarding the mixing of French into English, and the redistribution of English back to French (and other languages).
I especially liked "estate" to "êtat" and "state" at the 11m40s mark.
Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

Merveilleux!

[ChrisGreaves]

Merveilleux!

d'accord :beret:

[BobH]

In addition to my native English (at which I have been called a savant), I have some Spanish (after 4 courses at uni and immersion while in Madrid for most of a year) and a smattering of German. I've always regretted not taking up Latin and French. I was denied Latin by a fluke in scheduling between junior and senior high schools. I went instead into German which continued for a year at uni. I had to drop out of uni but returned 5 years later. Rather than take up German again at the comparative literature level (to satisfy language requirements for a degree), I opted to start afresh in Spanish.

While in Madrid, I found that d'accord was widely used by the Madrileños.

[ChrisGreaves]

I've always regretted not taking up Latin and French.

https://www.sbs.com.au/language/french/en/podcast/sbs-easy-french
Stop regretting, and start getting!
Note: The Easy French episodes have a written text that arrives by email, so you can practice reading and writing skills at the same time!
Cheers, Chris
P.S. catalogue of languages C

[ChrisGreaves]

The Great Bowel Movement of the late Middle Ages?

Hans, it continues to this day. This morning's news from the ABC fatured this:-

Untitled.png

I glanced at it and thought "No wonder! Every one of them is eating out of a bowl!"
Cheers, |Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Another interesting snippet about pronunciation, and how we change a language's vocabulary by slurring - the means by which our brains speed up the slowest part of natural communication.
Fluid Speech
This happens in at least French, probably in all human languages. The gate-keeper at Chex Phillips in Fontenay-aux-Roses said "Zonnpree" when I thanked him for opening the gate, his version of "Je vous en prie, monsieur!"

Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

- the means by which our brains speed up the slowest part of natural communication.

I still don't understand how language changes. In evolutionary terms, the currently popular phrases like "coming off of" and "period of time" and "almost exactly the same as", ar a backward step which sacrifices speed of oral communication to The Great God of fancy language!
("coming off" and "period" and "almost") 8 syllables replaced by 17 syllables.

Cheers, Chris