Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 January 5

= January 5 =

Long vowel sounds in Old English

 * 1) Why were there 2 long E's and 2 long O's in Old English??
 * 2) Later, when the Great Vowel Shift occurred, how come the long E's merged into a single sound but the long O's didn't?? Georgia guy (talk) 02:03, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * There weren't two long mid vowels in "Old English" as this is commonly defined (i.e. English before about 1066 AD or 1150 AD). Rather, that was a feature of some varieties of Middle English.  That can happen as a result of sound changes.  There were a number of things going on, but one part of it that can be simply explained was that Old English "long a" raised from [ɑː] to [ɔː] in many types of Middle English, but previous "long o" remained as [oː], so that now both [ɔː] and [oː] existed.
 * And Middle English [ɛː] and [eː] didn't merge in Modern English in a few words, such as "great", "steak", and "bear", while Middle English [ɔː] and [oː] have by now merged before "r" in most types of modern English -- few people distinguish "poor" and "pore" etc. But you're correct that Middle English [ɛː] and [eː] have merged as [iː] in most cases (after Great Vowel Shift), while Middle English [ɔː] and [oː] usually haven't.  Not sure that there's any simple explanation for this... AnonMoos (talk) 06:23, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Quite a few.  Dbfirs  16:34, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Sorry if you're a "poor"-distinguisher and I've offended you, but the merged pronunciations are already shown as acceptable among RP speakers in the 1937 edition of Daniel Jones' pronouncing dictionary, and currently in UK and US quasi-standard English "poor"-distinguishing seems to be done by a distinct minority (as is also the case with "wh"-distinguishing). AnonMoos (talk) 03:27, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Really? I find that quite surprising, as a GA speaker just with a few idiosyncrasies (no yod-dropping after n, incomplete cot–caught merger).  I would render "pore" as /pɔːr/ and "poor" as somewhere between /pʊːr/ and /puːr/.  Which of these do you think is not standard in the US, ? --Trovatore (talk) 02:37, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Trovatore -- I wouldn't say that "poor"-distinguishing is necessarily non-standard, but it could be a little old-fashioned in some contexts. ("Pore" is maybe not the best example, since it started out with [ɔː] and so is dependent on [ɔːr]/[oːr] merger as well as [uːr]/[oːr] merger to coalesce with "poor", but [ɔːr]/[oːr] merger is also quite common in modern English dialects.)  There's nothing wrong with "poor"-distinguishing, and some might prefer it as being historically more accurate, but I doubt that the network news-anchor "broadcast standard American English" which some aspire to usually includes it... AnonMoos (talk) 03:03, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, I really just think you're wrong about that. See my comment below about "Pore Jud is Daid".  The "pore" variant is low-prestige, not "modern". --Trovatore (talk) 03:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I agree about the [ɔːr]/[oːr] merger. It's the [uːr]/[oːr] (or [ʊːr]/[oːr]) one I don't buy. --Trovatore (talk) 03:17, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, the merged form sounds very odd to me, though I do hear it occasionally. The OED Second edition of 1989 has the traditional pronunciation (pʊə(r) first and the homophone of pore second, but the order is reversed in the Third Edition update of December 2006.  Here in the north of England, I think we tend to stick with the older pronunciation.    Db<i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  11:50, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I would go so far as to call the "pore" homophone a low-prestige pronunciation in the US. See "Pore Jud Is Daid". --Trovatore (talk) 03:07, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Poor"-merging may have been déclassé in 1943, when "Oklahoma!" was being written, and the Mid-Atlantic accent was still being pushed as the prestige pronunciation in the Eastern United States, but that was 75 years ago... AnonMoos (talk) 08:12, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Do you live in the States? Do you really hear anyone saying "pore"?  I don't hear it, or if I do, I identify it as a strongly marked regionalism. --Trovatore (talk) 18:22, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Midwesterner here, and I've heard it as both an "oo" sound to rhyme with "loom" or "boom", for example, which is the "proper" way; and as homophone to "pore" and "pour", which is the "usual" way. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:08, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Can't you even tell a good tree from a 'pore' tree?" At about 13:15 here. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:11, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm really quite startled to hear that any significant contingent of GA speakers fail to distinguish "poor" from "pore". Do these speakers also make homophones of, say, lure/lore?  (I guess there's a possible issue here, given that "lure" can have a yod, but I don't think very many Americans give it one &mdash; certainly I don't, and I do keep the yod in "news".) --Trovatore (talk) 23:17, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I can't say I've ever heard anyone say "lure" the same way as "lore". And it's certainly ironic that "poor", with it's double-o, obviously should be pronounced with a double-o sound, but oftentimes, it ain't... Or maybe it's not so obvious. Everyone I know of pronounces "door" as "dore". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:11, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I can't even imagine someone saying "pore" and "poor" the same way. Heck, there's even a slight difference in "poor" and "pour" in my speech. --Khajidha (talk) 02:37, 8 January 2019 (UTC) PS - I'm from North Carolina. --Khajidha (talk) 02:38, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Is that what you really meant? For me "pour" and "pore" are the same, but "poor" is different.  I think (actually I'm pretty sure) that that's the most common pattern in General American. --Trovatore (talk) 03:09, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I meant exactly what I typed. --Khajidha (talk) 15:25, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, that seems to imply you pronounce "pour" noticeably differently from "pore", then, and indeed more differently than you pronounce "poor" and "pore" "pour". It doesn't follow by pure logic, but Grice blah blah blah.  Is that true?  Can you give IPA for the three words in your accent?  --Trovatore (talk) 18:42, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's what I said. I can't give IPA, but here's an attempt to describe my pronunciations: "pore" rhymes with "bore", "lore", "sore", and "door"; "poor" rhymes with "lure"; and "pour" is similar to "poor" but extended into 2 syllables more or less rhyming with "sewer" (as in sewage, not sewing). --Khajidha (talk) 01:18, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow. I really didn't know that pronunciation of "pour" existed.  To me "pour" is a homophone of "pore", but "poor" rhymes with "lure", "dour", "moor". --Trovatore (talk) 03:33, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * While to me, "dour" rhymes with "hour". ---Khajidha (talk) 10:17, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Did you watch the link I suggested to Trovatore? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:42, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Do you mean that our long o is actually a descendant of Old English long a?? If so, what is our long A descended from?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:20, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * You can read further at Middle English and Middle English phonology... AnonMoos (talk) 16:07, 5 January 2019 (UTC)


 * In response to a Trovatore comment indented twelve levels deep somewhere up there: "Lure" does not ordinarily rhyme with "lore" in most types of American English, because earlier [uːr] and [juːr] have diverged there (the original divergence must have happened before deletion of [j] after dental consonants).  In some types of RP in the UK, it is or was the case that "lure" can indeed rhyme with "lore", as indicated in the 1937 edition of Daniel Jones' pronouncing dictionary... AnonMoos (talk) 04:08, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * But you still seem to think that "poor" and "pore" are homophones for most Americans. I just don't think that's factual. --Trovatore (talk) 04:39, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've lived in various parts of the country, and I've only heard the "pore" homophone except when someone is trying to be very careful complying with an old-school English teacher. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:01, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Here's W.C. Fields, a native Philadelphian, saying "pore" at about the 2:20 mark. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:07, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Here's Ann Richards, a Texan, saying it. It sounds like "pore" to me, though maybe less obviously than Fields. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:12, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * It should be noted that English doesn't really use vowel length as a phonemic property. See Vowel_length, "This is commonly used for educational purposes when teaching children how to read; however, this system does not cover all vowels of English and the terminology is not linguistic." (bold mine) What we call a "long vowel" or a "short vowel" in English is more properly termed (by linguists) as mere differences in articulation rather than length; in some dialects some vowels are longer in duration than others, however AFAIK, no English dialect puts any meaningful difference on two vowels that only differ by length; that is there is no minimal pair of words where length itself is the key distinction in meaning between two words.  For example, the "double ee" vowel sound is often called "long e" in English, as in words like fleece, and is transcribed as /i:/ indicating that it is longer in duration than most vowels, but no dialect uses /i/ to mean a different sound (that is a short version of the same sound).  In reality, when we have minimal pairs between two words that we call as "long e" and "short e", those are really just two differently articulated vowel sounds.  For example, "red" and "reed", are /rɛd/ and /ri:d/.    -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 18:55, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * That may be much less relevant to Middle English than to Modern English. In any case, modern English indisputably has Checked and free vowels... AnonMoos (talk) 19:41, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That's true, but that property is still not vowel length strictly speaking, which as a linguistic property usually refers to phonemically meaningful differences based solely on length alone. Some language do have such a distinction, just not English.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 19:16, 8 January 2019 (UTC)