On Early English Pronunciation, with Especial Reference to Shakspere and Chaucer, Containing an Investigation of the Correspondence of Writing with Speech in England, from the Anglosaxon Period to the Present Day, Preceded by a Systematic Notation of All Spoken Sounds by Means of the Ordinary Printing Types: Including a Rearrangement of Prof. F.J. Child's Memoirs on the Language of Chaucer and Gower, and Reprints of the Rare Tracts by Salesbury on English, 1547, and Welch, 1567, and by Barcley on French, 1521, 1. osaPhilological Society, 1869 |
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Common terms and phrases
accent ææ Anglosaxon Bullokar cæsura Canterbury Tales Chaucer considered consonant Cooper dialectic diph diphthong distinct distinguish doubt England English examples final French e French words frequently German Gill Gill's gives glide Gower Greek guttural Harl Hart hath heard Hence Italian Jones labial labialisation language Latin letter lips long and short long vowels lyke means Meigret Miege modern mute nasal nounced nunciation occur old high German orthoepists orthography palaeotype palate Palsgrave passage phonetic preceding present probably pronounced pronunciation quæ rhymes Salesbury Salesbury's Saxon says Scotch seems Shakspere shew short vowel Smith sonum speakers spelling suprà syllable tion tong tongue Triphthong Visible Speech vocal vowel sound Wallis Welsh Wilkins writes written XIV th XVII th century XVIII
Popular passages
Page 326 - Craignez, Romains, craignez que le ciel quelque jour Ne transporte chez vous les pleurs et la misère; Et, mettant en nos mains, par un juste retour, Les armes dont se sert sa vengeance sévère, II ne vous fasse, en sa colère, Nos esclaves à votre tour.
Page 326 - Il ne vous fasse en sa colère Nos esclaves à votre tour. Et pourquoi sommes-nous les vôtres? qu'on me die En quoi vous valez mieux que cent peuples divers?
Page 218 - Hebrew letter called schin. And if you wish further information respecting this sound, you should listen to the hissing voice of shellfish when they begin to boil.
Page 334 - There is also generally a stress upon the last syllable of the fifth measure, but if any one of the three conditions above stated are satisfied, the verse, so far as stress is concerned, is complete, no matter what other syllables have a greater or less stress or length.1 It is a mistake...
Page 18 - ... the general utterance of the more. thoughtful or more respected persons of mature age , round which the. other sounds seem to hover, and which, like the averages of the mathematician, not agreeing precisely with any, may for the purposes of science be assumed to represent all, and be called the language of the district at the epoch assigned.
Page 42 - English Orthographie or The Art of right spelling, reading, pronouncing, and writing all sorts of English Words. WHEREIN Such, as one can possibly mistake, are digested in an Alphabetical Order, under their several, short, yet plain Rules.
Page 212 - hodiè apud nos desuevit pronunciatio gh, retinetur tarnen in scriptura," but he makes it (f ) in cough, laugh, rough, tough, trough, and makes Wallis's distinction between enough and enow. MIEGE, 1688, says also that gh is generally mute, but is (f ) in laugh, draught, rough, tough, enough (not distinguishing enow,) but adds " sigh, un Soupir, et le Verbe to Sigh soupirer, ont un son particulier qui approche fort de celui du th en Anglois.
Page 200 - The rough r is formed by jarring the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth near the fore teeth : the smooth r is a vibration of the lower part of the tongue, near the root, against the inward region of the palate, near the entrance of the throat.
Page 217 - ... and he thinks that these instances lead to the conclusion that the pronunciation shuit " was in existence at the beginning" of the XVIIth century. The jokes upon shooter and suitor certainly establish that a sufficiently similar pronunciation of the words was in existence to make the joke appreciable. The various spellings, I fear, prove nothing, because, considering the frequency of the word, — suit occurs 163 times, suitable once, suited 7, suiting I, suitor 38 times in Mrs Cowden-Clarke's...
Page 153 - Bullokar, who calls this sound of ou its " old and continued sound," but as will appear from the study of Chaucer's orthography. The change of (uu) into (ou) in English, which occurred partly perhaps in the xv th century...