Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 September 10

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 10

New question about English orthography

Why was the sound of Old English long u re-spelled as ou in Middle English?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:42, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Was it? --Jayron32 01:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

The chart and especially the large image at Great Vowel Shift#Overall changes should explain why, for example, OE hūs became ME house.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 05:47, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm not convinced it's got anything to do with the GVS, actually. The introduction of <ou>-spellings for the /u:/ sound predates the sound shift. Chaucer, for instance, seems to be regularly spelling <ou> already before 1400. Haven't got a reference at hand right now, but my guess is it's simply a spelling habit copied from the French, which also had <ou> for long /u/. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:02, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Ref of sorts: David Crystal's By Hook or by Crook (very much pop linguistics, but he does real work too) says Then, after the Norman Conquest, the English writing system was largely put in the hands of French-trained scribes, who immediately began to introduce the spellings with which they were most familiar. They brought in the qu spelling for words which in Old English had been spelled cw – such as queen for cwen. They introduced ch for c in such words as church – cyrice in Old English. It is thanks to them that we now have an ou instead of a u in house, and a gh instead of an h in might and enough. Henry^Flower 08:15, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

To confirm and expand on that:

In Old English this vowel was represented simply as u as in OE hus ‘house’. In the course of the Middle English period it came to be written as ‘house’. This spelling is based on the use of the digraph ou to represent the vowel /u/ in French. In the latter language the simple u grapheme stood for a phonetic /y/, cf. Modern French vu /vy/ ‘seen’ and fou /fu/ ‘mad’. In English, however, the digraph ou was not necessary because /y/ had been unrounded in the Early Middle English period (with the exception of the West Midlands area), cf. OE þymel (ME thimble) ‘thimble’. It was nonetheless used so that by Late Middle English the /u:/ of Old English had come to be written with ou (OE /y/ being written simply as i), cf. out, now (the latter with the variant ow at the end of a word). [1]

OED (2nd edition) gives the spelling hus as being recorded up to the 14th century, and the spellings hous and hows from the 13th century. This spelling-change doesn't imply any change in pronunciation (see https://www.macmillanihe.com/resources/CW%20resources%20%28by%20Author%29/F/freeborn/pdfs/commentary/35_Development_of_MnE.pdf page 5). --Antiquary (talk) 09:48, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Now, can anyone reveal the reason it was spelled ou in French with u being used instead for the sound of German 2-dot u?? (What this contrasts with is u being used for the English oo sound and several possible answers (including ue, u with 2 dots, and y) for the sound of German 2-dot u.) Georgia guy (talk) 11:24, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

This may, in turn, reflect a set of phonological changes in early French; according to Phonological history of French, inherited Latin /u:/ had fronted to /y:/ (i.e. the u-umlaut sound) in early medieval French, while inherited Latin /o:/ was getting raised, via a diphthongal state /ou/, to /u:/ (e.g. Latin flor- > Old French flour > Mod.Fr. fleur, cf. English flour). This latter class was spelled <ou> in French at the time of contact with English. This would correspond to an often-observed cross-linguistic trend in vowel systems, but details in French seem to be quite complex. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:45, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to all three of you for correcting my bad answer and providing references. In the future I shall not rely solely on 20-year-old memories to answer a query.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 23:28, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

I have long suspected that the French convention was in some way derived from Greek, where 'ου' has been used to write /u/ since ancient times. This convention was adopted into the Armenian and Georgian scripts (though in Georgian this is obscured, because it was a digraph that developed into the letter უ in Mkhedruli. --ColinFine (talk) 23:14, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Cruz, Cruise and Crews

I was wondering whether the names Cruz, Cruise and Crews shared a common origin. Were the latter two possibly anglicizations of the Spanish? As I expected, Cruz is Spanish for Cross, but the other articles Cruise (name) and Crews (surname) aren't so clear. Both are said to be variations of Cruse, which is of Norman origin, but where did that name come from? Rojomoke (talk) 10:44, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

"Cruise" also comes, via Dutch, from the Latin crux.[2] "Crew" appears to be unrelated.[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:47, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but Rojomoke was asking about the surnames not the words. See for example Cruise (name) which links to "Cruwys, Cruise and Cruse". ---Sluzzelin talk 12:04, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

A Dictionary of English Surnames by P H Reaney and R M Wilson distinguishes two different surnames. One, evidenced in 1214 as de Crues, is "perhaps from Cruys-Straëte (Nord)". The other, with 13th-century forms le Criuse, le Cruse and Creuse, they identify with Middle English crus(e), "bold, fierce". OED (2nd edition) reckons that that in turn was borrowed from Low German or Frisian in the Early Middle English period. Nothing about Norman anywhere there. --Antiquary (talk) 14:38, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Does a VCVCVCVC word exist in English?

I was wondering whether a VCVCVCVC syllable (four syllables) exist in English. I know that short vowels in English followed by a consonant form a single (metrical) syllable.--Carnby (talk) 12:25, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

These are legion. Off the top of my head, "animated". 62.49.80.34 (talk) 13:30, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, thanks. But animated has a long a /eɪ/. Another user suggested unicolor. What about a word stressed on the penultimate syllable with the same pattern?--Carnby (talk) 16:09, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Carnby -- I'm not entirely sure what you're asking -- in modern English there are the "checked" vowels which do not appear word-finally or before another vowel, and are usually stressed in some way (/æ/, /ɛ/, /ɒ/, /ʊ/, /ʌ/ etc.), unstressed vowels (always [ə], and some others that vary by dialect, such as [ɪ] and [ɨ]), and "free" vowels, which are relatively unrestricted by position of occurrence (/iː/, /eɪ/, /uː/, /oʊ/, /ɔː/, /ɑː/, /ɜːr/, /aɪ/, /aʊ/, /ɔɪ/). In most British English, /ɪ/ is both checked and unstressed, but in many American dialects /ɪ/ is checked only. (See article Checked and free vowels). So I can't begin to interpret VCVCVCVC with respect to English until I know what "V" can stand for with respect to checked vs. unstressed vs. free... AnonMoos (talk) 16:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

(ec) You didn't ask for short vowels only in your question. But if that's your criteria, then unicolor is no good. "abolition" /æbɒlɪʃən/ fits the bill for sound only, as does "analogous" /əˈnælədʒəs/. You could look at wikt:Category:English_4-syllable_words, which will show you "American", "analytic", "anatomic", ... Bazza (talk) 16:39, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Do you use a soft g in all –logous words? —Tamfang (talk) 06:43, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

I do that one, it seems in a non-standard way. I'd never really thought about it. It's not a very common construct in everyday speech. I'd say "humongous" with a hard g. Strange. Bazza (talk) 09:46, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

It's by analogy with the word "analogy"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 16:34, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

What is your goal in this mission? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:34, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

To boldly go where no man has gone before (?) —107.15.157.44 (talk) 18:52, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Or, as Julius Caesar said, "Veni, vidi, VCVCVCVC." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:03, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

To check whether some phonologically related Chomskyan theories are right or not. And to verify a theory about music and language.--Carnby (talk) 10:03, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

grepping words suggests "uvulitis" which I guess is inflammation of the uvula. Also "adiposis", "agenesic", etc. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 21:24, 13 September 2018 (UTC)