This is an issue near and dear to my heart. My husband, who is British, says that we Yanks have butchered the English language- specifically, we say things like “aluminum” instead of “aluminium,” and “alphabetize” for “alphabeticalize.” Also, we have taken the “u” out of words like “flavor” and “color.”
My question is, why have these changes in the language occured? I tried to convince my hubs that print setters did it to make their jobs a little bit easier, but he didn’t buy it. Please shed a little light on this!
this is because, in an effort to gain further ‘independence’ from the british, a crazy american named noah webster changed many of the british spellings.
many of his ideas were laughed at, but many, as you see, have remained.
and yes, he is the webster as in webster’s dictionary.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
Well, all that was only a very small gain. Why did attempts to get rid of ‘gh’, etc. in the 1940s fizzle? Was it to prevent some of the huge homonym confusion in English, a small amount of which does not carry over to the written form?
Kilgore Trout: I do know about Webster, but if he wanted to be really snotty, why didn’t he change the words more dramatically? I’m only asking because I know my husband is going to needle me about this… He’ll probably say that Americans were too stupid to spell/say things correctly! Of course, he says things like “dinnae” and “cannae,” so I guess I shouldn’t worry…
Nanobyte: I should have mentioned that the explanation I gave to my husband about print setters was just something I said to keep him quiet for a bit! However, if you think of all the u’s that could be knocked out during the course of a print setter’s day, maybe the gain wasn’t so small…
Noah tried his best to “Americanize” the language. To use an example from Robin McNeal: he took the word Waistcoat and gave both syllables equal footing, Waist-coat (long O on the coat).
Changing it from the British, WEST-cot.
Look, a revolution had been going on. In 1790 the British were “The Great Satan.”
(No offense, SATAN)
New York changed the names of a bunch of streets to de-British them. There wasn’t a lot of love lost between the ex-colonies and the crown at the time. The War of 1812 didn’t help heal those wounds, either. It’s hard to put ourselves back in that time.
Language changes according to dialect. Over the years, many American English words have been chopped down because of the way people generally pronounce them.
Like no one says ‘ye oldy Anty-que Shappee’ for Ye Olde Antique Shoppe’ anymore.
Sentinel, I doubt that anyone ever pronounced “Ye Olde Antique Shoppe” like that. They would have said “Ye old anteek shop”. The extra Es at the ends of words were silent (as in “apple”.
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 15 tons.
-Popular Mechanics, 1949
They would have said, “The old anteek shop.” What you’re thinking is a ‘Y’ (reasonable mistake, since it looks like a ‘Y’, is, I believe, a thorn, which was pronounced ‘th’.
In addition to Bricker’s excellent point about how “Ye” was pronounced in this context (there is a word “ye” meaning “you”), silent e’s were all pronounced in Chaucer’s time.
In fact, nearly all English words are spelled the way they were pronounced at the time they entered the language.
The “ough” combination is a perfectly good representation of the original sound – rough “oo” followed by a gutteral like the German “ach.”. All “ough” words were originally pronounced that way.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Sentinel is right because I remember that example as being a common one used in my high school, years ago, and once even being used in some printer article to show the difference between the language of the 1600s and now.
Ye Olde Antique Shoppee WAS pronounced phonetically as ‘Ye oldee anty-que shappie’. I remember being surprised at the difference and considering that the misspellings in texts of those times probably were NOT misspellings after all. I recall thinking that those people of the past, supposedly well educated, couldn’t spell worth a damn, until the difference in pronunciation was pointed out which led to the changes in spelling over the centuries.
Similar to the change in curse words, like ‘zounds’ or ‘tis blood,’ ‘a pox on ye’ or the familiar British ‘bloody.’
It kind of falls into place with the recent disclosure that the Pilgrims, who are always pictured as wearing those funny hats, black and white clothing and having absolutely no sense of humor at all, being much different in reality. For one thing, they didn’t wear those stupid hats, for another they liked colors and it turns out their image was ‘created’ and popularized by either an early movie producer or historian.
Besides, American English is a conglomeration of languages from all over the world.
No. Bricker is right, as the following extract from the OED demonstrates (it is the final words, in brackets, which are significant):
In other words, “ye” is just a variant spelling of the definite article, which was written variously as “the” and “Þe” but pronounced in (roughly) the modern way. This variation is presumably because of the resemblance in appearance between y and Þ.
As for “oldee”, the final e would have been pronounced in some dialects and on some occasions more like the indeterminate vowel sound represented in the phonetic alphabet by the schwa, but was pronounced more or less in the modern fashion by about C. 16.
Try this for yourself: find a passage from Shakespeare whith the original spellings (I think the Arden edition has them). Read it out loud as if every word ending in E ended with the “ee” sound as in “feet”. Does it scan? Thought not.
Pray tell, why can it not be assumed that Brit’s added a ‘U’ instead of us taking one away. After all Websters says that ‘humour’ is the Brit variation of ‘humor’ not that ‘humor’ is the american variation of the brit ‘humour.’
Aside from my omission to change “Ye” to “Þe” or “The”, I have a problem with
Not every terminal E in Chaucerian English was pronounced, and those that were, were given more of an “uh” sound. Thus “shoppe” would have been shop-uh, nevershop-ee
Of course, all of this is based on my university courses in Chaucerian English – there is no-one surviving from that era, so I can’t give the ultimate refernce…
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 15 tons.
-Popular Mechanics, 1949
Nod of thanks to TomH, who saved me from hauling out my OED (which I do not have electronically, more’s the pity) to provide a cite for my ‘ye=the’ assertion.
Actually, to get back to the OP, there was a meeting of the American Philological Society held in New York to determine the spelling of certain words that were in dispute: honour/honor, colour/color and the like. But the meeting ran overtime, and was broken up by the Bronx janitor who came to sweep the floors of the meeting hall. He dismissed the academics with the words: “Youse get out”, but the philologists interpreted his command as “U’s get out”, and that’s what has been done ever since.
Changes to the English Language ===============================
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be
the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the
other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government
conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a
5-year phase-in plan that would be known as “Euro-English”.
In the first year, ‘s’ will replace the soft ‘c’. Sertainly,this will make the
sivil servants jump with joy. The hard ‘c’ will be dropped in favor of the ‘k’.
This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome
‘ph’ will be replased with the ‘f’. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20%
shorter!
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach
the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage
the removal of double leters which have always ben a deterent to akurate
speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent ‘e’ in the
languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ with ‘z’
and ‘w’ wiz ‘v’. During ze fifz year ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords
kontaining ‘ou’ and similar changes vud of kurs be aplid to ozer kombinations of
leters.
After ze fifz yer ve vil hav a rali sensibl ritn styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evriun vil find it ezi tu undrstand ech ozer.
