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Re: orthography and pronunciation

From:D Tse <exponent@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 11, 2001, 12:50
> > In a 1000 years, 20th century English will probably be referred to as > "Classical English", and will be studied by a few nutballs. There will be > diverse speculations about its sound inventory; it will seem totally > unpronounceable to most (there being a lot of weird vowel sounds, syllabic > consonants, extreme consonant clusters, stress rules from hell, and an > ill-understood system of vowel weakening (resulting in the legendary > "schwa") and strengthening). Scholars will disagree on the values of the > various orthographical quirks, such as {gh} and magic {e}. They might say: > "{gh} was most probably pronounced as [G] or [x] (or some say a uvular > approximant)... certainly in Classical English, and perhaps for > some time in > the post-classical period (until the collapse of the American > Empire); {gh} > had surely become silent sometime before the Great Spelling Reform of > 2665..." > > Óskar's 5c :D >
Hehe...very entertaining. But (and this is conjecture) isn't today's language, specifically its pronounciation be easier to figure out in the future, what with audio samples that the scientists of today hope to retain for prosperity? What I'm saying is that back in Roman 1 AD I'm sure that there was no way to record the exact pronounciations of words, but that making speech recordings are something that is achievable in this day and age. Imperative