On early pseudo-learned orthographic forms: A contribution to the history of English spelling and pronunciation

• Authors: Jerzy Wełna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The history of English contains numerous examples of "improved" spellings. English scribes frequently modified spelling to make English words and some popular borrowings look like words of Latin or Greek origin. The typical examples are Eng. island, containing mute taken from Lat. insula or Eng. anchor ‘mooring device’ (< Fr. ancre), with non-etymological . Although such "reformed spellings" became particularly fashionable during the Renaissance, when the influence of the classical languages was at its peak, "classicised" spellings are also found earlier, e.g. in texts from the 14th century. In the present contribution which concentrates on identifying such earliest influences on spellings in Middle English attention is focussed on the regional distribution of reformed spellings, with a sociolinguistic focus on the type of the text. The data for the study come from standard sources like the Middle English Dictionary (2001) and Oxford English Dictionary (2009).

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 25-39

Dates

published

2011-01-01

online

2012-02-29

Contributors

author

Jerzy Wełna

• University of Warsaw

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10121-010-0010-9