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<br><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">Dear E-Ching, </font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">You may now this already, but I thought a precision about English was desirable as Middle English is often taken as being a unitary system. The Old English > Middle English unrounding from /y/ > /i/ only occurred in the Northern and East-Midlands dialects (in Kentish, the historical reflex is already found as /e/). In the city of London there was a great deal of variation, but eventually it was resolved to favoring the East Middlands pronunciation, with isolated words from other dialects, in spelling, pronunciation or both, e.g. </font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; "><br style="text-indent: 0px !important; "></font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">- Kentish spelling and pronunciation: "merry", "knell"</font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">- Southern spelling, but East-Midlands pronunciation: "build", "busy"</font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">- Southern spelling, but Kentish pronunciation: in both the verb "to bury" and the stem in compounds such as "Canterbury"</font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">- Southern spelling and pronunciation, but unrounded to /u/: "lust" (the current pronunciation comes from an unrounding and lowering that happened later seen today in most dialects including the standard) or "worse" (with central vowel of a later period). </font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; "><br style="text-indent: 0px !important; "></font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">Very best,</font></div><div style="text-indent: 0px !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" style="text-indent: 0px !important; ">Enrique</font></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4" style="text-indent: 0px !important; "></font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2" style="text-indent: 0px !important; "></font><br><br><br><br><br><div id="SkyDrivePlaceholder" style="font-size: 10pt; "></div><hr id="stopSpelling" style="font-size: 10pt; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:01:02 -0400</font><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">From: e-ching.ng@yale.edu</font><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">To: histling-l@mailman.rice.edu</font><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">Subject: [Histling-l] Front rounded vowel question</font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">Dear all,</font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">I'm looking for languages which lost front rounded vowels, e.g. German /y/ > Yiddish /i/. So far I've got Old > Middle English, OHG > Yiddish, French > creoles. If you know of other languages with front rounded vowels and descendants, I would be very grateful. I will of course post a summary to the list.</font><br>
<br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">Hopefully,</font><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">E-Ching</font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">___________________________________</font><br><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">E-Ching Ng</font><br><font class="Apple-style-span" size="2">Department of Linguistics, Yale University</font><br><a href="http://pantheon.yale.edu/~en27/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 10pt; ">http://pantheon.yale.edu/~en27/</a><br>
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