LL-L 'Phonology' 2007.01.26 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 25 January 2007 - Volume 07

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From: Aleta Turner <aletamosquito at gmail.com>
Subject: "wicca" pronunciation [E]

On another listserve I'm on, the terms "witch"
and "wicca/Wicca" came up.  I'll paste in
what I said to that goup.  I'm wondering
what comments y'all might have....
-Aleta

Second, apparently the pronunciation of "wicca" like wika is based
upon a mistake anyway.  The Old English and Middle English
pronunciations of the word were more like "witcha", hence our
word "witch".  When Gerald Gardner brought back "wicca", he
wasn't familiar with the Anglo-Saxon pronunciation, and pronounced
it the way that spelling looks to us in contemporary modern English.

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Gardner#Wicca

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization#Historical_.28diachronic.29_palatalization
(This one also mentions church vs. kirk.)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wicca
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wicca
(These two are separate pages - the capitalization matters!)

--
~~~~~~~~
Aleta van Riper Turner
~~~~~~~~
"Butter, bread, and green cheese is good English and good Fries."
"Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk."
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Hi, Aleta!

As far as I know, there's an inherent difference between "witch" and
"wicca."

Old English wicca denotes a male witch (a warlock), and it's pronounced
"wickah".

Old English wicce denotes a female witch, pronounced something like
"witcheh".

Before non-low vowels, old /k/ (written c) came to be palatalized to "tsh",
hence the difference.

Modern Low Saxon (Low German) has Wicker for the male witch and
Wickersch(e)for the female one.  Saxon never developed the
palatalization rule.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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