saying "ah" for "awe"

[Paul Johnston]

Dear Tom,
But they ARE using their knowledge of phonics.  We could get into a
debate on this--but let's assume phonics is the way to go in teaching
reading & spelling.  We have a problem--our spelling system is keyed
roughly to the English of about, say, 1400.  A lot of things--
perfectly accepted things--have caused homonyms like road & rowed.
And even awe was written like that, and not, say, oo or oa, because
at that time it was pronounced roughly like we say ow (or owa), and
according to good, 1500-year-old conventions of using our Latin
alphabet, the combination of letters <au> or <aw> designated the "ow"
sound.  It later changed to what we say now, and the people you have
complained about have carried it even further.  All the phonics
teaching in the world--or ANY schooling--can only retard change.  In
the face of things like this, a teacher is like King Canute telling
the tide to go out.  It just doesn't work.  Many people want to sound
like people who they identify with.  That can be a teacher.  It CAN'T
be a book.  But it is usually their parents, their neighbors and
their peers.  Sorry 'bout that--it's been that way forever.


Paul Johnston
On Oct 1, 2006, at 1:16 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: saying "ah" for "awe"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>> From: Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
>> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: saying "ah" for "awe"
>> Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 11:01:40 -0400
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: saying "ah" for "awe"
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> Dear Tom,
>> As far as the distribution, the COT=CAUGHT merger is a phenomenon of
>> vowel change that linguists have explored a lot.  It occurs in
>> several areas:  (1) parts of Eastern New England; (2) Western
>> Pennsylvania and adjoining areas; (3) most of the West--though in
>> some cases, the vowels are just very close, not actually merged;  (4)
>> some areas adjoining Canada, where the merger is usual; and (5) a
>> growing tail of dialects running from Central Ohio through the center
>> of the country connecting (3) and (2).  In (1), (3), most of (5), and
>> sometimes  (4), it tends to be the COT vowel that survives, though
>> (1)'s COT vowel sounds like a lot  of American's CAUGHT vowel.
>> OK--people have been saying what you've said about confusing word
>> meanings and so on for at least 400 years.  I know of grammarians in
>> the early 17th century on how disgusting it was to pronounce tail and
>> tale, or main and mane, or road and rowed, or no and know the same.
>> (The spelling shows that they were once different, and they still are
>> in a number of British dialects).  Yet we accept their merger today
>> as Standard, and  learn their spelling individually,  because our
>> phonics rules don't quite work here.  Same with knight and night,
>> rights and rites, and so on.  No one confuses their meaning because
>> these words are not spoken in isolation--they are in sentences, and
>> these sentences in texts and conversations.  So we can determine the
>> meaning by the words they are around--their context.  So, although it
>> may make it harder for kids to learn to spell using phonics alone,
>> our language still functions--and if there is confusion, you can
>> always ask what was meant.
>>
>> Paul Johnston
>
> Personnally, if language is given to change, I would prefer it to
> be more
> phonetically consistent with spelling.  What you say is that we
> have no way
> to influence this.  I think we have a way - our school systems.  The
> dropping of phonics was a bad thing.  Now "phonemic awareness" is
> back.  A
> good thing.
>
> Tom z
>
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