"Drouth"

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:19 PM -0500 11/7/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>I believe Larry is speaking historically: Until the 16th century,
>"autor" or "autour" was the normal spelling, presumably representing
>the standard English pronunciation. Sometime in the 15th century,
>Frenchmen started spelling the word "authour," which would
>(probably) represent the same pronunciation as "autour." However,
>when the French (mis?-)spelling "authour" made its way to England,
>Englishmen began pronouncing the word with an unhistorical [T] or
>theta.

exactly

>Similarly with the proper name "Anthony" . . .


with the added fillip (as oppose to Phillip) that it was evidently
assumed that the name derived from the Greek "anthos" 'flower', as in
"anthology"--but not as in "Ant(h)ony".

Larry



>____________________________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 17:10:04 +0000
>>From: ronbutters at AOL.COM
>>
>>"Be" what? How else would one spell these words (or pronounce them
>>as they are normally uttered in the USA?)
>>____________________
>>
>>Larry Horn wrote:
>>
>>Wouldn't the /T/ in "author" be one?  And the one in "Anthony"
>>(U.S. pronunciation) be another?
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org