flay / flea (and other "ea" words)

[Randy Alexander]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> In my Shakespeare class this morning, discussing _King Lear_, I got to
> wondering out loud why the _Riverside Shakespeare_ , which professes to show
> modernized spellings, gives the verb "flay" as "flea"--thereby ensuring that
> most students will mispronounce and therefore misunderstand the word: "With
> her nails / She'll flea thy wolvish visage" (1.4.307-08).
>
> I took the occasion (a "teachable moment," in the current cliche) to ask
> the old favorite history-of-the-language "trivia" question:  What four
> common current English words have that "ea" vowel spelling and preserve the
> pronunciation /e/?


I've also never heard of shea butter, but up here in the near-Siberian
wastelands there are several classes of elementary school aged Chinese
students (mine) who would instantly rattle off "break steak great yea", as
well as their rhoticized companions "bear pear tear wear swear".

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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