flay / flea (and other "ea" words)

[Charles Doyle]

No, proper names don't "count"--unless we wish to remember that Ronald Reagan, before he aspired to national office, went by the name of [rigIn].  I wonder why [regIn] was deemed more--what?--electable?

Charlie

_____________________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:51:30 -0400
>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject: Re: flay / flea (and other "ea" words)

>
>At 12:36 AM +0800 6/20/09, Randy Alexander wrote:
>>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
>
>There's also Shea Stadium, although it's now defunct and I suppose proper names may not count as words.
>
>LH
>
>>, but up here in the near-Siberian
>>wastelands there are several classes of elementary school aged Chinesestudents (mine) who would instantly rattle off "break steak great yea", aswell 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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