flay / flea (and other "ea" words)

[Randy Alexander]

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Joel S. Berson<Berson at att.net> wrote:
> At 6/19/2009 11:43 AM, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>I took the occasion (a "teachable moment," in the current cliche) to
>>ask the old favorite history-of-the-language "trivia"
>>question: Â What four common current English words have that "ea"
>>vowel spelling and preserve the pronunciation /e/?
>
> OK, I haven't seen anyone answer this yet. Â What are the four (plus "shea")?

I answered that upstream a bit: break, steak, great, yea.  There are
also five one-syllable words with a rhoticized ea(r): bear, pear,
tear, wear, swear.

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

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