| Edward Sapir (1884–1939). Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. 1921. | | |
Page 191 |
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“short” vowels in the old oo- words will not seem quite as erratic as at the present transitional moment. 9 We learn, incidentally, the fundamental fact that phonetic laws do not work with spontaneous automatism, that they are simply a formula for a consummated drift that sets in at a psychologically exposed point and gradually worms its way through a gamut of phonetically analogous forms. |
It will be instructive to set down a table of form sequences, a kind of gross history of the words foot, feet, mouse, mice for the last 1500 years: 10- fot: foti; mus: musi (West Germanic)
- fot: föti; mus: müsi
- fot: föte; mus: müse
- fot: föt; mus: müs
- fot: fet; mus: müs (Anglo-Saxon)
- fot: fet; mus: mis (Chaucer)
- fot: fet; mous: meis
- fut (rhymes with boot: fit; mous: meis (Shakespeare)
- fut: fit; maus: mais
- fut (rhymes with put): fit; maus: mais (English of 1900)
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| It will not be necessary to list the phonetic laws that gradually differentiated the modern German equivalents of the original West Germanic forms from their English cognates. The following table gives a rough idea of the form sequences in German: 11 | | Note 9. It is possible that other than purely phonetic factors are also at work in the history of these vowels. [back] |
| Note 10. The orthography is roughly phonetic. Pronounce all accented vowels long except where otherwise indicated, unaccented vowels short; give continental values to vowels, not present English ones. [back] |
| Note 11. After I. the numbers are not meant to correspond chronologically to those of the English table. The orthography is again roughly phonetic. [back] |
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