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John Dawkins
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 5:14 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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In article <35d6smF4lknndU1@individual.net>,
"Skitt" <skitt99@comcast.net> wrote:
| Quote: | John Ings wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
1. Why would a Webster's dictionary list British pronunciations?
It does, quite often.
2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
It's in my Webster's.
If it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary, it probably says something
like
chiefly British past and past participle of SPELL
It says:
spelt1 a pt. and pp. of spell 1.
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many different
ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of those shouldn't
exist.
|
The AHD4 has simply: "A past tense and a past participle of spell."
--
J.
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 5:43 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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John Dawkins wrote:
| Quote: | "Skitt" wrote:
John Ings wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
1. Why would a Webster's dictionary list British pronunciations?
It does, quite often.
2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
It's in my Webster's.
If it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary, it probably says something
like
chiefly British past and past participle of SPELL
It says:
spelt1 a pt. and pp. of spell 1.
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many
different ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of
those shouldn't exist.
The AHD4 has simply: "A past tense and a past participle of spell."
|
True as that is, it just ain't what AmE normally uses. There are times when
some dictionaries don't tell the whole story.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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John Lawler
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 5:44 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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Yusuf B Gursey <ybg@theworld.com> writes:
| Quote: | John Ings writes:
I always thought the pronunciation of 'yogurt' as yoh-gert was
left pondian, and yaw-gert was right-pondian, but I find my
Webster's lists only yoh-gert and spells it two different ways:
'yogurt' and 'yoghurt'. But now I'm looking at a container of the
stuff from a Canadian source that spells it 'yogourt' on both the
English and French sides of the container.
Since it's a Turkish word originally, spelt 'yogurt', I wonder how
they pronounce it?
in modern roamnized turkish yog~urt (the g has has a small crescent-
like diacritic on top of it).
/o/ low rounded back vowel (short)
/u/ high rounded back vowel (short)
/g~/ in careful speech a lightly voiced laryngeal fricative (in arabic
script represented in a back vowel environment by ghayn, and so in some
rural dialects), frequently in rapid speech (esp. urban speech) a
glide.
|
In other words, in ordinary (not careful) Turkish, the g is silent, and the
word is pronounced /yourt/ or /yowurt/. Since American English /o/ is
diphthongized with /u/, this sounds just like an American had tried to say
Yo-urt, either as one long syllable or two short ones. Yamas,ek ge ('silent
g'), the name of the letter 'g' with the breve on top, is a morphophonemic
adaptation of the fact that Turkish often alternates voiced and voiceless
stops like /g/ and /k/, and when the /g/ happens between vowels it fricates
to /g~/ and often deletes, only to show up again as a /g/ or a /k/ in other
environments.
Back to the original question, it's a Turkish word borrowed into Englis, so
English speakers, who can't be expected to know about the morphophonemics of
Turkish Romanization, can (and do) spell (and pronounce) it any way they
please when they're speaking English. Plus, the word's been in English
longer than Turkish has had a Roman alphabet, so the English spelling is
pretty variable, even today.
The OED gives the following spellings in citations:
1625 Yoghurd
1687 Yogourt
1837 yahourt
1883 yaghourt
1912 yaghourt
1925 Yoghurt
1970 yogurt
1980 yoghourt
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler U Michigan Linguistics Dept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting
than looking." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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John Ings
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:32 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 20:26:07 GMT, "Adrian Bailey" <dadge@hotmail.com>
wrote:
| Quote: | 2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
It's in my Webster's.
What a peculiar reason.
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I'm also Canadian. We're liguistic hybrids.
Color/colour, harbor/harbour... like that. |
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John Ings
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:44 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:26:55 -0800, "Skitt" <skitt99@comcast.net>
wrote:
| Quote: | Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many different
ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of those shouldn't
exist.
|
"Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary"
Derived from the Random House Living Dictionary Database
Copyright 1989-1996, a large computerized electronic database that
enables high technology to merge with traditional lexicography in the
compilation of an extensive range of dictionaries."
I'm partial to it because adjacent to each word is a small bell symbol
which when clicked on provokes a feminine voice to pronounce the word
in dulcet tones. This saves puzzling out all those accents and long
and short vowels and whatnot. |
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 7:26 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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John Ings wrote:
| Quote: | "Skitt" wrote:
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many
different ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of
those shouldn't exist.
"Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary"
Derived from the Random House Living Dictionary Database
Copyright 1989-1996, a large computerized electronic database that
enables high technology to merge with traditional lexicography in the
compilation of an extensive range of dictionaries."
I'm partial to it because adjacent to each word is a small bell symbol
which when clicked on provokes a feminine voice to pronounce the word
in dulcet tones. This saves puzzling out all those accents and long
and short vowels and whatnot.
|
I see. I'm not familiar with that one. The AUE FAQ discusses dictionaries
at
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxdictio.html
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 7:53 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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John Lawler wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | Plus, the word's been in English longer than Turkish has had a
Roman
alphabet, so the English spelling is pretty variable, even today.
The OED gives the following spellings in citations:
1625 Yoghurd
1687 Yogourt
1837 yahourt
1883 yaghourt
1912 yaghourt
1925 Yoghurt
1970 yogurt
1980 yoghourt
|
Well, yes, sort of English. What interests me here is that few of the
examples quoted really connect with modern usage. It moved quickly
from virtual non-existence to everyday speech during the sixties and
seventies. I don't think I'd ever heard of it till the early sixties,
when a health-foodie friend mentioned it; and had to go to the Middle
East in 1965 to see or taste it. By the time lots of people had
started eating it (in a sweetened form), the spelling stabilized at
once to -og- and -ogh-. The 1980 OED -ghou- example seems like a
maverick to me.
It's very recently that the folks in Walton Street expected
English-speakers to have any use for the word. The OED's 1883
quotation has it in italics, as an exoticism; and as I said earlier
the word was so rare that the 1959 Concise Oxford Turkish Dictionary
gives only "yaourt (a kind of sour milk)" as the English version in
the T-E section, and doesn't bother with the word in any form in the
E-T section. COD5, 1964-1969, says _yog(h)urt_ is a variant of
_yaourt_. The 1934-1968 C.O.French Dictionary gives _yaourt_,
_yogourt_, and _yoghourth_ in the F-E section, glossing them as
"Yoghourt, yaourt; boiled curdled milk", but no word at all in the
E-F section. Nothing at all in the 1906 _Beeton's Cookery and
Household management_.
Apart from the OED's 1912 quotation from the _Dundee Advertiser_,
which says (without context, highly questionably) "Servian yoghourt
is well known", it's clear that the word became a real English one
very recently. So much so that OED1 is mistaken in its definition:
yogurt isn't a "liquor", despite the similarity to koumiss mentioned
under _Yaourt_.
Mike. |
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Martin Ambuhl
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:07 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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|
Skitt wrote:
| Quote: | John Dawkins wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
John Ings wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
|
[No attributions match:]
| Quote: | 2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
|
[No attributions match:]
| Quote: | It's in my Webster's.
If it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary, it probably says
something like chiefly British past and past participle of
SPELL
It says:
spelt1 a pt. and pp. of spell 1.
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many
different ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of
those shouldn't exist.
The AHD4 has simply: "A past tense and a past participle of spell."
True as that is, it just ain't what AmE normally uses. There are times
when some dictionaries don't tell the whole story.
|
I don't know how many Americans contributed to this thread; neither do I
know which of them use 'spelt' as a past or perfect participle of
'spell.' However, at least one of them does, and I do as well. I doubt
that we are alone in being Americans using this form. Skitt's idea of
"what AmE normally uses" needs a serious retuning. |
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:16 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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|
Martin Ambuhl wrote:
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
John Dawkins wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
John Ings wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
[No attributions match:]
2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
[No attributions match:]
It's in my Webster's.
If it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary, it probably says
something like chiefly British past and past participle of
SPELL
It says:
spelt1 a pt. and pp. of spell 1.
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many
different ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of
those shouldn't exist.
The AHD4 has simply: "A past tense and a past participle of spell."
True as that is, it just ain't what AmE normally uses. There are
times when some dictionaries don't tell the whole story.
I don't know how many Americans contributed to this thread; neither
do I know which of them use 'spelt' as a past or perfect participle of
'spell.' However, at least one of them does, and I do as well. I
doubt that we are alone in being Americans using this form. Skitt's
idea of "what AmE normally uses" needs a serious retuning.
|
You think? Maybe, but I have hardly ever seen it used in AmE books. Maybe
never. Maybe I don't read enough.
Quick Web check (excluding only UK sites so identified) gives
"word is spelt" 2,060 hits
"word is spelled" 30,100 hits
I'd say that the normal use appears to be "spelled" (by a margin of roughly
15:1).
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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Jess Askin
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:16 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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|
"Mike Lyle" <mike_lyle_uk@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:35db76F4lbbcoU3@individual.net...
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
John Ings wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
1. Why would a Webster's dictionary list British
pronunciations?
It does, quite often.
2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
It's in my Webster's.
If it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary, it probably says something
like
chiefly British past and past participle of SPELL
It says:
spelt1 a pt. and pp. of spell 1.
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many
different ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of
those shouldn't exist.
Back in 1828 it seems the real Webster was reasonably tolerant, as he
has simply:
SPELL, v.t. pret. and pp. spelled or spelt.
spelt2 (spelt), n.
a wheat, Triticum aestivum spelta, native to southern Europe and
western Asia, used chiefly for livestock feed.
Yeah, sure, but that's a whole nother thing and a separate entry.
I'm sure that it's not the meaning you wanted.
The wholefood shop in Carmarthen, and presumably therefore many
others over here, sells packets of unground spelt. I suppose for
those on the Iron-Age DietT, on which if necessary and if it hasn't
already been done I shall write a food-fad book.
|
Too late, alas:
http://tinyurl.com/4y7rz |
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Yusuf B Gursey
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 4:35 pm
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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|
John Lawler wrote:
| Quote: | Yusuf B Gursey <ybg@theworld.com> writes:
John Ings writes:
I always thought the pronunciation of 'yogurt' as yoh-gert was
left pondian, and yaw-gert was right-pondian, but I find my
Webster's lists only yoh-gert and spells it two different ways:
'yogurt' and 'yoghurt'. But now I'm looking at a container of the
stuff from a Canadian source that spells it 'yogourt' on both the
English and French sides of the container.
Since it's a Turkish word originally, spelt 'yogurt', I wonder how
they pronounce it?
in modern roamnized turkish yog~urt (the g has has a small crescent-
like diacritic on top of it).
/o/ low rounded back vowel (short)
/u/ high rounded back vowel (short)
/g~/ in careful speech a lightly voiced laryngeal fricative (in
arabic
script represented in a back vowel environment by ghayn, and so in
some
rural dialects), frequently in rapid speech (esp. urban speech) a
glide.
In other words, in ordinary (not careful) Turkish, the g is silent,
and the |
well, also depending on the speaker's accent.
| Quote: | word is pronounced /yourt/ or /yowurt/. Since American English /o/
is |
more like yo:urt
for westerners, it is usually adviswd to just lengthen the preceding
vowel, though in actual pronounciation it is a slightly voiced h .
normally, turks are able to distinguish a true long vowel (in
loanwords) with vowel + g~
| Quote: | diphthongized with /u/, this sounds just like an American had tried
to say
Yo-urt, either as one long syllable or two short ones. Yamas,ek ge
('silent |
<< yumus,ak ge >> meaning "soft g" refers to its fricative
pronounciation and that it is originally a velar (or palatal, depnding
on the vowel) fricative,
not neccessarily to the change of sound. people do normally think of it
as a velar fricative, even though actual pronouciation is frequently
not so. french r's are described as "r's pronounced like yumus,ak ge"
| Quote: | g'), the name of the letter 'g' with the breve on top, is a
morphophonemic
adaptation of the fact that Turkish often alternates voiced and
voiceless
stops like /g/ and /k/, and when the /g/ happens between vowels it
fricates
to /g~/ and often deletes, only to show up again as a /g/ or a /k/ in
other
environments.
|
in yog~urt it was a velar fricative all along.
| Quote: |
Back to the original question, it's a Turkish word borrowed into
Englis, so
English speakers, who can't be expected to know about the
morphophonemics of
Turkish Romanization, can (and do) spell (and pronounce) it any way
they
please when they're speaking English. Plus, the word's been in
English
longer than Turkish has had a Roman alphabet, so the English spelling
is
pretty variable, even today.
The OED gives the following spellings in citations:
1625 Yoghurd
1687 Yogourt
1837 yahourt
1883 yaghourt
1912 yaghourt
1925 Yoghurt
1970 yogurt
1980 yoghourt
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler U Michigan Linguistics
Dept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting
than looking." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:24 pm
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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|
Jess Askin wrote:
| Quote: | "Mike Lyle" <mike_lyle_uk@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
[...]
The wholefood shop in Carmarthen, and presumably therefore many
others over here, sells packets of unground spelt. I suppose for
those on the Iron-Age DietT, on which if necessary and if it
hasn't
already been done I shall write a food-fad book.
Too late, alas:
http://tinyurl.com/4y7rz
|
Oh, well. But at least he doesn't seem to use the expression
"Iron-Age Diet", so there may be a little scope left.
Mike. |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:17 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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|
Mike Lyle wrote:
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
John Ings wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
1. Why would a Webster's dictionary list British
pronunciations?
It does, quite often.
2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
It's in my Webster's.
If it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary, it probably says something
like
chiefly British past and past participle of SPELL
It says:
spelt1 a pt. and pp. of spell 1.
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many
different ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of
those shouldn't exist.
Back in 1828 it seems the real Webster was reasonably tolerant, as he
has simply:
SPELL, v.t. pret. and pp. spelled or spelt.
spelt2 (spelt), n.
a wheat, Triticum aestivum spelta, native to southern Europe and
western Asia, used chiefly for livestock feed.
Yeah, sure, but that's a whole nother thing and a separate entry.
I'm sure that it's not the meaning you wanted.
The wholefood shop in Carmarthen, and presumably therefore many
others over here, sells packets of unground spelt.
|
Heavens! Half of our bakers' sell spelt bread. I think it's for
wheat-intolerent people. Tastes alright when fresh, but, to my mind,
doesn't keep well.
--
Rob Bannister |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:17 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
|
|
Skitt wrote:
| Quote: | Quick Web check (excluding only UK sites so identified) gives
"word is spelt" 2,060 hits
"word is spelled" 30,100 hits
I'd say that the normal use appears to be "spelled" (by a margin of
roughly 15:1).
|
I suspect that even some British writers who say "spelt" are afraid to
actually write it.
--
Rob Bannister |
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Pat Durkin
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:18 am
Post subject: Re: Yogurt |
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|
"Martin Ambuhl" <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:35dnb4F4i3mo5U1@individual.net...
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
John Dawkins wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
John Ings wrote:
"Skitt" wrote:
[No attributions match:]
2. If you are left-pondian, why do you use the word "spelt"?
[No attributions match:]
It's in my Webster's.
If it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary, it probably says
something like chiefly British past and past participle of
SPELL
It says:
spelt1 a pt. and pp. of spell 1.
Exactly what kind of "Webster's" is your book? There are so many
different ones bearing the name in some form or other, and some of
those shouldn't exist.
The AHD4 has simply: "A past tense and a past participle of spell."
True as that is, it just ain't what AmE normally uses. There are times
when some dictionaries don't tell the whole story.
I don't know how many Americans contributed to this thread; neither do I
know which of them use 'spelt' as a past or perfect participle of
'spell.' However, at least one of them does, and I do as well. I doubt
that we are alone in being Americans using this form. Skitt's idea of
"what AmE normally uses" needs a serious retuning.
|
I don't use "spelt" or "learnt", but I certainly use some of the old past
participles--"knelt", for one. I wonder if there is a listing of them, and
comments on which ones are on the way out the door.
I know that I find it mildly irritating when I read in a novel "He lighted
her cigarette". Most people I know say "lit", but I rarely see that in
print in US usage. I don't think it is as close to the door as "knelt",
however.
--
Pat
durkinpa at msn.com
Wisconsin |
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