Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[Yannis Haralambous]

As illustrated by Coulmas, there is no causal relation between the presence of 
the phoneme /h/ and the one of the grapheme :

Consider, for instance, Latin-derived words such as habit, heretic, hotel and 
hospital in English where the initial  is pronounced, although it had 
already ceased to be pronounced in Middle French whence these words were 
borrowed. Some frequently used words like hour are still pronounced without the 
/h/, despite the spelling. But the others are evidence that writing had become 
an agent of linguistic change, transcending its role as a means of expression. 
The image became the model.

(quote from F. Coulmas, "Writing Systems", CUP, 2003)

"History" may very well be one of these words which were pronounced without the 
/h/ phoneme in Middle French when passed over to English, and then re-acquired 
the /h/ phoneme because of their spelling. So much for the Saussurean primacy 
of spoken language…

> Le 20 août 2022 à 11:47, Jens Bakker  a écrit :
> 
> May be, this is a misunderstanding by some teachers who do pronounce it 
> „istory“ or a joke by some students, in English this word is pronounced with 
> an „h“, and therefore it seems to be impossible to write it without an „h“ 
> but to pronounce it with an „h“ at the beginning of the word, according to 
> the customs of English orthography.

 Yannis HARALAMBOUS
Professor
Computer Science Department
UMR CNRS 6285 Lab-STICC
  
 
Technopôle
 Brest-Iroise CS 83818
29238 Brest Cedex 3, France
Une École de l'IMT 

‌I recall a workshop in which Pat Hayes proposed a fine of $1000
for every researcher who invents a new logic.
‌(Murray Shanahan, ‌Solving the frame problem)‌

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[John Was]

Ahem, that would be vulgare pecus...

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022, 17:55 Eric Streit,  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> an interesting conference about the 'French orthographe" and how it was
> defined (and, no, this was not logical at all).
>
> The conference is in French, but with subtitles, I hope you can understand.
>
> Orthograph was used to separate the "vulgus pecus" from the "educated
> people". It was never meant to be accessible to everyone.
>
> And it's why, you have the "f" sound, for example for "une photographie"
> written with "ph" and not "f" like in many other latin languages.
>
> Best regards
>
> I had fun listening to this conference.
>
> Eric
>
> Le 20/08/2022 à 17:25, George N. White III a écrit :
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 6:23 AM Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX
> > mailto:xetex@tug.org>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > Many readers of this mailing list are
> > native English language speakers and
> > the following question is for them.
> >
> > Someone claimed that English people (I say
> > more generally English language speakers)
> >   learn at school why you write history and
> > not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
> > am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
> > has graduated from high-school know the
> > reason why this happens?
> >
> >
> > American high-school I experienced was sadly
> > lacking in the reasons behind the “facts” being
> > crammed into young minds.
> >
> > --
> > George N. White III
> >
>

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[Eric Streit]

oups, I forgot the link; here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YO7Vg1ByA8

Eric

Le 20/08/2022 à 18:38, Eric Streit a écrit :

Hi,

an interesting conference about the 'French orthographe" and how it was 
defined (and, no, this was not logical at all).


The conference is in French, but with subtitles, I hope you can understand.

Orthograph was used to separate the "vulgus pecus" from the "educated 
people". It was never meant to be accessible to everyone.


And it's why, you have the "f" sound, for example for "une photographie" 
written with "ph" and not "f" like in many other latin languages.


Best regards

I had fun listening to this conference.

Eric

Le 20/08/2022 à 17:25, George N. White III a écrit :



On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 6:23 AM Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX 
mailto:xetex@tug.org>> wrote:



    Hi everybody,

    Many readers of this mailing list are
    native English language speakers and
    the following question is for them.

    Someone claimed that English people (I say
    more generally English language speakers)
  learn at school why you write history and
    not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
    am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
    has graduated from high-school know the
    reason why this happens?


American high-school I experienced was sadly
lacking in the reasons behind the “facts” being
crammed into young minds.

--
George N. White III

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[Eric Streit]

Hi,

an interesting conference about the 'French orthographe" and how it was 
defined (and, no, this was not logical at all).


The conference is in French, but with subtitles, I hope you can understand.

Orthograph was used to separate the "vulgus pecus" from the "educated 
people". It was never meant to be accessible to everyone.


And it's why, you have the "f" sound, for example for "une photographie" 
written with "ph" and not "f" like in many other latin languages.


Best regards

I had fun listening to this conference.

Eric

Le 20/08/2022 à 17:25, George N. White III a écrit :



On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 6:23 AM Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX 
mailto:xetex@tug.org>> wrote:



Hi everybody,

Many readers of this mailing list are
native English language speakers and
the following question is for them.

Someone claimed that English people (I say
more generally English language speakers)
  learn at school why you write history and
not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
has graduated from high-school know the
reason why this happens?


American high-school I experienced was sadly
lacking in the reasons behind the “facts” being
crammed into young minds.

--
George N. White III

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[Jens Bakker]

May be, this is a misunderstanding by some teachers who do pronounce it 
„istory“ or a joke by some students, in English this word is pronounced with an 
„h“, and therefore it seems to be impossible to write it without an „h“ but to 
pronounce it with an „h“ at the beginning of the word, according to the customs 
of English orthography.

Best wishes,
Jens Bakker


> Am 20.08.2022 um 11:27 schrieb Philip Taylor (Hellenic Institute) 
> :
> 
> On 20/08/2022 10:21, Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX wrote:
>> 
>> Someone claimed that English people (I say
>> more generally English language speakers)
>>  learn at school why you write history and
>> not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
>> am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
>> has graduated from high-school know the
>> reason why this happens?
> No, the matter was never raised during the period that I was at school 
> (1952–1963).  We were told that the subject was called "history" and that was 
> that.  The OED  
> has this to 
> say —
> 
> Etymology: In Old English < classical Latin historia (in post-classical Latin 
> also istoria (7th or 8th cent.)) (see below);
> 
>  
> subsequently reborrowed < (i) Anglo-Norman and Old French istorie, estoire, 
> historie, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French estorie, Anglo-Norman 
> and Middle French, French histoire, Old French, Middle French hystoire, 
> Middle French histore account of the events of a person's life (beginning of 
> the 12th cent.), chronicle, account of events as relevant to a group of 
> people or people in general (1155), dramatic or pictorial representation of 
> historical events (c1240), body of knowledge relative to human evolution, 
> science (c1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (c1462),
>  
> and its etymon (ii) classical Latin historia (in post-classical Latin also 
> istoria (7th or 8th cent.)) investigation, inquiry, research, account, 
> description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical 
> narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative, in 
> post-classical Latin also narrative illustration (from 12th cent. in British 
> sources) < ancient Greek ἱστορία inquiry, knowledge obtained by inquiry, 
> account of such inquiries, narrative, in Hellenistic Greek also story, 
> account < ἵστορ- , ἵστωρ or ἴστορ- , ἴστωρ (ancient Greek (Boeotian) ϝίστωρ ) 
> (noun) judge, witness, (adjective) knowing, learned ( < an ablaut variant 
> (zero-grade) of the stem of οἶδα to know (see wit v.1 
> ) + -τωρ , suffix forming 
> agent nouns) + -ία -y suffix3 
> .
>  
> Old French forms in e- arise as alterations of earlier forms in i- , which 
> was unusual in this position in Old French; Middle French forms in h- show 
> remodelling after classical Latin historia .
>  
> Compare Old Occitan estoria , Catalan història (14th cent.), Spanish historia 
> (1220–50; also as †estoria ), Portuguese história (14th cent.), Italian 
> storia (1690; a1374 as †istoria ). Compare story n. 
> 
> The Latin word was earlier borrowed into Old English as stær (also ster , 
> steor ) history, narrative, story (perhaps via Celtic; compare Early Irish 
> stoir , Middle Breton ster ); the length of the stem vowel of the Old English 
> word is uncertain, and the phonology is difficult to explain (see further A. 
> Campbell Old Eng. Gram. (1959) §§507, 516, 545, 565, and (for a summary of 
> views) A. H. Feulner Die griechischen Lehnwörter im Altenglischen (2000) 
> 248–51):
> 
> Philip Taylor
> 

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[George N. White III]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 6:23 AM Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX <
xetex@tug.org> wrote:

>
> Hi everybody,
>
> Many readers of this mailing list are
> native English language speakers and
> the following question is for them.
>
> Someone claimed that English people (I say
> more generally English language speakers)
>  learn at school why you write history and
> not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
> am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
> has graduated from high-school know the
> reason why this happens?
>

American high-school I experienced was sadly
lacking in the reasons behind the “facts” being
crammed into young minds.

-- 
George N. White III

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[BPJ]

The Indo-European root is _*weyd-_ 'see' > _*weydtōr_ 'seer, knower,
examiner' > ἵστωρ. According to Rix's small historical grammar which is the
only relevant source I have to hand at the moment Attic has _hVs-_ for
_*wVs-_ (V = a vowel), although the only example he gives is ἕσπερος, cf..
Latin _vesper_. He doesn't say whether it is exceptionless but the argument
from silence ought to be that it is. (The normal source of Greek _h-_ is
PIE _*s-_, but _*y-_ — yod — also gives Greek _h-_ cf. ἧπαρ, Latin _iecur_.)

I note that Herodotus spoke and wrote Ionian which was a psilotic
(h-dropping) dialect, which may have influenced the preferred spelling of
ἱστορία in later times, but it would seem that _historia_ is actually the
spelling, and early on pronunciation, which Atticizing Latin literati would
be expected to adopt. Non-psilotic diacriticization of Ionic texts on the
other hand is Atticizing hypercorrection from a time when all Greek had
become psilotic.

Note also that not just English but all Germanic languages write and
pronounce _h_ in this word, so the post-medieval consensus clearly is in
favor of _h_ as far as Latin is concerned.

Over and out from a once-upon-a-time Indo-Europeanist (although mainly
Germanicist!)

/Benct

Den lör 20 aug. 2022 11:24Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX 
skrev:

>
> Hi everybody,
>
> Many readers of this mailing list are
> native English language speakers and
> the following question is for them.
>
> Someone claimed that English people (I say
> more generally English language speakers)
>  learn at school why you write history and
> not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
> am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
> has graduated from high-school know the
> reason why this happens?
>
> Kindest regards,
>
> Apostolos Syropoulos
>
>
> Στάλθηκε από το Ταχυδρομείο Yahoo σε Android
> 
>

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[Yannis Haralambous]

English (and French and German and many other languages) respect words of Greek 
origin and
represent the rough breathing in some way (`H' in Latin alphabet, `Г' in 
Cyrillic alphabet, `ه' in Arabic,
'ハ' in Japanese, etc.).

Greeks themselves have chosen to destroy this cultural heritage by adopting the 
monotonic system…
(because of the Saussurian doctrine that only oral language deserves to be 
considered, and the
rough breathing has not phonetic realization anymore so, according to Saussure 
and his Greek
followers it should better disappear…) See 
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02480230/document 


Yannis

> Le 20 août 2022 à 11:21, Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX  a 
> écrit :
> 
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> Many readers of this mailing list are
> native English language speakers and
> the following question is for them.
> 
> Someone claimed that English people (I say
> more generally English language speakers)
>  learn at school why you write history and
> not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
> am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
> has graduated from high-school know the
> reason why this happens?
> 
> Kindest regards, 
> 
> Apostolos Syropoulos
> 
> 
> Στάλθηκε από το Ταχυδρομείο Yahoo σε Android 
> 
 Yannis HARALAMBOUS
Professor
Computer Science Department
UMR CNRS 6285 Lab-STICC
  
 
Technopôle
 Brest-Iroise CS 83818
29238 Brest Cedex 3, France
Une École de l'IMT 

‌Le tact dans l'audace, c'est de savoir jusqu'où on peut aller trop loin.
‌(Jean Cocteau, ‌Le Coq et l'Arlequin)‌

Re: [XeTeX] Off topic (interesting) question

[Philip Taylor (Hellenic Institute)]

On 20/08/2022 10:21, Apostolos Syropoulos via XeTeX wrote:


Someone claimed that English people (I say
more generally English language speakers)
 learn at school why you write history and
not istory. Since I do not know I'd this holds, I
am asking: Is this true? Does someone who
has graduated from high-school know the
reason why this happens?


No, the matter was never raised during the period that I was at school 
(1952–1963).  We were told that the subject was called "history" and 
that was that.  The OED 
has this 
to say —


*Etymology: *In Old English < classical Latin /historia/ (in 
post-classical Latin also /istoria/(7th or 8th cent.)) (see below);


subsequently reborrowed < (i) Anglo-Norman and Old French /istorie/, 
/estoire/, /historie/, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French 
/estorie/, Anglo-Norman and Middle French, French /histoire/, Old 
French, Middle French /hystoire/, Middle French /histore/ account of the 
events of a person's life (beginning of the 12th cent.), chronicle, 
account of events as relevant to a group of people or people in general 
(1155), dramatic or pictorial representation of historical events 
(/c/1240), body of knowledge relative to human evolution, science 
(/c/1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (/c/1462),
and its etymon (ii) classical Latin /historia/ (in post-classical Latin 
also /istoria/ (7th or 8th cent.)) investigation, inquiry, research, 
account, description, written account of past events, writing of 
history, historical narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, 
narrative, in post-classical Latin also narrative illustration (from 
12th cent. in British sources) < ancient Greek /ἱστορία/ inquiry, 
knowledge obtained by inquiry, account of such inquiries, narrative, in 
Hellenistic Greek also story, account < /ἵστορ-/ , /ἵστωρ/ or /ἴστορ-/ , 
/ἴστωρ/ (ancient Greek (Boeotian) /ϝίστωρ/ ) (noun) judge, witness, 
(adjective) knowing, learned ( < an ablaut variant (zero-grade) of the 
stem of /οἶδα/ to know (see wit v.^1 
) + /-τωρ/ , suffix 
forming agent nouns) + /-ία/ -y suffix^3 
.
Old French forms in /e-/ arise as alterations of earlier forms in /i-/ , 
which was unusual in this position in Old French; Middle French forms in 
/h-/ show remodelling after classical Latin /historia/ .
Compare Old Occitan /estoria/ , Catalan /història/ (14th cent.), Spanish 
/historia/ (1220–50; also as †/estoria/ ), Portuguese /história/ (14th 
cent.), Italian /storia/ (1690; /a/1374 as †/istoria/ ). Compare story 
n. 
The Latin word was earlier borrowed into Old English as /stær/ (also 
/ster/ , /steor/ ) history, narrative, story (perhaps via Celtic; 
compare Early Irish /stoir/ , Middle Breton /ster/ ); the length of the 
stem vowel of the Old English word is uncertain, and the phonology is 
difficult to explain (see further A. Campbell /Old Eng. Gram./ (1959) 
§§507, 516, 545, 565, and (for a summary of views) A. H. Feulner /Die 
griechischen Lehnwörter im Altenglischen/ (2000) 248–51):


Philip Taylor