|
ESL Forum:
Techniques and methods
in Language Teaching
Games, activities
and teaching ideas
Grammar and
Linguistics
Teaching material
Concerning
worksheets
Concerning
powerpoints
Concerning online
exercises
Make suggestions,
report errors
Ask for help
Message board
|
ESL forum >
Message board > ´The Thames ´: correct pronunciation
´The Thames ´: correct pronunciation
|
|
libertybelle
|
There is a term called language corruption. That means that many words change the way they are pronounced through time and use. This is found in almost every language.
I doubt there are many languages that sound as they did back in the 1200 ´s!
I think this is probably the reason why so many English words are not spoken as they are written. They probably were much more phonetic long ago.
Who knows - perhaps The Thames was pronounced with an H and an A sound way back when.
Another thing could be the conquering forces that invaded Britain and other countries that have contributed to the change in pronunciation.
|
7 Jun 2009
|
|
|
alien boy
|
The earliest known forms of the name come from Greek Temese (whichis even mentioned in ´The Odyssey ´ - the trade in tin was happening way back then) & from the Latin Tamisa or Tamesa.
From The American HeritageŽ Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
The modern spelling of the word Thames illustrates an
interesting phenomenon in the history of the English language. The
Thames is first mentioned in English around 893 in King Alfred the
Great ´s Orosius. At the time it was called the Temese, a form believed to come from an earlier, unrecorded English *Tamisa. The spelling Thames,
which first appears in 1649, is an example of the kind of "learned"
respelling that went on in English from the late Renaissance through
the Enlightenment, when the prestige of Latin and Greek prompted
scholars to "correct" the form of many English words. The a in Thames is etymologically correct, since the Latin forms had that vowel, but the h is a "learned" error, added in the mistaken belief that Thames
derived from Greek. Such errors were common, and many words that had
nothing to do with Greek were respelled to make them look Greek; two
other examples are author (ultimately from Latin auctor) and Anthony (from Latin Antonius), with the h added as if these were based on Greek words with a theta (th) in them. In many cases, the pronunciations of these words changed accordingly, yielding what linguists call a spelling pronunciation; author is now pronounced with a (th). The pronunciation of Thames
remained unchanged, however, providing an etymologically explicable
example of the notorious discrepancy between English spelling and
pronunciation.
Cheers,
AB
|
8 Jun 2009
|
|
< Previous
1
2
|
