Does anyone know how the "E" in "English" came to be pronounced as an "i", or even almost as a schwa? The germanic languages most closely related to English have retained the "e" sound, while English itself appears to have adopted the Iberian/Italian "i" as in "inglese" Any ideas when how or why this happened? Thanks

Anguish-Enguish-Inguish!

No I can't help!

Good one, Bridget!

Max, I don't know for sure, but I suspect it has to do with
the same carelessness that makes us say pin when we mean a
writing implement. I remember teachers getting on us
about that.

>the same carelessness that makes us say pin when we mean a
writing implement

But surely all the good folks (around Bridget down under) do say pin, as in pin and paypuh?

But surely all the good folks (around Bridget down under) do say pin, as in pin and paypuh?

Tread softly on that very dangerous ground, maverick. Those of us living down under are acutely aware of the differences between accents on either side of the Tasman, even if the rest of world is too aurally deficient to notice. Try calling a Canadian an American, and you'll know how A NZer will react if you say that the NZ accent is indistinguishable from the Australian.

Does anyone know how the "E" in "English" came to be pronounced as an "i", or even almost as a schwa?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I find it much more difficult to stress a long "e" sound and say "eeng" than to just go with the "ing" sound that we use in so many other words. A long "e" just doesn't flow well with the "ng" sound.

. A long "e" just doesn't flow well with the "ng" sound.

I think that's probably it. I was thinking this morning of the only other language name I know of that is spelled similarly, Entish. It is easy to pronounce the "e" in that word, so it could well be the "ng" that encourages "i" in Inglish.

The alternation between Angle and English is regular, umlaut of the e by the following i, as in Frank ~ French, or (much earlier) man ~ men.

The change from Eng- to Ing- must have been early, possibly before o-umlaut changed to e in Old English, because strength and length didn't change (both from -o- of course). There are no other normal words in English containing -eng-. There's an obsolete word 'meng' (= mix, mingle) but this has the alternative 'ming'. Modern words like 'penguin' and 'Dencorub' show it's perfectly pronounceable, but it must not have been a thousand years ago or whenever.

NicholasW opines: The change from Eng- to Ing- must have been early

I believe if you were to dig not too deeply you could find an OE spelling inglisc.

In reply to:

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"e" pronounced "i", schwa

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Much depends on whether it's in a stressed or unstressed syllable. The general rule seems to be if it's in an unstressed syllable, the hell with it -- it comes out more or less as a neutral sound (schwa) just to take up the space between consonants. Now in languages like Polish, you don't have the problem (you don't have a lot of vowels).

>There are no other normal words in English containing -eng-

I challenge that with a vengeance; what about penguin?

NicholasW: There are no other normal words in English containing -eng-

Tsuwm: I challenge that with a vengeance; what about penguin?

Tsuwm, I think Nicholas was talking about words coming to us from Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon), while your examples are later imports.



Bingley

The original poster showed their NZ origin by saying a stressed /i/ as in England could be a schwa.

As to unstressed /i/, this depends on dialect. A word like 'indivisibility' consists of all the one vowel in RP, and in modern southern British only the final vowel is different (a short form of the [ i] in 'seat'); but in most accents the unstressed vowels are neutralized.

NicholasW said: The original poster showed their NZ origin by saying a stressed /i/ as in England could be a schwa.

I'm no linguist but I if you listen carefully, the "E" is not only unstressed, but it disappears. (I always thought that "schwa" applied to a whole syllable, by the way, not the way one letter of it was pronounced. I stand corrected).

The average New Zealander actually pronounces it "Ngland" and kills the "E" stone dead. Funnily enough, I can't think of any other word which suffers this fate. "Angle", for instance has the "a" stressed, not removed.

It may have something to do with the prevalence of the Maori "nga" structure, but since that is pronounced "ngaaa", probably not.

(On England becoming Ngland in NZ) More likely to be a general feature of English, once the e had become schwa: that is, that schwa + sonorant is usually realized as syllabic sonorant. 'garden' is /ga:d@n/ or /ga:dn-/ where /n-/ represents the syllabic nasal.

NicholasW: There are no other normal words in English containing -eng-

Tsuwm: I challenge that with a vengeance; what about penguin?

Tsuwm, I think Nicholas was talking about words coming to us from Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon), while your examples are later imports.

1. NickW quoted penguin as a 'modern' import

2. How long have length and strength (lingth and stringth?!)been around in English?