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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
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Anguish-Enguish-Inguish!
No I can't help!
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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.
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>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?
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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.
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old hand
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old hand
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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.
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. 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.
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enthusiast
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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.
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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.
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In reply to:
"e" pronounced "i", schwa
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).
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