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I have found that, in speaking, there are subtle differences in the way words are pronounced based upon the context.
For me it is "only natural" to change "THE" from a short sound to a long sound when preceeding a word that begins with a vowel.
I say, (phonetically) "`Thee` educated man" but "`Thu` mild-mannered man".
Is there a word for this? Is it common or simply my 1950's Philadelphia* upbringing?
*"Did you ever notice how many people are FROM Philadelphia?" - W.C. Fields
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world" -Michael Crichton
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Is there a word for this?Yes, phonology. In other words, it's how languages works. For example, hard as it may be to believe, the sounds represented by t in top, stop, and spot are all different (aspirated voiceless, unaspirated voiceless, and unreleased alveolar stops). There is a phoneme t in English that has several different realizations or allophones based upon considerations like position and context.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Pooh-Bah
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I do the same Parkin and I've never even had a philly cheese steak.
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Nothing to do with phonology ParkinT, but you've got a nice new photo.
Nice image!
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Sandhi
Sandhi is a kind of phonological change. For me, the change in the word the is not conditioned by the word that follows (beginning with a vowel), but rather emphasis. A favorite bit of dialog from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum illustrates this:
X: The (thee) Miles Gloriosus?
Y: The the (thee) himself.
Sandhi is a linguistic term used by Sanskrit grmmarians. It can refer to the changes to the beginnings and endings of words based on what preceeds or follows. The following sentence and its counterpart with the words in isolation (sandhi undone):
raamo vanam gacchati ||
Rama goes to the forest.
raamah | vanam | gacchati ||
Rama (nom sg), forest (acc), s/he goes
The ending -ah (originally an -as, cf. Latin -us, Greek -os) becomes an -o before voiced consonants. Editions of the Rigveda have the individual lines in both forms to make it easier to understand the hymns.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
but you've got a nice new photo.
Nice image!
Thanks. That was taken just outside my house here in Orlando!
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Thank you (all) for your input. I am gaining an education in Latin 
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Quote:
For me, the change in the word the is not conditioned by the word that follows (beginning with a vowel), but rather emphasis.
I think there's a little of each at work here. Certainly the emphasis thing can be seen, but PT's thee V-word vs thuh C-word thing is also present in many idiolects, too.
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Quote:
Sandhi
Sandhi is a kind of phonological change. For me, the change in the word the is not conditioned by the word that follows (beginning with a vowel), but rather emphasis. A favorite bit of dialog from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum illustrates this:
X: The (thee) Miles Gloriosus?
Y: The the (thee) himself.
Sandhi is a linguistic term used by Sanskrit grmmarians. It can refer to the changes to the beginnings and endings of words based on what preceeds or follows. The following sentence and its counterpart with the words in isolation (sandhi undone):
raamo vanam gacchati ||
Rama goes to the forest.
raamah | vanam | gacchati ||
Rama (nom sg), forest (acc), s/he goes
The ending -ah (originally an -as, cf. Latin -us, Greek -os) becomes an -o before voiced consonants. Editions of the Rigveda have the individual lines in both forms to make it easier to understand the hymns.
Sorry for butting in, Nuncle, but is there no gender whatsamacallit in Skrt? Pardon my resorting to such highly technical terms, but I mean that in Hindi "I go" if said by me would be main jaata hoon, or main jaa raha hoon for "I am going", but main jaatii hoon, or main jaa rahii hoon, if said by my dear wife.
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is there no gender whatsamacallit in Skrt? Pardon my resorting to such highly technical terms, but I mean that in Hindi "I go" if said by me would be main jaata hoon, or main jaa raha hoon for "I am going", but main jaatii hoon, or main jaa rahii hoon, if said by my dear wife.
Yes, Sasnkrit has gender (a grammatical category). Three of 'em: masculine, feminine, and neuter. As with Latin and Greek, most of the time you can tell a word's gender by its ending, but that does not always hold. For example, in Latin most words that end in -a are feminine, but there are exceptions like agricola 'farmer' or nauta 'sailor'; same with nouns ending in -us usually being masculine, except some like corpus 'body' or opus 'work' (neuter) or vannus 'winnowing fan' or fagus 'beech (tree)' (feminine). But those are nouns, and you sopecifically asked about verbal forms. Like Hindi, English, and Latin, Sanskrit has verbal forms which are single words and then it has a few verbal forms which are periphrastic; almost none in Vedic Sanskrit, but in the later classical language). The hoon in your example above is the finite form of hona 'to be' and is conjugated for person, number, and tense, but the other part of the verbal phrase, the raha or the rahii are basically verbal adjectives which agree in gender and number with the subject. (This is true of the non-continuous forms of the verb like main jata hun 'I go'.) You could see this in Latin with a sentence like tela vulneratus eram 'I was wounded with a spear' which could've only been uttered by a man; a woman might've said: tela vulnerata eram. In Sanskrit, agnAv agniSh carati praviSTaH 'Agni is constantly present in the fire' where praviSTaH is a verbal adjective agreeing in case number and gender with the subject Agni. (They're so rare, I couldn't really recall any of the forms, and had to check in good old Whitney's Grammar.)
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Thanks for the explanation. Unfortunately, it revealed that I had not phrased my question well enough. I had feared that such was the case. I was really asking about the gacchati, for "s/he goes" and wondering why it wasn't gacchata.
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I had feared that such was the case. I was really asking about the gacchati, for "s/he goes" and wondering why it wasn't gacchata.
Because in Sanskrit (like in other IE languages like Greek and Latin), the ending for the 3rd person singular of any of the three genders is -ti, cf. Old English -eð, Latin -Vt. In the present indicative of gam 'to go':
1st Person Singular gacchAmi
2nd Person S gacchasi
3rd Person S gacchati
1st Person Dual gacchAvas
2nd Person Dual gacchavathas
3rd Person Dual gacchavatas
1st Person Plural gacchAmas
2nd Person Plural gacchatha
3rd Person Plural gaachanti
You see something like this is the Hindi forms of hona 'to be':
hun 'I am'
hai 'thou art'
hai 'he, she, it is'
hain 'we are'
hao 'ye are'
hain 'you are'
hain 'they are'
Though, in Hindi there are less forms. But, the gender concord is on verbal adjectives and not finite verb forms.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
I had feared that such was the case. I was really asking about the gacchati, for "s/he goes" and wondering why it wasn't gacchata.
Because in Sanskrit (like in other IE languages like Greek and Latin), the ending for the 3rd person singular of any of the three genders is -ti, cf. Old English -eð, Latin -Vt. In the present indicative of gam 'to go':
1st Person Singular gacchAmi
2nd Person S gacchasi
3rd Person S gacchati
1st Person Dual gacchAvas
2nd Person Dual gacchavathas
3rd Person Dual gacchavatas
1st Person Plural gacchAmas
2nd Person Plural gacchatha
3rd Person Plural gaachanti
Though, in Hindi there are less forms. But, the gender concord is on verbal adjectives and not finite verb forms.
Shukriya, swami-caca.
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Quote:
hai 'thou art'
.
.
.
hao 'ye are'
hain 'you are'
Huh?
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Huh?Huh, indeed. I misremembered how Hindi handles the 2nd person: there are three grades of respect: intimate 2PS ( tuu hai), familiar 2PS/2PP ( tum ho), and respectful 2PS/2PP ( aap hain). I tried to map these to quasi-archaic English. Looking at verbal conjugation in an online grammar, I'd also forgotten that the 3rd person, singular and plural, is divided into 3rd person near and far from the speaker: yah hai / ye hain and vah hai / ve hain.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
Huh?
Huh, indeed. I misremembered how Hindi handles the 2nd person: there are three grades of respect: intimate 2PS (tuu hai), familiar 2PS/2PP (tum ho), and respectful 2PS/2PP (aap hain). I tried to map these to quasi-archaic English. Looking at verbal conjugation in an online grammar, I'd also forgotten that the 3rd person, singular and plural, is divided into 3rd person near and far from the speaker: yah hai / ye hain and vah hai / ve hain.
Thanks. I had been restrained from posting my initial thoughts by images of grndmothers and eggs. Nice to have it confirmed that I have learned a few things rightly.
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Nice to have it confirmed that I have learned a few things rightly.
I know you've been studying Hindi for a while. I, on the other hand, had a one semester class that I didn't pay much attention in.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
Nice to have it confirmed that I have learned a few things rightly.
I know you've been studying Hindi for a while. I, on the other hand, had a one semester class that I didn't pay much attention in.
P'raps, but there ain't never going to be nothing that tempts me to correct any posts by you on any matter philological. That smacks too much of hubris for my taste.
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