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enthusiast
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Apostrophes are important.
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I suspect the 'r' entered as a non-rhotic spelling variation. Sherbet was one of Australia's most successful 1970s pop band ( Sherbet). Their music was as kitch as most everything else in the 70s. Or kitsch if you prefer.
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Apostrophes are important. Your right, they are arent they? Or are they? Wouldnt it be terrible without em? As Anu points out, Dictionaries follow language, not the other way round. It won't be too long before they list words without the accustomed apostrophes as acceptable spellings. You're will become your and the apostrophied (apostrophised?) version will become archaic. You just wait and see.
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I suspect the 'r' entered as a non-rhotic spelling variation.
I believe that non-rhoticism is much more recent than the 400 year b.p. date given for the introduction ofn sherbet and its almost immediate variation, sherbert. What I wanna know is, when it came into English did we know to change the French or Italian, whichever it was, initial S back to the original Arabic SH or was that just some ignorant, lazy solecism? Language Log has given a date for the start of non-rhoticism, but I couldn't find it. Or maybe it was Nuncle zhd.
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I suspect the 'r' entered as a non-rhotic spelling variation.
I believe that non-rhoticism is much more recent than the 400 year b.p. date given for the introduction ofn sherbet and its almost immediate variation, sherbert. Wikipedia has this: The earliest traces of a loss of /r/ in English are found in the environment before /s/ in spellings from the mid-15th century: the Oxford English Dictionary reports bace for earlier barse (today "bass", the fish) in 1440 and passel for parcel in 1468. In the 1630s, the word juggernaut is first attested, which represents the Hindi word jagannāth, meaning "lord of the universe". LanguageLog does have this: The traditional account (as e.g. in (Richard) Bailey 1996 and Lass 1992) was that loss of postvocalic /r/ in England was a 17th and 18th century phenomenon. Thus r-lessness would have been widespread (but not universal) during the period when English speakers emigrated to North America, and thus settlement patterns are a likely source of influence. However, recent research suggests that "... most of England was still rhotic ... at the level of urban and lower-middle-class speech in the middle of the nineteenth century, and that extensive spreading of the loss of rhoticity is something that has occurred subsequently..." (Peter Trudgill, "A Window on the Past: "Colonial Lag" and New Zealand Evidence for the Phonology of Nineteenth-Century English". American Speech 74(3) 1999).
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In the 1630s, the word juggernaut is first attested, which represents the Hindi word jagannāth, meaning "lord of the universe". This example of an unpronounced R being put in a word not previously known in English is consistent with The Pook's conjecture that the second R in sherbert was a result of non-rhoticism. The earliest citation for the sherbert spelling in the B&M OED is from 1675: We were severall times treated with sherbert of lemmons. Thanks, latishya. Incidentally, the OED also lists variations with the first syllable spelled ser-, cer-, and sar-. I'm still wondering about the initial sh.
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I suspect the 'r' entered as a non-rhotic spelling variation.
I believe that non-rhoticism is much more recent than the 400 year b.p. date given for the introduction ofn sherbet and its almost immediate variation, sherbert. What I wanna know is, when it came into English did we know to change the French or Italian, whichever it was, initial S back to the original Arabic SH or was that just some ignorant, lazy solecism? Language Log has given a date for the start of non-rhoticism, but I couldn't find it. Or maybe it was Nuncle zhd. It's hard to see how it could be a deliberate rhotic spelling. Why would someone deliberately add an 'r' sound, thus making it harder to pronounce, not easier? It has to be spelling, not a real phonetic addition of a consonant, surely? It is probably a non-rhotic attempt to change the value of the 'e' to something more like a long schwa.
Last edited by The Pook; 05/06/08 11:49 AM.
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Do you mean non-rhotic spelling? Surely people have been speaking dialects with or without the 'r' sounds in certain words for longer than that?
Certainly, in some circumstances the R has dropped out of pronunciations, but it doesn't really count as non-rhoticism. The missing R in speak is an example. I think it's a matter of an R after a bilabial or labio-dental that disappears. Modern examples are liberry, Febyuary, and infastructure. That doesn't really count as non-rhoticism. And, yes, probably there are dialects all over the world where post-vocalic Rs have disappeared. But this is Modern Standard English we're talking about and it's all getting too complicated to keep up at the moment. I've got my day job to go to and it's getting late.
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someone will likely have an idear.
time to pahk my cah in the gararge.
formerly known as etaoin...
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